Notebook
Judgment is now due from the Court of Appeal in the most important case which has arisen in the struggle between Private Eye and Sir James Goldsmith. This is the distributors' case, which has so far gone before three tribunals in our heavily overmanned legal system and may yet reach the House of Lords. The point at issue is whether a litigant in libel can proceed against the humblest newsagent without first exhausting his remedies against the principal publishers.
Naturally the great retail monopolists such as W. H. Smith and J. Menzies are not involved in this battle since they have always refused to distribute the magazine in question. Instead it has been left to seventeen small newsagents and wholesalers,to defend the interests of the trade, not for the first time. The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes records the heroic precedent of Henry Hetherington and the Poor Man's Guardian. To suppress this radical publication the Whig government' of 1831 tried to impress every copy with a fourpenny stamp. The publisher, Hetherington, was sentenced to six months imprisonment by Bow Street magistrates, but the paper continued to appear and every week newsagents and street hawkers were sent to jail. Eventually Hetherington was tried by the Tory Lord Chief Baron Lyndhurst and a jury, and triumphantly acquitted on the technical grounds that his periodical was not a newspaper.
Another battle for press freedom, if we are to believe a leading article in last week's Times, is being fought by Mr David Astor the former proprietor of the Observer or 'that obscure personality who has recently lost his editorship' as the Father of the NGA Chapel at The Times terms him. The emergence of David Astor as a critic of weak management in Fleet Street is about as credible as a later passage in the leader where The Times portrays its historic struggle to establish its editorial freedom from 'three major influences,' the government, the advertiser and the proprietor. This picture of The Times as a paper free from the influence of advertisers is very amusing. 'Advertisers in the eighteenth century were able to insert paid puffs [as though they were] an independent editorial opinion,' explains The Times.' Could there be a better description of today's 'Special Supplements'?
Then, smuggest of all, comes the statement: 'early in the nineteenth century we established our freedom from government and government subsidies.' Perhaps the editor of The Times has simply failed to
notice that there is a Royal Commission on the Press which is seriously considering government subsidies for newspapers. Where was he on Christmas Eve when his own paper reported that the EEC had fiddled three million pounds out of its Social Fund in 'aid for Fleet Street'?
On the staircase of an underground car park near Leicester Square, London, there is a peculiar graffito: 'KGB Mikado NF.' Either this marks a broadening of interests by the National Front into the artistic field, or members of the National Front are unable to spell. They would have that in common with Sir Harold Wilson KG. Some years ago he submitted a review of a book about Gilbert , and Sullivan to the Evening Standard in which he consistently referred to 'the Mikardo.'
No one could accuse politicians and their toadies of spreading the self-glorification too thin. A week of discreet medical bulletins, a full-page obituary in The Times then the moving spectacle of the House of Commons taking the afternoon off (with only the fearful Dennis Skinner to blow raspberries) and we have not laid Sir Anthony to rest. After the funeral, the memorial service, and of course the obligatory Foundation to foster the causes dearest to his great heart.
But perhaps we should reserve our keenest anticipation for the monument to Eden's forcible repatriation of two million men, women and children to Soviet labour camps and death squads at the end of the war. This, as Spectator readers will remember, is being organised by the Ukrainian Mazeppa Society (78 Kensington Park Road, London W 11). Strangely, despite the length of The Times obituary, there is no mention at all of this appalling blot on the great man's career. I wonder who wrote it ?
In the current issue of Encounter an article by H. J. Eysenck discusses the recent attack on the reputation of the geneticist Sir Cyril Burt and argues convincingly that despite Burt's implications he has been the victim of a disgraceful witch-hunt, chiefly in the Sunday Times. 'What opprobrium is suitable for this misdemeanour in the Republic of Letters?' Eysenck inquires.
The official answer is 'none,' but in The Need for Roots Simone Weil made some forthright suggestions. These include special courts to punish any offenders against the printed truth, whether historical, literary or merely journalistic. Courts were to be manned by judges who had received a spiritual education which would instil in them a love of truth. All propaganda would be entirely prohibited and publications which discussed ideas could only appear at weekly intervals, as 'there is absolutely no need to appear more frequently in print. if its object is to make people think instead of stupefying them.' These measures alone would have abolished advertising, public relations, party political broadcasts, Special Supplements and even magazines sponsored by the Arts Council. All excellent, though Dr Eysenck may consider that she went a little too far in advocating prison with hard labour for journalistic recidivists.
Kay Summersby's posthumous record of her love affair with General Eisenhower, Past Forgetting, does not seem to have aroused that degree of interest in America on which the calculations of the publishers, Collins, must have been based. Perhaps this Is because Mamie Eisenhower is still alive. One of the more interesting discussions about the book occurred on the radio and involved Malcolm Muggeridge.
Muggeridge, who has always stoutly defended gossip as a legitimate area of journalistic inquiry, took the view that the book was not very interesting because 'it was not very good gossip.' This meant, it emerged under quite close questioning, that Muggeridge did not accept Kay Summers' by's statement that the affair had never been consummated owing to Eisenhower s 'incapacity' (or keen interest in guns). 'I know,' said Muggeridge, and refused to be drawn further. Bearing in mind Darn Rebecca West's review of the book, in which she said that if there had been anY such affair it could only have taken place with the blessing and possibly at the instigation of both intelligence services, this places in a new light the remarks of ex-Captain Muggeridge of British Intelligence. Are we to see him as a sort of Captain Pandarus, advising Troilus, the Supreme Allied Commander, to 'tarry at the grinding'? Fortunately there is another volume of his autobiography still to come.
Patrick Marnhani
Previous page
