Notebook
Ayear ago next week Polish workers met in Gdansk for Solidarity's first national congress. Now they meet only with tear gas, water cannon and concussion grenades. Among the foreign guests at Solidarity's congress was Mr Len Murray, who spoke on behalf of 111/2 million British unionists, expressing their full support for Solidarity, but explaining that they too had Constantly to fight for their rights. Then, with supreme tact, he presented Lech Walesa with a banner commemorating the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Since General Jaruzelski's military takeover, however, Mr Murray and the TUC have been less than vigorous in their expressions of solidarity with Solidarity. The TUC was the only major Western trade union move- ment not to support Tuesday's protest
birthday, to mark Solidarity's second
oirthday, although it was expressly re- quested to do so by the International Con- federation of Free Trade Unions. In Paris even the Communist CGT cooperated with bring four other major union organisations to °rIng thousands of people onto the streets in front of the Polish embassy. When the TUC conference opens on Monday its agen- da will carry motions deploring the suppres- sion of trade unions in Iraq, Turkey, El Salvador and South Africa. Apparently no debate on the suppression of Solidarity is Planned. Mr Murray personally ruled out of order an amendment about Poland propos- ed by the electricians' union. Of course this Pusillanimity does not have anything to do with the political allegiances of some Members of the TUC's International Com- Mittee. Nor could their judgement be cloud- ed by the possible loss of pleasant trips to resorts of official Soviet bloc trade unions.
An Indian doctor whom I met the other day said that many Asians in Britain are rapidly turning into zombies. They spend those hours during which the televi- sion waves are silent watching video- cassettes of Hindu films. Heaven knows What will happen to the rest of us if, as she is said to be about to do, Mrs Thatcher authorises the introduction of cable televi- sion, which will give people a choice of up t9 30 different programmes to watch at a tirne. It is strange, given the obvious dif- !iculty that the BBC and ITV already have In filling their existing three channels with watchable material, that there is such Pressure to increase the volume of television Output — Channel Four, Breakfast Televi- sion, and now Cable TV. How often, for example, does one turn on the evening television news to find that practically nothing of any interest has happened in the world that day? Yet Mr Harold Evans, writing in last Sunday's Observer argues in favour of a 24-hour television news service which would give each of us, as he puts it, 'a front seat in the global village'. Those responsible for putting together such a ser- vice will be reduced to desperation in their efforts to fill the limitless time available to them. One can imagine a diet of endlessly repeated bits of film from Northern Ireland and the like which will plunge half the na- tion into a state of brooding melancholy. Another person likely to go mad as a result of Cable Television is Mrs Mary Whitehouse. How is the poor woman to monitor the moral quality of television out- put if she has another 30 channels to con- tend with?
It was brave of the cardiologists at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire, to call for an end to the heart transplant pro- gramme, though perhaps less brave than it would have been a few years ago. Until quite recently heart transplantation was one of those things which people mysteriously seize upon as areas for competition between nations, like football or nuclear science. When, in 1979, the Department of Health refused to make money available for Bri- tain's heart transplant programme, the Daily Telegraph complained that we had been 'left behind in the transplant field.' At that time only six transplant operations had been carried out in Britain, and all six pa- tients had died. This was definitely a poor record, comparing unfavourably with that of the Stamford Medical Centre in Califor- nia which could then boast 66 survivors of 154 operations. But things have looked up a bit since then. Of the 78 transplant patients in Britain, 40 are still alive — the longest survivor being Mr Keith Castle, who had his operation three years ago. For the past three years, the programme has been sup- ported by charity, but the money is running out and calls are once more being made on Government funds. The Government should have no qualms about refusing. Its money could be much better spent on other branches of medicine, and the public's im- agination is no longer engaged. The Observer's 'Pendennis' column refers a little meanly to Max Hastings as 'the heroic liberator of the Upland Goose'. While it is perfectly permissible to make jokes at Max's expense, for he is something of a caricature of the heroic war reporter, one should not forget that it was in fact extremely brave of him to walk alone into Port Stanley in front of the British troops. Meanwhile, the Falklands war has been forgotten in the excitement of events in the Lebanon. In Beirut there is another veteran reporter cast in the heroic Hastings mould. He is John Bullock of the Daily Telegraph. Early on in the bombard- ment; Bullock travelled out of West Beirut to visit the Colonel in charge of the Israeli artillery to tell him to avoid any shelling near the Commodore Hotel, pointing out that the hotel was occupied mainly by jour- nalists. Returning from lunch a day or two later, he was infuriated to find that one shell had hit the hotel and another had ex- ploded some 50 yards away. So he hired a taxi to the Israeli lines, then another taxi to the Israeli battery, and gave the Colonel a fierce dressing down in front of his amazed troops. That is bravery for you.
Isaid the Falklands War had been forgot- ten. Well, that is of course not true. I returned from holiday at the weekend to find in last week's issue of the Spectator a letter from Kingsley Amis expressing his disillusionment with our 'coverage of the Falklands episode'. This had, he said, cleared up one small point — that the Spec- tator was not 'a fairly responsible journal of the libertarian Right', but merely 'a fair- ly entertaining magazine'. I rang him up to ask why a magazine of 'the libertarian Right', if that was what he had though we were, should have been expected to be automatically in favour of the Falklands ex- pedition. His complaint was that we had drifted about inconsistently on the tide of intellectual opinion, which is instinctively opposed to the majority view. I can see what he means, but it is not entirely fair. What we did was to drift about on the tide of our own opinion. There is no greater comfort in life than to be absolutely certain about something. But if you are not, it is dishonest to pretend coherence or consisten- cy where they do not exist. Anyway, I am glad that Mr Amis still regards the Spec- tator as 'a fairly entertaining magazine'. This is no mean compliment.
This week we welcome to the Spectator our new political correspondent Colin Welch who, after a gap of a few months, replaces Ferdinand Mount who left us to head Mrs Thatcher's policy unit in Down- ing Street. Mr Welch is, of course, 'new' only to the Spectator, having been a greatly admired political writer and columnist for. the Daily Telegraph for some 30 years. We are very glad to have him with us.
Alexander Chancellor
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