Notebook
It is entirely appropriate that the British section of Amnesty International should have chosen Mr Jeremy Thorpe, out of 42 applicants, as its new director. He has ex- perienced political persecution. He has even Vent a night in a police cell. While other less enlightened organisations might have shiftily wondered whether it was in their in- terests to employ as chief executive a man who had been charged with attempted murder, Amnesty would not have permitted itself to ask such a question. It could not have been seen to reject an applicant on such squalid grounds. But one cannot blame the staff of Amnesty for wondering whether it was really such a very good idea. They have suffered enough already under the leader- ship of the excitable ex-priest and former Prisoner of conscience in South Africa, Cosmas Desmond, who was dismissed last Year in a blaze of unwelcome publicity. Many had hoped he would be succeeded by some quiet, dedicated man with what The Tones calls 'a solid, impregnable public im- age who would get on with the job and heal the wounds that Mr Desmond had left behind him. But Mr Thorpe is not a retiring Man. Inked, if he had wished to remain out of the limelight, he would not have ap- Plied for the job; nor would he have ap- Plied, as he did recently, for the position of race relations adviser to the Greater Lon- don Council. He could have chosen instead a John Profumo solution and worked his Way back to public acceptability in some obscure and self-effacing charitable activi- ty. It seems, on the contrary, that for all the aPPalling publicity he has received in the Past, he cannot actually bear to be without Being mentioned daily in the newspapers can become addictive. Now Mr Thorpe has acquired a new platform from which to pronounce on public affairs, and I will be Most surprised if he does not make the max- 'Ilium use of it. The current joke among Amnesty staff is that Richard Nixon is to be !PPointed to the vacant position of Secretary General.
great gloom has descended once more
over the glass and concrete palaces of The Times and the Sunday Times in the Crays Inn Road. The journalists, who take a Morbid pleasure in constantly assessing their own 'morale', tell me that it has never been lower. Three well-known Times jour- nalists of the old school — David Spanier, Roger Berthoud and Marcel Berlins — have already resigned out of dissatisfaction with e excitableatmosphere of the Harold vans regime. They jumped at the final of- Ierof voluntary redundancy. It now looks as If they may have been wise. While the closure of the two newspapers is by no' means certain, it has never been more pro- bable. There is no reason to doubt the seriousness of Mr Murdoch's threat. While he may be satisfied with less than 600 redundancies, he will certainly close the papers if he does not reach some agreement with the unions which he can at least pre- sent as a victory. And Mr Fitzpatrick, the leader of the clerical workers, is not being cooperative. One way or another, a deci- sion may be expected by the end of next week. And if the decision is to close, there will be fewer tears shed than would have been the case at any time in the past. The Times has undergone so many crises in re- cent years that people have grown ac- customed to the possibility that it may at some time cease to exist. Preparing them- selves for this eventuality, they have been asking themselves more and more what is so special about the newspaper. A myth, once shattered, cannot easily be revived.
At the time of His Majesty's death, Her Royal Highness, with her hus- band Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was in Kenya, ready to proceed to India.' I have seldom seen so many capital letters in a single sentence. With its reverential em- phasis on titles, it sounds like the work of some humble royal chronicler of some bygone age. But it comes in fact from Sir Harold Wilson's tribute to the Queen in last Saturday's Times to mark the 30th anniver- sary of her accession to the throne. Why are Labour prime ministers so much more awed by the monarchy than Conservative ones?
The Royal Automobile Club has struck a major blow for freedom. It has refused to list a hotel at Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex because it caters only for non-smokers. The RAC's reason for this brave stand is, admit- tedly, not very impressive. A spokesman for the motoring organisation said it could not include the hotel in its handbook because it did not have a symbol denoting a non- smoking hotel. This sounds a rather feeble
excuse. Nevertheless, the decision was right. For centuries, smoking has been seen as a socially acceptable activity, just as drinking still is. In recent years, however, anti-smoking propaganda has been having its effect. Smokers feel so guilty about their unhealthy addiction that they do not even protest as more and public places are closed to them. The anti-smoking group ASH argues that, because a majority of adults no longer smoke cigarettes, 'organisations like the RAC should respond to this change ap- propriately.' One wonders what ASH would regard as an appropriate response probably the non-listing of any establish- ment in which smoking was allowed. Still, I find the news that smokers are now in a minority rather encouraging, for it should entitle us to the protection emjoyed by other minority groups. The RAC should no more list hotels that exclude smokers than it should list hotels that exclude blacks.
The Government's latest package of measures aimed at terrifying the Rus- sians into keeping out of Poland illustrate the futility of such measures. Soviet diplomats, it was proudly announced last week, will have to stay within 25 miles of their embassies unless they apply two days in advance for permission to wander further afield. This is in fact a reduction by ten miles of existing travel limits, bringing them into line with the restrictions applying to British diplomats in Moscow. It means that a Russian diplomat will still be allowed to go to Sevenoaks, but no longer to Tun- bridge Wells; to Windsor, but no longer to Henley-on-Thames. This will be a disap- pointment, no doubt, to some Russians, but it is unlikely to shake the Kremlin. The restrictions are, so the Foreign Office em- phasises, only part of a larger package of measures, which includes reducing 'the level of activity' under Anglo-Soviet agreements on such things as medicine, the environment, agriculture, and atomic energy. But I am still unimpressed, and so, I expect, is the Soviet Union.
Imust apologise to Mrs Narisa Levy for my ignorance of the Siamese Royal Fami- ly. In a letter to the Spectator last week, she pointed out that there had never been any such person as Prince Chula Birabongse of Siam. The name had been invented by Rolls Royce, which included it in a newspaper advertising campaign designed to demonstrate how many incredibly grand people had been owners of Rolls Royce motor cars. Mrs Levy should know. She is the daughter of Prince Chula Chakrabongse, an historian; and it turns out that it was in fact he who owned a Rolls Royce. His name has now replaced that of the mythical Prince Chula Birabongse in the company's latest newspaper advertise- ment — another victory for truth over misinformation.
Alexander Chancellor
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