TH E T A B L E T , October 20Ih, 1951

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW VOL. 198, No. 5813 PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA LONDON, OCTOBER 20th, 1951 FOUNDED IN 1 8 4 0 NINEPENCE PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

“THE GOVERNMENT IT DESERVES”

Next Week’s Test of British Character AGRICULTURE AND THE POLITICAL PARTIES

The Need for an Agrarian Policy. By Jorian Jenks

LANCASHIRE IN THE ELECTION MEN AND MACHINES

Seven Key Constituencies

By E. F. Caldin

“RENEWING THE FACE OF THE EARTH” Impressions of the World Congress of the Lay Apostolate A CALL TO THE CHILDLESS PORTUGAL RE-VISITED

By Ann Ronald

By Ursula Branston

THE VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS ON REBUILDING A CHURCH Another Statement from the Hierarchy By Mgr. R. A. Knox

AN END TO IMPROVIDENCE A S the General Election enters its last few days, the news from the outside world continually underlines the gravity of the time, the need for a clear majority and for a different temper in the British people and those who represent them. I t is all too easy for modern electorates, because what is everybody’s business can be nobody’s business, to behave collectively in a fashion exactly parallel to that of a bad and weak king, the kind of monarch only too common in the history of every country, who will not attend properly to business, and will only listen to and take as his advisors those who flatter and reassure him, and who waste the capital assets of his kingdom in order to keep things going agreeably for him and retain his confidence.

in the true sense of that old term, which ruled out the humanitarian proposals for great immediate increases of working class consumption, regardless of production, in the years before the war.

The unemployment figures for the ’thirties continue to be quoted by people whose interest is that they should be thought of as global and static through those years, whereas they were mostly the figures of a shifting population between jobs ; and, while some black spots, like Jarrow and the Welsh coalfields, suffered continuously for years, the hard core of permanently unemployed was always under the half-million. It is equally mythical, though it may impose on the young voters, to suggest that the ’twenties and ’thirties were periods in which Conservatives and Liberals remained supinely indifferent to the condition of the people. Historical Travesty

No sooner had universal suffrage been achieved in this country—it is not a quarter of a century old—than it began to be faced with a series of exacting tests, through the ’thirties and ’forties ; and it is faced with a very exacting test today. The electorate has to look in the face, and adapt itself to, very important and very uncomfortable facts ; of which the first and foremost, which points directly to a withdrawal of confidence from the present Government, is that since the end of the war that Government has misjudged the international situation of the country, both in terms of defence and in terms of trade. It ought to have pursued a much more cautious policy, to have moved forward much more slowly in spending money in ways that cannot be quickly reversed, which are momentarily pleasant but greatly aggravate our difficulties, and, in particular, make it much more difficult to maintain the purchasing power of the pound.

The readiness with which this is believed is very chastening to those who were active in those decades, and have still on their shelves the copious literature of the parties, the White Books and Yellow Books, or who possess the Hansards which record so much experiment with forms of protection following Ottawa, with Marketing Boards, Emigration, and the transference of industry inside Britain. It is easily forgotten how great was the recovery, year by year, in the ’thirties ; how extensive the house-building, and how many of the social services which have since been extended, like school meals and milk, date from that time.

How reckless it will look in retrospect that, when the Health Service, estimated to cost well under £200 millions, was found instead to be costing over £400 millions, the Government, not batting an eyelid, merely introduced supplementary estimates. The only conclusion to be drawn is that they did not at all appreciate in what sort of world they are living, or they would have taken care to conserve a margin of taxable capacity for emergencies, as they have not done. Whatever the criticism that can justly be made of the British Government in the ’thirties, chiefly that they were too slow in actually spending the money voted for rearmament, at least they preserved a substantial reserve margin of taxable capacity, which could be, and was, drawn on as soon as the worst had happened, and which enabled the country to rise to the challenge. It would not have been good statesmanship to have taken the risk of leaving the country without that reserve, and it was not callousness but prudence, and political economy

Mr. Stokes’s broadcast last Monday was but one illustration of this loose way of speaking, when he told his audience that he had joined the Labour Party in that period because the other parties had “nothing to offer,” and all their thoughtful and laborious work was thus airily dismissed. It is ironical, because what the Labour Party was offering in those years was very different to what the Labour Government has done. Any man who joined them in the ’twenties and ’thirties was not offered practical policies for full employment, for the Labour Government in 1929 was as baffled as the other parlies, because world conditions then were as unfavourable as they have been favourable since 1945. What the party offered was intellectual and emotional extravagances, from the Council of Action to support the Bolsheviks in 1919, to support of the General Strike, to all the wild and woolly pacifism of the early- ’thirties and the Disarmament Conference period, and then all the Popular Front and Left Book Club ideology.

It is not an impressive record, but Labour speakers now