Notebook
A few days ago, on Radio Four, I listened to !-Ord Carrington commending Ian Smith's Internal' settlement. The reporter asked if It wasn't beginning to look a little bit too Much like Kenya. 'Well,' Carrington replied, 'that isn't too bad, is it?' But not too bad for whom? Surely, Lord Carrington could not have been condoning Kenya's massive corruptions, its assassinations, its, arbitrary arrests? (The novelist Ngugi is Only the latest in a long list of casualties.) None of this, however, prevents Kenyatta from being considered, in the Newspeak of our day, as an exemplar of moderation. If a monkey were in charge of Zaire, the West — Provided that he was a moderate monkey — would rush to his aid in times of trouble. Moderate Africans are those with Swiss bank accounts, châteaux on the Loire, farms in the Home Counties. The moderate African takes his cut and lets you take Yours. One of the sadnesses of Africa is that moderation is never in short supply. Sithole, Muzorewa and the rest belong to a now hallowed tradition; and I am sure Nkomo (despite his fondness for Russian uniforms) would have been equally obliging. Now the Poor man must make increasingly 'progressive noises. He made a big mistake in going to Malta. If Kenya is to be especially cherished, it is because it has shown how easy it is to betray every ideal of African independence and nationhood. They should be putting up statues of Kenyatta in Salisbury's parks and squares.
have been reading a book called Six Months in the West Indies by one Henry Nelson Coleridge who toured the islands in 1825. At that time, slavery was still legal, though the campaign for its abolition was reaching a climax. Coleridge, while never ceasing to protest his love of liberty, was also a defender of slavery. Patriotism supPlied the link between these two apparently contradictory commitments. For men like Coleridge, 'liberty', 'rights' and so on were not abstract propositions with universal application. They were outgrowths of the E.nglish condition, not the human condition. English liberty and English rights Were a tribal inheritance; as inalienable and as exclusive as one's genetic make-up. On returning from the West Indies, the first Sight of his country had an almost aphrodisiac effect on him. 'When I saw the two broad lights on the Lizard again, my heart swelled with . . . unconquerable passion . . . 0 my country, I have no pride but that I belong to thee, and can write my name in the muster-roll of mankind, an EnglishIt.tan.' The preface to the third edition of his 000k, published in 1832 (the year before
the Abolition of Slavery Act received the Royal Assent), resounds with passion: in this awful crisis of our country, when the right hand of the colonial power of England is hacked at with a pertinacious hatred [he is referring to the Abolitionist campaign] of which there is no example in the history of domestic treason or foreign hostility . . The issues may change. Patriotic hysteria, alas, is always with us.
A little curiosity worth noticing is the almost exact parallelism that exists between the arguments put forward by the apologists for slavery and the arguments put forward by contemporary apologists for apartheid. The latter never stop telling us that South Africa's blacks have more to eat, drink and wear than blacks in other parts of the continent; that they are better educated; that they are fortunate — indeed, that they are privileged — to be allowed to live in a country with civilised standards, wedded to law and order; that, above all, they are happy as they are (except where tainted by Commie ideas) and have no wish to see their manifold contentments put at risk by interfering Western liberals who do not 'understand'. Writing one hundred and fifty years ago in defence of West Indian plantation society, Coleridge repeats these arguments virtually word for word. In doing so, he reproduces the high-minded, slightly outraged tone so characteristic of those who seek to defend the indefensible. 'I am not aware of any other bias on my mind, except that which may be caused by a native hatred of injustice, and a contempt and a disdain of cant and hypocrisy. . .' etc, etc. He even wheels out the classic Sambo (a moderate if ever there was one) to back him up. 'What for me
want free?' one of his black acquaintances is alleged to have said to him, `me have good 'massa, good country, plenty to eat, and when me sick, massa's doctor physic me; me no want free, no not at all.' Me wonder 'bout dat.
I have only recently acquired a television set. Its charms have so far proved resistible: I find myself perfectly capable of not watching it for days on end. Occasionally, though, I do have the eerie sensation that its glassy Medusa eye is fixed mockingly on me, aware of its power to turn me to stone if it should so choose. What I have found slightly off-putting about my television is the piping of commercials into my sittingroom. To have some strange person materialising amidst familiar objects and telling me I must buy this washing powder or use that toothpaste or smoke this kind of cigar, seems a violation of privacy. One's home should not be treated as an extension of the market-place. Yet, I am told tat the commercials are, perhaps, the best things on television, the last refuge of inventiveness and wit. But why complain? The market-place is everywhere.
My television set has not succeeded in weaning me from The Archers. I find it as compulsive as ever. Its celebration of ordinariness, its relentless super-banality, constitute — for me — its undying fascination. Every 'character' is an undiluted archetype (or, should! say 'archer-type?), a bundle of delightful clichés: Jack Woolley, the gravel-voiced capitalist with a heart of gold; Sid Perks, the cheeky Cockney publican; Major Danby, the returned expatriate with a joky liking for Malayan fish curries; Laura Archer and Michelle, the abrasive, gogetting Antipodeans; Shula, the pretty, pert adolescent who has a way with horses; Jennifer, the intellectual of the Archer brood, interested in the ecology of hedgerows and a reader of sentimental poetry; Mike Tucker, the pedantic union man; Simon Parker, the brash editor of the Borchester Echo; and, of course, twinkling genially over them all, the ineffable Dan and Doris. The unusual — will Shula be seduced by a married scoundrel old enough to be her father? will Tony Archer run off with the new barmaid at the Bull? — may be hinted at from time to time, but, at the last moment, the crisis is always headed off. Commonsense invariably triumphs. Archer life is devoid of angst and mystery. All the answers are known in Ambridge. Nobody will ever become a drug-addict, a nymphomaniac or a Trotskyist. If they do betray any of the symptoms of waywardness, you can be sure that a quiet chat with Doris and a couple of her homemade scones will soon put matters right. During bouts of insomnia all I have to do is think of Dan Archer tending his sheep on Lakey Hill, Ambridp spread peacefully below, its chimneys smoking. I drift off effortlessly into \ sweet sleep.
Shiva Naipaul
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