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2 ee oS moved into action. Lady Violet Bonham Carter was the mo 4 ’ active and the most open. A study of hér activities during th 4 tively. has now all the tine that it could ask to paepare # positions. But I do sot thiak that, when Parliamehi 4 .. Position this week—since this coluom has to be written ete "the White Paper is published—to comment on the details of _ the scandal. But oue aspect of it seems to me to deserve Lcall the ‘Establishment’ in this country is today more power- -ful than ever before. By the “Establishment’ I do not mean ‘oaly the centres of oficial power—though they are certainly _ part of itbut rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be - “naderstoad unless it is recognised that Ht is exercised socially.: Anyone who has af any point been close to the exercise of power will Know what I mean whea ¢ say that the ‘Establish- “ment’ can be seen at work in the activities of,-not only the: Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bark » Marshal, but of such lesser mortals as the chairman of the . Arts Council, the Director-General of the BBC, and even the ediior-of The Times Literary Supplemenr, sot to mention ’ divinities like Lady Violet Bonham Carter, <0 0 So “Somewhere neat the heart of the pattern of social relation- ships which so powerfully controls the exercise of power in i this country is the Foreign Office, By its traditions and its _Inethods of recruitment the Foreign Oice makes it inevitable ; that the members of the Foreign Service will be mea (and - " aggembles, it will be allowed to fog the issue. I am nol in a- immediate comment, I have several times suggested that what - Past twenty years would reveal how power in this countr can sill be exercised by someone who has, politically, bee stripped of it. But Lady Violet Bonham Carter was not alotie. No one whose job it was to be interested in the Burgess... Maclean affair from the vecy beginning will forget the anbde- but powerful pressures which were brought 1 bear by those who belonged to the same stratum as the two missing men.» From those who were expecting Maclean to dinner og the | very night on which he disappeared, to those who just bap- © pened te have been charmed by his very remarkable father, ‘ the representatives of the ‘Establishment’ moved in, and how: st - effectively they worked may be traced in the columns of the ° more respectable newspapers at the time, especially of The.- Times and of the Observer, 6 00 0 eRe sig! : ’ [heard recently a story which Muminates many of the ways“ “in which the “Establishment” now works. Mr. Maurice Bdel- | man, the Labour Member of Parliament, was asked some | time age by an American magazine to write an article about 4 . Princess Margaret which could be published to celebrate. her | twenty-fifth birthday. (That Labour Members of Parliament § should be assumed to know about the Royal Family seams toe, me tO be an amusing comment on contemparary British society * in self.) Mr. Edelman wrote his article, which contained 2 sentence which was in no way disrespectful but which might. be construed as a criticism of Princess Margaret. Then, being - . the Poreign Service is one of the bastions of masculine Engligh. Mr. Edelman, he subsnitted his article to the Lady-in- Waiting ‘ _ Spciety} who, to use a phrase which has been used a lot in. of Princess Margaret. The next that he heard about it Pas | ‘the past few days, ‘know all the right people.’ At the time f, when he was calied to Mr. Attles's room in the House of Cams + fe Sisappearauce of Maciean and Burgess, ‘the right people" mons, There, in front of Mr, Attlee, was the offending arthle.” 2S arabe! > a nae a al