A Spectator's Notebook

0 From all accounts the Conservative leadership — or at least part of the present hierarchy — will soon be demanding the capital penalty for acts of terrorism resulting in death. Mrs Thatcher is expected to announce her own conversion quite shortly, and will no doubt carry most of her colleagues with her. But not all of them.

Apart from the wider implications of such a grave decision, there are serious personal considerations. The shadow minister for Home Office affairs is Mr Ian Gilmour, a penal reformer of distinction, a lifelong abolitionist. Among other things, he is a former proprietor and editor of this journal, which has continued to share (and to express) the same convictions. Mr Gilmour is hardly likely to change. ,., Nor is Mr Whitelaw, deputy-leader of the uPposition. As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under Mr Heath he set his face against any resort to treason charges which might have activated the death penalty. He did so for reasons of head as well as heart, believing that it would have been against the public interest to do otherwise. He was never persuaded of the deterrent effect so commonly claimed by the ProPonents of capital punishment, even for acts of terrorism. Mr Whitelaw is still of the same mind, or so it is thought. What then will happen if Mrs Thatcher goes ahead? Is she prepared to risk losing Mr Whitelaw and Mr Gilmour — and perhaps one Or two other members of her Shadow Cabinet? Or is she thinking of allowing them a dispensation, as if there were a free vote and freedom of expression thereafter?

Mr Heath's response to events — to the pressures of the day, Mrs Thatcher's actions not excluded — must also have importance. He, too, has always been numbered among the abolitionists. It would be surprising if he were to fall in with Mrs Thatcher's inclinations.

[I] The Whitehall establishment, the higher bureaucracy, is rattled — alarmed — by the Widespread unrest, not to say anger, to which its swollen powers and privileges have at last pven rise. Officialdom — national and local — Is under fire as never before. To suggest that the overblown army — or armada — of public servants may become an electoral issue is to understate the reality, which is amply apparent: they have become an electoral issue. The party which best understands that truth — presumably the Conservative Party — is at once in tune with a growing mood and, given Policies to rectify the wrongs, can expect to benefit accordingly. The British people are not prepared to put up for evermore with administrative services which are rapidly bringing them to their knees. It is as simple — as fundamental — as that. Last Saturday, The Times published a striking letter about the advantages enjoyed by members of our own diplomatic service. Writing from Lincoln's Inn, Mr Rupert Evans was able to show that officers serving abroad receive stupendous tax-free grants for their children's education at home —£1,291 a year for a boy at a public school, £1,241 for a girl, 0,164

for a boy at a preparatory school, £1,117 for a girl.

Imagine a family of four children — and there are plenty of them. Then imagine what it is costing the state — that is to say the taxpayer — to educate those children. Out of taxed income it would amount to more than E10,000 a year. All this, remember, while the father of the family is paying no or little income tax because he is serving abroad. Are we all to be ruined for the sake of maintaining privileges like these? Let members of the Foreign Service pay for their children's education, just like the rest of us who happen to prefer the private system. It is not as if they were subsisting on low salaries — quite the contrary nowadays.

This is, of course, only one example of the advantages — often amounting to public abuse — enjoyed by the bureaucracy. There are many others. The Spectator would like to build up a library — an archive — of exact information, not necessarily for immediate use but in order to gain a more complete knowledge of what is going on. Readers are invited to acquaint us with their own experiences.

°Why are wooden houses so few and far between in this country? We ought to have more of them — and not only for reasons of economy. Apart from costing less, they are often prettier than houses built of brick, as anyone can see in North America or Scandinavia. Just as the growing of timber should be encouraged, so should its domestic use.

Wooden houses add variety to any community. Like office architicture, residential building has become too standardised — and boring when not actually offensive. We could do with less uniformity.

0 It was entertaining, in more ways than one, to hear Mr Michael Foot speaking last week at a dinner commemorating the birthday of Jawaharlal Nehru. The dinner was, of course, rather more than a commemorative affair. What lent a certain bitter amusement to the occasion was Mr Foot's paean of praise for modern India: after all, he had just completed an arduous parliamentary effort largely designed to restrict the freedom of journalists, while Mrs Gandhi — who sent a personal message to the gathering — has gone further, actually locking up journalists who disagree with her.

But there could be no doubt that the dinner was a considerable success. Many came who, whatever their criticisms of the Gandhi government, were anxious to demonstrate the continuing friendship of Britain for India. Mr Swaraj Paul, the Indian industrialist behind the occasion, had every reason to feel pleased with himself; and many of the British guests were certainly gratified by the efforts that the Indian government, and the Indian community, had made to impress British opinion. Prize of the evening went to Mr Reginald Maudling, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, for an elegant speech which avoided all potential embarrassment and was, in comparison with those of other speakers, pleasingly short.

Eyhen the Times Literary Supplement ended its reviewers' traditional anonymity last year there was some fear that the change might make pure objectivity harder to come by. What some people meant by this was that it might kill the splenetically nasty review of one don's work by another — anonymous — don. These fears have lately been proved groundless in a resounding way. Not long ago the TLS published a review by J. H. Hexter of Christopher Hill's latest, but not quite recent, book. The review was unusually long and technical, if that is the word for the detailed study of seventeenth-century history, but those who read through it found a tight-lipped ferocity which would have ben arresting even in the old nameless days.

Hill's methodology, Hexter implied, was fraudulent; he quoted an earlier book: 'I . . . picked out evidence which seemed to me to support my case.' The result was that Hill (the Master of Balliol) 'stood at that joyous pinnacle of power shared with rulers of totalitarian states and Humpty Dumpty. Words . . . meant anything he wanted them to mean.' This is not the only crack at Hill's (sometime Communist) politics: 'A government more delicately attuned than that of Britain to the virtues of productivity would surely by now have bestowed on Dr Hill some suitable and appropriate honour — the accolade of a Hero of Labour, perhaps.'

Dr Hill has replied to' the charges in a long letter suggesting that Hexter's attack was personal — 'more in anger than in sorrow' — and ending' with a nod to the Professor Hexter 'I have long admired, and for whom I once had considerable affection.' One hopes, no doubt improperly, that the correspondence will ' blossom into alUll-blooded academic row.

El One after another, the London clubs — the so-called gentlemen's clubs, though some have long since taken to embracing ladies in their membership — are falling victim to inflation. Mergers or arranged marriages are the order of the day — the Guards with the Cavalry, the St James's with Brooks's. Perhaps only two can feel confident of independent survival: White's and the Turf because they are so rich. They are among the last bastions of individual inherited wealth.

The loss of the St James's as a single entity is especially sad, if only because of its beautiful house in the middle of Piccadilly, looking over Green Park. There is no finer dining room in London. While Brooks's house is very handsome, it is not to be compared with that of the St James's — which is, of course, protected, so nothing dreadful can happen to either the 'facade or the interior. Not that protection will necessarily assist the sale of the remaining lease.

For St James's members soon to be making, their way to Brooks's, there is perhaps one compensation: they will be able to see more of the Home Secretary. As a man with a taste for these things, Mr Roy Jenkins is frequently in the club.

El Like all true Scots, Sir Hugh Fraser is a believer in the old-fashioned rudiments of education. That being so, he will need to keep a sharp eye on one of his English establishments — John Barker, the store in Kensington — if he is to be sure of killing off an unwelcome innovation in a recent advertisement: 'Family Favorites'. •

No, it was not a newspaper misprint, but the chosen spelling in a block supplied by Barker's. That is not how Sir Hugh would wish his children to spell.