The Light’s On At Signpost. George MacDonald Fraser
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bears witness.
That, of course, is the ever-present danger, and it applies regardless of whether a country has a constitution or not. Any democracy which plays its people false is liable to find itself displaced by tyranny, and don’t think it couldn’t happen in dear, sane, sensible old Britain. All it takes is enough betrayal by dishonest government, and enough public disillusion, and suddenly Wodehouse’s wonderful fun about “Spode swanking about in his footer bags” is funny no longer.
We can only hope for the best, reminding ourselves that our creaky old “democracy” can work, given integrity and courage in those charged with operating it; even the ghastly party system needn’t be an insuperable obstacle to good government. It’s a bloody awful manifestation of the worst in human and political nature, but it’s inevitable, as is the lure of politics to the corrupt and venal personality. The days when Cincinnatus could be called from the plough are long gone – and if he could be called he would be derided as a comic figure at Westminster.
In closing, I must cite a prime example of hypocrisy in the so-called mother of Parliaments: the clamour from the Liberal Democrat benches for proportional representation. They demand it as the only fair, equitable, sensible, honourable, etc., etc., system. In fact, fairness, equity, sense, and most of all honour, have nothing to do with it; the Liberals want it because it’s the only possible way by which their clapped-out party can ever hope to get a share of power. Strange that their cry was never heard in the days (now some time ago, fortunately) when the Liberal Party meant something; was it not fair and equitable then? The truth is that today’s Liberal Democrats are like a football team fed up and resentful at languishing permanently at the bottom of the league, crying: “The rules must be changed, so that we can win.” It is a pathetic, typically dishonest plea.
Quite apart from the moral one, there are many reasons why proportional representation, in any form, would be an extremely bad thing. One is that in Britain we traditionally vote for people, not parties, and the notion of party lists of candidates, chosen by the party hierarchy, is totally odious to any serious democrat. Not only is it wrong in principle; in fact it would mean that you could never get rid of those parliamentary disasters who so often rise to the top in their parties; p.r. would guarantee them permanent seats.
On that last ground alone p.r. is abominable, but we may add the equally convincing objection, namely that it doesn’t work, as consideration of the havoc it has wreaked in various continental countries shows all too clearly. Fortunately, thus far New Labour has resisted the Liberal Democrat demand; the danger is that if ever they suffer a reduced majority they may bring it in to ensure the survival of Left-wing government – and its probable continuance until the day when Scotland becomes fully independent, and England, spared the presence of the Clydeside rabble at Westminster, will get the conservative (I emphasise the small “c”) English government it wants.
* Admittedly, Commons tradition militates against this. Bad manners is deeply ingrained, as we see from the constant heckling, childish braying, waving of papers, and general kindergarten behaviour for which the Chamber is noted. If anything, M.P.s seem to be quite proud of this, and defend it as part of the parliamentary system. Indeed it is nothing new, but what was an unwelcome novelty was the playground “nyah-nyah-nyah” technique lately employed by party leaders who mistook stridence for oratory and insult for wit.
* The much vaunted “democracy” of ancient Greece was not a democracy in any sense. About 5 per cent only of the population were entitled to vote, and women were excluded altogether. More than 60 per cent of the population were slaves.
WITH THE FIRST FILM OF The Lord of the Rings trilogy having rekindled the controversies about allegories and symbolism which broke out after the books’ publication more than forty years ago, and new disputes about where Tolkein got his inspiration (the Warwickshire countryside? the Ribble Valley? the Western Front?) it is highly satisfactory to be able to settle absolutely one minor question in the great panorama of Tolkeinery. Namely, are the goblins of The Hobbit the same creatures as the orcs of the Ring stories, or are they of different species?
This debate divided the canteen of The Glasgow Herald in the 1960s, so I wrote to Tolkein for a ruling and received a courteous and detailed reply, written in the famous spidery hand so familiar to students of his works. Yes, orcs and goblins were identical, and he added the fascinating information that they had been inspired by his childhood reading of The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, eerie spellbinders which had helped to freshen my own infant nightmares. Their author was a Scottish minister named George MacDonald (I was about to say “no relation” until I discovered that he was descended from a survivor of the Massacre of Glencoe, and therefore kin to my paternal grandmother).
That is my tiny contribution to Tolkein scholarship. His orcs and goblins are George MacDonald’s, but as to other inspirations, who knows? It is a common mistake to think that one can spot with certainty the wellsprings of an author’s imagination, as I know only too well, having had a critic state flatly that I was plainly much influenced by Conrad – of whom I had not read a single word at that time. I will not enrage Tolkein admirers by noting that Conan the Barbarian preceded the Ring books by many years in the field of sword-and-sorcery, since I would bet heavily that Tolkein never even heard of Conan, but I have wondered if he ever encountered that remarkable fantasy of E. R. Eddison’s, The Worm Ouroboros, which has been casting its spell for more than seventy years. Probably not, but I’m fairly certain that Tolkein enthusiasts would find Eddison to their taste.
Gene Hackman Should Have Blown up Vesuvius
SOMETIME AFTER the Musketeer movies had been released, Pierre Spengler asked if I was interested in doing Superman, which Ilya Salkind was determined to bring to the screen. I had my doubts but said ‘yes’ on principle; however, later Pierre phoned me to say that they thought an American writer would be more appropriate, and I couldn’t argue with that; in fact, I was rather relieved.
After that nothing happened until the scripts of Superman I and II were written by David and Leslie Newman, and Robert Benton. Pierre told me they had some slight problems with the script; would I go to Rome to meet Guy Hamilton, who was to direct? So I went, staying at the Cavalieri Hilton, outside Rome (notable for excellent ball-point pens which wrote very finely). Guy and his wife (formerly the actress Kerima, in Outcast of the Islands) were staying at a palazzo (Lanzerotti?) in the middle of Rome, one of those magnificent marble interiors which looks like a slum from the outside. We had dinner, and I quickly realised that this was a director I could get on with splendidly; a tall, genial, educated Anglo-Scot who had learned his trade sweeping the studio floor for René Clair.* He was slightly older than I; Kerima, who was about my age (early fifties) he referred to as “my child-bride”.
The production at that time was planned for Cinecittà, and there I was given the two scripts – really one long script, split in the middle à la Musketeers. Guy said: “I want twenty-five minutes out