Notebook
Dr Eschel Rhoodie, South Africa's former Information Minister, is being tiresomely reticent on one thing — the names of those Members of Parliament who, he alleges, were to be the recipients of South African bribes. In his BBC interview with David Dimbleby on Wednesday night, he refused even to be specific about Britain, but he implied most strongly that British MPs were among parliamentarians in several countries who were offered financial inducements either to adopt 'a more positive attitude' towards South Africa or to act as informants about developments in antiSouth African circles. It is hard to imagine any more contemptible role for a Member of Parliament. Dr Rhoodie may not be telling the truth, but it should not be left to the South African authorities to find out. It Is for the British Parliament to purge itself.
There is much more information, however, about another way in which Dr Rhoodie intended to use his £38 million secret fund to buy influence in Britain. His aim was to establish an international network of proSouth African newspapers and journals, With special emphasis on this country. The Core of his strategy lay in the attempted acquisition in 1976 of the British publishing house of Morgan-Grampian by two South African businessmen, Mr David Abramson and Mr Stuart Pegg. At first sight, Morgan-Grampian was an odd choice. Its stable of specialised journals included such titles as Tunnels and Tunnelling, Manufacturing Chemist and Aerosol News, and .What's New In Farming — not obvious vehicles for South African propaganda. But Dr Rhoodie was apparently much impressed by the claim that these journals were read by 83 per cent of all Britons earning over 49,000 a year (extraordinary thought!). Furthermore, the company was vulnerable, as it was looking around for someone to save it from the avaricious advances of Rupert Murdoch. Morgan-Grampian was to become the nucleus of an international Pro-South African publishing empire. Accordingly, Mr Abramson and his friend It Pegg (a former business associate of Jim Slater) bought in April 1976 a 20 per cent stake in Morgan-Grampian. The deal was financed with a tack-to-back' loan between Kleinwort Benson of London and the Volkskas Bank in South Africa with the Permission — most unusually granted — of the South African Reserve Bank. This origMal stake was gradually increased until suspicions were aroused that a take-over Was being planned. At this point the day was saved by Mr Victor Matthews. Trafalgar House stepped in and took it over instead. The only distressing aspect of this outcome was that Abramson and Pegg, by their own admission, made a profit on the sale of £2.4 million, of which half went to the South African Department of Information and the rest was divided between them. As Abramson commented later, it was 'the one deal in which the government actually made some money'.
Good old Pegg and Abramson were involved in a number of other abortive attempts to gain control of British publications. In 1977, they were involved in a bid for the Investors' Chronicle, again — according to Pegg — with loans guaranteed by the Department of Information. He said the intention was to make it pro-South African and pro-gold. When that failed, they bought a 50 per cent stake in Investors' Review, but failed to gain editorial control. Their stake was eventually acquired by Trust Houses Forte which already owned the other 50 per cent. The Investors' Review has now folded. Mr Pegg has also claimed an involvement with West Africa magazine, an influential London-based journal, through a complex series of covert deals, but this allegation has been strongly denied by Mr John Kimche, the magazine's acting chairman. Abramson and Pegg are now living in Britain and may, for all we know, have a prosperous future ahead of them — unlike Dr Rhoodie.
'The tax on earnings is viciously suppressive. It punishes the worker for working, and when the revenue raised in this manner is used to reward the indolent, this tax totally invalidates the contribution made by the worker to the common good'. What right-wingextremist wrote this? None other than that old trade unionist Mr Arthur Lewis, the Labour Member of Parliament for Newham North West. Mr Lewis's recipe for Britain's economic recovery is set out in a little pamphlet he has distributed to newspapers, calling for the total abolition of income tax. 'We must not rest until it has been abolished. It is not good enough to talk in terms of reducing this tax. This is tantamount to condoning theft from the pay packet'. Mr Lewis gets more and more excited. He feels he has found the answer to all our problems. He even convinces himself that no alternative tax may be necessary. 'It is an idea.' he says of his own idea, 'that takes one's breath away'. But what takes one's breath away is that any Labour MP — even a slightly ludicrous one like Mr Lewis — can solemnly put forward such explicitly anti-socialist proposals. This seems to be an extreme example of a trend.
A more rational example is the case of Councillor John Mills, the deputy leader of Camden Council, London, who has made a brave but unsuccessful attempt to inject some common sense into the council's deliberations. Camden has for some time been the most extravagant local authority in the country. Three years ago, the amount of money it spent on housing was second only to that spent by Birmingham, and a great deal higher in terms of population. The result is a huge rate-borne deficit on its housing revenue account which, according to Councillor Mills, is rising at a rate of £8 million a year. In a paper circulated among his colleagues, Mr Mills says that, spending on housing is now so out of hand that it will soon swallow up all Camden's income. In other words, there will be nothing left to spend on anything else. But, predictably, his proposals for major reductions in the council's future housing development programme failed to obtain the support of his Labour colleagues. But there is some good news from South Devon. The South Hams District Council, about which Christopher Booker wrote last week in an article entitled 'Have local authorities gone mad?' voted on Monday by 27 votes to nine against building themselves a new multi-million-pound headquarters. They were armed, incidentally, with copies of Mr Booker's article.
'You don't become heir to the throne by accepting a dunking' — Reginald Bosanquet, News at Ten, Monday, 19 March. This was Reggie's comment on a picture of Prince Charles clambering back on to a sailpowered surf board from which he had just fallen into the sea. There is undeniably truth in this observation. You do not, in normal circumstances, become heir to the throne by accepting a dunking. You more often become heir to the throne through some fortunate accident of birth. But it could be that Reggie was groping towards an even deeper truth, one which I myself have noted before. This is that it is apparently part of a prince's royal duties to indulge for much of the time in strenuous physical activity. I see here a risk of a widening gulf between our future monarch and his increasingly slothful subjects.
Alexander Chancellor
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