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COLIN MAC INNES
the judges at Nuremberg (two of them British) condemned the Nazi
leaders in the most categorical terms.
English judges are drawn from a minute minority of about 2,000
barristers-that is, lawyers who plead in court, and do not initiate
contact with the client, which is done by the non-pleading solicitors.
During their youth, they argue cases this way or that for fees but, once
be-wigged as judges, assume enormous powers (and income) since much
English law is created not by parliament, but by justices' interpretations
of its enactments. The feeling is growing that these immensely privileged
persons are assuming an increasingly administrative, rather than inter–
pretative, function; and that their powers are growing as that of an
elected parliament declines.
The aforementioned national gadfly Claud Cockburn startled every–
one recently by printing full particulars of the man he alleged to be
Head (capital letters) of our Secret Services. In America, everyone
knows who runs the CIA or FBI, but in England the identities of their
opposite numbers are shrouded in becoming mystery. Yet why should
we not know who these men are? Our Secret Services are responsible
only, and directly, to the prime minister, and it is inconceivable that
this busy man should be able to control this vast bureaucracy, which
means that it is in fact operated anonymously, and largely without
democratic control.
Like everyone else in World War II, I drifted for a while into
the periphery of this occult organization, and was much impressed by
two things about it. First, the undoubted brains of many of its officers
(people who could crack codes before breakfast, for example), and
next by the temperamental
boyishness
of these gifted men. The upper
hierarchies of English life (civil service, judiciary, universities) are
exclusively staffed by gentlefolk, and the Secret Services are no exception.
One may doubt most earnestly whether such persons are either devoted
to democratic processes or as politically mature as they need to be in
1963. That overgrown sexless schoolboy, James Bond, is usually thought
to be a parody of what secret servicemen really are. It is alarming to
reflect that the creator of these fantasies may in fact be a realist.
Of all the social sewage that the Profumo affair has dredged up
to assail our nostrils, the most repellent have been the revelations of
how slum landlords operate in the center of our capital. All visitors
here will have noticed the glass and concrete palaces that newly adorn
London, but perhaps not so many will have visited the insalubrious
