WRING OUT THE OLD
IN days gone by Punch used to provide annually variations of a stock cartoon in which the wicked Old Year, depicted as an aged, dilapidated codger with a Rip Van Winkle beard, was chased out of sight by the brave New Year, a gay young child. And however corny the treatment, the sentiment usually had some justification; most old years seemed in retrospect so dreary that the new ones could hardly be worse. There have been precious few years, in fact, in the present century which people have been sorry to see out (with the appropriate celebrations); and even when an indi- vidual year has brought joy, or relief-1918, 1945 —it has usually also brought disillusionment.
For a change, we can take some comfort from 1959; if not pride. At least it was the year of the Thaw. The two great world power blocs met not head-on but face to face. The cold war became less intense; the risk of a real war receded. When the Russians sent a missile to the moon, and another round it, we in Britain could feel genuine pleasure at the achievement—a different kind of pleasure, too, from that which greeted the first Sputnik, which was spiced by the feeling that the Americans had been taken down a peg. Anti- American feeling here decreases when there is diminishing fear of Russia—for the obvious reason that the less dependent we are on the US the less resentful we are of our dependence. The best fillip Anglo-American relations received in 1959 was not Ike's visit, pleasant though it was to be host to him, but the news that sterling had become relatively 'harder' than the dollar.
In 1959, too, Britain never had it so good. It was the year that the old slogan 'I'm all right, Jack,' was politically translated at a General Election into 'You're all right, Mac'; and to do the Govern- ment justice, it would have deserved the elec- torate's accolade had home affairs alone been the issue. But they were not : and because they were not, we should take a searching look at the old year, with a sceptical eye in the hope that what- ever may happen at home in 1960, the same dis- graceful mistakes will not be repeated abroad.
Undoubtedly the worst failure was over Africa. It has become as difficult to avoid tedium in repe- tition of 'Hola,"Nyasaland,"apartheid' and other loaded words as it was to escape it with 'Sue'; it would be preferable to put the past out of mind— particularly as the new Colonial Secretary should be given every opportunity to show whether he can do anything to rescue the Government from last year's ignominy, as the signs are he has been trying to do. In Kenya there have been slight but perceptible moves to bring the Not an Inch! white residents to their senses; and Tanganyika under Julius Nyerere is well on the road to self- government. But farther south the picture is less happy; and the Prime Minister has now made it worse by his announcement of how he has filled the vacant places in the Monckton Commission.
It is hard to account for two of his choices except on a basis of rather childish spite. Lord Shawcross and Aidan Crawley have both shown themselves men of ability : Lord Shawcross as an outstanding advocate; Mr. Crawley as the founder- organiser of independent Television News. But because they are ex-members of the Labour Party who have not yet found a new allegiance, neither of them carries any weight politically.
When Lord Shawcross prated of the length of his service to the party at the 1953 Labour Party Conference, the writing went up on the wall : soon afterwards he was dubbed Sir Shortly Floor- cross, and his party proceeded to discount him. He has done nothing to restore himself in its good graces. Mr. Crawley was for a while an Under- Secretary in the Labour Government; but his head-prefectorial manner, with its resemblance to a school cricket captain waiting to chase the fags out to fielding practice, did not endear him to his colleagues. Since that time his weekly articles in a Sunday newspaper, which attempted to be weighty and succeeded in being heavy-handed, have clearly charted his course on the long tack to starboard. It is comically easy to visualise him on the Commission—a figure like Sir Harold Nicolson's Marstock, putting his hand on some Africali's shoulder and saying, 'You promise that during the next year you will try'; but it is not easy to see who on the Left is going to take his opinions seriously. Indeed the Prime Minister could hardly have found an easier way finally to discredit the Com- mission with the Left than by these two appoint- ments, nor will they strengthen it with Conserva- tives. The majority report is clearly destined to be Welenskyite in character. If either or both of them agree with it the presence of their signatures will be superfluous; if they disagree, their minority reports will carry no weight.
In the meantime, the general trend in Central Africa remains retrograde. Occasional breaches in the colour bar are boasted about—when a hotel, say, becomes multi-racial. But much less is heard about 'The Preservation of Public Security Ordinance' or The Protected Places and Areas Ordinance,' both ostensibly designed to preserve public safety in Northern Rhodesia, both provid- ing the administration with further arbitrary powers without any real justification—powers which can be used to suppress legitimate national- istic aspirations as well as faction. Mr. Macmil- lan's visit to South Africa, too, is wonderfully badly timed, It is just possible that he will be able to convince his hosts that Field-Marshal Mont- gomery's opinions are not shared by the great majority of Britons, but it is much more likely that the mere presence will seem to cast a British bene- diction on apartheid.
But Africa, though the most pressing of the Government's problems, is far from being the only serious one. Relations with Europe are cer- tain to cause growing embarrassment unless the present rift between the Six and the Seven can be healed. It can be argued that the collapse of the negotiations for a free trade area was not Britain's fault—certainly not the fault of Reginald Maud- Bin, who did his best within the framework of what was politically possible. But there is no doubt, in view of what has happened, that the Government misinterpreted the mood of the French and the Germans, and underestimated their capacity to go it together, without the British. There is still far too much cant talked by Minis- ters, the Foreign Minister in particular, at gather- ings in or about Europe, on the lines of 'Britain is in Europe'; what the Six want is not phrases, not even gestures, but solid indications that Britain is prepared to make sacrifices to prove its right to this geographical claim.
Defence represents another worrying problem. In an article on another page Christopher Hollis cogently exposes some of the underlying contra- dictions and fallacies of British defence policy. We are, he says, doing exactly what we blame the French for doing : pretending that the possession of nuclear weapons gives us strength and prestige, when in fact it does neither; it merely costs immense sums of money.
There is something disreputable, too, about the way in which we congratulate ourselves that we are about to abolish conscription, admirable though that aim certainly is, when it simply means that we are doing so at the expense of our com- mitments to NATO.
Even in the wider field of international relations the prospects are not as rosy as some propagand- ists have tried to make them appear. To represent the agreement to hold a summit meeting as a diplomatic triumph for Mr. Macmillan was foolish; but, in any case, now that it is likely to be held, it no longer seems so important. The craving for a summit was originally based on a desire to see East-West tension eased; as it has now eased anyway the prospect of seeing the heads of States talking and drinking together before a huge concourse of journalists, though still gratifying, no longer seems to have such urgency.
Notable though President Eisenhower's contri- bution to the slackening of world tension was, some of the glitter of his Progress has been taken off that, too, by his visit to Spain. His voyage took him to such ill-assorted places that he was made to sound less like a prince of peace than a presi- dential candidate who has to say different and contradictory things at each whistle-stop in order to try to remain popular in all States.
A fortnight ago our Madrid Correspondent drew attention to the proceedings against the diplomat Julio Ceron; they were, presumably, tacitly ignored during Ike's visit. They should not have been. Ceron had earlier been sentenced to four (according to some reports, three) years' imprisonment for 'plotting rebellion.' The Public Prosecutor, who had demanded a ten-year sen- tence, was not unnaturally indignant; and the Military Governor of Madrid was persuaded not to confirm the sentence, on the grounds that it was not severe enough. The Public Prosecutor, gratefully taking the hint, asked for a twenty-year sentence: 'presumably,' our correspondent wrote, 'the "court" will, equally obediently, now give Ceron eight years.' And that is precisely the sen- tence the court has since given him.
The sentence might have been heavier but for the presence in Madrid of Bob Edwards, MP, and the publicity which followed his detention by the Spanish police. Mr. Edwards was able to watch the Eisenhower parade, with its three lines of military', its machine-gun nests in tactical places, its police among the crowds and on the roofs. He was able, too, to hear the crowds' glum silence (except where claques had been planted); and to see the indifference of the back streets, where no decor8. tions were shown. But he was not allowed to attend the Ceron trial, as he had wished to do. He believes, though, that the hullabaloo arising out of his arrest, which had repercussions in Nevi York as well as in London, may have helped Ceron, whose defenders expected a much heavier sentence. Who knows? But certainly such pub. licity—in Spain, in South Africa, wherever ifl. justice is to be found—can, be of great benefit-- just as official visits, Ike to Franco, Mac 10 Vervvoerd. can do great harm.
There is no reason to be pessimistic about 1960; but there is every reason to be cautious. Mr. Khrushchev is not playing his present game for fun; he has made up his mind that the easiest way to break Western unity is to ease the pressure on the Western Powers, in the hope that their own differences will drive them apart. The economic situation may look satisfactory, but, even if we can reasonably assume there will be no 1929-style slump, the mechanism of our mixed economy has shown itself liable to breakdowns in the not-so- distant past : they may happen again. And so long as our rulers appease the Verwoerds and the Francos, so long as they allow legitimate national- istic movements to be stamped upon by minorities, so long as they continue to elevate 'I'm all right. Jack' into a moral principle, we would do well to be sceptical about the prospects for the future.
Previous page
