Notebook
Searching a car at an army check-point in Northern Ireland, a soldier came across some papers in the boot. 'Oh, you're all right', he told the driver, waving him on. You're that British imperialist lot, aren't You?'
It may come as a surprise to learn that the papers which gave the soldier such confidence in the driver were produced by a grouP calling themselves the British and Irish Communist Organisation. But his confidence was well justified. for this small breakaway movement from the Communist Party are fervent supporters of the Union and of the Army's duty to defend it. Ihey are the only left-wing group in Ireland Who recognise the North as a nation separate from the South, with a nation's right to self-determination, and they see Northern Ireland as historically and Properly an integral part of the United Kingdom. Their activities are confined mostly to the publication of ideological newspapers, but occasionally they take to the streets. Rec„entlY they distributed leaflets outside a 'neatre warning the audience that the play they were about to see, They do it for Love, was extremely unfair to the security forces, and Presented a thoroughly biased and Inaccurate picture of the Irish question.
Yet another English soldier has been killed In the dreaded town of Crosmaglen. South A,rmagh. The ferocious record of Crosmaglen has misled Englishmen into thinking tnat it represents the pure spirit of Irish ,RePublicanism and must be admired wherever green is worn'. In fact Crosmag.len has always had an unenviable reputaIlcm, with Catholics' as much as Protestants, as,a Perilous den of cut-throats and horse thieves. There is an old Armagh song of a Young man who goes to market, is cheated and robbed of his goods and afterwards ;Lies his experience in a number of verses. ach of which ends: 'Twas the men from 'rosmaglen who put the whiskey in me tay'.
ALL J. P. Taylor's *BBC I lectures on The '"arlords are having a predictably i mixed resPonse, but what a virtuoso he still isking straight to camera without a note 'except for the odd quotation), let alone an antocue, and always ending on the dot with ah,short and memorable peroration. One of is favourite tricks is seeming to grope for vvords or dates which he knows perfectly W„ell. Nobody has a greater gift for making a PrePared performance seem impromptu.
Irl last week's lecture his admiration for
alin came across as strongly as ever. At his 'eventieth birthday lunch last March, his 0I(1 friend Michael Foot, taking time off from the Labour leadership contest, referred to this in a most amusing speech. He said he had actually been present when Lord Beaverbrook read the piece that made him aware of Mr Taylor's admiration for him, but had not, unfortunately, been in the Kremlin to observe Stalin's reaction to a similar discovery about himself.
It is a scandal that Mr Taylor has received no official recognition. He should have the OM.
Questionable though the tactics of the police may have been in presenting themselves in such numbers and with such killjoy expressions on their faces at the Notting Hill West Indian Carnival, one can only feel much sympathy for them over the violence they received at the hands of young black hooligans. This sympathy is increased by the completely inadequate protection they enjoyed. If police are to be involved in riot control, could they not be equipped with something better than dustbin lids and helmets that fall off at the smallest disturbance?
The recent activities of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre hardly seem to fit our contributor Auberon Waugh's description of him as 'an austere, obviously rather saintly man of high intelligence but simple faith.' His grievances about the reformed liturgy are shared by many Catholics, and the reform certainly went further than even the Vatican Council required. But when he condemns the new rites as 'horrible and abominable', and talks about 'bastard sacraments', he is guilty of blasphemy; and when he says that the Pope is in the hands of freemasons, he is clearly verging upon the insane. It should be recalled that the Archbishop himself signed all the documents of the Council, whose authority he now denies.
Now that the age of majority has been lowered to eighteen, and it is fashionable to talk of lowering the age of consent still further, it is surprising to learn some of the things that cannot be done even at the ripe old age of twenty-two. It is the normal practice of car hire firms not to rent cars to drivers under twenty-one. Hertz, however, no doubt in accordance with their advertised status as No. I in the car hire industry, have adopted a more complex and ingenious policy: they will hire a car to anyone over twenty-one 6ut will not accept payment by cash or cheque from anyone under twentythree. How then can a qualified driver with a clean driving licence who is over twentyone but under twenty-three hire a car from Hertz? The answer is: by credit card.
It seems incredible that farmers have been allowed to persist in burning stubble—a practice which is anyway debatable on agricultural grounds—at a time when the country is tinder-dry. Quite apart from the number of trees and hedgerows which have been scorched, often to extinction, one is bound to ask how many large-scale fires have been caused by stubble-burning.
Lord Nugent of Guildford, whom the drought has brought back into the limelight as an authority on water supplies, was one of the two parliamentary secretaries at the Ministry of, Agriculture who offered to resign over the Crichel Down affair in 1954. The other was Lord Carrington. Both offers were refused, and the Minister of Agriculture, Sir Thomas Dugdale (now Lord Crathorne), taking full responsibility for errors of judgment largely committed by others, insisted on resigning himself. Such quixotic behaviour has not occurred since and may not be seen again.
The 'Festival 40' programme on BBC 2 last Sunday night took an unexpected turn when. after the American broadcaster Fred Friendly had described his decision to run a report on the Vietnam war, from which the United States emerged badly, Jonathan Dimbleby raised the question of reporting on Northern Ireland and it was suggested that there was a conspiracy, involving the Government and all the British news media. to give a one-sided picture of the emergency there. Nobody unfortunately pointed out to Mr Dimbleby—or to Mr Friendly. who was surprisingly quick to support him—that there is virtually no analogy at all between Northern Ireland and Vietnam. For one thing. the guerrillas operating in South Vietnam were fighting on behalf of North Vietnam and with full support from the North Vietnamese government, whereas the IRA is as much Dublin's enemy as London's or Belfast's.
David Frost conducted the programme on Sunday, which took the familiar form of a discussion with 'experts and studio audience (itself consisting almost exclusively of media representatives). Grave questions, requiring knowledge and sustained argument, should not be exposed to such trivial treatment.
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