TAPER
SIR,—Generally I yield to none in my admiration for Taper's column. I share many of his prejudices, including a profound distaste for Marshal Big- Mouth Wilson. I have only occasionally wondered at the choice of his now de plume (readers of C'oningsby will recall that Taper and his chum, Tad- pole, were not regarded by their creator, Disraeli, as the highest form of political life). Like many others of his readers I have been only mildly irked (the victim not at all) by his flouts and jeers at the Foreign Secretary.
'Hoylake Urban District Council' was quite a good joke, though perhaps staling a little with repetition. indeed, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd made an amusing com- ment on it when a somewhat pompous portrait of him in oils was presented to that august body. Still, the vendetta has been there and plain to see.
Last Wednesday friends who were in the House, Members of Parliament, a member of the Socialist Shadow Cabinet and journalists all assured me that the Foreign Secretary had made a first-class speech. The News Chronicle, politically no admirer of Mr. Lloyd's, wrote: 'The Foreign Secretary held the House as he has not done before' . . . 'The Foreign Secretary argued forcibly' . . . The Daily Telegraph Parliamentary sketch writer wrote: 'Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, the Foreign Secretary, again demonstrated a new confidence and a new command of the House' . . . `Mr. Lloyd slapped his brief together and sat down. He well deserved the cheers which greeted this frank and competent statement' . . . And (in a leader) 'The Foreign Secretary's powerful speech' . . . The Daily Mail referred to 'Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, who made a remarkable 22-minute speech' . . . The Times commented : 'The theme which the Foreign Secretary drove home with a sort of contained com- pulsive force, his words rattling out with a speed matching the urgency of his conviction' . . `Mr. Lloyd had given a steely content of conviction to his assertion on the Lebanon affair' . . . The Express, by no means a lover of the Foreign Secretary, said that he 'received the biggest shower of applause that has ever fallen on the shoulders of the man who was loyal and faithful to Sir Anthony Eden's incursion into Port Said. He is an unemotional man. He speaks like a Blue-book. But for once he aroused enormous enthusiasm in defending the Government's approval of America's landing' . . . 'Then he -announced his flight to Washington to discuss the situation with Mr. Dulles. The House gave him a great cheer on his way.'
It was with interest, therefore, I turned to Taper's column to see what he would have to say. Would he ignore Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's speech? Would he, I wondered, even make amende honorable? After a charming and elegantly worded description of statc- mcnts by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secre- tary on Tuesday (Tor when the organ-grinder had finished, the monkey had a tune of its own to play. Mr. SelWyn Lloyd rose to report on the Middle East situation' . . .) and Taper's ex cathedra statement that `Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's twisting really will not do this time,' we come to the description of Wednesday's
debate. Speaking of the Foreign Secretary, Taper says, 'He was almost as bad as usual, but his normal note of unnecessary and whining aggressiveness, that puts up the back of virtually everybody listening, was for once absent.'
Of course, Hoylake could not be left alone. 'When the cries of "What does that mean?" grew hard to bear, he snapped, with all the old nastiness flowing through his voice. "It means just what it says"— which is what they say up in Hoylake, presumably,
for "l haven't the faintest idea."' The Times may have detected 'a contained compulsive force' in the Foreign Secretary's speech, but Taper can only com- ment, `Mr. Lloyd bumbled on.'
Sir, we are all entitled to our private hates, but this sort of trashy misrepresentation is going a bit too far. In my early youth in Fleet Street 'political commentators' were few and far between. There were, however, a number of excellent political reporters. I should hate to feel that Taper's unfairness to the Foreign Secretary should lead me to regard Marshal Big-Mouth with sneaking sympathy!—Yours faith-
10 St. James's Place, SW I
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