A Statement Of Plain Fact

Charles Moore is an Old Etonian and the authoritative biographer of Margaret Thatcher. He is also an unapolegetic huntsman and climate change sceptic. None of these things can dispose a man to omniscience. However his column in last week's Spectator contains a well written paragraph that bears repetition in full. It is right in all it says and provokes thought.

 

Airey Neave was born 100 years ago this Saturday. He was the queenmaker — the Tory backbencher who could reach backbench colleagues beyond Margaret Thatcher’s reach and persuade them to choose her as their new leader. He was also the first British officer to escape from Colditz, one of those involved in the Nuremburg trials, an intelligence officer and an accomplished writer. Mrs Thatcher became leader in February 1975 and Neave became her chief of staff and Northern Ireland spokesman. On 30 March 1979, five weeks before Mrs Thatcher won her first general election, Neave was killed by a bomb planted on his car in the House of Commons car park by the Irish National Liberation Army. ‘Some devils got him,’ she said that day. ‘They must never, never, never be allowed to triumph.’ In October 1984, Mrs Thatcher herself narrowly escaped death when the IRA blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton on the night before her party conference speech. On 30 July 1990, a few months before her fall, the IRA murdered Ian Gow with a car bomb at his house in Sussex. Gow had been Neave’s parliamentary private secretary, and after Neave’s murder, became Mrs Thatcher’s outstandingly successful PPS. Like Neave, he held strong unionist views about Ireland. So Mrs Thatcher’s career as Prime Minister was book-ended and punctuated by Irish Republican attacks aimed directly at her and those closest to her. It would be an exaggeration to say that ‘some devils’ were allowed to triumph, but it would be a statement of plain fact to say that Jeremy Corbyn (and Ken Livingstone and John McDonnell) led the way in welcoming the devils’ leaders and blaming Britain, not the terrorists, for IRA violence. This should not be forgotten.

What I resent about the leftists he mentions is not that they held these views (I knew and even respected plenty who shared them - I was after all a student in the seventies and I am by conversion, like Moore as it happens, a papist ) but their knowing evasions on the topic in these changed times. Sorry lads but your ends do not justify the means. That is a lazy argument.

Pictures, Words, Actions, Food And A Notable Life

Pictures. I strongly recommend the Lichtenstein Retrospective at the Tate Modern in that London. Dude could paint. Daughter Number 2 (who knows about these things) felt the show was not well curated but this detail did not hamper my enjoyment. Nor in the end did the behaviour of bored out of their brackets young children brought to the gallery by their idiot, inconsiderate parents. If you bring them then keep control of them! Allowing them to lie on the floor in front of the exhibits is not cute or even mildly endearing - I seriously toyed with the idea of staging an 'accidental' tripping exercise so that I could give one of the little buggers a sly kick. Didn't do it of course - you have to admire my restraint. You won't believe it but there was actually one little sod in the exhibition on his skateboard.

Words. I'm finally learning to wrestle with James Joyce. My method is to let it wash over me.

Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
 

Actions. And Words as it happens. To the bijou charms of the Almeida Theatre in that Islington to see Before the Party. Excellent and even a star sighting - Timothy West and Prunella Scales in the audience below us. She's tiny.

Food. Doing something reliably and speedily is all that is sometimes needed so full credit to the staff at a crowded Strada on the South Bank. More evidence of uncontrolled children. As Woody Allen so memorably asked in Annie Hall, why is there never a large polo mallet to hand when you need one? I should stress I would use it on the parents not the children. At least to start with.

A notable life. The blogosphere will be knee deep in Margaret Thatcher - tributes and venting of spleens in equal measure. Not much for me to add save that it seemed to this employer of people that she liberated my generation from the captivity of decline. That my generation has used its freedoms so oafishly is not her fault. Reactions to her death have also served as a timely reminder of just what knob vans are Ken Livingstone and Gerry Adams. Not that any reminder was really needed.