Charles Moore

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.

The Passion narrative, read in all churches this week, reminds one of exactly why Jesus was put to death. In Matthew’s account, it is based on the evidence of two false witnesses. They accuse Jesus of saying ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.’ Then the chief priest asks Jesus whether he is ‘the Christ, the Son of God’. Jesus replies: ‘Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power....’ This is denounced as blasphemy by the chief priest, and the crowd calls for Jesus’s death. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, says that Jesus is a ‘just person’ but literally washes his hands of him and allows him to be crucified.

Right-minded people are fighting to retain habeas corpus. We would have more popular success, I feel, if the public knew what habeas corpus meant. The trouble is that, even translated into English, it is still obscure. Habeas corpus means, of course, ‘you may have the body’. The IRA seem to have their own interpretation of the phrase. First, their men murder Robert McCartney, splitting his abdomen from his navel to his breastbone, severing his jugular vein and gouging out one of his eyes. Next, they deny involvement. Then, when protests grow too loud, they say that witnesses should come forward, though without talking to the police. Finally, when that won’t do, they have a brilliant idea.

If you are a monarchist, this does not automatically make you an admirer of the royal family. But it does lead you to give members of that family the benefit of the doubt, particularly when so many others so viciously do the opposite. In general, too, our monarch has shown shrewdness in preserving the institution and so one trusts her judgment more than that of her more emotional, wilful heir. But, try as I might, I cannot see that her refusal to attend the marriage ceremony of Prince Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles does anything but harm. It is easy to understand why, over the years, the Queen has opposed her son’s remarriage, but now that it is happening, matters can only be made worse by foot-dragging.

Like thousands who met in the hunting field last Saturday, I was half-delighted, half-bewildered. Delighted because it was a gigantic show of defiance and the large number of foxes killed proved the absurdity of the ban. Bewildered because we seem to have moved into an era in which legislators happily pass laws which they know won’t work. Among our mounted field of 150 and the much larger crowd of foot supporters, two policemen wandered with a camera. Although one of them had the identification code ‘KGB’ on his back, both were thoroughly amiable but completely pointless. We presented them with the drag — a fox shot earlier — for them to snap, and that was that. One must ask the question, if the law is not made to be enforced, is it supposed to be obeyed?

Tony Blair (who has introduced the most divisive law in modern times) thinks that George Bush ‘owes him one’ for his support over the Iraq war. But what form could the payment of the debt take? Bush’s backing, after all, might make Blair even more unpopular among those thinking of voting Labour. I think I know the answer and, not surprisingly, one detects the hand of Peter Mandelson in it. Bush is coming to Europe next week and will visit the institutions of the European Union in Brussels, the first American President to do so. I gather that early drafts of his speech for this occasion get him to endorse the European constitution.

Immigration is an issue like new housing in the Green Belt — governments have to permit it and they have to try to restrict it. This is because the interest of those already present — the indigenous population, the nimby houseowner — is damaged by the arrival of many more people and yet, at the same time, it is also helped. People may say that they want a ban on immigration, but if that happened, they would quickly discover that they could not find enough building workers, waiters, cleaners, plumbers to satisfy their wants.

Having been brought up in a family of active Liberals, I am well acquainted with the category of ‘civilised Tory’. He was easily recognised. He was anti-hanging, pro-Europe, anti-Enoch, anti-Rhodesia. At his zenith (roughly 1972), he tended to wear his hair quite long and swept back, curling over the collar of a shirt which had very wide blue stripes. He was usually fond of good food and wine and preferred the company of non-Tories, attracting friendly profiles in the Observer. He liked it to be known that he read books. He was very public-schooly, though quite often he had not been to a public school. He had charm, but his main vice was vanity, both physical and intellectual.

When Tony told Gordon, while they were having dinner with John on 6 November 2003, that he (Tony) was going to relinquish the Labour leadership in 2004, he (Tony) said, ‘I know I must leave, but I need your help to get through the next year.’ According to Robert Peston, the author who reports these words, Tony then spent that period plotting how to go back on this promise. What Peston does not note is the similarity of Tony’s phrasing to the famous message that the IRA, allegedly through Martin McGuinness, gave to British intelligence in 1993: ‘The conflict is over, but we need your advice on how to bring it to a close.’ It is an interesting echo, whether conscious or not, because the IRA’s message, like Tony’s to Gordon, remains murky.

Hearing about the tsunami on Boxing Day, I remembered Keith and Nicki. Keith Lake used to be my driver when I was editor of the Daily Telegraph and remains a great friend. He and his wife Nicki were on holiday in the Maldives. I felt certain, knowing Keith, that a) he would have got into trouble and b) he would have got out of it. Keith rang when he reached home, in response to our messages. He told me that he had been snorkelling in two feet of water when suddenly the sea level rose to his chest. He and his party heard a great roar. They ran, and reached the shore, but the wave sucked him out to sea, to the bottom. The force of the water pulled even the wedding ring from his finger.

People won’t put it in Books of the Year, but there is no more entertaining Christmas present than The Lord Chamberlain Regrets by Dominic Shellard and Steve Nicholson (British Library). It is a history of British theatre censorship, and describes the strange system by which, until 1968, the chief courtier, the Lord Chamberlain, pre-censored all plays that were to be publicly performed. The system was always mistaken, and became increasingly absurd, as, well into the Fifties, the Lord Chamberlain tried unhappily to maintain the policy that there could be no jocular portrayal of Queen Victoria or even her son (‘the play shows up King Edward VII in a tiresome light as regards girls’).