A Spectator's Notebook
rr HE week has seen some curious expressions I of the democratic process. In South Vietnam the elections seem to have produced various losers but it's hard to name a winner. The Viet- cong first said the voting would never take place, then tried to wreck the polling when it did hap- pen: the high turnout defeated their ends. The militant Buddhists, whose rebellions in Hue and Da Nang originally prompted thoughts of hold- ing these elections as an emergency counter- measure, appealed for spoiled voting papers, and there is little comfort for them in the outcome. As for the people elected, they have the bleak task of working out a new constitution in just under a year. It will be interesting to see what sort of leadership emerges from the confusion.
An even more guarded response applies to Mr Vorster's swift inheritance of Dr Verwoerd's mantle. One thing certainly can be said about the Nationalist party—its 'customary processes' work with brisk efficiency. Mr Vorster's emergence has all the marks of a polished piece of political management. In the wholly unpredictable situation created by the murder of Dr Verwoerd, a successor was plucked from the ranks with scarcely a ripple of public controversy. The episode says much about the single-mindedness of the Broederbond, the Afrikaner league which really runs the country. Naturally, a seemingly unhesitating choice is important in the embattled psychology of South Africa, as is all the talk of `toughness' and 'strong men.' I see that it is already being said that high office will mellow Mr Vorster, and in a sense something of the sort seemed to happen to his predecessors. But has any parliamentary leader anywhere ever reached power with a public reputation as unappealing as his?
Compulsion The right of an ever-increasing number of people to own a house, or rather to obtain a mortgage to enable them to own a house, is an article of faith with all political parties. It is therefore noteworthy that as the urge to be a freeholder grows, so the rights of freeholders are brought increasingly under pressure. Com- pulsory purchase powers and similar inter- ventions by authority long since eroded the old notion of absolute possession. But still, the em- ployment of compulsory purchase has been relatively limited on the whole and most house- holders, I dare say, never give a thought to the possibility of its affecting them. The general supposition is that compulsory purchase is more or less confined to slum clearance and road widening.
A public inquiry at Wembley next week will disclose a case in which a local authority, the Brent Borough Council, has radically departed from this concept; and since it is the kind of case which is likely to happen more and more often as the growth in population increases the demand for rebuilding suburbia at higher population densities, it will be worth watching. Briefly, the council has decided to buy up, com- pulsorily, a lot of good, modem and quite ex- pensive houses in order to pull them down and build council flats and houses in their place. Leaving aside the larger dottiness of demolish- ing good houses in a city with miles of rotten ones to its discredit, this proposal will seem shocking to anyone with old-fashioned ideas about private property. Many of the people threatened with eviction hold such ideas, it seems, for they have combined to form a residents' association: hence the public inquiry at which they will put their case. Whichever way the verdict goes, pre- cisely this kind of conflict seems certain to become more and more a part of our lives in the next few years.
H. G. Wells There is a distinct irony about this month's centenary commemoration of H. G. Wells. Ob- sessed as he was in his lifetime by visions of the future, posterity now tends to think of him as an engaging period figure, a man essentially of his own time. But I am told he is by no means unread today, and Gollancz has per- formed a respectful service by reissuing his Experiment in Autobiography in two stout volumes.
Wells was, I recall, the first famous writer I ever met. He was very old, and I was very young, and therefore it did not surprise me to find that in the flesh he matched precisely the personality that emerged from his writings. Sub- sequent experience has taught me how often a writer's works belie his physical presence. Wells presented exactly the jaunty, impatient, energetic appearance one would have supposed from his enormous output.
He never lacked detractors and it is easy now, I suppose, to see his career as an enormous bad joke, with the lifelong disciple of Science and Education and the rest sent sprawling, at the end of it all, on the cosmic banana-skin of the atom bomb. But it is melancholy, too, to con- template the cycle of struggle, and hope, and prophecy, and then disillusion. Wells belonged to the race of literary giants who existed earlier this century, and who perhaps can no longer exist. His personal achievement in reaching that position was immense. A plaque now marks the site of the poverty-stricken household in Brom- ley in which he was born. It is rather pleasing that Bromley has staged in its town hall a memorial exhibition which charts and documents his progress from that luckless start, for he wrote
some severely uncomplimentary things about the place once he had escaped to the larger world.
Seaside Season The arrival of the agenda for the Labour party conference, a document unswervingly conserva- tive in appearance, alerts one to the imminence of the party conference season. Resolutions on this agenda seem in the classic mould, from the fractious (`This conference views with de- spondency the poor public image of the Labour party': Wallsend) to the optimistic (`. . . calls upon the Government to increase the efficiency of the nationalised industries': Colne Valley) and on to the sternly traditionalist ('. . . the total prohibition of blood sports': Woking). The parties' annual plunges into anguished self- appraisal, in short, are almost upon us.
No one, as far as I know, has yet given proper literary commemoration to these remarkable events. Of course, there are columns and news- stories in abundance; occasionally some 'colour- writer' is dispatched to the seaside to write of winkles on the front and his own happy ignor- ance of the political process. But certainly there is no work of literature which adequately evokes the concentrated, febrile atmosphere of the con- ference hall and the conference hotel.
From the practising journalist's point of view there are a few more mundane grumbles. Why, for instance, do most hotels fail to provide a place in which a man (or woman) can write or indeed conduct any other part of his busi- ness? A reporter's wants at a conference, after all, are tolerably modest: a writing-table, a telephone, and preferably a radio. Few hotel rooms provide all these, and nowadays the hotel writing-room is usually given over to television. Bedrooms are filled with enormous wardrobes and chests of drawers, a bed, and little else. At Blackpool last week my colleague Alan Watkins was compelled to make use of the local public library. (I am rather relieved to learn that Black- pool has one.) Most journalists, however, write lying on their beds, which, contrary to what one might think, is not even very comfortable.
Scorched Earth Travelling in the countryside at this time of year has its alarming moments. The up-to-date farmer's passion for burning the straw after a field has been combine-harvested produces the impression at times of a ruthless scorched-earth policy in progress. The sight of a whole field alight, with the flames spurting to the height of trees and great banks of smoke billowing across the landscape, can be very striking. But although farmers say this is the most efficient way of dis- posing of the straw, I find it hard to be con- vinced. Horticultural sages have for years been persuading growers not to burn their weeds and other rubbish, but to rot it down to refertilise the ground. It seems so sensible that it must surely apply to agriculture, too.
I suspect the real explanation of the scorched- earth policy lies, as real explanations so often do, in matters far removed from efficiency. My guess is that farm workers simply enjoy staging their scenic bonfires. I came across a group of them the other day, working like wild-eyed demons to bring under control a straw fire which had grown, over-exuberant and was threatening a tall hedge. It seemed plain to me that, after the long, unexciting toil of getting in the harvest, they were having a marvellous schoolboyish time. There is a suppressed pyromaniac inside all of us. Perhaps one day some new annual ritual will emerge from all this, to replace the somewhat tired Guy Fawkes ceremonial.
J. W. M. THOMPSON
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