Sta,—I have read Lord Goodman's speech. I have read Nigel
Lawson's comments on it. My verdict is that, through misreading, Lawson has been unfair to Goodman.
The passage in which Lord Goodman attacked proposed changes in the law .which, in his view, would diminish the rights of the public, referred solely to libel. Nigel Lawson insists, in reply to Professor Gower, that this was a general proposition and hence illiberal. I can only suggest he read the passage yet again.
Nigel Lawson's second misreading of Lord Good- man's speech is almost comic. It was not his view that the press had been guilty of 'enormities' and 'iniquities.' Lord Goodman was reporting, with ironical exaggeration, the views of the 'Justice' work- ing party but expressly not adopting them! Unfor- tunately the irony has not come over (to Nigel Lawson) in print.
Lord Goodman's speech was critical not of news- papers but of certain of the recommendations of the 'Justice' report. It was neither reactionary nor anti-press. On this issue Nigel Lawson has, in Lord Goodman, an ally with a first-class record of law reform campaigning, not an enemy.
HAROLD LEVER House of Conunons, London, SWI
[Nigel Lawson writes: 'I'm impressed by the calibre of Lord Goodman's friends, but not (on the whole) by their arguments. Mr Chapman-Walker accuses me of having made no reference to the 'Justice' report: in fact I referred to it both in my original note and in my footnote to Professor Gower's letter last week. But I am glad that the managing director of the News of the World dis- sents from Lord Goodman's opposition to any liberalisation of the law of libel: so do I. In reply to Mr Lever, I have read the first passage again, but still cannot see that I was unfair. In the second passage I was, of course, aware of Lord Goodman's irony, which seemed clearly to have been directed against the press as much as against the report itself. But if—to take but one quotation—Lord Goodman's reference to 'what I think is the unsatisfactory de- cision that penal damages can now no longer, as a matter of course, be obtained in a libel' isn't evidence of illiberality I don't know what is. Or maybe this 'as just another of Lord Goodman's little ironies.]
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