MARX SAID that religion was the opium of the people.
I see that a writer in Tribune seems to agree with him. He points out that while there has been an increased interest in religion there has been a decline of interest in politics as exemplified by a decline in the poll at the General Election. 'If this is more than a coincidence,' he writes, 'then men like Billy Graham . . . have a heavy responsibility on their shoulders.' A low poll favours the Tories and apparently therefore Dr. Graham bears the 'heavy responsibility' for Labour's defeat. He was the drug that kept Labour voters away from the poll. The same writer recently saw the General Election as a contest 'between those who as members of the working classes believed that the Labour movement especially serves their interests, and those who fear that the furtherance of those interests represents a threat to their own.' Mr. Graham does not seem to me to fit very well into this picture, and it is perhaps a difficulty that about half the Tory vote comes from the working classes. But such well-known facts have of course to be ignored by believers in class-war dogma. Finding such pieces of vulgar Marxism in Tribune did not surprise me, but it is mildly surprising that the faithful Bevanite who wrote them is not a Marxist but a Methodist, Dr. Soper.
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