End of the year report, 1978

Some years ago, at this time of the year, I was invited to go down to Florida and talk to a group, a forum or whatever, of people in Palm Beach who were interested, according to their brochure, in the arts and politics. So I leapt with alacrity from the northern snows and in a couple of hours I was driving past Australian pines on a blissfully warm day, blinking in brilliant light.

Palm Beach is sometimes called in European magazines 'the Riviera' of North America. If it was, it wouldn't be 80 degrees by day in December. The Mediterranean is far to the north of the latitude of Palm Beach which is in fact opposite West Africa below the bulge. Anyway, the... the group that met at five o'clock on this perfect day consisted of many old people, most retired, and a majority of ladies in very elegant clothes, exquisitely coiffed silver hair and a good deal of what Damon Runyon's guys used to call 'ice', by way of bracelets, necklaces and the like. They'd asked me to talk on what's right with America and in case I hadn't got the message in time, one of the officiating ladies patted me on my way to the platform and said, with a winking nod, 'Be sure to keep it on the lighter side!'. 

Well, I gave my talk which began with a good look at the darker side of things, went on to look at the lighter and ended with a list taken from Edward Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' of the symptoms of decadence that seemed to me just then to be much in evidence not only in the United States, but in Western Europe as well. When it was over, there were drinks and polite socialising and the officiating lady, who'd warned me about the correct tone to adopt, came up and said, 'I thought you were going to talk entirely about the lighter side.' And I said, 'Well, you can't see the lighter side, can you, until you've identified the darker side?' This was less than satisfactory and no more was said. And my suspicion that I'd been saying the right things to the wrong group was confirmed by a wonderful remark I overheard as the last of the audience was drifting away. Two, quite old, ladies were whispering busily together on their way out and one said, 'I just refuse to believe that Ed Gibbon could have said such awful things!' I discovered from a male official between the tears of his helpless laughter that Ed Gibbon was a notable local interior decorator. 

I thought of this while fishing around in my mind for some cheerful things with which to brighten the end of your year, but I'm afraid I've come up with nothing much. A year ago we were all gurgling over the warming photograph of Mr Sadat and Mr Begin locked in an embrace and we were looking forward to 17 December as the great day when the Israelis and the Egyptians would sign the peace treaty. As I'm talking now, it seems as far away as ever. In the meantime, Mr Carter had to say, with the very faintest hint of irritation, and I don't remember a president who ever showed less irritation in public, that he'd spent a huge amount of time on the Israeli-Egypt business and really there were other pressing things that had to be taken care of. Indeed there were. While we weren't looking, the Soviet Union got itself another useful satellite in Afghanistan, making yet another move toward putting a girdle round the Middle East, or, if you like, the supply depot of our oil. 

I talked about China last time when we were heady with the news of American recognition. According to Mr Carter in the flush of the announcement, practically everybody on earth felt happy about it, except some of those grouchy old conservatives in the Senate like Senator Goldwater who felt we'd deserted an ally in Taiwan, in fact abandoned a dependant. Mr Brezhnev's telegram of congratulation which Mr Carter quoted was a puzzle. He'd said that the Americans' new relationship with the People's Republic of China would contribute to world peace. Now this, I thought at the time, was a puzzling response and suspicious, if you remembered that the Russians are the world's best chess players. Which pawn was Mr Brezhnev throwing away? Which side of the board were we neglecting to look at? 

I concluded that the Russians were certainly not stunned – they'd been expecting this for some time, but neither, some of us assumed, could they possibly break into cheers – they must be brooding and working out the next move but one. Then, however, they evidently felt that Mr Carter had misread Mr Brezhnev and they did something very rare indeed which was to publish in Moscow the whole text of Mr Brezhnev’s telegram to the president. They did this because they said Mr Carter had simply picked out the favourable things Mr Brezhnev had said and overlooked the misgivings or fears we might have guessed at – as, for instance, that the Soviet Union would take a dim view of America and its Atlantic allies making an ally out of China in order to counter Russian interests anywhere, but especially in Asia and Africa. Moscow says it will pay particular attention to Chinese vocabulary. Now this means absolutely nothing in itself. What they talking about is the word 'hegemony' which Mr Carter defined literally as one nation's domination of others. 

Mr Carter explained this because the joint communiqué issued in Washington and Peking said that both China and the United States were opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish hegemony in the Asian Pacific region or in any other region of the world. Now, according to Moscow, the Chinese use the word 'hegemony' exclusively as a warning against the Soviet Union. In other, and blunter, words, the Russians are warning us that this new relationship could, in fact, become an alliance and, in time, a military one, against them to which one irreverent old observer here said, 'Well, isn't that the whole idea?' 

I have the strong feeling, based on no Gallup poll but on the tone of so many editorials and so much talk on the tube that most of the 'comfort and joy' – comfort, anyway – Americans feel from the recognition of China, springs from the hope, at least, that with a hefty boost in its technology, China could become a powerful deterrent to any more Russian adventures. The 'joy' is reserved for industry and businessmen. Within 24 hours of the announcement, the Chinese communist flag was flying over the headquarters of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. The Chinese are going to be taught 'the pause that refreshes' and, in time, to bottle their own. 

There was also great rejoicing among the manufacturers of farming tools and equipment (tractors, reapers, harvesters and the rest). No arms, mind you. That is the soothing syrup fed to the Soviet Union, but I'm right, am I not, that the French and the British are selling arms to China? And its own nuclear technology grows apace. So, it seems to me, the Russians from their point of view have every cause for concern. 

The second great issue or headache at the end of the year was oil. When OPEC, the oil-producing export countries, were about to meet, the experts here, to a man, guessed a five per cent increase. They were staggered at 14 and a half per cent but recovered their balance quickly for fear of frightening the average breadwinner, the 60 or 70 million breadwinners who proceed to work every morning in the ratio of one man:one car. Petrol, of course, is what we all immediately think of and the government was quick to explain that the cost would go up by only five per cent for a month or two and then gradually up to the full 14 and a half by the end of the year when, incidentally, OPEC meets again to figure the next boost. It was also explained that industry was not likely to suffer just yet because power plant fuel oil would be hardly affected and because industry had been a good boy and since the first big shocker of an oil hike, had been using over 18 per cent less chemicals for refining and so on. But they had to grant that utilities companies would suffer a four per cent increase in the price of their fuel, that the Arab move made a recession harder to avoid, that the economy would decline by something around two per cent – which sounds piddling but can also be made to add a quarter million to the unemployed. Also, to protect the dollar abroad, interest rates are bound to go up and that, too, hurts the domestic economy. One government expert said he was afraid, however, that the main, the most harmful effect on the public would be psychological. 

The conviction is now fixed in people's minds that the Arabs have us over a barrel of oil. We don't stop to consider that the disruption in Iran, for example, makes it impossible for the Iranians to produce enough oil to meet the normal demand. Also, anything that OPEC does, any move an Arab makes, appears at this distance dramatic and we tend to blame him for any coming pinch on the economy. For instance, the government, the American government, is going to be blamed along with the Arabs for the predicted rise in the rate of inflation. Not many people will stop to realise that Congress has just passed a general increase in social security taxes and that this increase will hurt the consumer exactly as much – something close to two per cent – as the increase in the price of petrol. But a congressman putting social security figures into a computer makes a much less colourful villain than a sheikh. 

So, the prospects for the New Year are dearer petrol, dearer telephones, buses, tube fares, airplane fares, a rise in unemployment, a notch of higher inflation, a Congress angry over the abandonment of Taiwan and likely to be loathe to pass the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement AND, as if this wasn't enough, a brilliant new tennis star, John McEnroe, who throws such tantrums on the court that even old 'Nasty' Nastase had to turn to the crowd the other day and say, 'Please forgive him! He's only 19.' 

So the best I can wish you is a 'lucky' New Year.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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