28 FEBRUARY 1958, Page 7

' SHOULD A SOCIALIST,' Tom Driberg asked in Reynolds News last

Sunday, apropos Time and Tide, 'regret the death of a reactionary newspaper or periodical? When the Socialist Common- wealth is established, presumably such publica- tions will, with other agencies of the old order, wither away.' Mr. Driberg then goes on to lament that Reynolds News 'is bought by only one in every thirty people who voted Labour in 1955: The other twenty-nine, I should think, are under- standably nauseated by such cant—especially Coming from a man who, as the first William Hickey, made his own reputation on the Daily Express, as a protégé of that great herald of the Socialist Commonwealth dawn, Lord Beaver- brook.