The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 6

THE GUARDIAN Friday September 17 1982 Smiley, circa 1848, takes his place in history David Pallister finds a 19th century British agent's trail ending at the Gladstone museum Whitehall battle on costs brings closure threat to law centres than Lord Ponsonby" (then ambassador in Vienna). Another Cobridge friend, Charles also appeared to be among his network of contacts. But contact was not always easy. "I had the intention of seeing him again at the Ghent railway station. But I was so hungry and fatigued that I sat down to a very good dinner and put a whole bottle of excellent claret in me and then fell fast asleep and by the time I awoke he was, no doubt in Antwerp." Blackwell's official career ended in October, 1849.

By Christmas he was back in London, and thereafter he sank into obscurity at the age of 51. His private letters live on at an exhibition which opens tomorrow at the Gladstone Museum. IN THE best inscrutable tradition of the British secret service, the name of Joseph Andrew Blackwcll does not appear on Foreign Office personnel files. His uncertain identity as a Victorian spy, in letters to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, has lurked in the public records for decades, emerging only briefly in a' 60-year-old history of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution. But now, amid a vast quantity of old technical papers belonging to a Potteries colour merchant, the career and exploits of Joseph Blackwell have been give new life.

During his escapades through Europe on two guineas a day and travelling expenses" Mr Blackwell also corresponded with his was always a Whig. the Vicar of Bray and I trust have now much better prospects before me than scribbling books He added Excuse this scrawl for I am hurried and worried and flurried and scurried to death making preparations for my departure." Blackwell's dispatches from the crumbling Austro-Hun-garian empire, where he won the confidence of the Hungarian rebels, were apparently of a high standard. The historian Charles Sproxton, writing in 1919, said He was a far more intelligent observer and acute judge of events and men His assiduous cultivation of political contacts won him the friendship of Sir Robert Gordon, the brother of Pal-merston's predecessor, Lord Aberdeen, who was soon to be the ambassador in Vienna. The year of his recruitment as a spy remains unknown, but by 1847, with Palmerston at the Foreign Office, he was writing to his old friend I shall set off on the 15th' for Hungary on the service of Her Majesty's Government with the same salary as before (two guineas a day and travelling expenses). "I have managed to get with the good graces of Lord Palmerston (you know that I small, mainly Roman Catholic, enclave of artists, writers and musicians who flourished in Cobridge in the 1830s.

He was president of the Society of Amateur Musicians, an expert on northern antiquities and a noted linguist with a reputed command of 20 languages. In the late 1830s his private income apparently dried up and he was obliged to earn his living writing books and for journals. In 1837, he wrote to Francis Emery At the present moment it is my pen that supports us but I am striving to obtain some kind of permanent situation for it is always a life of excitement to live on one's wits." old friend from Stoke-on-Trent, Francis Emery. Several years ago the papers of Mr Emery's firm in Cobridge were handed over to the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton. They were found to be heavily contaminated with colour samples and, as the Victorian potters used uranium oxides to obtain yellows and reds, the Gladstone researchers were at first reluctant to handle them.

Tests eventually established that they were not radioactive, and the real Joseph Blackwell was discovered. Born of a wealthy pottery family, Blackwell became a prominent figure in the By Malcolm Dean The Hammersmith law centre, reprieved this week from having its funds cut off, is only one of several centres threatened with closure. About half the 44 law centres could ultimately become pawns in a Whitehall battle over who should finance them. These are the centres funded through the Department of Environment urban aid and inner city partnership programmes. Ministers are reluctant to keep financing the centres and say that they should look for alternative sources of finance.

But the most obvious alternative, the Lord Chancellor's Department, is reluctant unless Game may send girls hopping mad captured the council. The Greater London Council has since reopened two centres one in Wandsworth and the other in Hillingdon. Since the first law centre opened in North Kensington in 1970 they have struggled for. adequate finance. The Royal Commission on Legal Services, which reported in 1979, noted that much of the finance for the centres had been "in the nature of rescue operations rather than of planned support based on long term policies." The commission praised their impact on legal services for poor people which had been out of all proportion to their size and to the number of lawyers." A more systematic form of finance was wanted, and the commission recommended that a new central agency, appointed by but independent of central government, should provide finance and management.

The Federation of Law Centres favoured a central agency for finance but opposed the proposed managerial rolo. The proposal, however, fell foul of the new Conservative Government's opposition to quangos. Mr James Ritchie, Law Centres Federation vice chairman, said yesterday the immediate concern was to establish a source of adequate funds. the Treasury provides adequate resources. Under urban aid pro grammes, the DoE provides 75 per cent of the grant and the local authority 25 per cent, traditionally with a time.

limit. A full meeting of Hammersmith council on Monday re jected a sub-committee recommendation that the council should withdraw its grant for the centre's fifth and last year under the urban programme. Three law centres were closed in Wandsworth, London, when the Conservatives won control in 1978. A fourth London centre was closed in Hill- ingdon after the Conservatives Woes of living in the. country By Rosemary Collins, Agriculture Correspondent ENGLAND'S 10 million country dwellers are enduring an ever-increasing list of problems, according to Rural Voice, an organisation reflecting the views of nine bodies with specialist interests in the countryside.

Rural Voice cited the closure of village schools 79 in 1981 compared with 26 in 1979 threats to the survival of the rural telephone kiosk, cuts in bus and rail services and the closure of Jobcentres in many market towns. There is also a continuing decline in rented accommodation in rural areas, partly as a result of the sale of council houses. Public spending in rural areas, per head of population, is now running at 82 per cent of the national average, 364 a year compared with 444 in 19812. Rural Voice suggests that there should be encouragement for the conversion of redundant buildings in the countryside for use as housing or for industry, that district councils should be permitted to expand house building in rural areas, and that housing corporations should give higher priority to housing association schemes in villages. By Dennis Barker As a children's game, Space Invaders will soon look about as modern as a Victorian skipping rope except, possibly, to girls.

Girls between 10 and 16 have proved much more unresponsive than boys to what Chris Campbell, an American guru of the video games industry, yesterday called "the highly competitive shoot-'em-up type of game." This is one reason why his company, Parker Bros, Is counter-attacking with games of special appeal to females. Of the first two home video games introduced yesterday by Parker they will bring six to the UK before next April one was aimed at girls. Frogger, the game with' unisex appeal, has a frog which has to cross a road without being run over and then a river without being drowned. "Many of our games take a lot of competitive concentration and skill. Women Patients 6 need back-up' By Andrew Veitch Hundreds of mental patients who have been locked in hospitals for years may be released without back-up facilities being provided to help them to adjust to society, the British Medical Association said yes terday.

Picture by Garry Weaser Children sampling the new video games yesterday. The Home Secretary, Mr Whitelaw, and the Social Ser patients who need not be in hospital but have lost all hope of ever getting out will now be. given the chance of freedom. But the BMA's general medical services committee, which discussed the decision yesterday, pointed out that community services were inadequate. He added We support the concept of patients being cared for in the community but strongly urge that immediate action is taken to ensure that community services such as social workers with mental health training, community psychiatric nurses, and the provision of appropriate hostels and sheltering houses will be adequate to meet this new demand." vices Secretary, Mr rowier, have decided that all patients detained under the Mental Health Act whose cases have not been reviewed for at least to collect as many coconuts as possible before being captured Super Cobra, in which a helicopter is shot at from all directions, and Spiderman, after the American TV series.

Later there will be Reactor, in which, unless the right moves are taken to preserve it, a nuclear reactor will blow up. "If that happens," said Mr Waterman, "you naturally lose, the game." the Strawberry Shortcake game. This was based on a friendly American Mid-West girl who lives in Strawberryland and makes friends with the animals and plants as well as the humanoids. But this sop to the girls will be an exception. The three other video games which will appear by next Spring are Amidor, in which an ape has Froggers has been sold in the United States, and 2 million worth is expected to be sold in this country before next spring about 100,000 cartridges at 29.95 each.

In the United States the whole video games industry, based on those seen in amusement arcades, is worth $7,000 million a year, more than the entire US cinema box office. Two million households in the UK are expected to have video games by the end of next year. But girls who don't want to shoot-'em-up may be a stumbling block. Hence the counterattack. Mr Peter Waterman, of the Palitoy Toy Company, the British counterpart of Parker Bros, which years ago invented Monopoly, said yesterday that he expected a good market among girls in this country for three years should automatically be referred to a mental without biassing it tend to like gam.es which are less intense and less skill-orientated, where they have a chance.

Women are less competitive by nature, but still enjoy the basis of playing games." Even without overwhelming support, $100 million worth of The Empire Strikes Back and health review tribunal. Their decision has been wel comed by. MIND, the National Association for Mental Health, which estimates that some 500 1 'fit rfR2ta Iff to SOT ''Mb i jtSSSsshi ASroHEtt were navigational necessities for millions of Londoners. We use the word millions advisedly. Our weekly audience now stands at 23A million listeners, an increase of 22 since last autumn.

One in three of all adults in Greater London now listen to LBC. "Sorry I can't talk any more, I have to go to the Supermarket" (TelephonecallertoLBC) LBC is a commercial radio station. We have to attract both listeners and advertisers in order to survive. And our success is rooted in the simple fact that saying he had thought of calling the BBC, but had decided that we would handle the story better As a result of our listener's loyalty we were confirming and breaking the news from Kenya while the relevant Foreign Office official was, by all accounts, still knitting up his ravelled sleeve of care. ''Thank you for the 'magnificent job you have been doing" (LettertoLBCfromGovernmentMinlster) This letter came not, as you might suppose, from the Foreign Office, but from Reginald Eyre, Under-Secretary "The radio should broadcast this" (Teiephonecailertoiicj On the night of May 20th, a team of health counsellors working on our 'Drugs The Family' project received a string of alarming off-air telephone calls.

That night we were broadcasting a programme about 'hard' drugs and the health workers were expecting a barrage of enquiries about everything from heroin, glue-sniffing ana alcoholism to giving up smoking. It never came. Instead, incredibly, the lines were jammed by people desperate to break their addiction to a drug of which most counsellors had never even heard. Of 277calls logged that night, 255 were about this drug lorazepam, and its better known cousin diazepam. We had stumbled across a tranquilliser problem of vast, and hitherto unsuspected size.

The radio did broadcast this. "Callers rang because they trust and are loyal to the tadiO Station" (Health Education Service report) Over the fortnight of the project, we helped 1,475 callers, nearly 900 of whom were worried about tranquillisers. But why did these people ring LBC with problems and fears which, in call after call, they said they could not share with their own doctors? The Health Education Service report on the project says: listeners build a trusting relationship with the presenters and the programmes and the counselling team latched on to that relationship: "I thought you might like to know there's just been a COUp in Kenya" (TelephonecallertoLBC) LBC's rapport with its listeners has led to news scoops: a man rang to report the Nairobi coup attempt, 5VPMElnJ5 because LBC is worth listening to, our listeners really do listen. To put it another way: everyone, including advertisers, gets-more out of LBC. ot Mate at tne Ministry ot Transport.

He was referring to our work during the recent rail and tube strikes when our frequent, accurate and continuously updated traffic reports AS RADIO People get more out of LBC.