FROM TEA OVERLORD

The Institute of Directors, the organization which represents Britain's boardrooms, held its annual conference last week in the baroque surroundings of the Albert Hall.

Four thousand them packed into the tiers of seats which go right up to the domed Ninos Whe present read like ceiling. The list of men and Who's Who of commerce and industry. The captains, the knights and the lords of British capitalism were all there The 43,000-strong body was founded in 1903 and is open to anyone who is a director of a public or private company.

A Press release states, however, that membership is not automatic: 'The council scrutinizes each application with an eye to the candidate's fitness for membership,' it says. In previous years the conventions have been smug, selfcongratulatory beanfeasts at which the audience cheers enthusiastically in reply to ingenuity integrity British big business. It's a warm affair with one or two joke speakers thrown in to keep everyone humoured A feature of the Institute's annual seminar is the luncheon arrangements. Everybody given a lunch in a box. The boxes arrive at 11 a.m. in a refrigerated van and are distributed to the 4,000-odd participants. This means that the audience can remain seated in the hall and stuff themselves with a 'modest' meal. This year's menu:

Mousse de foie gras, breast of chicken, cold tongue, salad, muscat grapes, stilton cheese and a quarter bottle of Travel Rose. Free cigarettes and monogrammed matches too.

This was the second year Last year we had the spectacle of Jim Slater, head Slater Walker finance industry, talking about business ethics. It fairly had us rolling in the aisles!

This year featured the other half of that partnership-Peter Walker, the new Secretary for guest of honour, four days aftee Trade and Industry, was promotion in the Heath Cabinet.

The relationship between big business and the Tory Cabinet is now quite remarkable. Walker joins the Heath Cabinet and is thus forced by law to give up his partnership in the Citv of London's fastest money-making outfit.

then gets placed in charge of the department that ostensibly guards the public interest against the ravages of speculation.

At the same time Nigel Broackes, the other fastest gun in the City, and head of Trafalgar Investments, is given a part-time job in Whitehall as chairman of a procurement board. And also in the background John Bentley, a protégé of Jim 'Slater, the man who asset-stripped the toy industry and is now carving up British Lion, announced he wants a new career—in politics as a Tory MP Walker's speech, the first he has made since assuming his new supremo role, dealt with the evil practices in the money-making world. It is certainly a subject to which he could turn some attention, His new department was recently accused of failing to take action against crooked _companies which had "fleeced the public of millions'.

Among the companies cited in the House of Commons was Real Estate Fund of America, the offshore property fund (it was registered in the banana republic of Liberia) run by Jerome D. Hoffman, now serving two years in the US for mortgage fraud.

The first president of the tund was none other than the ex-Tory Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, who, on resigning the job, said it was "a good and sound investment'.

More than a year after Maudling resigned the fund crashed spectacularly leaving creditors all round the world.

Without referring to the embarrassing Maudling incident, Walker said: 'We need to see that the consumer enjoys a proper system of protection, and this we will do. 'We need, in fact, to have a framework which encourages the good firms and clobbers the rogues.' The remarks about changing company laws to meet these requirements sent a shiver of apprehension through the Albert Hall. But they could all relax. A second later the sprightly minister (42) added: 'We need also to have a system where the entrepreneur can, from small beginnings, make a major impact upon our commerce. They are the seed bed for future economic growth. We want to see the young entrepreneur have a go. It sounds innocent enough. But in these circles this sort of statement is the wink, wink and nudge, nudge that business is as usua..

The property speculation, the roaring and uncontrolled play of the share market will proceed. Not that any socialist would think it otherwise, because there has been so much hypocrisy lately about i dividend controls and other crypto.socialist measures to inhibit the 'freedom' of the City of London.

Walker himself started as one of the small entrepreneurs that he wants to encourage. Not that he mentinned this to his audience. His only reference to his past was an anecdote about his schooldays when, at 14, he formed a group called 'Walker's Anti-Labour League'. This fraternity specialized in putting Tory literature in the desks of Labour masters.

But he didn't mention that at 16 he joined the General Accidont Accuranco offira noor Gloucester as little more than an errand boy.

A couple of ycars later, while serving his Nationai Service, he spent his time peddling insurance to squaddies. Via unit trusts and his partnership with BritishLeyland accountant Jim Slater, he has established himself as a multi-millionaire. 'Never has there been a time when the young Dick Whittingtons had a greater opportunity to succeed,' Walker told the Institute of Directors with all the passion he could muster.

But Walker's enthusiasm for the future-'we can achieve a new commercial areatness nut of all proportion to our size and then see that the fruits of that greatness are applied to create a society in which the quality of life, the elimination of poverty, the improvement of the environment is of such dimensions that it gives Britain a new leadership, a leadership that is truly admired' _had heon hlanted dumcu — nau utti by a previous speaker, Alistair Cooke, 'The Guardian's' correspondent in America.

Cooke's contribution was a meandering, cynical and humorous account of various politicians in America over the past couple of hundred years.

His concluding remarks. however, were the thoughts of a man troubled by the next stage in American politics. They were a distinct departure from his normal apologies for 'American democracy' which have bored millions of radio listeners for the past 30 or He said: 'Mr Nixon says that in the last faur veare vinlanra has been cooled, the Republic is troubled but calm. Unfortunately, the President of the United States, since that bad day in Dallas, is particularly insulated from a close look at any part of the United States, except the interior of the White House and Air Force One [the presidential jet], or any intercourse will Is cluzens. with ite nitinana 'Anyone who has travelled much around the whole nation in the last year or two is certain, I believe, to be staggered by Mr Nixon's complacency. My own fear is that the great calm is a great lull. I wonder about all the embittered and disaffected, all the minorities -the blacks, the students, the women, the best of the young who raised Cain four years ago, fear that this vaunted calm could be the dead centre Alistair Cooke, The Guardian's' correspondent in America for more than a quarter of a century, brought some sobering thoughts to the conference. He warned about corruption in high places and described how four or five of President Harding's Cabinet advisers were sent to jail. Richard Marsh, former Labour Transport Minister and now Tory-nominated chairman of British Rail, told the conference: 'For many years I was a member of the executive of the Fabian Society. The insignia of that radical organization was a picture of a tortoise and the slogan-"The Inevitability of Gradualness". That may sound surprising for an organization campaigning for radical change in society, but it is, I think, very apt.? of the hurricane. I believe we are living through a time not unlike the headless halcyon days of President Harding, except that our complacency ie foonfil inctead of emiro is the complacency of". double-locked door. 'Harding provided a welcome change from the puritanism, the idealism of Woodrow Wilson. And during Harding's reign there was the same stolid indifference to corruption, until four or five of his cabinet officers and advisers went to Jall. Inere was ine same m- :- :1 Thann tha coma indifference to the vast sums spent by corporations in electing the tribune of the people. 'Then, as now, people concluded that if one party wouldn't rob the public till, the other would. The Republic was never calmer than in the twilight of Coolidge's reign. But volcano was brewing under him and it burst on Hoover. And then all the smug frauds, and the all-wise tycoons, and the smart boys ran for cover. 'We may in the next four years go through bad, even terrifying, times before the next worthy leaders appear. Rut it is I helieve hound to happen again.' When he finished Cooke received an appreciative but nervous round of applause. The point was that Cooke had very consciously not been talking only about the United States.

Being too polite to upset his audience he was using the American experience to issue a grim warning of the explosive times in front. The corruption, the unbridled exploitation-these are not only symptoms of the US. It's happening in government here. In the police force too.

When the chairman made his closing remarks the delegates rushed for the myriad exits. It was belting with rain outside. The Rolls-Royces and Bentleys purred in a long line Peter Walker, the new Secretary for Trade and Industry • at the Institute of Directors' annual conference last week. to pick up the fattest cats. A second layer caught taxis and the lower breeds from the board room rushed for the nearest underground.

Newspaper sellers outside did a brisk trade. The headline screamed: 'Man grows one million years older.' There was a bizarre moment when one thought this had something to do with the Institute of Directors convention. It turned out to be a story of the discovery of a prehistoric skull in Kenya by the National Geographical Society The man who shouted to a taxi driver: 'Bring the bloody thing over here out of the rain, you bloody idiot' reminded one that similar excavations could have been conducted at the Albert Hall last Thursday with just as momentous results.

Last week, the Soviet shipping delegation and eastern European representatives in Spain held a cocktail reception party in Madrid to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. The reception had official authorization from the fascist authorities and was the first ceremony of its kind in Spain since the trade unions and parties of the working class were des troyed in the Spanish Civil War. The 'Morning Star' and British Communist Party remained absolutely silent on this crime against the workin g class as they have been on the whole development of the counter-revolutionary dact between the Kremlin and Franco. Today our special w riter on Spanish affairs. Juan Garcia, continues Tuesday 14,