SPECTATOR'S NOTE BOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
The new copyright convention empowering 'developing' countries to help themselves to the property of writers and publishers appears' to be based on the principle that theft becomes respectable provided its practitioners can claim to be hard up. I don't blame the publishing trade for becoming indignant at the British government's acquiescence in this proposition. Obviously there is much to be said for a rich country helping a poor country to get all the books it needs in its educational programme. This is a case for government aid, however. Instead, the burden of giving help is going to fall exclusively on the authors and their pub- lishers, whose role in this peculiar transaction is that of conscript benefactors required to make generous donations without the option of refusal.
Perhaps this raw deal for books will at least encourage the Government to deal fairly with publishers in the matter of selective employ- ment tax. At the moment most publishers pay the tax, but many don't, collecting the premium instead. The lucky ones are those who are either members of the periodical publishers' association or who have their own printing works. Thus the publishing trade is divided almost at random into taxed sheep and sub- sidised goats. With a dotty tax like SET this sort of thing is bound to happen, of course, but I'm not surprised to hear that an all-party group of naps is now pressing for equal treat- ment; and this is an opportunity to make some small amends for the other injustice.
Silver lining
Reverting to the question of literary piracy, I suppose it can have its compensations for the victim. I once found myself (I forget quite how) explaining to Somerset Maugham that his works had just been banned in Russia on the ground that he was a fascist hyena, or whatever the fashionable term then was. He sipped his martini with absolute calm at the news. 'I can b-b-bear that with fortitude,' he said at length, 'considering that I've never had a p-p-penny p-p-piece out of them in royalties.'
Hot blood
When I lived in New York the approach of the hot weather was signalled by a sudden pro- fusion of posters reading: 'New York Is A Summer Festival.' Perhaps they are still there. It always seemed to me, in that achingly un- comfortable humidity and heat, to be the most implausible publicity campaign ever devised. I don't in fact know any western city where great heat is pleasant, let alone festive. In New York the fortunate can at least plan their days so as to spend the least possible time out of the soothing care of an air-con- ditioning plant. But as we have seen in London in the past couple of weeks, a heat wave is perhaps the fiercest test of a city's fitness for its purpose.
'Long hot summer' has quite naturally come to be a synonym in America for racial violence; and in July weather Newark, New Jersey, is the natural setting for the warfare between blacks and whites which has broken out there this week. Newark is only a few miles from New York, but before this week
one would hardly ever hear its name men- tioned there. It's just a slab of industrial America at its grimmest: ugly, noisy, with a teeming population jammed into miles of dis- mal housing. I remember being profoundly depressed by the harsh and (it seemed) joyless scene. When people talk about civil rights pro- grammes, and similar entirely desirable ad- vances for the American negroes, I can never see how these can solve America's problem while people have to live in a pitiless environ- ment like this. The task of rehabilitating these simmering cities is stupendous, of course, even for the richest of countries. The killing and looting in Newark, in fact, is a real part of the price paid for the ghastly commitment of America's resources in Vietnam.
Dead reckoning
Like everyone else who drives a car, I daily run the risk of sudden death or maiming. This is a (to me) disagreeable fact, but it certainly doesn't make me likely to give up the use of cars. Indeed, if I were to announce that I wouldn't go in cars any more, in order to avoid danger, I would no doubt be considered decidedly eccentric. Yet the strange thing is that we are all self-contradictory in our atti- tudes to this matter. Isn't there, for example, a powerful element of delusion in the current debate over the seventy-mile-an-hour speed limit? Anyone might think that saving lives was the sole object of all concerned.
One side argues that the limit has reduced casualties and therefore ought to be retained. The other side merely disputes the evidence that casualties have been reduced, while con- ceding that this would make a conclusive argu- ment if it were proved. In reality, however, it's sheer humbug to pretend that saving life and limb on the roads is the first consideration. Thousands of terrible accidents every year could be avoided if it were: but the process would be both expensive and inconvenient, therefore society settles for the deaths and in- juries. Otherwise we might now be arguing about a seven-mile-an-hour limit, not one of seventy. Imagine the uproar if Mrs Castle pro- claimed that her first objective was to eliminate the carnage of the roads absolutely, however low, the speed limit necessary for the purpose proVed to be! People long ago accepted the arrangement by which modern transport sys- tems are paid for with a daily sacrifice of life and limb. The argument about speed limits and other restraints is really no more than a form of haggling over the price. How many dead people is a motorway worth, per mile?
Back to the drawing-board ?
From Walter Terry's interview with the Prime Minister in the Daily Mail (13 July): 'After the first 1.000 days, what is the main achievement of the Government?'—'In eco- nomic terms, to have got Britain paying het way again after the disastrous deficit we inherited.'
From The Times Business News (14 July): 'Lower exports for June and a bigger trade deficit were part of a gloomy economic package released by the Government yesterday . .
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