Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 3 November 2016

Also in The Spectator’s Notes: cant about ‘The Other’, Gillon Aitken remembered, and poets in one word

It is a great relief that there will be no inquiry into the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ in 1984. The weirdness is that Mrs May’s people ever entertained the thought in the first place. The push for an inquiry is a classic example of the attempt by the aggrieved, usually on the left, to turn history into a trial. If we were to inquire into the miners’ strike, more than 30 years on, it would be far more pertinent — though still a very bad, divisive idea — to establish the full facts about how Arthur Scargill got money from Gaddafi’s Libya and was promised it by the Soviet Union. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is current proof of how retributive urges make a just process impossible. If Orgreave, which was actually a victory for the rule of law and the right to work, had been put in the dock we really would have entered the world according to Ken Loach.

Following my note last week about how to be addressed by my bank, a friend tells me her mail-order problem. She is Lady X, an option not offered by the computer form. So she clicked ‘Other’ in the box marked ‘title’, and now is addressed as ‘Other’ in correspondence. ‘No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States’, says Article 1 of the US Constitution. The same applies to the internet.

‘The Other’, by the way, has become a cant term. It is used by people who studiedly don’t use it, but attribute its use to people they dislike. Thus those who oppose mass immigration or transgender lavatories or gun control are alleged by their critics to have a fear of ‘The Other’. This dislike of people said to fear ‘The Other’ embodies the vice it attacks.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in