The press
Flops and clangers
Paul Johnson
?There is nothing quite so pathetic, or to
competitors hilarious, as a sensational scoop which fails to stick. It's not so serious among the popular papers (where it hap- pens more often), since they are here today, gone tomorrow, washed away, as in that notorious shot of the Daily Express in Noel Coward's In Which We Serve. But posh papers, in nuclear terminology, have a longer half-life — last week, on the Tube, I saw a mean-looking fellow still reading the Observer on Friday — and people tend to remember what they say. So it's too bad about the Observer's front-page 'exclusive' on Mrs Thatcher, Mark Thatcher and the Oman contract.
Last week two of the paper's reporters, David Leigh and Paul Lashmar, declared that after 'a three-month investigation' they had 'established' that Mark Thatcher had been associated with Cementation, which won a £300-million contract in 1981 to build a university in Oman. Mrs Thatcher had fought hard to get that contract for Britain; and Mark, it seems, had fought hard for Cementation. I thought when I read the piece that it was a non-story, but presumed
that the paper, after those three months of digging, had something in reserve. Never- theless it seemed odd not to put everything into what, on the face of it, was a thin tale. Even odder was the behaviour of the Observer's editor, Donald Trelford, who on the Friday before 'went to Downing Street to table a list of six written questions to the Prime Minister'. What's all this drama about editors 'tabling questions'? Does he think he is the MP for St Andrew's Hill? Would not the telephone suffice, or a messenger, or even the post?
The trouble with the story was quite sim- ple: only one British firm was bidding for the contract. If there had been two or three or preferably lots, things might have been different; but then no doubt we would have heard all about it long ago. As it was, Mrs Thatcher naturally fought for the British firm involved, as she fights like a tigress for all British firms, and Mark's connection with Cementation was neither here nor there.
Far from there being 'a potential conflict of interests', as one of Mr Trelford's ques- tions supposed, there was a natural and quite proper identity of interests. It would have been very strange (and a real story) if Mrs Thatcher had not fought for our firm, or backed a foreign one. As it was, people wondered what all the fuss was about. It is a sure sign of a failed scoop when other papers decline to follow up the story. The Observer itself made a faint-hearted attempt last Sunday (`Mark's Trip to Oman — by No 10'), but the substance of its second article, that Mrs Thatcher and Mark met twice while they were both in Oman, was even more meagre than its first. If members of the same family find themselves in a remote place like Oman it would be very peculiar indeed if they did not meet.
The paper's claim that 'Last night's developments came after a week of moun- ting political pressure on the Prime Minister to explain her son's role in the deal' was plainly wishful thinking. Against a huge Tory majority, Labour's spokesmen are willing to try anything, but even the most sanguine of them did not put much faith in the Oman story. Their wiser heads are chary of getting at the Prime Minister through her family, especially on such inadequate grounds as this. The children of famous politicians do not have an easy time of it, as some Labour front-benchers have reason to know. To use her son to attack Mrs That- cher, who is by any standards an outstan- dingly honest and straightforward person, must strike most people as contemptible. In any case MPs remember, as the Sunday Telegraph put it, 'the fuss Mr Callaghan
ran into when, as Prime Minister, he an- pointed his son-in-law, Mr Peter Jay, as British Ambassador to the United States'. If they were in any danger of forgetting, Jay himself, or rather his former nanny, was in the Sunday papers to remind them (Teter Jay is the Father of My Son, Says Ex- Nanny'; 'Peter Jay is My Daddy, Says Nanny's Little Son').
Another posh paper which sometimes falls for a non-story is the Guardian. Of course the Guardian is not what I would call a serious newspaper. Like the Sun, only at the top end of the market, it does not give the highest priority to accuracy but concentrates on entertaining its growing body of readers, one reason why it is the British paper Rupert Murdoch most ad- mires. Just as Sun types want lubricious girls, so Guardian types want to be titillated by horror stories about Reagan, Thatcher, the CIA etc. So when Enoch Powell a fort- night ago accused the CIA of being involv- ed in the murder of Lord Mountbatten, the story — preposterous as it seemed at first glance, and indeed at second and third glance — was seized on eagerly by the Guardian high command. Inevitably it was as dead as mutton by lunchtime.
Powell takes great pleasure in these jour- nalistic fishing expeditions, and he must have chuckled to catch the Guardian, if no one else, in his net. Otherwise his Mount- batten story was a flop. He had more suc- cess last week with the Queen's Christmas message, because there was a good deal of truth in his complaint. What spoilt it, and drew fire on him from unexpected and unwelcome quarters, was his foolish sup- position that the message is written or ap- proved by ministers. The truth is that these royal Christmas broadcasts have hitherto been so innocuous that ministers have not felt it necessary to interfere. But this one was a colossal danger. Mrs Gandhi is wide- ly and rightly disliked in Britain (in India too, for that matter) and people do not want her muscling in on their Christmas, least of all under royal sponsorship. Although the Queen may not have realised it, her speech had a high political content. To assume that the 'rich' nations have a moral obligation to provide aid to the 'poor' nations is increasingly a contentious opinion; the very concept of the Third World, invented by the French socialist Alfred Sauvy in 1952, on the analogy of the Tiers Etat, is an instrument of left-wing political ideology. The Queen's statement, 'The greatest problem in the world today remains the gap between rich and poor countries' is a left-wing cliche which Is manifestly debatable and is simply not believed by the mass of her subjects.
Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that Mrs Thatcher had nothing to do with this speech, since it flatly contradicts what she herself thinks. Then who was responsible? I find it hard to blame Michael Shea, her press adviser, who is the best who has ever served in this capacity, and who must surelY have known that the broadcast would cause trouble. My suspicions centre on that lo- creasingly pushy organisation, the Com- monwealth Secretariat. In this sense Powell may have a point. If the Queen's message is to be something more than a TV Christmas card, then obviously ministers will have to accept constitutional responsibility for it and vet the script. That would be a pity, and the best advice Shea can give the monarch is, in future, to drop the politics and get back to simple moral uplift.
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