THE TABLET December 6th, 1958. VOL. 212, No. 6185

T l-IE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 184 0

DECEMBER 6th, 1958

N1NEPENCE

Africa and 1789: The French Problem

Verdict of 1 ranee: The Rout of the Communists. By Frank MacMillan

What Kinds of Secondary School i*: Coincidentia Oppositorum

Pope John XXIII and Poland: The Farewell Audience with Cardinal Wyszynski

Meditations in Advent: II. Recognising Christ. B y William Burridge, W.F.

CHRISTMAS BOOK SUPPLEMENT Reviews by the Bishop of Salford, Lady Hcsketh, D.W., J. J. Dwyer, Siegfried Sassoon, D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Rosemary Gould, Iris Conlay, Peter Watts, George Scott-Monerictf,

Maryvonne Butcher, Janet Bruce and Denis Brass.

EXPANSION

yHE British electorate is a great deflator of extremists.

For the change over forty years from what the Labour Party was meant to be in the drastic imagination of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, writing the programme in 1918. to what Mr. Gaitskell puts out in 1958, the only parallel is what happened to Radicalism between the middle of the last century and the time when it came to power in the beginning of this.

In 1885 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain issued a Radical programme which really was radical, looking for root and branch reforms, which included the disestablishment of the Church of England. It was a blood-andthunder document by comparison with the programme with which the Liberals won the election of 1905, really on the misdeeds of the Conservatives who had been in office ten years. The great Radical of 1885 had become the great Protectionist and Imperialist, who went down to defeat thirty years later.

As 1959 approaches, the political shape of things begins to emerge. The Government will go to the country with such clear proofs that it is pursuing an expansionist policy as will make it impossible for even the most unscrupulous platform opponents to suggest that Tories have a secret love of deflation and unemployment. This week Parliament is being asked to sanction a further £1,655 million in the borrowing powers of the four main nationalised industries, electricity, gas, transport and coal. A Labour Government could hardly venture to do more. Over the railways the great difference is that the Conservatives do not propose to re-nationalise road transport in order to shore up the railway accounts. Their view will commend itself to

RENEWED the general public and, in particular, to the business community who undoubtedly prefer that road haulage should not be a nationalised service.

The gold and dollar reserves are now the highest for seven years ; and the Government can point to them to still doubts whether they are over-spending in their determination that there must be no unemployment because a serious growth of unemployment would lead to electoral defeat. In spite of the high reserves, there is ground for some disquiet lest the two-party system is settling down to an inevitable competition, as though the political parties were shops desperately seeking to attract the same customer inside, by showing what he can have here and now, while paying later, if at all.

One of the biggest assets of the Government is Mr. Heathcoat Amory’s gift for carrying conviction when he declares his belief that taxes are too high. Many Conservative leaders have said and say this, but without carrying the same conviction, for they leave the impression that, while they give a notional assent to the proposition, they are really much more interested in seeing that the Conservative Party has as good a Welfare State record of money spent on education, or health, as their opponents. While they want to spend rather more than their opponents want to spend on defence, and at least as much in Government grants and loans for the Commonwealth, the result is a formidable total which leaves little or no scope for serious tax alleviation, while they never forget that the patient payers of direct taxation really have nowhere else to turn to, for the Labour Party will always treat them worse, particularly over income that can be misleadingly labelled unearned.