Spectator's Notebook
WHEN I suggested a fortnight ago that the campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was ripe for a take-over bid by the Communists, I fully expected a number of letters of abuse and reproach. They duly arrived. But I did not expect that my words would be so quickly con- firmed by Hugh Gaitskell and Len Williams, the general secretary of the Labour Party. Now 1 wonder if those who found a vicious smear in what I wrote will be shaken out of their inno- cence by Mr. Williams's statement that CND 'has now obviously become infiltrated by anti- democratic elements,' and that the barracking and disgraceful disorder at May Day demonstra- tions in Glasgow and London was 'unquestionably organised by the Communist Party and other extremist Left-wing groups hostile to Labour'? And if not, will they be shaken by the resignation of the leading Glasgow campaigner and his at- tack on the demonstration as a Communist stunt? I doubt it. There are no people more mulish than those petrified in the consciousness of their own rectitude. Few of the letters that have reached me inspire me with much belief in their authors' accessibility to the power of reason or even to events in the world around them. I find some- thing comical in the idea of Canon Collins's writing to Hugh Gaitskell to apologise for the incidents on Sunday, but 1 do understand his anxiety. It now looks as if CND might be pro- scribed for members of the Labour Party. Canon Collins must presumably wish, as a minis- ter of religion, to avoid the coming struggle be- tween ambition and conviction in the consciences of those Left-wing Labour members who are neither card-carrying Communists nor fellow- travellers.
Previous page
