T H E T A B L E T , October 4th, 1952.

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGINA ET PATRIA

VOL. 200, No. 5863

LONDON, OCTOBER 4th, 1952

NINEPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1840

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

“L’EUROPE VATICANE” An Ominous Phrase Comes into Currency THE DILEMMA OF THE GERMANS Varying Views o f the Relationship with Western Europe

THE APPROACHING CLIMAX IN THE ENGINEERING DISPUTE

The Importance o f the Shop Stewards’ Attitude

WELFARE AND EQUALITY A Labour Party Discussion Pamphlet. By Paul Crane, S .J . MR. EDEN IN VIENNA WINE AND THE ITALIANS Reassurance for the Austrians Facts and Fancies

THE POETRY OF ACTION Epic Across the Centuries. By W . W . Robson

NO NEW THINKING

T HE Labour Party Conference at Morecambe has illustrated the inherent nature o f all political parties that are founded in the name o f radical reform, whether they claim to be revolutionary or not. The Labour Party is commonly referred to as the Labour movement, although no one talks o f the other party as the Conservative movement ; and the reason is that the Labour Party is a movement because it cannot stop still. It must go always on. I f the pace is allowed to slow to o much the signs o f disintegration appear. The momentum must be maintained, and if Mr. Herbert Morrison has been voted o ff the National Executive it is because he was thought to be in favour o f stopping still.

What was presented in the Press on Wednesday as the triumph o f the Bevanites was really the triumph o f the people who understand this best, not all o f whom are to be described as Bevanite in any strict interpretation o f that term. Mr. Crossman, for example, is included with the Bevanites in the list o f those who have com e into the National Executive, and it is true that he accepts Mr. Bevan’s main thesis about rearmament. But he is by no means a follow er o f Mr. Bevan in the more general issues o f Labour policy. H e is not one o f those whose ceaseless cry, even now, is for the nationalization o f everything. “The heart and centre o f Socialism is public ownership” : such is the simple formula which Mr. Bevan repeated last week in Tribune, and which is the theme o f so many o f the resolutions sent to Morecambe from the constituency organizations whose votes secured Mr. Bevan’s triumph on Tuesday. But Mr. Crossman’s view , as expressed in the New Fabian Essays, is quite different ; he writes :

“The main task o f Socialism today is to prevent the concentration o f power in the hands o f either industrial management or the State bureaucracy— in brief, to distribute responsibility.” That is quite a different matter. But singularly little has been heard at Morecambe, after all, o f the “new thinking” in which the Fabian Society is engaged, and with which Mr. Crossman is associated. The “new thinking,” o f which another exponent was Mr. Austen A lbu in the New Fabian Essays, is an expresssion o f the realization that the old thinking is no longer enough for the w inning o f elections. Mr.

Bevan has achieved som e success— although less success than may at first appear from the voting figures— in gaining the favour o f lo ca l organizations where strong feeling is more marked than foresight, but he has not helped the Labour Party to improve its prospects for the next General Election.

The success which Mr. Bevan has won in the elections to the National Executive is comparable to that which the Communists have often won in the higher direction o f the trade unions, in being much greater than numerical support among the rank and file should warrant, and in being helped by the great advantage which the exponents o f extreme doctrines always have over more moderate men when it comes to making their follow ers back them up. Even more important, the follow ers o f Mr. Bevan are a relatively com pact group. There were relatively few o f them among the nominations, so that their follow ers could concentrate on getting them in, whereas the “old guard” were numerous and the votes o f the non-Bevanites had to be distributed among them. So also it has often been w ith the Communists in the unions. Politics at Strasbourg

On the political plane the Strasbourg debates have made it clear that no one in the Council is at the present moment prepared for anything in the nature o f an overt breach. The hands o f the British negotiators have been to som e extent weakened by the fact that Conservative Party propaganda at hom e has acclaimed Mr. Eden’s policy as a success before even it has been adopted, and has thus created a situation where the British had at all costs to bring back an agreement o f som e sort. When you are in that position, and when those with whom you are negotiating are aware that you are in that position, you are handicapped in standing out upon details. On the other hand, M. Bertrand de Jouvenel once truly said that “when we say that an army is efficiently organized, we must remember that it only has other armies to fight against.” So, if the British have been hampered by the game o f party politics at home, they have been saved by the fact that their opposite numbers also have their domestic party politics to worry about. The part that the observers o f the “N in e” w ill in fact be able to play in the life o f the Specialized Authorities