DIARY
Iwas particularly interested to watch Mr Caspar Weinberger warning Mr Kinnock on Panorama on Monday, because I had just spent a few days in the United States discovering American attitudes to British nuclear disarmament. The occasion was a conference grandiosely entitled the British- American Project for the Successor Gen- eration, and the setting was the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, a Georgian building a few yards from the place where the Americans declared their independence of us and held various im- probable 'truths' to be self-evident. The British Successor Generation included Sue Slipman of the SDP and the National Council for One Parent Families and Julia Neuberger, the rabbi whose broadcasting frequency must be now have knocked even Rabbi Blue into a yarmulka. As befitted the nation of enterprise and litigation, our American counterparts were less political and journalistic and were for the most part businessmen or lawyers. Their political views ranged from liberal Democrat to mildly conservative Republican. Since we were the Successor Generation, the world was our oyster, and we searched for its pearl through virtually every topic imagin- able. Groups discussed 'the individual in society', transatlantic 'perceptions' and the international economy, and Rabbi Julia reported that her group `grieved for the loss of the 1960s'. I spent most of my time safely ensconced in the group debating the future of the Atlantic alliance, and it was here, at once, that Labour policy was discussed. Generally, I am a bit unsound on Nato and the bomb, tending to doubt whether Russia has direct aggressive de- signs on Britain and to worry over Enoch Powell's argument that a bomb which everyone knows there is no advantage in ever using cannot be much of a deterrent; but as we tried to explain Labour's plans to the anxious Americans I began to feel embarrassment, almost shame. Here we were, 25 Americans, 25 British, pretending that our two countries were, though not equal in power, vital to one another and enjoying a sort of moral equality, and yet we British were representing a country whose chief opposition party is following a policy based on the idea that we have no responsibilities towards anyone else and the pretence that our fate is separable from that of everyone else. Mr Kinnock is not saying that we should turn against Amer- ica, which would at least give him some consistency. He is saying that we can opt out of nuclear war and ban nuclear weapons from our shores while continuing to benefit from the protection of a nuclear alliance. He says that it is senseless to have nuclear weapons for diplomatic leverage, and yet he boasts that Mr Gorbachev has CHARLES MOORE
promised him that our total nuclear dis- armament will be matched by the scrap- ping of the same number of Soviet missiles. He admits that we could easily lose a conventional war against the Soviet Union, and yet claims that Labour's policy of conventional defence will make us secure. And it is a current British commonplace to describe American defence policy as `naive' or `mad'l The US Successor Gen- eration were alarmed, seeing a return to American isolationism as the almost cer- tain result, and asked what they could do to help. We said that they should not launch any more attacks on Libya, and also that their officials should refrain from public comment. But after seeing Mr Weinberger, I would withdraw the second point. Labour's policy is not merely a domestic matter, but would have a vast effect on the alliance and on the future of hundreds of thousands of Americans in Europe. The Americans have to point tliis out and, since Labour is not in office, they cannot only point it' mit in private. They should not comment on voting intention, but they must comment on the policy. British voters need to know what America thinks.
As well as believing the Americans to be naive, we tend to regard them as uncouth. It is true that American cities sometimes contain specimens of the fat slob so awesome that they beat even Britain's strong entry in the field, but in general I observe much more courtesy there than here. Americans are extraordi- narily good at remembering one's name, appearing to be interested in what one says and not talking among themselves about subjects of which one knows nothing. They are generous and solicitous of one's com- fort. And in Philadelphia, I noticed some- thing more than this — a sort of gentle- manliness. The American founders of the Project are elderly men who struck up friendships with Englishmen, either during the war or at university before it. These men, some of them leading citizens in Philadelphia, have all the dignity of the old world, and they add to it the uncompli-
cated frankness of the new. They reminded me of some of the dear old gentlemen in Dickens whose one desire is to spread benevolence to the less fortunate. I suspect Dickens would have preferred modern America to his native country.
Wapping and associated events have strained relations between the Observer and the Sunday Times. The strain has produced a number of uninteresting arti- cles attacking one another in both papers, with the Observer taking the biscuit for sanctimony. Now the campaign seems to be taking more concealed and therefore even less legitimate forms. The main arti- cle of the Observer's Weekend section on Sunday was devoted to a story about how Sir Woodrow Wyatt had palmed off his son on some friends of his relation, Honor Wyatt, who wrote the piece. As she herself admitted, the piece was motivated by spite; and it was never explained why this story was thought to be suitable anyway. Can it be unconnected with the fact that Sir Woodrow is a close associate of Mr Rupert Murdoch and a contributor to the Times and the News of the World? In the same day's edition of the Sunday Times, the paper's political correspondent, Michael Jones, departed from his normally neutral style with a fierce attack on Mr James Prior and his book of memoirs (whose title and publishers he did not mention). At pre- sent, the Observer is serialising this book. Look out for an attack on Sir Ian MacGre- gor, the Sunday Times's current serialisa- tion, in the next Observer.
In a recent book, I said that Mr Derek Pattinson, the Secretary-General of the General Synod of the Church of England, had 'a large head and very small feet'. There was always an element of pot and kettle in this observation, since my own head is almost size eight and my feet are seven and a half, but now I discover that I was wrong about the feet. Mr Pattinson has told the Church Times that his feet are a perfectly normal size nine. So I apologise for this optical illusion, but I stick to what I said about the big head.
ormally at this time of year, we begin our annual Treasure Hunt competition which runs almost until Christmas. But we have received so many complaints that Christmas preparations have exhausted potential competitors that we have decided to postpone the next Treasure Hunt until January. It should then be possible to concentrate on nothing else for the whole fag-end of the winter.
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