Notebook
rre Soviet Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens seems to have taken the place of the May Pole in British life. Strange peo- ple of all ages go there on May Day to pay homage, protest, dance, sing and generally make fools of themselves. The Russians are unappreciative of all this attention. Each group that is escorted by the police up the Private road to the embassy returns a few Minutes later having received an official brush-off over the intercom at the door. The group's spokesman then announces that they will not take no for an answer, that a petition will reach Mr Andropov in the Kremlin in due course, and that he will take note of their demands. Mr Andropov, Meanwhile, with an expression of desperate boredom, is watching the latest Soviet rocketry trundle across Red Square, unaware that at that very moment a gentleman in 16th-century dress is trying to break the world lute-playing record in Lon- don as a protest about the plight of Soviet Jews. The Guinness Book of Records doesn't recognise the existence of a world lute-playing record, so Mr John Sussman should have had little difficulty in beating lt. There not being much room on the pave- ment, the peace groups spend a lot of time Squabbling. 'I want you to know that we dissociate ourselves completely from those People,' a spokesman for the Campaign for Rational Disarmament tells our reporter. They are trying to make political capital i out of a life-and-death situation. He is referring to the young Liberals who ad- vocate unilateralism. Then arrives the world's most dignified gossip columnist, bearing Olga Maitland of the Sunday Express, ueanng a bunch of red tulips and a tidily- wrapped box containing 13,000 signatures and a petition demanding Soviet complian- cy in disarmament talks. As an aspiring Tory candidate, she also might be mistaken for someone trying to make political capital Out of a life-and-death situation. She leads an organisation originally called `Women for Defence', then amended to 'Women and Families for Defence', which was set up as the responsible housewife's answer to the women of Greenham Common. Its pro- spectus declares: 'Our only hope for peace s that we are not in such moral disarray that hat we can be walked over any time.' However, Lady Olga lost her first round with the Russians. The Soviet Embassy rang the police, asking that she remove her 'lit- ter' from its doorstep. 'Litter', she exclaim- ed later to her followers in Trafalgar Square. `They call your petition litter. This .111s1 shows how intransigent Russia is. They Will not get away with it. I promise Mr An- dropov will receive the petition by post.' But Mr Andropov did not even wait for his registered letter to arrive. On Tuesday he
announced a major concession in the disar- mament negotiations, saying he was prepared to calculate nuclear strength in terms of the number of warheads, rather than missiles, held by each side. A clear victory for Lady Olga.
The purity of Lady Olga is as much under threat as is the purity of Monsignor Bruce Kent, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Neither of them can carry on his work without 'political' involvement. Lady Olga is obliged, poor woman, to consort with Mr Winston 'Kashoggi' Churchill, the ill- chosen leader of the Government's cam- paign to discredit the CND. Mgr Kent, as Mr Churchill's friends do not tire of poin- ting out, is obliged to consort with Com- munists. As far as Mgr Kent is concerned, I find Cardinal Hume's position rather dif- ficult to follow. 'Should the political aspects of CND develop and become predominant in this work,' the Cardinal said in his circular letter on the subject, 'it would be difficult for a priest to hold responsible office in the direction of the movement.' At what point do the `political' aspects of CND become `predominant'? The cause of unilateral disarmament has always been a political issue and one more closely associated with the Labour Party than with the Conservatives. The only development which has made the CND more 'political' than in the past has been the striking growth in its support over the past couple of years, which has made it a force to be reckoned with in the next general election. That is why the Labour Party has been espousing the cause more earnestly than before, and why the Conser- vatives have felt it necessary to try to brand the CND as a subversive organisation. None of this has anything to do with Mgr Kent's leadership of the organisation, ex- cept as a reflection of his success. If Car- dinal Hume believes it is proper for a priest to occupy such a position, then he has no
good cause to abandon this view simply because the priest concerned has done the job rather too well.
The Sixth Earl Grey's entry in Who's Who is curious, in that it says practically nothing about the Earl himself but goes into unnecessary detail about his wives, even taking the trouble to inform us that his second wife had been previously married to Surg-Comdr Neil Leicester Denham RN. The Earl's only listed achieve- ment is that in 1978 he became President of the Association of Cost and Executive Ac- countants. We are not told, for example, that last year, in February, he was ap- pointed chairman of a sex shop and magazine publishing company run by the sleazy Mr David Sullivan. The appointment aroused much comment at the time, it seeming sad to many people that a member of such an old and distinguished family, which had even given its name to a very respectable brand of tea, should become associated with so disreputable a business. Earl Grey was at pains to reassure us. He was not attracted by the money, he claimed. `I am doing it for the sake of public in- terest,' he said, adding that he was a 'highly moral person with a strong code of con- duct.' Now the public interest, in the form of the police, has arrested him, after a series of raids by Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad. It is a poignant little story. I only hope that the Earl, having pro- ved his innocence, will recognise that there are better ways of serving the public in- terest, if this is his calling, than working for Mr Sullivan. Alternatively, we would think no worse of him if he decided it was not necessary to serve the public interest at all.
Ihave long felt that, for all his virtues, Mr Edward Heath has some small part of his brain missing. If anybody still wonders why he is no longer leader of the Conservative party, he need only reflect on last week's in- cident involving the Queen Mother. Mr Heath missed a division in the House of Commons because his car was delayed in a traffic jam. Police had held up the traffic to allow the Queen Mother to pass on her way to an engagement in the City. This was doubtless irritating for Mr Heath. But what politician in his right mind would have made a fuss to a journalist about it? In- asmuch as we know anything, we know that the Queen Mother is a far more popular figure in the country than any politician. Rightly or wrongly, most people probably imagine that it is more important for the Queen Mother to be delivered painlessly to a Royal Naval Reserve Reception in the Fishmongers' Hall than it is for Mr Heath to get to the House of Commons on time to vote. To make a fuss about it, therefore, is to court unpopularity — something which no sensible politician does except in a cause in which he passionately believes. It seems that Mr Heath passionately believes that he should not be caught in traffic jams.
Alexander Chancellor
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