Six,--Your contributor gloatingly debunks the New Left, but he leaves
out its most important feature—it is the conscience of Britain. Disquieting world developments in the middle Thirties created the Spanish Crusaders and the Left Book Club with their accompanying mental ferments; the apocalypse of the Second World War brought forth in 1945 a Labour Government aspiring to be New but con- demned to be Old Left; Suez, Hungary and the H-bomb have created the latest (not the late) New Left. Whenever the conscience of Britain is sharply pricked, a New Left comes painfully to birth. Our current baby is incoherent, lacking in clear self- direction as in clear self-expression: it dreadfully needs an Orwell and a G. D. H. Cole. But it is at least aware; it at least tries to think alongside the racing advance of lethal technology; it takes seriously the attempt to steer us away from hell on earth. Let us keep it alive and nourish it, for despite its callowness it's the only conscience we've got.
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