The Spectator’s Notes | 1 July 2006

A listener to the BBC on Tuesday might have concluded that the Palestinians were about to recognise the state of Israel. This was because, as I heard on the PM programme, it said so. But then it was over to Jeremy Bowen in Jerusalem. He spoke excitedly of ‘movement’ but explained that he had not seen the document in question and that it would not make any mention of the recognition of Israel. The point was that Hamas, or rather a part of Hamas, was talking of accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and therefore, by implication, of recognising Israel in its pre-1967 borders. It is like the claim that the Palestinian Covenant was rescinded by the Oslo Accords — when you looked, you couldn’t really find that it had been. One of the great skills of terrorist movements is pushing out the idea that they are about to do something ‘historic’ and then offering to sell yet again, for more concessions, a horse they have sold before. Sinn Fein do this about every 18 months, reannouncing that ‘the war is over’. Without organisations like the BBC, such tactics would fool nobody.

There is a school of thought among animal enthusiasts that believes so strongly in primal innocence that it refuses to attribute any ill to any creature (except, of course, man). Thus grey squirrels are not held responsible for any of the threat to red squirrels, and birds of prey are exonerated from attacking grouse. One of the beasts that can do no wrong under this doctrine is the badger. It is now so fiercely protected that it has become dangerously common. My wife, who studies these things, points out that there are far fewer bumblebees than there used to be and that the only natural predator of their nests is the badger. This will be strenuously denied, though, until there is not a bumblebee left buzzing.

Monsignor Denis Faul, who died last week, was both the classic parish priest and a very unusual one — classic in his old-fashioned pastoral care and unusual in his individuality. He was the only person in the Green village of Carrickmore, Co. Tyrone, known to take the Daily Telegraph. Thence, in his sixties, he used to come to London to learn Hebrew. He did this for scholarly reasons, but these were linked in his mind with a philo-Semitism quite rare in the Irish clergy. His father had been a GP in the East End between the wars and had watched the rise of Mosley with dismay. When a cross was erected in St Colmcille’s cemetery in Carrickmore, Mgr Faul made sure that one of the reliefs on it depicted the visit of Pope John Paul II to the Wailing Wall. In physique, Mgr Faul rather resembled the late Pope, with wide, strong-boned, Slavic features. He was very much an old Irish Catholic, but so revolted by Republican terrorism that he ended up voting for the atheistic Workers Party.

Everyone now agrees that too many bad laws have been made in a hurry, but few pay much attention until these measures have actually reached the statute book. The latest one that deserves attention is the proposed ban on ‘Samurai’ swords. Dr John Nandris, who is the European vice-president of NBTHK (the initials are Japanese and mean The Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords), has written to the Home Office. There are so many categories of sword, he says, ‘such as “weapons”, “Samurai” swords, the Japanese Art Sword, with all its types. The so-called “Samurai” which is at all likely to be afforded and used by a criminal is of low quality, and usually as harmless as the decoration over the mantelpiece. Are only Japanese swords to be singled out? Are axes and machetes to be specified in the same way? Or John Lewis kitchen knives?’ He explains that a Japanese art sword is ‘an object of contemplation’ and that ‘You do not even speak or breathe over a Sword. The blade is never handled at all.’ No one ever cuts anything with a Japanese art sword. What will be gained if these objects are banned? A part of the Asiatic art market which flourishes in London will be lost, as will a scholarly pastime. Dr Nandris says that whereas cars can have an MOT to ensure their mechanical safety, it is not possible to MOT swords. He adds, ‘The Japanese did have a version of this, but it involved cutting criminals in half. I mention this only as the impractical germ of a potentially pleasing idea.’

There were reports of violence and 25 arrests at Ascot last week. We were there on Ladies’ Day and experienced nothing alarming, but it is true that the new grandstand, though better in almost every respect than the horrible old one, incites the drunk and belligerent to start making trouble. Its layout exposes the Royal Enclosure to a long line of entry points running off the main concourse where there are innumerable bars. By about five o’clock, as the crowd thins out slightly, nothing seems more fun to the bitter Englishman who has lost at the bookies and drunk champagne at £80 per bottle than to try to barge through into the Enclosure. So there was some contretemps there. To prevent this, of course, you need reasonably able-bodied stewards, but in fact some of these added to the trouble because they were unpleasant. Instead of the kindly old men who traditionally kept a lookout to prevent women with bare shoulders or no stockings coming in, there seemed to be large numbers of rude bouncer-types. They introduced an atmosphere of threat and sourness which made even law-abiding racegoers feel aggressive. Ascot must make a fortune selling drink; it needs to give more thought to handling its consequences. One racegoer told me that his company had now given up its hospitality box at Ascot after a bottle fight outside it in which two of their guests had been sprayed with blood.

Last week I attended one retirement party — for this paper’s great Christopher Fildes — one 80th birthday and (previously mentioned in this column) a lunch to mark Bill Deedes’s 75 years in journalism. At all three the speeches, which were excellent, focused on the first day of the relevant bit of the life being celebrated — a young woman seen in the Cambridge Zoology Department in 1948, Bill being taken by his grandmother to the offices of the Morning Post in 1931, etc. At a milestone in a life, the mind instinctively seeks the origin of it all. Bill Deedes said that at the end of his first day he entered a pub for the first time in his life, ordered half a pint of mild and bitter (something which, in my experience, landlords often refuse to serve), drank it and decided, ‘This is the way I want to spend the rest of my life.’ Is it only retrospect that makes these beginnings seem so important, or is it true that in our beginning is our end?