Notebook
DearBron,' I wrote in a letter a few weeks ago, 'This is just to let you know that we are producing our 8,000th issue next month. It is the issue dated 7 November, for which Tuesday, 3 November, is the deadline. I am not suggesting that you write anything special to do with this rather artificial celebration, which we are basically trying to exploit for advertising purposes, but you might like to bear the event in mind nevertheless.' It is not often,' writes Auberon Waugh on the next page, 'that I receive instructions from the editor of this magazine about my subject for the week. In fact, I think it is the first time this has happened.' It may be that Auberon Waugh is like a finely tuned racing car or like one of those Lippizaner horses at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna which, at some imperceptible signal, leap into the air and kick out their back feet. Or it may be that control of the paper has by now slipped so far out of my hands that even the smallest attempt to influence what it might contain is received with surprise, even shock. In fact, the paper does tend to edit itself. Perhaps a lot of papers do. It is one of the mysteries of journalism that a mere word, a mere title — in this case the Spectator — can exercise such power. Since the name Spectator has been attached to a newspaper it has not always meant the same thing. The Spectator which was founded in 1828 by Robert Rintoul (and of which part of the front page is reproduced on this week's cover) bore no resemblance to the original Spectator of Addison and Steele and not much resemblance to the Spectator of today. It was much more of a news magazine. And yet, when a journalist Is asked to write an article for the Spectator, the article he writes will usually be different from the one that he might write on the same subject for any other paper, Just as he will write differently for The Times and for the Sun. It is the writers who collectively give the paper its identity Without much assistance from the editor. The odd ,thing is that the model for the typical Spectator article of today is the Addison Spectator rather than that of Rintoul, as James Fenton pointed out three years ago in an article to mark our 150th anniversary. 'What Addison was able to write on a daily basis, the short essay, has provided the model for the weekly press,' Mr Fenton wrote. 'In the best of this kind of journalism, the writer uses the freedom he enjoys in order to present his subject from an unusual point of view — like those photographs of familiar objects from unfamiliar angles. It is this creative obliquity which enlivens the characteristic weekly essay. It is difficult to reproduce in a large daily paper, because of the pressure there is to produce an immediately recognisable type of article. In the weeklies, the writer has a much closer control over his own work. It is his. He does not have to oversell a personality in order to succeed. Nor does he have to suppress a personality. The typical weekly essay seems far more natural a production than those in the daily paper, which have to be placed in certain categories.' I could not have put it so well.
It was part of the folklore of Birmingham during the depression of the 1930s that the Japanese were labelling their engineering goods 'Made in Birmingham' in order to find export markets for them. Whether the rumour was true or false is of little importance. It is just extraordinary to imagine, the way things are now, that so recently it was still considered an advantage to claim British origin for one's manufactures. On Tuesday The Times published an interesting interview with the leader of Japanese trade unionists in the motor car industry. 'When we negotiate new pay levels every year,' he said, 'the management is fully aware that we will never go on strike. That would be destructive to our companies. Instead we offer the management a high level of productivity. That is the ultimate weapon of our bargaining power.' Anything more different to the situation in Britain would be hard to imagine. Productivity improvements are here regarded by the trade unions as concessions to be made under duress, and then not implemented. The strike is still considered the most effective bargaining weapon, even in companies like British Leyland which would have to close if it was used. Luckily the BL workers have been wiser than their shop stewards. They have voted against strike action. But this was only a vote against suicide, a gesture of protest against the likes of Mr Nicholas Reed. There has been no fundamental change of attitude; and without one, it is hard to see how BL can compete. How can British automobile workers be expected to carry on for 30 years — like Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Mit subishi — without a single hour of production lost in labour disputes? How can they be expected to identify as closely as the Japanese with the interests of their companies? It would be worrying if they could. The only hope is for Birmingham to start labelling its products 'Made in Osaka'.
The Royal opening of Parliament on Wednesday provided the first opportunity for the press to witness the full strength of the new Liberal-SDP alliance. Their MPs managed to fill nearly three House of Commons benches, including the front row between the gangway normally occupied by left-wing Labour rebels. The Social Democrats, who are among the least frequent attenders at the Commons, were for once all there, grinning complacently. The Queen's speech was unremarkable, a routine mid-term affair containing only one surprise — an announcement that she would visit Sweden, of all places, next June. She is right to go there soon, because luckily the Swedes are so conscientious about birth control that within a generation or two they are going to die out.
There are those who are willing to believe anything, among them Sir John Colville and his friend the editor of the Sunday Times, Mr Frank Giles. In a letter published Prominently in that newspaper last Sunday, Sir John claimed that the BBC and the Oxford University Press had together published a modernised Anglican hymn book in which, among other things, the couplet '0 hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea' had been changed to 'Please hear us when we cry to you, For those upon the sea so blue'. The Guardian on Wednesday reported that no such new hymn book existed and that Sir John had been taken in by a joke letter to the Church Times. Sir John must now be feeling very embarrassed to have written such an elaborately pompous letter about something so improbable, and Mr Giles even more embarrassed for failing to get the story checked. It is not only in the BBC or the OUP that standards have declined.
T do not think I was right, after all, to call lthe promotion of our 8,000th issue 'an artificial celebration'. It is quite good to have produced 8,000 issues of any publication, particularly of one which has such a small readership. To have survived over the past couple of decades is specially remarkable, for the trend has been consistently against publications like the Spectator. People have grown to prefer their news and their opinions presented to them in neat, sterile little packages. Now, I believe, the tide is beginning to turn in our favour. But the future must remain uncertain unless our readers will help. It is vital that we increase our circulation substantially. So permit me to draw your attention to the Christmas subscription insert in this week's issue.
Alexander Chancellor
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