THE TABLET January 11th, 1958. VOL. 211, No. 6135

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 11th, 1958

NINEPENCE

Party Convictions and Political Compromises : Dilemma for Both Parties Greek Enigmas : Language and Religion. By Joseph Minihan Plans for Pensions : The Labour Party’s Scheme. By John F. L. Bray The Dependence o f M.p.s: Life Without the Party Whip. By Patrick Maitland, M.P. Behind the Block Grants : The Local Government Bill The Church Unity Octave : Growth through Fifty Years Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters ; Chess

ILL-TIMED DEPARTURE

''T 'HE annual Budget is now so large that the estimates are always out, and generally by more than the £50 millions which have divided the Treasury Ministers from their colleagues. They have been over-rigid, and by resigning are rocking the boat just when the Government most needs support. It may well be that Mr. Thorneycroft has stiffened the Cabinet he has left. The Ministers who remain will be particularly careful to disprove the apprehensions at home and abroad that they are politicians thinking too much about the electorate and the next election to pursue to the full consequences the policies needed to preserve the pound.

Mr. Thorneycroft has so often reaffirmed in recent ,weeks that the defence of the pound must come before all else that he must be assumed to have weighed very carefully what the effects of his resignation, its timing and its declared cause, are likely to be at home and abroad. He has a good deal of support on the Conservative back benches, and the Ministers, nearly all of whom have now been for only a short time in their offices — Mr. Lennox Boyd is the chief exception in the Commons—will meet a restive Conservative Party. Many of the back-benchers have only a remote prospect of being in the next House, and while they do not at all agree with suggestions that the Government has shown a lack of courage to do unpopular things, for they look like suffering electorally for them, they recall that there is an old proverb about as well being hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and think the Conservative Party would now do well to show more of the courage of its own convictions ; and that the bold course might avoid a hanging altogether. They want to reaffirm their basic conviction that the object of policy should be first to generate the largest possible national income and then to leave as much of it as possible to be spent by people themselves, and not for them by Government; that to keep money stable and things cheap is more important for social welfare than the extension of social services whose consequence is that what seems to be given with one hand is, in fact, taken away with the other through falling money and rising prices.

But all this, which is discussed further in our editorial article, is a much wider question than that on which Mr. Thorneycroft has chosen to go. He had been in the Cabinet since 1951, and must be presumed to have acquiesced in the large shape of the policies, and the onlooker may well ask, in the words of Richard 11, “ and tires he now for this ? ”

The Conservative Government can claim that public expenditure is taking a smaller share of the national income than it was when they came into office ; that it is now 30 per cent instead of 32 per cent, or whatever it might become if the Opposition were in power. If this is not a great result, and less than what was predicted when the Socialists fell, it is something, even if it is chiefly due, not to economies, but to the rise in the national income as measured in money terms. The depreciation in the value of money distorts the picture, and we are not nearly as much better off as might be thought by those who see that the gross national income has risen by half as much again ; that where it was £12,790 millions when the Conservatives came in, it is over £18,000 millions today. Government expenditure has not moved upward in proportion from £4,000 millions to £6,000 millions, but only to £5j millions. Dealing with figures of this size, the Government are quite right to eschew a too hard and fast approach, or to let a matter of £50 millions be magnified into a great issue of principle. Even granted that Mr. Thorneycroft was right to fight for such a rigid line, it does not follow that he was right to leave because he could not get his way if his departure is likely to increase a general sense of instability.

The substitutions were plainly made in great haste, and we cannot believe it is a good plan to load Mr. Maudling with further wide responsibilities as lieutenant to an inexperienced Chancellor when he himself faces a most arduous year negotiating with the Western European Powers, and trying to prevent the economic unity of Europe from taking a shape that will be injurious to British prospects. Those negotiations are plainly a full-time assignment for one Minister. Mr. Thorneycroft's colleagues were quite right not to be brow-beaten into further cuts at this juncture. It is one of the strong reasons for going very