A Spectator's Notebook

The question as to who will succeed Sir Hugh Cudlipp as editorial boss of the Mirror newspapers remains intriguing. Last October Hugh Cudlipp announced that he would retire this year. That retirement will take place as late as possible: on December 31. Who will succeed? Only one name is bandied about. Harry Evans, editor of the successful portmanteau Sunday Times, a man sufficiently left, will suit. Harry Evans has twice said "No "; but on the second refusal the way he put it was that "I can't." This is not the same thing at all as "I won't." It is expected at the highest levels — as they say — in IPC and at Reed International (the paper-making firm, run by Sir Don Ryder, which owns the Mirror papers, run by Sir Hugh Cudlipp), that Harry Evans will, eventually, say " Yes."

It is difficult to understand how any journalist could say " No " to the offer of the Cudlipp succession. It is the biggest job in journalism, for it carries with it the effective editorship, or overlordship, of the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People, together with the Scottish counterparts. As far as I can discover, Harry Evans, and Harry only, is in the running for the top job. If, at the crunch, he feels unable to accept the challenge — which is to say, if he chooses the safe life at the Sunday Times, then the top editorial job will be offered to Tony Miles, present editor of the Mirror. In this event, the overlordship at present exercised by Hugh Cudlipp will be ended, and his powers will be divided up between some IPC management chap and Miles (as editorial diector). The full succession is to be had by Harry Evans, and only Evans.

Tom Baistow of the New Statesman has been suggesting that Bob Edwards, once editor of Tribune, twice editor of the Daily Express, and now editor of the Sunday Mirror, might get the top IPC job. This suggestion, according to my information, is absolute rubbish.

It is Harry Evans or nobody.

No juge here

I was delighted to learn that, far from supporting it (as Patrick Cosgrave had written), Lord Hailsham is opposed to the French system of having a juge d'instruction (who conducts rigorous preliminary examinations of those accused by the police of criminal offences). The Lord Chancellor went out of his way in the Lords the other day to deny the Cosgrave charge, and also to say that one of the disadvantages of the French system is that it takes much longer than the British system. He also said, quite rightly, that justice delayed is justice denied, and surprised me by claiming that our system of trial " disposes of cases even now, when it is slightly under strain, more rapidly than any other in the civilised world." I cannot help feeling however, that, if this is the case, the rest of the civilised world must suffer from pretty slow justice. To take a spectacular example: the libel case between the Times and Bernard Levin on the one hand and Lord Rothermere, Vere Harmsworth and Associated Newspapers on the other, which began in 1970, is not expected to come to trial for another eighteen months or so. Delayed justice — and, if the estimates being bandied around of eventual costs being £200,000 or £300,000 are accurate, scandalously expensive justice, too.

The Lord Chancellor praises our " uncorrupt and independent Judiciary" and "the tight discipline and the high tradition of the professions from which the judges are drawn "; and while this may well be justified praise, it is also the case that solicitors and barristers use their monopoly powers to charge extremely high fees. The cost of justice often puts it out of men's reach, and as will often happen has the effect of dissuading men from seeking it however sound their cases might be. The very rich can not only afford to obtain justice; but can also use the threat of expensive litigation to avoid justice.

Obvious reform

One very obvious reform the Lord Chancellor might consider would be the unifying of the two branches of the legal profession. The barristers would squeal, of course, but the public would benefit. Also, Lord Hailsham might consider appointing more solicitors as judges. It judges were appointed solely from the body of solicitors, the barristers would soon change their tune and would demand, instead of resist, a unified profession.

Looting treasures

A fuss is blowing up about the acquisition by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art of a particularly fine Greek vase. There are suggestions that it was dug up north of Rome by illegal excavators and smuggled out of Italy. Nowadays people are much more squeamish about such matters than they used to be. Much of the most prized pieces in the world's great collections — such as many in the Louvre and the British Museum — were assembled at a time when powerful and rich men and nations thought nothing much of plundering and looting great masterpieces of classical and renaissance times. I. have always thought it a bit rough on the Americans, who started out late and almost from scratch, with little indigenous art worth the name, and have had to acquire their collections the hard way, rather than by theft and conquest. It is humbug when some work of the Italian renaissance, say, is hailed as a British national treasure which should, on no account, be permitted to leave these shores for the States.

The Elgin marbles are less a national treasure than a national disgrace, and should without any question be returned to Greece. Lord Elgin may have performed a useful service in removing them from the Parthenon and other temples at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but there is no justification for keeping them here now w'hen, without question, the Greek authorities would care for them in their rightful places. As long as the Elgin marbles are regarded as part of our national treasure, we should not quibble about the Metropolitan Museum of New York acquiring an antique pot, however beautiful and splendid it may be, and however shifty the museum's means of acquiring it may have been.

The Khartoum drama

/an Meadows, our Beirut correspondent, writes: "Two striking points arise from the Khartoum drama. First . . . Palestine Liberation Organisation chaiman Yasser Arafat denied that his group had any connection with the incident. Secondly . . Arafat offered to help in the negotiations. These acts seem to dispel, once and for all, speculation that Black September is a secret offshoot of the Al Fatah guerrilla group. They also tend to confirm other reports that Arafat is being turned to more and more as the Palestinian representative against the day when he is named to more formal Palestinian leadership.

"It was also noticeable that Black September apparently backed down when it came to the decisive moment of whether, or not, to kill the Jordanian and, more especially, the Saudi Arabian diplomats. If the Saudi had died all hell would have been let loose and King Feisal would have made his anger felt in no uncertain manner.

"Allegations that one of the slain American diplomats had previous involvement in the tragic Jordanian civil war of September 1970 should not be casually dismissed as mere flights of propagandist fancy. There was much in that particular period which should cause at least one major power to examine its conscience thoroughly."