SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
I wonder if the back-bench MPs who have been made to look silly by the Government's somersault over London's third airport will learn their lesson? It's not surprising that they are angry. More than a hundred Labour mem- bers signed a motion, early last year, calling for a reconsideration of the Stansted proposal. Then the whips went to work, and almost to a man these fainthearted rebels swallowed their misgivings and went into the lobby to vote against a reconsideration of the Stansted pro- posal.
Of course, MPS who find themselves in this situation are in great difficulty. They don't want to bring down their government, however opposed they may be to a particular measure. But in a case like Stansted the answer is that they ought never to have permitted themselves to be landed in such a plight. Members of the House of Commons (especially the younger ones) are constantly complaining that there is too little work of importance for them to do. Here was a major argument which had been dragging on for years. It concerned (to quote Professor Peter Hall) 'the biggest single investment decision a British government may take in the second half of the twentieth cen- tury,' with profound effects upon the face of southern England and on the lives of scores of thousands of people. Yet how many MPs really began to do their homework on the making of this decision before the eleventh hour, if at all?
Outside Parliament, the smell of a scanda- lous contempt for proper democratic pro- cedure was evident long ago, as was the neglect of any rational approach to planning. MPS' nostrils ought to be more, not less, sensitive to such odours. If they had waded in much earlier, they could well have put things right far ahead of that embarrassing three-line whip. With a few admirable exceptions they let it slide until the situation had become, in normal circumstances, beyond repair. That the circum- stances in the end proved to be abnormal was largely due to a sustained and splendid out- cry, by experts and the general public, which arose far from the Palace of Westminster. Plus the prospect of effective resistance in—not the Commons, but, of all places. the House of Lords.
Nobel explosive
I hear that there's a move to nominate Canon Collins, of St Paul's, as a candidate for this year's Nobel peace prize. It's not generally realised that these awards are often preceded by a deal of activity among friends or ad- mirers of possible candidates. In the case of Canon Collins, a number of eminent people who have been at some stage associated with his various campaigns are putting their names to a proposal, which will eventually be sent to the committee of the Norwegian parliament which awards the peace prize. (The other Nobel prizes are under Swedish direction.)
There's no doubt that a number of ortho- dox souls would be gravely shaken if the peace prize were in fact to go to Canon Collins. His nuclear disarmament activities, his march- ings and sittings-down, and even his vigorous opposition to apartheid, have long since estab- lished him as what, journalists, when they wish to be polite, call 'a controversial figure.' On
the other hand he's a man of the greatest goodwill and like other 'controversial' Angli- cans he has strenuously endeavoured to apply his Christianity to the realities of life today. One could easily produce a list of people more obviously deserving of a peace prize than Canon Collins (what about U Thant, for ex- ample?); but I fear the whole idea of this prize is somewhat nebulous. However, Canon Collins has never been averse to a little pub- licity, and I hope no one would begrudge him the kudos which might come his way from this initiative.
Exit line
Condolences, and congratulations, to my one- time colleague Leslie Finer on getting himself thrown out of Greece. It is a disagreeable distinction to have earned, but in the present unsavoury Greek atmosphere the reward for candour is apt to be unpleasant. The colonels weren't, I imagine, particularly irked by what Finer wrote for English newspapers: what made his continued presence in Athens un- acceptable was his work for the BBC. In a country as stiflingly blanketed by censorship as Greece today the importance of the thrice- daily news broadcasts from London is hard to exaggerate. I'm told Athenian cafes, for example, now experience a sort of tidal ebb and flow of customers every evening. As the hour of the BBC news in Greek approaches men look at their watches, drink up, and fade away. Shortly afterwards they're all back, talking about the night's bulletin. Naturally the colonels don't like it. Hence Finer's expulsion. This, incidentally, was marked by a nice piece of semantic niggling of the sort beloved by bureaucratic tyrannies. The authorities were in- dignant at the suggestion that he was being 'ex- pelled.' Nothing of the sort, they insisted: all they were doing was refusing him a permit to stay.
Open diplomacy
Britain, so I am told by an excited announce- ment from the Ministry of Public Building. may become the first country in Europe to adopt open-plan offices for its civil service. In fact, one new government office in London is actually being built on the open plan. It's an unsettling thought. No more corridors of power for Snow's dons and administrators to lurk in: just aisles between rows and rows of desks. What will become of the discreet, con- fidential flavour of Whitehall life? The open- plan workplaces I know best are newspaper offices, and one of the chief characteristics of the system is its lack of secrecy. Everyone sees everyone else's callers, all telephone conversa- tions are involuntarily monitored by a net- work of neighbouring desks, spasms of idleness (sometimes called creative thinking) are widely noted, quarrels and flirtations are conducted before an enthralled audience. Letters left on desks tend to be read and enjoyed by in- numerable passers-by. Gossip flourishes. It's a happy environment for the gregarious and inquisitive, but what it would do to the higher Whitehall mystique I shudder to think.
At least the open-plan fashion is better in offices than in dwelling-place. I know of modernists who have built their homes to this style and have subsequently been driven wild by the competing claims, Within one modishly planned space. of television, children's music practice, reading, and old-fashioned conversa- tion. But wherever there's an open plan there's a noise problem. One man with powerful vocal cords can reduce the efficiency of a score of near-by workers by 50 per cent. If the revolu- tion were ever to reach the Foreign Office. it's terrifying to imagine what proximity to Mr George Bro%%n would mean in terms of wasted man-hours.
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