Spectator's Notebook
LORD HUNTINGDON'S letter in Wednesday's Tinter is a textbook demonstration of the fallacies of innocent fellow-travelling. He is dismayed by the prospect of Earl Russell's expul- sion from the Labour Party for his sponsorship of the now-notorious Moscow conference. He says, rightly, that nobody will question Lord Russell's sincerity or suspect him of sympathy for the Communist Party. He says, sensibly, that Communist strategy of infiltration must be resisted. So far, so good. But embedded in these unexceptionable statements are the central falla- cies of the well-meaning but disastrous approach that the letter typifies. Lord Huntingdon says Lord Russell faces expulsion for his sponsorship of 'a conference which has the object of promot- ing peace between East and West.' But this is Lord Russell's object, not that of the conference. The purpose of the conference is to further in any way it can the Soviet domination of the world. That simple aim is the sole reason for the conference's existence. The fact that people like Lord Russell, who do not support that aim, have yet been induced to support the conference, helps its purpose very well, since it helps to disguise that purpose from the gullible. Lord Huntingdon also propounds the other main fallacy. 'If we are not allowed to talk with people from Communist countries,' he asks, 'how can they learn that there is some virtue in the Western world, or how can we hope to change suspicion and hostility into tolerance and under- standing?' But dialogue can only be fruitful (to put it in Kennedyesque terms) when both speakers can hear. When one of them is deaf it is at best useless, and at far more common worst actively dangerous; for the man who can hear thinks that the other can too, and acts accordingly. Talking to a Moscow-sponsored conference of this variety is talking to the deaf. And it would only be undertaken by the blind.
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