SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Cultural festivals do not ordinarily stir me greatly: they tend to move a little too close to the packaging business for my comfort. Still, on Sunday the sun shone unexpectedly and Brighton, with its infant Festival newly launched, seemed worth a visit. The initial problem, I decided after tramping around a bit, lay in the nature of Brighton. In such a relaxed, indulgent setting the organisers' attempts to stir up a special sense of carnival were scarcely noticeable. Moreover, things were poorly signposted and it was curiously difficult to find out what was going on. How- ever, the programme, when I found someone willing to sell me one, seemed full of alluring concerts and other attractions.
I headed for the Pavilion and there, beside that immensely self-confident evocation of the festive spirit, pondered the works of 'concrete poetry' on exhibition. On one lawn several rows of large wooden `8cs' had been laid out and painted orange: this work of art bore the title `Amber Sands.' The spirit wilted at such over-inflation of a little joke. No wonder the passing crowds looked singularly glum. Later I found another essay in the same genre, con- sisting of the words `Love,' Beauty' and 'Passion' in gigantic red letters on three verti- cal contraptions floating offshore. This sea- borne work, presumably deeply disturbing in intention, seemed to be having no effect what- ever, perhaps because the impassive British holiday-makers dismissed it as an unfamiliar form of navigational aid. Then on the pier I visited the Kinetic Audio-Visual Environments Labyrinth, where in warm darkness one watches moving patterns made by coloured light; and an earnest lady seemed affronted when I said it had great possibilities for shop-window display. All these offerings might have been chosen to illustrate how ephemeral and dis- posable a great deal of the current avant- garde's work is intended to be. The work of the old surrealists, also on view in the festival, seemed meant for the ages by contrast: and Brighton herself very nearly eternal.
The bar
It is logical to follow up the Race Relations Board's detailed disclosures this week of the extent of the colour bar with legislation pro- hibiting such discrimination; and this is what we may now expect from the Government. Many people will no doubt deplore this in- trusion of the law into what ought to be, ideally, an aspect of private human relations. Others will argue that persuasion and education are the best way of eliminating prejudice. I can find nothing in the PEP report to support such attitudes: and since we are plainly faced by a colour problem of appalling scale, the sooner we get the law on the matter right, the better.
Meanwhile, is it not remarkable that public protest against colour discrimination has hitherto been so slight? There is in the country a lively cult of protest, with large and or- ganised crowds available to chant, march, or sit down by way of complaint against all sorts of political or other activities they disapprove of. The spectrum of fashionable causes ex- tends all the way from Vietnam - to the ad- ministrative arrangements at the London School of Economics; the other day, London even had a protest march against 'polite brutality in Sweden' (of all countries), Yet nothing remotely resembling the .while &hid- pation in America's civil rights demonstrations exists here. that that the unpleasant details of discrimination have been spelled out, perhaps we shall see students and other young activists demonstrating vigorously on behalf of their coloured contemporaries who are denied equal rights in the competition for jobs and houses. I wish them well if we do.
Planned bedlam?
In these lean days it is pleasant to note what looks like a piece of swift governmental action. On Monday the report of the recent inter- national conference on the menace of aircraft noise was published. That same day Mr Douglas Jay announced new restrictions on this plague. So far, so good. But it will be years before the new restraints become effective. They don't apply to existing aeroplanes, or to those at pre- sent being developed. The idea is simply that future designers will have the new rules in mind when they sit down at their drawing-boards. For the suffering populations unlucky enough to live near to airports, this is not really much better than pie in the sky.
But having read this report, a point of more immediate importance occurs to me. The inter- national experts taking part in the conference held out no hopes of any panacea. As might have been supposed, they accepted that bedlam in the air is an inescapable fact of life in the jet age. But they did emphasise, in very clear terms, that a priceless palliative is to be found in the intelligent siting of airports. Meanwhile, of course, the Board of Trade is about to announce the site of London's third airport. Stansted in Essex was the original choice, and in spite of massive opposition at a public in- quiry this is still regarded as overwhelmingly the most likely site. If Stansted is chosen, it will mean that yet another huge airport is to be inflicted on the outskirts of London: and the fine words about 'effective noise abatement planning,' to which the Government has just subscribed, will be seen as pious humbug. One day, surely, it will dawn on us that in a cramped island the best place for an airport is by the sea.
Alongside Ball's
I see that, in its helpful way, the Sunday Times Business News last weekend published, alongside Professor Ball's article on the budget, a large diagram showing, for-each of the past eighteen years, the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer who produced the budget and the amount he gave away and/or claimed back in taxation. In seven of the eighteen years they got the wrong Chancellor; in two more they got the Chancellor right but spelled his name wrong; and in a further two they got the tax changes wildly wrong. However, for seven of the eighteen years the information appeared, at first glance, to be broadly correct; and I'm still appreciative of Fleet Street's efforts to inform me about Business. Why not, when they pro- duce such encouraging headlines as this week's
JOHN THOMPSON SPRINGS TO LIFE?
Poachers, gamekeepers, etc.
Mr Robin. Farquharson, until recently in charge of ,the RbQdesia trade boycott at the Foreign Offigg,.has. been moved to a new job. He,is going, to be Britain's commercial coun- sellor ' -
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