Spectator's Notebook
T nom the horrors of the Vietnam war won't 'cause that elusive entity 'world opinion' to for- get the plight of the Nagas, still unsolved after a decade and more punctuated by atrocities that have lost little by being deprived of the assistance of modern chemical warfare. The Nagas—there are about a million of them—are a mongoloid people who live in the hills that form India's north-eastern frontier with Burma. Part of Nagaland was included in British India, part wasn't : the whole is now a state of the Indian Union, enjoying a considerable degree of local autonomy. But this doesn't satisfy the militant Nagas, who all along have insisted on complete secession from India. and who have been at war with what they consider to be an army of occupation (there are at least 30,000 Indian troops, badly needed elsewhere, stationed in Nagaland) from 1955 until the temporary cease- fire negotiated two years ago.
The case for complete self-determination for the Nagas (who appear to be supplied with small arms from nearby East Pakistan) is a powerful one: equally compelling, from her point of view, are India's reasons for refusing it—notably, that the Naga hills are the only natural line of defence between China and the plain of Assam (and ultimately Calcutta). India has declared her- self ready to negotiate with the rebel Naga leaders, which is an improvement on her earlier attitude, but has made it clear that she will on no account allow secession: at the same time she has turned down the Nagas' suggestion of a third-party mediation. although it's true to say that no country has been rash enough to offer to mediate anyway. Meanwhile the cease-fire continues (unless extended for a further three months) until October, after which there is a real danger that, if the eyes of the world appear to be averted. Indian extremists might persuade a reluctant Mrs Gandhi to agree to 'the final solution'—a Naga massacre.
Poll Freeze Once again the pollsters are upon us, telling us that we would all like nothing better than a jolly old wage freeze. Tell that to the Transport and General marines. The only people I know who would really welcome a wage freeze are the Communists: their influence in the trade union movement would go up by leaps and bounds. It's quite true that the average English- man would rather have fair shares in misery than unequal joy, but how many workers would reckon a wage freeze to be 'fair' for long? I be- lieve that the vast majority who blithely tell the credulous pollsters that they would be prepared to accept a wage freeze are about as significant as the equally large majority who I'm sure would say 'yes' to the question 'would you be prepared to offer first aid to an injured man lying in the street?' But would they? Ask the police. There's a whole world of difference between talking and doing.
Perhaps, though, the pollsters are providing some sort of psychological social service, enabling us to salve our guilty consciences by giving virtuous answers to questions we sincerely hope we shall never have to face in real life. I suggest a little experiment: let the pollsters next time ask their victims to sign their names to a piece of paper pledging themselves to take part in a wage freeze. And then see what happens.: Probably a poll freeze. 4 ' Marxmanship Finding myself with ten minutes to kill before meeting a friend at the Randolph in Oxford last weekend, I wandered over to a small group of undergraduates and others who were being harangued by a fortyish man standing on a step- ladder in front of the Martyrs' Memorial. Small, earnest, with a working-class accent and in need of a shave, wearing a jacket over an open-necked shirt, and surrounded by four or five equally serious-faced youthful disciples, he was deliver- ing a much-interrupted lecture on the true nature of socialism and the reasons why every so-called socialist state in the world, from Wilson's Britain to Kosygin's Russia, in fact was nothing of the
sort. Quoting with equal facility from Marx and the latest annual report of the British Transport Commission his talk, although it had about as much relevance to practical politics as the book of Genesis, aspired—not .altogether unsuccess- fully—to an intellectual level that made one more ashamed than ever of the typical party political broadcast.
The orator turned out to be a Mr Fahy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a sect- I hadn't previously encountered. Not surprisingly, perhaps, since their membership is under a thousand even though they've been going since 1904. One reason for the small membership (it's never been otherwise) is that to qualify you have to pass an examination in Marxism. The SPGB, in fact, is the party of pure, fundamentalist, Marxism: it refuses to take any industrial action. deeply disapproves of all living Communists, and considers itself a Marxist elite that will ultimately triumph by educating and persuading the workers to vote for its candidates. The SPGB candidate at Hampstead in the last election, Mr Harry Baldwin, polled 211 votes, so there's still some way to go. Whether Mr Baldwin at Hampstead had to contend with as expert heckling as his colleague at Oxford I don't know, but poor Mr Fahy was given rather a rough ride. Specimen: 'Now I don't know whether you've read Lenin's The State and Revolution . . .' (young heckler: 'yes')'... well, in The State and Revolution Lenin enunciated the slogan "Peace, land and bread". . (heckler: 'actually, it wasn't "peace, land and bread": it was "peace, land and the Soviets." Anyway, I'm a Conservative.')
Innocence
I must confess to remaining fairly unmoved by Dr Emil Savundra's harrowing story about how the British press pursued him in spite of his heart attack : rather boringly, I'm reminded of the hundreds of thousands of innocents who insured with Fire, Auto and Marine Insurance and who now find that the policies are apparently worthless scraps of paper. But were they really so innocent? Technically, certainly, but did none of them stop to wonder how it could be that FAM could charge a full 50 per cent less than normal motor insurance premiums? Or was the chance of getting something at half price too much for them? It's the same with all those other 'innocents' who deposit their hard-earned savings in some medium about which they know nothing except that it is offering a double-figure interest rate, and then complain when they find they can't get their money back. The simplest way to go about losing money is to yield to the temptations of avarice, and if people are really determined., to lose money, no- amount of. legislation will stop them.
I; her Praire' a4)41 • Just in case there are any readers of this paper r Who, in spite of Hilary Spurling's unequivocal review two months ago, have still not yet seen The Prime of Miss lean Brodie at Wynd- ham's, let me urge them to do so now, without any further delay. We're fortunate at the present time in having a fine crop of young actresses— Dorothy Tutin, Billie Whitelaw, Joan Plow- right, Maggie Smith among them—but Vanessa Redgrave excels them all and as the wonderful, absurd and disastrous Miss Brodie she excels herself. In a play that is barely a play at all (it is in fact a dramatisation of Muriel Spark's novel) this is the performance of a lifetime, a transcendent happening.
NIGEL LAWSON
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