SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

NIGEL LAWSON

I was surprised to see that most of the published obituaries and tributes omitted all mention of one of the more curious phases of Bertrand Russell's extraordinarily long and varied life. I am thinking of the time when this former pacifist and conscientious objector, and future leader of the CND and Committee of 100, publicly urged Britain and America to launch a nuclear attack on Russia. Edward Boyle in the Telegraph was one of the very few who did refer to it, while the Guardian's leader-writer declared that 'He had denied such an advocacy and the record is still in doubt'.

Not so. I know nothing of any denial, but I happened to be present at the occasion in 1948 on which Russell made his surprising plea; and his habitual clarity of expression was such that there was no possible room whatever for doubt about his meaning. For some reason that I can't recall, Russell's meeting was held in the gaunt, roofless, bombed-out shell of the main hall of Westminster School; and as a schoolboy there at the time I went along. His thesis, I remember, went roughly as follows : (i) the history of man is one of a seemingly endless succession of wars, but (ii) the number of wars steadily diminishes, as the number of countries, empires or blocs in the world diminishes, since after each war the victor absorbs the vanquished. Hence (iii) war will come to an end only when there is but a single bloc or power-centre left. At the present time (this had, in 1948, a superficial plausibility) we are down to two players, East and West, so (iv) there is only one more war to come. But (v) Russia will soon get the atom bomb, too, which means that the war to end wars would then_become the greatest disaster the world has known. Hence (vi) we must go fora merciful quick kill now, while we have the bomb and Russia hasn't.

And paradoxically, given Russell's belief in the inevitability of all-out war, his subse- quent conversion to the cause of unilateral nuclear disarmament after Russia had ac- quired the bomb can be seen to have been, not a repudiation of his 1948 reasoning, but a logical development of it.

The great tradition

As a philosopher, too, while retaining the same basic approach throughout his life, Russell showed a readiness to change his mind and admit earlier errors which is all too

rare. His place in the great (predominantly English) tradition of empiricist, common- sense, non-metaphysical philosophy is, of course, assured: both personally and philosophically he provided the link in that tradition between his godfather, Mill, and his pupil, Wittgenstein. (And after Wittgens- tein? It may be that, like Messrs Sellars and Yeatman's history, with him philosophy came to a Full Stop.)

But Russell's precise achievement is harder to assess philosophically than in the context of the history of philosophy (or, indeed, the writing of philosophy, in which he is unsurpassed). He confined himself to the narrow front- of formal logic and epistemology, and his creative work was all compressed into a relatively brief period—roughly from 1900 to 1920. He sought certainty (a common enough reason for turning to philosophy or religion) but cannot be said to have found it; he believed that the only justification of philosophy was to help man understand the real world, but his work cannot be held to have contributed much to any such understanding—and he was disgusted when Wittgenstein came to hold the whole endeavour to be miscon- ceived.

In a reply to criticisms by my old philosophy tutor, J. a Urmson, Russell once wrote 'Most of them [philosophers] have been unduly optimistic as regards their own successes. But even when they have failed, they have supplied material to their successors and an incentive to new effort Of no one is this truer than Russell himself.

Philosophic doubt I wouldn't presume to claim that Russell did this for me, but I was so impressed by his whole style and approach to the problems of philosophy that it may even have affected the entire course of my life. During the 'fifties, when I was about to leave the navy and was unsure of what to do next, it was suggested to me by those who shall be nameless that I might care to be interviewed for what is commonly known as the secret service. After preliminary discussions and a medical ex- amination, I turned up for the great in- terview. 'Who, among living men', I was asked, 'would you say was your hero?' I don't believe in heroes', I replied, 'but I sup- posed the living man I most admire would be Bertrand Russell.' In- the silence that

followed, the sense of astonishment and shock was palpable. I'm quite sure they had other good reasons for considering me unsuitable—but I suspect that even if they hadn't that reply alone would have been enough.

The prophet Harold

It was while I was musing on the 'forties and 'fifties that I read the newspaper reports of Harold_ Wilson's speech at Nottingham last weekend, in which he warned of the horrors to come if the Conservatives were returned to office. Social disorder, the dismantling of the welfare state, and 'a brutal onslaught on the standard of life of most people'—no less. It all seemed strangely familiar—and then I suddenly remembered- why. It was almost word for word what he had been saying almost twenty years ago. The following is taken from Harold Wilson's election address to the voters of Huyton in 1951: `The Tory party, representing the financial interests of profiteers, high finance and big business, would destroy the social services in order to reduce taxation on the rich. The mass unemployment that would most surely follow a return of the Tories to power would lay the country open to the evils of Communism . . . LABOUR HAS ABOLISHED MASS UNEMPLOYMENT. THE TORIES WOULD BRING IT BACK .. . DON'T CHANGE YOUR RATION BOOK FOR A DOLE CARD ON OCTOBER 25TH.' Somehow or other, if this implicit appeal to the folk memories of the 'thirties didn't work in the 'fifties, I can't see it work- ing in the 'seventies.

Equal what?

Whichever government is returned at the next election, one of its inheritances will be the burden of implementing Mrs Castle's Bill to enforce equal pay for equal work, which began its parliamentary progress this week. The principle sounds all very fine : the pro- blem is how you define 'equal work'. But there is an even bigger objection than this. For the great majority of working women, the chief obstacle to earning a bigger pay packet is not unequal pay for equal work, but the refusal. of a large number of unions (whether at national or shop floor level) to allow managements to emply women at all in the skilled manual jobs that carry the really high pay packets, even though these may often be jobs that women are eminently suited• to do.

Yet Mrs Castle's Bill will do nothing whatever to remedy this genuine grievance. No wonder the TUC, at last year's con- ference, with sublime hypocrisy gave Mrs Castle's project its blessing by an overwhelm- ing majority. The solution is obvious—and, unlike equal pay, something that can be implemented immediately, since it is totally non-inflationary. It is, of course, to tack a clause onto the 1968 Race Relations Act making it equally illegal for an employer to discriminate against women. If Mrs Castle really wants to help her own sex, instead of simply making a gesture that will not upset the unions, this is what she would do.

Debt of cunctation

I know the Fabian Society's emblem is a tortoise, and all that, but I can't help feeling that it's begun to carry things a little too far. Its latest pamphlet states that it 'is based on a lecture given before a Fabian audience in London in November, 1669.'