Diary

Recent speeches by Gordon Brown suggest we may be in for some kind of incomes policy. I do hope not. We tend to forget nowadays that for a whole decade, 1964-74, we lived under an incomes policy of one sort or another, though Edward Heath briefly thought he could do without one. Strange effects were produced. One was in journalism. All the successive policies allowed that a change of job could justify an increase in wages. Accordingly political correspondents were transformed into political editors, as they remain today; with what used to be called political reporters promoted to political correspondents. It is all nonsense. Political editors do not edit anything at all. Most of them, indeed, could not edit the proverbial cornflakes packet. Many would not want to try. They do what they have always done: gather their subordinates round them midway through the afternoon and agree who is to write which story. For myself I have never hankered after fancy titles of any kind such as `associate editor'. I am content to go to my grave a columnist.

So many people have already put in their two penn'orth on the Daily Mail's charge of murder against five youths in the Stephen Lawrence case that I am reluctant to add to their number. But I will, because I think I have something new to say. It concerns the Civil Evidence Act 1968. This expressly provides that in defamation proceedings a criminal conviction is conclusive. If Bloggs is convicted of murdering his grandmother, and a paper later publishes an account under `This Fiend Killed His Granny', Bloggs (the fiend in question) cannot then try to reopen the case by suing the paper. But the Act says nothing about acquittals. If Bloggs is acquitted of murdering his grandmother, the paper can run the same story under the same headline. It is then up to him to sue. If Parliament had intended to have acquittals treated in the same way as convictions, it would have said so. It chose not to. Admittedly the Lawrence Five have not been acquitted of murder. Two sets of legal proceedings against them have collapsed for want of evidence. Nevertheless it seems clear that the Mail was well within its legal rights. In this case I think it was justified in exercising them.

After a hard day at the wordface - to be honest, it was more tidying up than hacking out the words - I thought I would settle down before the television to watch England play Italy. I looked up the broadcasting guide in the papers. No sign of any match. Surely some mistake? No: it was being shown on Sky Television only. Now I do not have Sky. I may in the end be forced to acquire it because I write a rugby column in the Independent as well as one on politics in its Sunday sister. I am still managing just about to hold out against Rupert Murdoch. But why should I have to? And why should millions of others? It is often said that Parliament should act to prevent Mr Murdoch from extending still further his control over sporting events. I prefer to place the responsibility where it rests: with the BBC. I pay my licence fee principally to obtain television coverage of national sporting occasions. So do millions of others. This corporation established by charter (as it insists on remaining) is manifestly failing in its public duty. It is fashionable in metropolitan circles now to say that the once reviled John Birt has done an `excellent job'. On the contrary: all he has done is surrender to Mr Murdoch at every opportunity. On the evening of the match, pubs were proclaiming their coverage on Sky. They were packed. What Mr Murdoch has done is contribute to the revival of the English public house.

More about murder, I am afraid, but one has to admire the persistence with which the late Iris Bentley campaigned on behalf of her executed brother, Derek. The campaign is now to be continued by her niece. But what exactly is it all for? What is it that the Home Secretary, any Home Secretary, can now provide? A free pardon? But there is no doubt that under the law Bentley was guilty as charged. He was an accomplice to murder. That he was already in police custody when his 16-year-old confederate fired the fatal shot at the constable makes no odds. Nor does it make any difference whether he said `Give it to him' or `Let him have it, Chris'. His supporters claim he never used the words, the police having lifted them from the textbook Archbold on Crime. Alternatively, they say, if he did use them he meant Craig to surrender his weapon rather than to fire it. It matters not, as the barristers like to put it. He had knowingly embarked on a joint enterprise of which the consequence could be someone's death. So it turned out. The jury, however, recommended mercy. Lord Goddard, the trial judge, thought Bentley would be reprieved. But the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, refused to intervene. As he wrote in his memoirs: 'I had the additional question of the possible effects of my decision upon the police force, by whom the murder of a police officer is justly regarded as the most heinous of crimes.' Bentley was correctly convicted but he should not have been hanged. Is there really anything more to say?

There is no doubt in my mind that Nora Beloff, who died last week, was a great journalist. But her genius was not for domestic politics. I remember her asking me once what line Fred Peart took on Israel. I replied that as far as I knew Peart had no strong opinions on the subject; had, indeed, secured the position he held in the People's Party precisely because he did not possess clear views on much, except, oddly enough, on the abolition of the public schools, which he favoured. Nora was, I remember, perplexed. To her it was inconceivable that a politician should not possess a view of some kind on the Middle East. On a later occasion she described another Labour minister, Anthony Crosland, as a noted Arabist. He remonstrated mildly that his opinions, insofar as he had any, were if anything the other way round. She offered to correct the description in next Sunday's Observer. `Oh for God's sake, Nora,' Crosland said, `no, please, don't.' She was certainly a great traveller, an early visitor to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. In her hotel bar she once fell into conversation with Duncan Sandys, another Strasbourg habitue. He did not know who she was but found her company agreeable and invited her to dinner. Nora accepted. `Speaking as a journalist . . . ' she said a few minutes later. An alarmed Sandys said: `Journalist? Journalist? I thought you were a lady.'

Copyright Spectator Feb 22, 1997
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