Another Spectator's Notebook

Behind all the great liberal causes of our time — and 1 am thinking specifically of abortion — there is a sense, an overpowering feeling, of rightness (which the rest of us call righteousness), and that feeling seems to be more important as a generator of energy for the proponents of its cause than any logic or reason which they may have on their side. This is one of the reasons why it is impossible to discuss matters reasonably with the abortion lobby. Because of the feeling they have that they are really doing good, abortionists, one would expect, would be on the enlightened side in most well-meaning campaigns, even those which have the sanction of reason behind them. I now find that, logically, this is not so; and that, logically, the abortion lobby must support the reluctance of Distillers to pay more than nominal compensation to the children who are victims of thalidomide.

Damage to non persons

I discovered this logic the other day, when I was preparing a script for the Granada programme, What the Papers Say. I intended to devote a lot of time to defending Harold Evans and the Sunday Times against what I judged to be a singularly inept and ludicrous decision by the Law Lords which prevented the paper from publishing a further article on the subject. Now, one of the main problems about this affair is the long time it has taken to reach any kind of settlement. One of the reasons for this, in turn, was the advice given by counsel to some of the parents that they were unlikely to succeed in any legal actO against Distillers, since they would be suing on behalf of the children and since, in English law, a foetus has no legal rights. Thus, if a mother takes a pill, and that pill so damages the foetus that the child, when born, is crippled, the child has no established right against the manufacturer since, when the damage was done, he or she was a non-person. Now this, of course, is precisely what the abortionists have argued all along: I hope it makes Dr Pott and Mrs Renee Short happy to lie down with the whisky millionaires, and line up against the thalidomide children.

Class conscious

Few thriller fans would ever say a word against Penguin Books (unless a few of the conservatives among us got together to attack them when they switched from the old plain green and white covers) whose truly incredible columns of detective, mystery and adventure stories have marched, rank after serried rank, into our hearts and minds over the years. Recently some of us have been worried lest the horrid lefties of Penguin Education ever got their hands on this treasure house of entertainment. Now also, it looks as if our worst fears are about to be realised, A new Penguin edition of Geoffrey Household's classic, Rogue Male, has just appeared and accompanying it is a nasty little pamphlet, with notes by somebody called Tom Moss and an introduction by somebody called Anthony Lewis. This excrescence is called ' Success with English,' and is designed for use by foreign students of English at advanced as well as intermediate level. These poor souls are told that the book is very largely about class in England: true, the hero, runs a socialistic co-operative for his tenant farmers; true, he refuses to sit on the boards of companies (untypical, we are told, of the English gentleman); true, he does all sorts of other things his class are not supposed to do: never mind, says Lewis, he is typical of his class.

Actually, I wouldn't normally bother with an attack on the kind of interminable drivel with which Moss and Lewis do their best to destroy the structure of the book, were it not for the fact that Household himself goes out of his way in the book to attack class values. There is an important concept in the book, of Class ' X ', which gets only one reference in the introduction and none in the notes. Class ' X ' people are those with natural authority, of whom the hero is one, and Household argues again and again how they transcend ordinary class divisions. The hero, for example. knows many conventionally upper class who never get closer to Class X than being shown to the saloon bar when they enter the public. And — here is the clincher — the young, conventionally working-class, aircraft mechanic, who speaks English very far from standard, who comes in contact with the hero, is "undoubtedly" Class X, because he is a prideful craftsman. When Lewis and Moss get to describing the meeting between the two men we are merely told how cleverly (and, implicitly, patronisingly) the hero imitates working class patois. Soon, no doubt, the Penguin Education boys will start re-writing books like Rogue Male. Meanwhile, pity the foreign student.

Cricketing chances

Having watched Frank Hayes of Lancashire score an unbeaten, and practically chanceless, century against the West Indies, in glorious Oval sunshine, I am minded to sympathise with Alec Bedser in his subsequent complaint that the counties are deliberately not bringing on players like Hayes, and that the English Test side is thus improverished. Selector Bedser had two edges to his anger: first, he said, young players like Hayes were neglected because of the demands bf one-day cricket, and got little chance to build their technique; secondly, the practically unrestricted importation of overseas players has

kept the youngsters of the English counties in the shade.

Certainly, while Peter May made his fill! Test century at twenty-one Hayes, who. " seems to me, has a lot of May's quality, had to wait until he was twenty-six; and even now iS not wholly certain of his county place. MY own judgement is that Bedser gets one and,1 half points out of two for accuracy. The flol, point goes to his awareness of the danger tha: one-day may supersede three-day cricket; b°' he loses half a point there because Len Hu1. ton recently said that, had he had the 000,1; tunity of playing one-day cricket he OW have developed some shots which we neve saw during his cricket career (my italics, hut justified). Bedser is, of course, quite der about the dangers of staffing our couolt teams with established overseas players. M0,5 of them are brilliant, and welcome: but rea0,Y,. made stars do inhibit the development of to,', locals; and England's middle order batting" proof of that, in its lamentably variabl quality. We must, 1 fear, seriously restrict tilt counties in their freedom to hire.

Send. them down

And we must remember that the foottAI,I season is about to open. I must say of tit" that 1 have a great deal of reluctant sympittlY' with the savage attack Brian Clough. tiled Derby manager, made on Leeds United 011,4 the Football Association in the Express Sunday. Because of their poor disciplinal record over the last few years Leeds ht° been fined £3,000, though they will not havr to pay it if they are good boys this Clough says that this is an absurdly adequate penalty for a club of such weal!' and that Leeds should have been c°111' pulsorily relegated to the second division. I don't doubt that Clough is right in sayl that such a move would revolutionise Britis football. When Leeds are in full flow, th,,e); remind me of the old Real Madrid side; bt":, when they are frustrated they can be vl nasty indeed. Because they have such they epitomise the schizophrenia whic[i seems nowadays inherent in British footho, — at once blessed with players of enorni0,11,,

skill, and cursed by tactics destructive of t", game itself. Something drastic will, 1 fe!'; have to be done if our game is not to beam), increasingly sterile and increasingly bruta,,,' and if that means sending Leeds down, I all for it.

Asking for censorship

I can't say I have a great deal of symPatri1 with poor old Anthony Burgess who, in don the other day, issued a pathetic appea':p judges to tell him what he could write, g,t‘cri that a number of cases have arisen Wo% there has been a connection agreed by 10„''; yers between teenage violence and 14 screening of Stanley Kubrick's version novel, Clockwork Orange. Burgess's firtsle claim was that there could, by definition,.,v no such connection, which is plainly a position to adopt. His next ploy was to prollt;, a fictional reply to such strictures. wants the judges to play nanny to him, cause, he says, he fears an even stricter sorship than they might impose. It has ahle seemed to me to be the height of sillinesS propound as a matter of principle that thr, can be no connection between art and het),,3%0• lour; and a great deal of modern art has desirable results. That doesn't mean I censorship — yet. But if what the artists that is a pretty doubtful appellation for modern writers, though Burgess is bright) write and produce gets too much ut, of kilter with what is acceptable to socieil then of course there will be censorship. Oa for one would not resist it. The moral I-01 of one child, the physical fate of one victillior a mugging, is worth a great deal more t any number of Clockwork Oranges.

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