THE TABLET, April 3rd, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5941

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

APRIL 3rd, 1954

N IN E P E N C E

H -B om b s and C h in e se A m b i t io n s : American and Allied Responsibilities

H e l l , S ta te and Church in N o rw a y : By Freda Bruce Lockhart The A tta ck on Savings: The Report of the Millard Tucker Committee: II. By Douglas Jerrold

Shakespeare’s H id d en Years: Lancashire Catholic Families. By Hugh Dinwiddy C onversion s in Israel: A Turning Towards Christianity? By William Zukerman H O W C a th o l ic is B e lg iu m ? : I : The Figures of Religious Observance

H is to r y and IVlyth: Mr. Watts and the Claims of Christianity. By Christopher Hollis Sheets o f F lam e : The Organ in the Festival Hall. By Rosemary Hughes Lenten JVleditationS : V : “Fac me tecum p l a n g e r e By Gerald Vann, O.P. B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Selected Letters o f Gustave Flaubert, edited by Francis Steegmuller ;

Cromwell's Generals, by Maurice Ashley ; Temples o f the Sun and Moon, by Michael Swan ; In Sara's Tents, by Walter Starkie ; The Magicians, by J. B. Priestley ; Spinsters in Jeopardy, by Ngaio Marsh ; and Istinci, a new review of the French Dominicans. Reviewed by Sir John McEwen, Oliver J. G. Welch, C. A. Burland and Bernard Gilliat-Smith.

BEFORE THE BUDGET

A PART from the questions raised by the American testing of the Hydrogen bomb, which we discuss in our leading article, party issues are very quiescent. The leadership of the Labour Party has its real battle with its own left-wing, and the divergencies of view go very deep. The Government has this moment to think more of its own back-benchers’ doubts and dissatisfactions than of the Opposition front bench. Over the whole range of urgent international and colonial questions, the utmost that can be found is the difference of emphasis and nuance. Perhaps a Labour Foreign Secretary would have reacted a little less vigorously than Mr. Eden has done in suspending talks with Egypt in the presence of terrorist murders. But, broadly speaking, there is agreement between the front benches : and even when the Budget comes, the faults the Opposition leaders must find, the allegations it must make that the Budget favours the rich at the expense of the poor, will not mean very much.

It is a curious position, for there is undoubtedly in the country a great deal of feeling and conviction that is almost unrepresented on either front bench. The Opposition Front Bench, consisting of men with a long experience of the realities confronting Britain, does not at all reflect the simple views and feelings of constituency Labour Parties. This is more markedly true and important than the corresponding reality that there is a great deal of inarticulate and disappointed Conservative feeling, of Conservative voters who confidently imagined it was going to make a much more obvious difference which party came to power. Perhaps they are insufficiently grateful for mercies that are not really so small. But if so, it is because what people are chiefly conscious of is the weight of taxation. There is something that it is exceedingly difficult for any Government to change quickly. Mr. MacMillan’s success in building houses is real enough, but it is a statistical and newspaper success, which few individuals actually see in the way so many see a tax demand note.

As Budget day draws near, the Chancellor and the Government are no doubt considering that if they want to convince people that things are really different, they must reduce the standard rate of income tax. There is a strong case for doing this, but it would be politically easier if previous exemptions had not removed a large part of the electorate from this particular burden. They are people who pay a large proportion of their earnings over to the Government, but they do so voluntarily, by choosing to consume things which are massively taxed. They pay when they smoke and drink and go shopping, and on their behalf the cry would be raised that income tax relief is now of no interest to them. All the same, the symbolical value of income tax reduction would be enormous, for it would proclaim the difference between the two parties ; proclaim that one party did not on principle believe in taking people's earnings and spending them for them, but in leaving money, in the great Victorian phrase, to “fructify in the pockets of the people.”

Because the Labour Party came to power while the war with Japan was still on, and the people were accustomed to nearly six years of severe controls and severe taxation, they had only to continue such controls and taxation, and did not have to fight any of the bitter and controversial battles that would have been necessary to bring in such drastic and revolutionary changes in time of peace. The most important part, the taxation, of what is now pointed to on Labour platforms as Labour’s great work was, in historical fact,