Notebook
It was ironic that the Anti-Nazi League's concert on Sunday should have coincided With the race riot on the other side of Lon don. The Whitechapel riot was obviously isgusting and depressing. The Anti-Nazi League ought to be heartening — who would hot call himself an Anti-Nazi? — but there are reasons to be suspicious of it. It is aeaded by a collection of show-biz and sPorting personalities chosen to impress
112o-p0lit1cal people, though not me: the
'ay has yet to come when I need to take Political advice from Mr Brian Clough. he intellectual level of the League can be Judged from the Thoughts of Mr Cough: Nazism is a disease just like cancer.'
\t/st. tong, booby.) Many thousands of idealis pie Y°ong people support the League. As Mr eter Hain says (yes, he's there too) it is an arnazing new constituency of support . . . PeoPle who would not normally get Involved in Labour movement organisations.' The League is meant to combat the threat of the National Front, a threat hich I remain convinced is more imaginary than real. But the people to fight totalitarianism should be themselves antitotalitarian. The Anti-Nazi League is organilsed by Mr Ernie Roberts, an ageing Stalinist, kept out of Labour Party candidatures t:)? decades by Labour's wise proscription °E men with Communist connections. The Proscription has now, unhappily, been u a,bandoned, and Mr Roberts has a safe seat ne ;„d up for the next election. Non tali auxmo, indeed.
hat, in _ my case' does 'anti-Nazi' mean? ''tVlazi' was abusive slang used by the Ger 111.,ao Left, just as the German Right called ,1;` e, Socialists `Sozi'. The official name of glees party was the NSDAP, the National oncialist German Workers Party (that's l!ght, . . . Socialist . . Workers Party). ich of these things is the Anti-Nazi Leaore anti: nationalism, socialism, Germany workers? As it happens I don't have rilueb time for any of them, myself, but that fl scarcely be the position of Messrs Ham, thugh and Roberts. Perhaps we should nk up a more accurate and less seductive nalne for the League.
N" that misleading names are a preserve el. the Left. On Tuesday there were parties tiv.en by two Conservative bodies. The altsbury Group is a somewhat mysterious qt air 'founded in honour of the Third Marof Salisbury'. A cheering name: Lord adsbury has been a hero of mine since bi read Lady Gwendolen Cecil's great ei braPhY. Perhaps I shall live to see it c°Mpleted by Mr Hugh Cecil. At least
'Salisbury' gives some idea of the political line to which the Group cleaves. Lunching afterwards with Mr Alfred Sherman — who has recently become one of the most famous political thinkers in the country — I thought about the name of the organisation which he presides over: the Centre for Policy Studies. It is rather like the Institute for Economic Affairs or the Institute of Strategic Studies: the name has a ring of academic respectability, of impartiality. There is nothing to suggest that each is highly partisan, in Sir Harold Wilson's words, a tightly-knit group of politically motivated men. Nothing wrong with that; but why not choose names — like, indeed Salisbury Group — which proclaim political allegiance?
The attacks on Bengalis in Whitechapel confirm the view that Asians represent the real
'race problem', not West Indians. The West Indians, in my observation, get along quite well with the English, perhaps because their — how shall we put it? — indolent, carefree nature is very close to that of the British people. The Asians are different. They believe in hard work, thrift, enterprise, education and family life. As Mrs Thatcher so rightly said, it is a culture quite alien to modern England. For some time one has heard the undercurrent of resentment against Asians on just those grounds. They are accused of being clannish, clever, good with money: it all has an ominously familiar ring. Perhaps we do, after all, need an anti-Nazi league — but not one in the hands of Mr Ernie Roberts.
As I predicted a fortnight ago the starting price book for the Derby was another bookmakers' benefit, nineteen points overround. It is not necessary to grasp the complexities of the field money table to under
stand this. If in a three horse race a layer offers even money all three, anyone can spot the rip-off. (The opposite of overround is overbroke: if, by contrast, 3-1 were offered against all three runners it would be impossible for the backer to avoid a profit, the layer a loss.) Seven or eight points is usually considered a reasonable profit margin. It may be that 4-1 was a true price for Inkerman, though I doubt it. In that case they should have bet 12-1 bar one, instead of two horses at eights, one at nines and two at tens. The more I ponder the activities of the Ring the more I think that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission should be poking its nose in.
The Ramblers Association complains that the new series of 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey maps is inferior to the old inch:mile maps which it replaced. It is perfectly true. The new maps are better in only one respect, which is of course that they are larger-scale. Their defects are several. They contain less detail, of a significant kind, than the old maps: no distinction between deciduous and coniferous forest, important for those who want to avoid the horrors of the Forestry Commission. Fewer antiquities are marked. Then there is the absurd metrication of heights. Rather than the logical (but impossible) solution of re-surveying the country, the old contours have been kept but translated into the nearest metric equivalent: instead of climbing a hill in fifty-foot stages we go up 122, 137, 152 metres. Above all there is a general tone of touristification about the new maps. They are not designed for people who love and understand the country, people such as ramblers (the very word has a poignantly old-fashioned ring). They are for motorists who want 'tourist information' like picnic sites and caravan sites; who need to be told where to find beauty spots and view points. The worst insult of all is the appropriation of blue, the traditional colour of water, for motorways: insulting but apt enough, for these are very much motorway-man's maps.
The sternest anti-European must surely warm to the beastly bureaucrats of Brussels after the vinegar row. Which of us knew that the 'vinegar' served in fish and chip shops was in fact acetic acid diluted with tap water? A ban on this stuff is now proposed by the Permanent International Vinegar Committee (there really is such a body — I trust that Dr Heinz Kiosk is its chief psychiatric advisor). Predictably, the National Federation of Fish Fryers is appalled by the suggestion that vinegar should mean vinegar, just as there were cries of horror when an EEC body tried to withdraw the name
'ice-cream' from the muck that passes as such in this country. The worst single aspect of British life is our diet. If the EEC can do something about the very nasty substances we ingest it will be doing a little to earn its keep.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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