Another Spectator's Notebook.
A footnote is needed to our political commentary last week, which mentioned the Transport House veto on Roy Hattersley's speech criticising the National Executive Committee's advocacy of the nationalisation of twenty-five major British companies. Last weekend Tony Crosland made a similar speech, taking the same position in stronger terms. Before it had even arrived at Smith Square, Nora Beloff, the political correspondent of the Observer (who devoted considerable space to the whole question on Sunday) rang up Terry Pitt, the head of the Labour Research Department who, I argued in my article, had arrogated to himself the authority to veto Hattersley. She wanted to know if Pitt was going to veto Crosland. Aware that there ' is to be an inquiry into the whole business, and that the General Secretary of the party, Ron Hayward, had disowned him on the previous occasion, Pitt went canny, and suspected a plot. He denied knowledge of the speech and, when he saw it, decided not to refuse it distribution facilities. He was, however, still smarting under Roy Hattersley's description of him as a "junior official " (which he emphatically is not) and decided that the justification for his new course would be that, whereas Tony Crosland was a senior Labour front benchr whose disagreements, even, with the NEC should he treated with a respect that would entitle them to distribution, Hattersley was just a junior who could be slapped on the wrist. •
Hayek for St Andrew's
I wrote last week of a meeting with F. A. Hayek, the greatest living philosopher of individual freedom, and author of the classic The Road to Serfdom (1944). I mentioned at the end that Hayek was to be a candidate for the Chancellorship of St Andrew's university; but, because I received this news very late, I was unable to do full justice to his candidature. There can be no question but that he is the best qualified of the men who are going, and might go, forward, even though I gather he finds the prospect "chilling." Apart from the suitability of Hayek being Chancellor on Adam Smith's home ground, his excellence as a thinker is widely recognised, with a current chair at Salzburg, and previous seats as Director of the Austrian Institute for Economic Reseach, Tooke Professor at the LSE, Professor of Social and Moral Science at Chicago, and of economics at Freiburg. Somewhere in the universities of this island there must still be men who can do justice to thinkers of truly original and creative power even if they are not to be found in the Sunday Times, whose Prufrock column last Sunday devoted substantial space to the Smith 250th birthday celebrations, never mentioning that Hayek was even there, and eulogising the totally antithetical (to Smith, that is) J. K. Galbraith and Edward Boyle, in a fashion that suggested the reporter understood the calibre of none of the men he mentioned. '
Old scars and passions
Much the most commented upon part of Enoch Powell's speech at Stockport last Friday was the overall impression it left that he might be prepared to recommend his followers to vote Labour at the next general elec tion. I have suggested that a more than covert alliance between Powell and Labour is possible, despite disavowals among the opposition; and I hold to that view, at least in so far as the Labour Party is concerned.
On Sunday night Robin Day talked on radio to Powell and Michael Foot, and Powell appeared to go even farther than he did in his speech (though the radio programme was recorded the previous Tuesday) in contemplating with equanimity the possibility of a Labour government for his lifetime, if that meant British repudiation of those aspects of Common Market membership which infringed the sovereignty of the House of Commons. Press kerfuffle concentrated on the extension the programme appeared to offer of Powell's Friday speech. But Michael Foot's statements, first, that he totally disagreed with Powell over race relations and immigration (assuming that they can be so divided) and, second, that he was prepared to devote the rest of his life to the restoration of the sovereignty of the House of Commons, were of equal political importance. It matters not (as Powell said on television on Friday night) what relationship we have with the European countries if that sovereignty can be restored: and if Michael Foot, occupying the position he now does in the Labour Party, thinks it can be restored, then a Labour victory might restore it. And if Foot further thinks that Powell's position on race and immigration is, at least, debatable (in the strict sense of the word) then I was not foolish to suppose the possibility of a more than covert alliance.
Nonetheless, there is a personal dilemma about Powell. It begins with the conviction, in certain Tory circles almost more than Labour, that he is an evil force, giving vent to evil passions. (That, of course, itself began with the 1968 speeches on immigration.) He now has a dual reputation, at once as an evil force; and as a proponent of certain fundamental constitutional principles, the first parliamentarian of his age. I am not, myself, unmoved by the first part of the reputation. In 1968 some of my dearest white friends were very nearly victims of the ferocious passions which followed the delivery of the Conserva
tive Political Centre lecture which led to his dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet. In Cambridge, I recall, some of us fought very hard to defend the Tory member, David Lane, against such passions; even if we insisted that Powell himself could not but scorn the activities of his self-professed adherents. Other Tory members, and their families, went through agonies, not because of what Rnoch Powell said, but of what others .made ofwhat he said. Such people — I was talking to one the other day — still hate Powell, because they remember their scars. And perhaps also because he was too proud to explain himself, too proud to state the obvious — and that was a weakness. It is perhaps cold comfort to such friends to say that Powell and his family have suffered equal agonies of persecution and misrepresentation; but it is true. It ought to be recompense at least that he is now saying something very clear, and very non-partisan, and very patriotic, and very democratic, about the House of Commons and the country; and that he is being listened to.
I still like All
On a much lighter (if still gloomy) note, I have to make mention of England's defeat by Poland in the World Cup, and her defeat of Russia in an international friendly. I heard the commentary on the first match in a car on the way to a party, and was bad company for a bit thereafter, I missed the commentary on the second, partly because of The Cruel Sea, partly because of the Day-Foot-Powell broadcast. I confess that I wish — clinging precariously to my liking for Sir Alf Ramsey — that we had lost to Russia. Then Ramsey would really have had to face major problems, whereas he can now persuade himself that he faces only minor ones. I can excuse his absurd statement that England played well against Poland — listening to a radio commentary one realises that the prose clichés of the commentator really do reflect the soccer clichés of the players — because he always supports his players. rcannot excuse his stated intention to play attacking football and going out with a defensive formation. That was fibbing. But the victory over Russia will probably let him allow himself to go on with the same formation and the same,' players. That could be disastrous, since, if only for self-respect, we must beat Poland at yvembley. The only sure thing I can comfort myself with is that the midfield formation I criticised when I last wrote on the subject was kept in being by Sir Alf in Poland, and lost. So I can say he didn't follow my advice.
Weeping with Mrs Gaskell
And since this has been a looking-backwards Notebook, and since so much of it has arisen out of broadcasts, I had better enter another of my irregular reports on the BBC's Sunday serials. I was in tears again at the end of Mrs Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, with naught, this time, but dry martini to console me. And we have another one starting next week! If memory serves the serials used all to be produced by the same team which, perforce, had to take a rest every now and then. Now suitable dramas are imported to the Sunday slot as repeats and this, with luck, should provide Sunday serial viewing fifty-two weeks of the year — ah, joy; ah, bliss! However, I am much less enamoured of Sunday's later viewing, particularly Owen M.D. I did try very hard with this, especially because Nigel Stock is such a fine actor. But the series, which once told of a doctor in practice in Wales, and now tells of him in retirement, has been going from bad to worse, with repetitive plots and amateur psychiatry from the good Owen each week. It should be re-titled Owen M.D. (retd): and then they should retire it. '
P.C.
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