A Spectator's Notebook

It was interesting, not to say extraordinary, to return from a holiday in Spain and go almost directly to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool. The day before I left Spain, General Franco, making some concession to the Pressure of European and international opinion, had decided to shoot rather than garrotte Some self-declared terrorists. The Labour Party Conference was, by the time I arrived, in a considerable tizzy about this. Mr Jack Jones, and the Foreign Secretary, Mr James Callaghan, both made extremely impressive speeches suggesting the exclusion of Spain from the comity of nations because of what the Generalissimo and his Cabinet — by a majority of eleven to eight — had done.

When I talked to my friend, Mr Michael Foot, and told him where I had been on holiday, he was, to use his own word, horrified. He, like Mr Jones, appeared to be in favour of banning everything from and with Spain until the dreadful killing of terrorists had been purged. I find it extraordinary — whatever the merits or demerits of the Spanish situation — that nobody at the Labour Party Conference, however many were prepared to make large stands about iniquities in Iberia, wanted a debate on Northern Ireland. None is scheduled.

Spain has, for far too long, been used as a cockpit of the left-wing conscience. One is reminded of Cyril Connolly's dictum that intellectuals should come first, 'almost' before women and children. Of course, Mr Jones fought in the International Brigade, and might, therefore, be thought emotional on the subject, but it is a bit much to see the Foreign Secretary parading his suddenly useful conscience to ensure his re-election to the National Executive on a Spanish ticket.

An embarrassment

None of the above should suggest that I am in any way hostile to furious Labour left-wingers. I can, though, be an embarrassment to them. I gave my dear friend, and the very beautiful, Miss Joan Lestor, a large kiss in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool. Entirely in jest, she suggested that I might lose her a place on the National Executive. I do feel that, like all good jokes, hers had a serious point. For hers indicated that this Labour Party Conference, unlike all its predecessors that I have attended, is dull and boring and doctrinaire.

I was lifted from this momentary depression by Lena Jager — who once smuggled me into a Labour Party Conference when I had left my press card at my hotel — who told me that it required at least a generation to understand how Labour conferences work: for the enjoyment is that of the specialist.

ASTMS and IEA

Even though they happen on Monday, the fact of the matter is that the ASTMS parties given by Clive Jenkins are the best at Blackpool. This, however, is a serious year for the union. They have just produced their first quarterly report on the state of the economy; and they reckon that their factual prediction of how things will go, economically and industrially, in Britain will prove much more accurate than anything produced by the NIESR or the Treasury. I have no doubt that they are right. However much I would dissent from the Conclusions for Action drawn up by Clive Jenkins and his cohorts — and I would dissent pretty vigorously — there is no doubt that the performance prediction of ASTMS is excelled only by that of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the major proponents of a free-market economy.

Is it not remarkable, say I, a liberal Tory, that ASTMS and the IEA, unsubsidised by government funds, have so consistently beaten the Civil Service and the taxpayer-subsidised National Institute? I look forward, hopefully, to ASTMS's quarterly papers of a general and philosophical character, which might do something to make up the leeway already gained on the right by the IEA's Hobart Papers. The conflict, unlike most in party politics, will be rigorous.

Jolly

Of course, all party conferences, whether Labour or Tory or Liberal, International Socialist, Trotskyite or other, become something jolly — jolly, in the sense that the participants are children pretending that they are about something serious, while the remorseless force of pesudo-academic scholarship is homing in on them.

I had a most agreeable drink with David Butler, the deus ex machina of academic political commentary — (through the agency of the Nuffield Studies in Elections) who thought politics could be reduced to theories and formulas. Butler was concerned to defend the Nuffield studies against my criticism of them in this paper five years ago. At the moment when we were arguing the point, John Mackintosh, the author of the definitive work on the modern British cabinet and political system, accosted us and said that neither of us understood quite what was going on. He was quite right, John Mackintosh is not just a boring, pseudo-moderate Labour Member of Parliament, deprived

of office by the of Willie Ross, but also a capable man, whose allegiance to the Labour Party I still cannot understand.

Suburbia

Listening to the news of the Spaghetti House siege in Knightsbridge on Sunday morning, I was startled to hear the 1RN news reader on London Broadcasting refer to Knightsbridge as "the fashionable suburb" Clearly a man whose metropolis stops somewhere near Temple Bar and drifts into suburbia somewhere short of Hyde Park Corner.

Fleeting fame

The small attention paid in the press to the recent deaths of the actress Pamela Brown and the actor Ian Hunter is indictive of how fleeting is the fame of all but the greatest 'stars' of the theatre. Both had been out of the public eye for some time, Mr Hunter (who was seventy-five) having retired after a career extending over some fifty years, and Miss Brown (who was fifty-eight) having been restricted in her work by ill health in recent years. Both, however, had been players of distinction, whose work gave immense pleasure. Mr Hunter's Trigorin in The Seagull, some quarter of a century ago at the Old St James's Theatre, was regarded by many as the definitive performance in the role. Miss Brown, as a young actress, was a member of the Old Vic Company in its most renowned period at the New Theatre (she and Margaret Leighton were Goneriil and Regan to Olivier's celebrated Lear) and was the original Jennet Jourdemayne in Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning. Thousands of veteran theatregoers must have been saddened by these deaths.

P.C.