Notebook
You may recall Beatrix Potter's lines on being a mole: Diggory Diggory Delvet A little old man in black velvet; He digs and he delves — You can see for yourselves The mounds dug by Diggory Delvet This week we were able to see the `supermole' on television, and a very striking performer he was — a charming and elegant mole, if ever there was one, who would have us believe that his digging and delving was of the most sensitive nature, producing only the sweetest little decorative mounds. He gave little away, taking refuge — amusingly — behind the Official Secrets Act. What we still lack — despite a brave if disastrous attempt by the Sunday Telegraph to link him with the betrayal of various Dutch agents during the war — is any evidence that he inflicted serious damage on anybody. Until such evidence is produced, it is easy to feel compassionate towards him. This was made easier by the BBC which produced an interviewer of such crassness that even the darkest villain would have emerged from the confrontation with an enhanced reputation. Who is this extraordinary person? He is sometimes allowed to read the news with an express!en of dumb incomprehension, his eyes like those of a rabbit caught by torchlight. On this occasion, however, he was not as harmless as he looked, for he interspersed the interview with comments of his own which tended to cast doubt on Professor Blunt's truthfulness and to suggest that he was unrepentant. The BBC seems to have lost its instinct for objectivity, a development which could in the long run be as harmful as anything that Professor Blunt has done.
It Was appropriate that the interviews With Blunt should have taken place in the Offices of The Times, the paper which in 1977 named the late Donald Beves, another Cambridge don, as the Fourth Man. The story had, I thought, been totally discredited, so I was surprised to find that the editor of The Times, Mr William Rees-Mogg, continues even now to believe that it may be true. I rang up Mr Rees-Mogg to ask him his views on an uncomradely aation by the Sunday Tunes, which suggested last Sunday that the Heves story had been 'planted' on The Times by enemies of Blunt in the security services who wanted, by attracting fresh publicity to the old spy scandal, eventually to 'get him'. This unkind suggestion was made rather more credible by Blunt himself, who agreed in his Times interview that there were people in MI5 who might have wanted him exposed. Mr Rees-Mogg, however, regards the Sunday Times comment as 'irresponsible' and denies it absolutely. Blunt, in fact, was publicly named in connection with the 1950s spy scandal not in the Spectator, but, oddly enough, in a parody of this paper's front cover published some weeks ago in Private Eye. One of the supposedly amusing cover headlines billed an article on The Fourth Man by Sir Anthony Blunt. There is speculation that Blunt may then have been tipped off by Philby or Maclean, both of whom are air mail subscribers to Private Eye, But I have no evidence for this.
Throughout the Thirties, Blunt wrote regularly for the Spectator about art, and we reprint 'a sample of his work on another page. Not long before his exposure we invited him to review the Thirties exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. On 25 October, he wrote to us in his own hand as follows: 'You will, I hope, have got my telephone message saying that unfortunately I couldn't do the review of the Hayward Gallery show — I am working against time to finish a book and it would have taken me quite a time to change gear, so to speak, from Roman Baroque to the 1930s. But thank you for asking me.' What a well-mannered mole! It is pleasant to imagine that during these past few weeks his mind may have been principally occupied with thoughts about Roman baroque. Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper suggests on another page that nothing has been gained by the unmasking of Blunt. I tend to agree. Indeed it is in some ways hard on Blunt that this should have happened, though it could hardly have been avoided. If Scotland Yard, as the Sunday Times reports, goes to extraordinary lengths to protect the 'supergrasses' who have turned Queen's evidence, shouldn't the same policy apply to `supermoles'?
The Blunt scandal did, on the other hand, draw attention to the inadequacies of the Government's outrageous Protection ot Information Bill, to which we devoted a leading article last week. Mr Andrew Boyle, the author of the book which led directly to Blunt being named as the Fourth Man, has pointed out that he could have been prosecuted for writing the book if the Bill had been law. As it is, Mrs Thatcher has very wisely decided to drop the Bill. It should be said, however, that she almost certainly would have had to do so even if the Blunt scandal had not come to light. There was already an incipient revolt against the Bill among her backbenchers. Sir John Hobson was the AttorneyGeneral who chose to grant immunity tp Professor Blunt in 1964. Whether or not this was a mistake, Hobson seems to have made others in his time. The year before, 1963, he was the first Attorney-General in 400 years (and there have been none since, I think) to be arraigned before the Benchers of his Inn — the Inner Temple — on a charge of professional misconduct. The 'trial' was completely secret and was not reported. The accusation was brought by Mr Reginald Paget QC, MP, now Lord Paget. It alleged that at the time of the Enaharo case Hobson had presented a false affidavit. The Nigerian government had sought the extradition from England under the Fugitive Offenders Act, 1881, of Chief Enaharo, who claimed political asylum. The then Conservative government was happy enough to get rid of Enaharo but legal difficulties supervened when Enaharo sought a writ of habeas corpus. The legal technicalities are intricate but, roughly, the charge against Hobson was that, knowing that the Nigerians would not allow Mr Dingle Foot QC into Nigeria to represent the Chief, he had denied this in an 'inaccurate and misleading' affidavit. In the end Enaharo was sent back, but such was the strength of legal opinion against Hobson's behaviour that he was summoned before, in effect, a secret tribunal. If it had found against him he would have been disbarred. Mr Harold (now Lord) Lever and Mr Jeffrey Thomas acted for the 'prosecution', Mr (now Sir) Henry Fisher and Mr Peter (now Mr Justice) Foster for the 'defence'. The Benchers, which is to say the ruling disciplinary body of the Inn, found in favour of Hobson by a narrow margin. Had the vote gone the other way there would have been the unique spectacle of an Attorney-General being slung out of the Bar by his colleagues — and another Law Officer would have had to deal with the Blunt case.
The news from Dublin is that Mrs Thatcher is planning to walk out of next week's Common Market summit conference when she fails, as expected, to get her way on the British contribution to the community budget. Since Dublin airport is as often as not paralysed by strikes, it was feared that, having walked out of the conference, she might find herself stranded there for hours before being able to board a plane to London. A specialpdlaignnewill therefore be on permanent standby so that she can make her exit with ity.
I was pleased to learn from the Sunday Tunes that due to the tireless efforts of the Yorkshire police in their search for the notorious Ripper, the list of suspects has now been reduced to a mere 17,000.
Alexander Chancellor
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