General Sir Walter Walker
The Spectator of 21st September 1979 contained an article by Bill Grundy which stated that Mr Martin Walker of the Guardian "opens too few files." The article went on to say that "He (Mr Walker) has an extraordinary acquaintanceship with the files of Colonel Stirling and General Sir Walter Walker of the National Front, and of General Sa'ad el-Shazly, the Egyptian ambassador to Britain." A vital comma is missing after Sir Walter Walker's name, for which we take full responsibility and we apologise for any injury or embarrassment caused to General Sir Walter and his organisation, Civil Assistance, which has not, of course, and never has had, anything whatever to do with the National Front. And does Mr Wilson think that the Press made unfair capital out of
Mrs Shirley Williams's odd remark that she will withdraw from active political life if a Labour Cabinet decision, based on the result of a referendum, is against staying in the Common Market? I don't. To be frank, I was rather surprised at how little the papers actually went to town on it. After all, it was a strange thing to say. We all know the Cabinet is split on the subject of the Market, but there is a general election in the offing, isn't there? Mrs Williams wasn't just rocking the boat. She seemed to be pulling the plug out as well. As for the affair of the defecting Labour peers, well, it was good knockabout stuff that did no harm and actually made me laugh. , Of course, a headline like "Who cares about the contract?" in the Daily Mail last week, over the story of the Ford workers' strike, may seem to Mr Wilson to be a little bit loaded. But right by the side of that headline, on page one, was the news that NOP were reporting a 14.6 per cent lead for Labour. The opening sentence of Anthony Shrimsley's piece read: "The Tories have opened their election battle in deep, deep trouble." Is that antiLabour, would you say? There are two things about that juxtaposition of stories. Firstly, the Mail, whose political affiliations are transparent, did not dream of suppressing what undoubtedly must be bad news for its cause. Secondly, the NOP figures tend to support my thesis that newspapers do not have a great influence over the way people think about politics. If, as the Prime Minister assumes, the papers are ganged up against the Labour Party, they seem to be having precious little effect on the opinions of their readers. So Mr Wilson, as I said before, has very little to worry about.
I know that "Don't worry" is just about the most pointless piece of advice you can give anybody, but it may help Harold to wipe the frown from his face if I remind him what sort of press Mr Heath is getting. The only word to describe it is "stinking." Nobody loves Mr Heath anymore. The Press knows it and is either reflecting the public's dislike of him, or encouraging it. Or both. Stories about the Tory leadership crisis are everywhere, and they don't all spring from Sir Keith Joseph's untypical recent outpourings. No Tory leader in recent years can have gone into an election with fainter-hearted support from a predominantly Tory press. Does that seem to Mr Wilson to be anti-Labour?
I always feel slightly uneasy when I praise the Press: it's a bit like taking soup with the Devil, with all the spoon-handles being conspicuously short. But on pre sent form, I think the election coverage has been very fair, properly full, and not at all obs cured by "personalities." Of course, Mr Wedgwood Berm, as I think he is now called, will continue to receive the treatment, but why not? He has never been averse to seek ing publicity; well, now he's getting it. But honestly, I can't think of much else that could be described as a campaign against Mr Wilson and his party. Of course it is early days yet. There is still time for a Zinoviev letter. But somehow I don't think one will arrive. The Press and the public have grown up a bit since then.
Some years ago a group of coypus escaped from an East Anglian zoo and multiplied exceedingly. They then proceeded to commit nuisances on a grand scale, including constantly nibbling away at Post Office land lines. That would seem to be reason for something I appeared to say in last week's article, which was phoned from darkest Suffolk. What I dictated into the mouthpiece was distorted by one comma before it appeared in print, as the apology on this page explains. My own apologies to Sir Walter Walker for any embarrassment the mistake has caused him. And my curses on those coypus.
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