Notebook
Donald Gould's article in this week's Spectator is extremely interesting, for it suggests that no IRA hunger strikers would have died if they had not been subjected to outside persuasion. Normally, he says, 'resolution falters as starvation begins to affect the metabolism of the brain,' and he recalls thath`Gandhi, surely one of the most dedicated of dissidents, survived many a hunger strike, always taking food before winning any concessions from the Raj'. It is not surprising, therefore, that India, motherland of the hunger strike, is impressed. The principal letter in Wednesday's Guardian was from two Indians in New Delhi, who said: 'Looking at Ireland from India, we are amazed at the courage of the young men who have ended their lives by refusing to take food under prison conditions which they cannot accept as political activists; we are amazed because in India after independence no political activist has yet fasted to death. There have been many fasts but no deaths . . .' It is unlikely that Irishmen are braver than Indians. The extraordinary 'success' of the hunger strikes in Ulster must surely have something to do with the way in which the authorities have handled them. As the Guardian's Indian readers put it, 'The British Government is not inexperienced in facing up to the use of the weapons of truth'. How did we manage it then?
This is a problem to which we should now address ourselves, for time is running short. What are we to give Prince Charles and Lady Diana as a wedding present? Any fears that they might already have everything they could possibly need were dispelled by a Buckingham Palace spokesman who told the Daily Mail last week: 'Like everyone else, they need everything for a house . . They have not actually got anything.' Not anything? It does seem extraordinary that over the last few centuries the Royal Family has not accumulated enough odds and ends to furnish another house. But the Royal couple's dismaying lack of material possessions does at least mean that it should be possible to give them something they would like. And I do not think one should be churlish and fail to give them a present simply because one is not going to the wedding. Even Mr Ken Livingstone, the left-wing leader of the Great London Council, is letting the GLC give them a painting, although he will not be attending the ceremony in St Paul's. And I imagine that some knick-knack or other will be arriving from Mrs Barbara Cartland, who, like Mr Livingstone, is to be congratulated on her sensitivity in refusing her invitation. (She was, however, under some pressure not to attend, with the bride's grandmother, Lady Fermoy, rumoured to have threatened a boycott of her own if the ageing nightmare was there.) So what is our present to be? Perhaps one should wait and see what the Cabinet is giving them. As each member of the Cabinet contributes out of his own pocket, the question can be expected to arouse strong feelings. There was much argument in the last Labour government about what to give the Queen for her Jubilee. Mr Tony Benn suggested, in all seriousness, a miner's lamp, but in the end they chose a Georgian coffee pot (one Minister proposing a leaky pot 'to remind Her Majesty who gave it to her). In the meantime, we can trot along to the General Trading Company in Sloane Street, where there is, if one is to believe the Daily Mail, a list of presents they would like to receive, including such items as 'two green spotty bed trays' and (does one detect here the influence of Mrs Cartland?) 'two large shocking pink butterfly lamps'. The couple are also hoping that someone will give them 'a pair of Crown Staffordshire white cockatoos', but these are rather expensive. The safest suggestion on the list, I would say, is 'silver photograph frames', for of these they could not possibly have too many. But, to be perfectly honest, there are few items on the list with which one would want to be identified. I know what we will do. We will sent them a subscription to the Spectator.
The Campaign for Press Freedom does not sit around and do nothing. Only one month after it published a pamphlet demanding a right of reply for victims of 'editorial bias' in the press, the Labour MP, Mr Frank Allaun, has introduced a Bill into the House of Commons to implement its proposals. Under the provisions of this Bill, which was given an unopposed first reading on Tuesday, people who have been lied about or calumniated in a newspaper would be permitted to publish a reply free of charge, of equal length, and in the same position as the offending article. You only have to think about it for one minute to realise that this proposal is preposterous. It has nothing to do with the protection of individual reputations; the libel laws already look after those more than adequately. The Bill is quite clearly designed for one purpose only; to allow trade unions and other pressure groups to answer their critics in the capitalist press, and to do so at length and as tediously as they like. If this Bill became law, it would mean that, for the first time in the history of British journalism, editors would be obliged to publish articles over which they had no say whatsoever. They would not even be allowed to correct the grammar. Are not most newspapers boring enough already?
The Spectator has long opposed the licensing laws, but their idiocy is particularly well illustrated in the latest edition of The Magistrate. This magazine contains a quiz to test its readers' knowledge of what is legal and what is not, and these are some of the facts that emerge from it. A 16-year-old girl in a restaurant may order a pint of beer with her meal, but she may not order a glass of wine. A 17-year-old boy, having lunch in a pub, may not, however, ask for a half-pint of lager to drink with it. Back in the restaurant, meanwhile, two six-year-olds are behaving perfectly legally by drinking large gins and tonic, provided these drinks have been ordered by an adult. Everyone knows that the licensing laws should be reformed, but governments are always so busy saving the nation that they never have time to examine legislation which actually affects people's lives.
Monday's weather forecast declared: 'Mainly dry, sunny spells, possibly thundery rain later'. This was by no means wrong, but it was a colossal understatement. For what had been foreseen as 'possibly thundery rain' turned out to be a thunderstorm of terrifying ferocity, as everyone who lives in London will know. Searching for suitable victims, it struck the Bracknell Meteorological Office in Berkshire, which supplies most of the country's weather forecasts, flooding its offices and filling the filing cabinets with sludge. 'The storms caught us on the hop', admitted a Met Office spokesman. There has clearly been a reaction in heaven against the whole business of weather forecasting. One expects science always to go forwards rather than back — wards, but meteorology seems to be the exception. Long-range weather forecasting has already been abandoned because the forecasts were always wrong. Where will it end?
Alexander Chancellor
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