The Spectator's Notes

Our children recently went to the stage version of Billy Elliot and, like most, loved it. I am sure it is an inspiring tale about aspiration, disadvantage and dancing. But the politics.... The miners, striking for a year in 1984–85, sing ‘Solidarity solidarity/ Solidarity forever’ while their police antagonists sing: ‘Keep it up till Christmas, lads,/ It means a lot to us/ We send our kids to private school. On a private bus.’ Were there really many rank-and-file policemen at that time who could afford to send their children to private school, even with the overtime? And where was the solidarity in a strike which was imposed on members of the union without a ballot?

The late Sir Edward Heath was notoriously uneasy with women, but there was one, Sara Morrison, who was a good friend and an important political confidante. She was with him when he died on Sunday. Sara was robust enough to be able to withstand the strange manners and see through to the vulnerable and honourable man within. Which was just as well, because the manners were strange indeed. At one dinner party, Sara noticed that it was still at the soup stage and Heath had already fallen silent. She wrote a note, delivered by the butler, which said, ‘Talk to the women next to you.’ Heath wrote back, ‘I have.’ During one of the 1974 election campaigns, Sara was at the back of the campaign bus, sitting on a table.

Last week I went to hear Jung Chang and Jon Halliday talk about their new biography of Mao Tse-tung at a lecture in memory of the Great Helmsman of Moderation, Roy Jenkins. Almost every claim made in favour of Mao, they argued, is untrue — that peasant villages rose up in support of the Communists (not a single one did, say the authors), that the Communists bravely fought and defeated the Japanese, that the Chinese Communist party was a popular mass movement in China (in fact it was the creature of Stalin). When I was at boarding school in the early Seventies, almost the only free literature readily available was propaganda from the Chinese chargé d’affaires in London.

What do we think of children? Boarding schools are out of fashion because they represent ‘delegated parenthood’ and we are taught to believe that we should be very ‘hands on’ with our children, and that everyone else’s hands are suspect. We are horribly mistrustful of Michael Jackson where our grandparents loved the equally strange J.M. Barrie. But probably never before in history have so many children seen so little of their parents. This is partly because so many (mainly fathers) are absent through divorce or separation, and partly because parents are now encouraged by public policy, social pressure, house prices and the tax system to work so hard.

It is proverbial that the British press is disgusting and contemptible, but would we ever have got ourselves into the extraordinary situation of our Continental counterparts? In France, no national newspaper, except for the Communist L’Humanité, called for a ‘No’ vote in the referendum on the European constitution. The nearest any major Dutch paper came was the Telegraaf (no relation), which asked its readers what they thought and featured their strong ‘No’ on its front page. All the others said ‘Yes’. We hear a great deal about political parties getting out of touch with voters, but doesn’t the same apply to newspapers and their readers? Is no penalty ever paid?

I wish I could share the widespread joy at the great European ‘No’. Yes, the word ‘No’ is good. Yes, I feel the normal human pleasure at the discomfiture of the politicians. I have enjoyed seeing Peter Mandelson trying to worm round the result and Neil Kinnock raging against his former friends on the French Left and Jean-Luc Dehaene telling France that it, not the EU, now has the problem, and the outside broadcast team sabotaging John Major, sounding like a Dalek on Valium, as he tries to tell us all over again about his wonderful ‘opt-out’ and the importance of ‘variable geometry’. But I fear there is very little chance of any serious break with the European ideal that has dominated Continental politics since the Fifties.

Les événements in France have provoked self-congratulation here. Apparently, the French model of assimilation is bad. If they had our multiculturalism, the celebration of diversity and ethnic monitoring, everything would be much better, it is said. The French are 20 years behind us, etc. It seems but yesterday that I read praise of France for its tough secularism which forbids anything religious in state schools and exalts being French above everything else. I also read that France would escape serious disturbance because it had been opposed to the Iraq war.

Fascism is a bigger part of this election than most people realise. We know about the BNP already, but the growing force is Muslim extremism. The tactics are nasty. Look at the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) and you will see lists of MPs whom MPAC wishes to make the victims of what it calls ‘political jihad’. MPAC had to apologise for attacking Lorna Fitzsimons, the MP for Rochdale, for being Jewish (she isn’t, in fact), but this does not seem to have cramped its style. Its aim is to ‘eliminate all pro-Israeli, Zionist MPs from power’.

People sometimes say ‘Easter Saturday’ meaning the day before Easter. In fact, it is the Saturday after Easter, and this year it was the day the Pope died. The first reading in the Missal for that day is from the Acts of the Apostles (iv 13–21). It concerns the reaction of the elders and scribes to the healing by Peter (the first Pope) and John of a lame man in the name of Jesus. The worried Sanhedrin hold a private conference, saying, in the Missal’s version, ‘It is obvious to everybody in Jerusalem that a miracle has been worked through them in public, and we cannot deny it. But to stop the whole thing spreading any further among the people, let us caution them never to speak to anyone in his name again.’ So they call in Peter and John and warn them.

The attempt by the Pope to pronounce his Easter blessing on Sunday and his failure in that attempt were so moving. On the day which, of all days, affirms life, John Paul II must particularly have longed to speak. As he struggled to do so, he looked like a strong man drowning, in sight of the shore yet unable to reach it. Some say that such a sick man should abdicate. But surely the Pope is fulfilling the vows which he made when he became a priest. He is trying to stand in the place of Christ, not usurping Him, but imitating Him. Against the humiliations which Christ endured, those which accompany the approach of natural death must seem minor, and the Pope wants to be seen to bear them for the sake of his Master. His example must be particularly inspiring to other old people.