Press
Unconsidered trifles
Bill Grundy
I have never told anybody this before, but my middle name is Autolycus. I am, in other words, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Which is why, this week, this column is not a column, but a thing of shreds and patches.
Shred 1: A fortnight ago the Sunday Times ran a first leader written, I understand, by the admirable Hugo Young. It laid out the reasons why the closed shop is a dangerous thing in journalism. Since Michael Foot does not seem to understand those reasons, it might be as well to spell two of them our. Firstly, if an editor must be a member of the NUJ, then it might happen that he finds himself being instructed by his union to take a course of action which he, as editor, objects to. But as a member of the union he has to carry it out. I am well aware, as Mr Ken Morgan, the union general secretary, keeps on saying — methinks the lady doth protest too much? — that the NUJ is a responsible body. That however does not guarantee that it always will be. Everybody knows what a few militant opportunists can do to a union while the reasonable rest are sitting scratching themselves. And secondly, to insist that everyone who writes for a paper should be a member of the NUJ is to close the doors to a lot of talent. As it happens, the day the Sunday Times leader appeared there was a striking example on the very same page. It was an article entitled, 'A Little Guidance' and it was by Alfred Challenor Chadwick, a name you will search in vain for in the files of the National Union of Journalists. For Mr Challenor Chadwick is not a journalist. He is a restaurateur, an eccentric, highly-individual individual, splendid at his job, and with a superbly dry sense of humour. The article was brilliantly funny about the behaviour of those people who come into restuarants armed with the Good Food Guide and little else, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But if journalism becomes a closed shop I would have missed it, because it couldn't have been printed. There's a moral there somewhere, if Mr Morgan and Mr Foot care to look for it.
Shred 2: A week or two ago, the What the Papers Say awards were presented at the traditional lunch in the River Room of the Savoy. One of the awards went to Peace News for their scoop about Colonel Stirling's plans for a private army.
The award was made because the judges thought that, given the paper's limited resources in staff and money, they had done a fine job, a verdict Fleet Street seemed to endorse, if the amount of follow-up in the nationals is anything to go by. As the three representatives of
Peace News marked up to receive their award, the young lady among them chose to make a speech. It was, in my opinion, a silly speech, and did little except prove that the lady takes herself far too seriously and is singularly deficient in a sense of humour. But at the end of it she made a reference to the British Army in Ulster. It was not a complimentary reference. In fact, it was downright insulting. Peregrine Worsthorne, of the Sunday Telegraph, clearly thought so, for he shouted "Shame" and promptly stalked out of the room. So what? We've come to accept that sort of thing from Perry, and nobody was particular worried. But one or two people got a bit worried when they saw that Mr Worsthorne devoted the whole of his next Sunday piece to justifying himself — which is fair enough —
and vilifying the rest of us — which isn't. It is quite possible that I feel as strongly about Queen and Country as Mr Worsthorne does, but it isn't yet compulsory that I should behave as Mr Worsthorne does. He can huff and puff as much as he likes, and good luck to him, but let him get it quite clear that those of us who aren't seen huffing and puffing may be every bit as honourable as Mr Worsthorne thinks he is. From the tone of the piece, it seems that all the rest of us are the demolition men who are pulling down the fabric of society about Mr Worsthorne's impeccable ears. Chuck it, Perry.
Shred 3: Not only was I rebuked by Mr William Wolff in a letter to The Spectator last week for getting
things wrong about his departure from the Daily Mirror: I have been rebuked by no less a person than the editor himself, Mr Michael Christiansen. He says that my column was "a ferragio (sic) of misinformation worthy of Private Eye." Two things occur to me. Mr Christiansen really ought to be able to spell "farrago." He is, after all, the editor of one. And I think Private Eye should take action against him.
Shred 4: I have also been rebuked by Richard Briginshaw, the general secretary of Natsopa, for what I said about him in last week's column. Lord Briginshaw says that in fact the Natsopa strike, which cost the IPC group 22 million copies of their papers and about a million pounds, was due to a miscalculation on the part of the IPC. He maintains that IPC had already taken their decision before discussions with Natsopa began. "All they had to do was to recognise that no self-respecting Briton will sit down at a table to discuss a decision that has been taken. Is it too much to say no preconditions to a discussion?" He goes on to add that he had written to IPC on the subject early in December but to very little effect. "Someone miscalculated. It unnecessarily cost the Morror a million. I had to urgently use a public service (BBC) on Sunday, January 19, to get them to the Conciliation and Arbitration Service before they lost two million." Point taken. I am delighted to have the opportunity of putting the record straight, and in Lord Briginshaw's own lambent prose, too.
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