Notebook
Anniversaries of public events provide a good excuse for the BBC to disinter old film from their archives rather than go about their business of making fresh programmes. This year the summer season of television repeats has been rather worse than usual with the 'celebration' of the tenth anniversaries of the first landing on the moon, the investiture of Prince Charles at Caernarvon Castle and the victory of Tony Jacklin in the British Open golf championship. But another event from the summer of 1969, which may have far more relevance for the immediate future, has been ignored by television — Chappaquiddick. In the same week that Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were taking one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind, Senator Edward Kennedy was charged with 'leaving the scene of an accident' on a Massachusetts island after his car leaped off Dike Bridge and into the water and , his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was drowned. He Pleaded guilty and was given a two-month Ils,pended sentence. The moon-landing was the fulfilment of a promise made to the American people by John F. Kennedy, and it was ironic that his posthumous thunder should have been to some degree stolen by I he behaviour of his brot her. According to Senator Henry Jackson Senator Kennedy will now 'certainly' be the Democrat nominee for President of the United States in next year's elections. If this
proves to be so, we shall be reminded of Chapp Kenned agyuiddick so often that Senator may wish that he had gone to the moon instead.
a journal which has had its unfair snare of libel actions in recent months, it !ceras appropriate that we should remember the man who, until his death three weeks ago, was acknowledged as the reatest English authority on the laws of !lila Colin Duncan would have been 85 in October, yet only last year he pubInb'lled, with Brian (now Mr Justice) Neill, ucliumuion, the standard work on the subject for all lawyers, and for the SpectflOr. Unlike so many barristers, Colin 1)uncan was never stiff in his manner or !115opinions; he WEIS illWayS light-hearted in conversation. I doubt if he would have e9Ioyed giving up the Bar for the Bench, ilthough he had been Recorder of Bury Si :Ek Limunds and of Norwich. Not only did he now inore about the law of libel than the ,ludgcs before whom he appeared in court, out he was often their senior by several Y,,ears. He was never afraid to be critical of the judiciary: in the report of the 1:milks Committee on Defamation he commented
strongly on the bias of some judges against plaintiff or defendant in libel cases. During his 50 years in practice Colin Duncan had a record number of pupils; and after he took silk in 1963 he always maintained a close interest in the welfare of the pupils (of whom I was one) and younger members of his chambers in Brick Court. Among the many cases in which he appeared, there was none more famous than Dering Uris in 1964. Dr Wladislaw Dering. OBE, had been a prisoner doctor in Auschwitz, and Leon Uris wrote in Exodus that he 'performed 17,000 experiments in surgery without anaesthetic' in the concentration camp. Acting for the doctor, Colin Duncan advised him that, while that passage might be untrue, no English jury, having seen and heard from some of the inmates of Auschwitz who had had their ovaries or testicles removed by Dr. Dering, would be likely to award him other than contemptuous damages. But the case went to trial, and lasted for over three weeks; the jury found for Dr Dering and gave him damages of one halfpenny.
Having, in effect, won his case Leon Uris saw what a good story he had and went on to write a book about it — the novel ()BM, of which a film was also made, But I cannot believe that Uris had a hand in directing the part of himself in the film: an appallingly smug and unlikeable person played by Ben Ciazzara, who confronts the doctor on the steps of the Law Courts with the remark: 'This is one Jew you're not going to castrate.' Neither the book nor the film is able to capture the atmosphere of what actually took place in the courtroom in 1964 — the remarkable strength of character of many of the witnesses, the harrowing accounts of what they had endured in Auschwitz, often made somehow more distressing when heard in the interpreter's translation from
Hebrew or German or French. (There is an excellent account of the court proceedings. Auschwitz in England, a book by two Times law reporters, Norman Williams and Mavis Hill). Dr Dering's evidence was that the organs which he removed had already been irradiated. and that if he had not done the operations he would have been shot. But this was countered most devastatingly by a French lady doctor, 1)1' Hautval, also in Auschwitz. who had refused on more than one occasion to take part in any medical experiments. She was never punished. The judge later described her as 'one of the most impressive and courageous women who have ever given evidence in the courts of this country.'
What a fine piece of detective work on the part of Peter Smiles, head of the racecourse security services, to identify one Simon Potter as the half-wit who threw a roll of lavatory paper at the runners in the Derby. The incident has been described in the press as a 'prank'. but it was in fact extremely dangerous and could have caused injury or even loss of life to men and horses. A five-year ban by the Jockey Club from all racecourses is hardly a sufficient punishment. particularly as it appears that Mr Potter had never been to a racecourse before. Some sterner deterrent is called for: the police could bring a prosecution for assault or, under the Public Order Act, for 'using insulting behaviour whereby a breach of the peace is likely to be occasioned:1W the guilts' man been identified at the time the peace might well have been breached by members of the racing public, not to mention the French jockey, Yves St Martin. who suffered more than the others; he still had the paper streaming from his head at the end of the race.
It was one of nature's great tragedies that the lads birds, having been struck down by the cold of last winter, were not around to feast on the swarms of greenfly which appeared in England last week. Aphid e4perts have been coming out, it seems. in almost equally large numbers to advise how best to get rid of the little pests (which suck the sap from the leaves of plants). You can spray the plants with all manner of chemicals, with Jews Fluid, with washing-up liquids or with a mixture of soap flakes, water and cooked rhubarb leaves. This is the best method as it spares the ladybirds and, incidentally, is the first way I have heard of putting rhubarb leaves to some good use. A man from the Ministry of Agriculture says that the plague of greenfly is now being killed oft by `a parasitic fungus'. But the more likely reason is the change in the weather. in time for the traditionally cool and cloudy month of August — just right for reducing the aphid population and, let us hope, for the return of the ladybird.
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