DIARY
Mrs Margaret Thatcher was correctly said to have suffered a defeat when, last week, the Cabinet refused to modify the rent restriction laws. This is one part of Thatcherism which might produce benefi- cent results. In this week's case of the Syrian diplomat it has, I think, gone largely unnoticed that he has been at least partially supported by courts and tribunals, over a reduction in rent, over security of tenure and over an option to purchase. He is being got out through the combined might of the Foreign Office and Buckingham Palace. Anthony Crosland said to me after 1974 that the extension of rent control was disastrous, that it would completely dry up the supply of private rented accommoda- tion, that he was against it, but that he had to go through with it because the Labour Party had promised to do it. This admir- ably illustrated Tony's deficiencies as a Politician: but most of the blame lies elsewhere, with other politicians. Rent control has been in existence since the first world war and has been added to Piecemeal ever since. Most young couples now have the limited choice of buying Privately, or renting — and, now, buying — from the council. Before 1914, and to a lesser extent before 1939, it was quite usual to rent houses or flats, furnished or unfur- nished. Winston Churchill, H. H. Asquith
and F. E. Smith all, at one stage or another, rented furnished houses in Lon- don. Today the prudent householder will rent his property only to an American academic. Americans have the best reputa- tion. Arabs had the worst, even before last week's case.
That most people are now forced to become owner-occupiers, whether they like it or not, means that they are richer. True, the property is the building society's, the bank's or the insurance company's until the mortgage is paid off: but an appreciat- ing asset is being acquired with depreciat- ing currency and with tax concessions.
ALAN WATKINS
True also, you have to live somewhere, and this gain is illusory unless you uproot yourself and change your way of life: but still, you look at the world differently. Mr Robert Worcester of Mori Polls once told me that owner-occupation was the most important single determinant of political allegiance. The Labour Party has yet to adapt itself to a change which, oddly enough — 'ironically', as most of Fleet Street now seems to write — it has itself brought about through its assault over the years on private renting. Novelists, jour- nalists and academic observers have to adapt themselves to it as well. Sex used to be the great unmentionable. Now it is, not class (about which we hear a great deal), but property.
Shivering at Lord's last Saturday, I watched Phil Edmonds take 6 for 87 for Middlesex, and John Emburey nought for 50. It therefore came as no surprise when, next day, Emburey was chosen to play for England against Australia, and Edmunds was dropped. Of course I can see the selectors' reasoning: Australia has a plethora of left-handers against whom the off-spinner is more effective. The decision had nothing to do with Edmonds's reputa- tion as an awkward customer. Still, the chairman of selectors, Mr Peter May, rather invites cracks of this kind. He was a great batsman but is one of those people who view the world from behind a collar- stud, if you see what I mean. Mr Simon Raven's portrait of the young May in Shadows on the Grass reinforces the im- pression of primness and priggishness which the older May conveys. He certainly has no business instructing players that they may not use particular shots, in this
case the reverse sweep. Nor do I think he and his colleagues have done a specially good job. England has three top-class spinners in Edmonds, Emburey and Underwood. Only one of them is chosen. Or ask yourself this question: of which English players are the Australians fright- ened? The list I suggest is, in batting order, Boycott, Gooch, Botham, Knott and Underwood. Only two have been chosen. By the time you read this the despised English fast bowlers may be tearing Au- stralia apart. But somehow I doubt it.
English critics are always looking for explanation and enlightenment, in the sense not so much of 'This made me laugh, or cry, and I wonder why' as, rather, of 'This may have made me laugh, or cry, but I did not learn anything new'. There were traces of this in the television critics on Mr Melvyn Bragg's programme about Mr Francis Bacon. It was entertaining and enjoyable. What more could anyone ask? One critic, I noticed, described the Colony Room, or Muriel's, as Mr Bacon's 'favourite gay drinking club'. It has never, I confess, been my own favourite place of resort of an afternoon. The charms of the late Muriel Belcher were lost on me, though she did once produce a good phrase of and to a parsimonious customer: 'Not very agile with the champagne, are you, dearie?' But 'gay'? Hardly, unless it has changed greatly in the last few years. I used
to be taken there by a resolute heterosex- ual, the late Maurice Richardson. Once there we would, it is true, often meet the late Lord Bradwell, Tom Driberg. He would usually be accompanied by a youth, whom he would introduce to us as 'Terry, one of my constituents'. He would produce some small change, give it to Terry, Kevin or Derek, as the case might be, and instruct him to play the fruit machine. He would then talk gravely to Maurice and me. No one could have been less gay than old Tom.
Afootnote to what I wrote about Lord George-Brown last week: several papers asserted that Private Eye coined the phrase 'tired and emotional' to apply specifically to George and to mean 'drunk'. This is only partly true. The words were first used by his press adviser, Mr William Greig, who had been seconded from the Daily Mirror to help him. The occasion was a television programme in which he partici- pated. Numerous viewers complained about his performance. The newspapers took the matter up. 'Mr Brown,' Mr Greig explained, 'was tired and emotional.' The Eye then adopted the phrase and gave it wider application. But the copyright be- longs to Bill Greig.
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