A Spectator's Notebook e arri now persuaded there will be a referenb V da rn on the continuation of British mem

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ership of the Common Market. So let us is rnake an estimate: what about January 1975? C.early the event will be unprecedented, so :s vtlIat about the instruments? There will ob. '-'13slY be a 'No' and a 'Yes' lobby. But how rTilhuch money will they be allowed to spend? 'Yesses' will have potentially unlimited while the 'Noes' will have to scrape 'ogether a limited budget. „In many ways this will resemble a general c!ection situation. So why should not each uside be limited to an amount of money based ,.,13nn the voting electorate? This would ,,yr,event the mighty slush funds of the Brus,,'els bureaucracy operating in a way to subvert the democratic British decision-making Ott:ices It Would be quite intolerable if the tax,'aYers money of other Western European y icIPUntries were to be channelled by the ‘ 'n ,I,,ghlY-paid Market apparatchiks into the .euction of the British electorate. 0 t_,Then there is the question of radio and n elevision. Would it be fair to allocate a certai

n amount of time to each of the Grand •

0Oa itions engaged in arguing out this matter? rLr.le thing is clear: we should now brusquely 5, ZJect any propositions which could result in e referendum being bought in the way that o ._ue advertising agencies bought (or temPfzarily leased) the United States for Richard .e Nixon.

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11 Weigh's legacy r „ ave never smoked. I deplore the a"trI1Wholesome habit. But what do you do s, not it? An irreverent medical friend at a , ree th ',,

Tit Spectator lunch came up with the idea

Seat at there ought to be a National health o ,erv ice stamp in every cigarette packet which a 1.31; can cash-in if you don't get cancer. It thatlY is most unsatisfactory that the rest of i!vetaxpayers should go on paying higher and wwler contributions to look after the cancer h,,ards. I am in favour of doing it but only on trnanitarian grounds. Perhaps we ought to e re'ule the taxes on cigarettes and earmark ssultant revenues to the National Health 'Nee?

'ff Ciao, ciao r, knr report of the Commission on Industrial e ations on the Con-Mech dispute was exact vv--,d appropriate although oddly tactful. It t, to°,tlicl have taken a very sophisticated reader

o Mterpret the following paragraph: e

if thi„" ePtember 19 when the dispute occurred some grc;'Y were employed in this group. Within this t wit1.1"IP, comprising as it does a number of employees , gua a limited understanding of the English IanWe found a particular need and a general 1:10 1;ngness to be represented by a trade union and ba "ave their interests dealt with by collective taming

Th.

the truth is that a substantial proportion of ea Workers were Sicilian immigrants who I ta14111,..e into this country to work on a loc,700m farm which went bankrupt. Their hecn religious leader was instrumental in Cillk:":g to introduce them to Con-Mech. The te mvestigators had to use Italian in1 threters to ascertain their views. The fact is it all went wrong was not their fault but not extraordinary that there was no

media discussion of this unusual workplace situation in which the employees seemed a very vulnerable group?

Investigate them all

One of the more interesting ideas coming out of the Department of Employment is that the new Conciliation, Arbitration and Mediations service should have its own investigative arm. It was a pity that the Commission on Industrial Relations was linked to the National Industrial Relations Court. Someone ought to put on record that the CIR reports were sensible, rational and informative documents and it would be a pity if, in the myth-making that goes on in industrial relations, the CIR and an able staff were to carry any kind of odium when they clearly worked within the progressive terms of the Donovan Commission on trade union and employer organisations. I do not think it would harm at all if it were taken over lock, stock and barrel by the new service. The trouble is that the Industrial Relations Act was so absurd and anti-tradeunion that the natural prejudice against it has sullied the atmosphere. It ought to be said that a neutral third party is often useful in recognition issues where the oilcan is still preferable to the sword.

Look north and pray

I simply cannot understand how tempers can become inflamed over the issue of public ownership of the North and Celtic Seas oil developments. If public ownership is good for the Libyans, Kuwaitis, Nigerians and Norwegians why should not it be appropriate for the Celts and Anglo-Saxons?

I confess to having a whole battery of astonishingly lively suspicions about the status of our continental-shelf oil and gas exploration, discovery and exploitation. I want to put it quite bluntly: in the past decades oil discoveries were blazoned by the companies concerned. They always operated on a 'thar she blows' policy. Now they seem to be reticent about disclosing the huge and enormous wealth of their discoveries because of

their apprehension about nationalisation. But why should we be the only small nation in the world not to insist upon our rights? Of course, it goes beyond this. I attach a lot of responsibility to Roy Mason in the last Labour government and every minister in the energy field in the Conservative governments, before and after him, for the entry of foreign interests into our mineral treasure troves. But now that the Americans are there, are we really dealing with Americans? Their multinational integrated companies are now so vulnerable to the pressures of the oil-, producing states that they will probably end up with Arab participation in the equity of their own home-based companies. This might have the ludicrous result of us seeing the Arabs, who have nationalised our interests in their oil fields, nevertheless having a financial interest in our oil and gas fields. The British are a nation of philanthropists but this really does go too far.

Groups within groups

Status and ranking in the rewards system of our society are a complex mixture of class, education, accent, social mobility and money. But within each complex society there are groups who have developed and retained their own ranking system. I was charmed recently to go to a conference of local government specialists to find that on the order paper I was identified as "past Chairman of the Staff Committee St Pancras Metropolitan Borough Council." This was not immediately humorous to me because I had the immense pleasure, while filling that elective post, of virtually regrading all the sanitary inspectors in London arising out of our need to have more of them in St Pancras because of our 'ports' — Euston, Kings Cross and St Pancras. That was the point at which they became Public Health Inspectors. It is sometimes hard to remember what one is remembered for!

Vicious circle

I recently lunched with some interesting merchants of death — or, to put it another way, the senior executives of an engineering group who might tender for the supply of arms or military support systems to South Africa or Latin America.

They wanted me to explain why we were Opposing the dispatch of submarines, aeroengines and frigates to Chile.

Briskly disposing of the arguments that bloodstained digits looked and smelled as fresh as palely moral fingers, we argued into more contentious areas. They said modern weapons are so hideously expensive that we could not afford a top-notch, they'll-neverget-through approach unless we sold some of these copper-bottomed stoppers to other people. In other words, it is already (they said) too costly to defend oneself unless one provides to others the means of attacking one!

Very, very, very fair

Who says the great companies are not neutrally public-spirited? C. T. Bowring, the insurance brokers, have contributed to both the Conservative Party and the Labour Committee for Europe. It is a grand tradition: the previous terrible Tory government gave a handsome annual Foreign Office subvention to the European Movement. This, in turn, helped the Labour Committee for Europe which opposed the Labour Party and TUC polices on the Common Market. Now that we have a Labour Government they give a handsome annual Foreign Office subvention to the European Movement which still helps the Labour Committee for Europe which opposes Labour Party and TUC policies on the Common Market.

Clive Jenkins