24 NOVEMBER 1967, Page 7

New phavlocracy for old

GREECE MICHAEL LLEWELLYN-SMITII

This is the second of two articles on Greece under the colonels. The first appeared last week.

Athens—If Greece's military regime confined its activities to road-building, housing and other

acceptable projects, while preparing for a return to parliamentary democracy, it might retain the support it has, which is by no means negligible. But this support must wane as more and more of the Greeks come to see that the parliamentary democracy being prepared is a fake; and government interference in sensitive fields such as education, entailing the destruc- tion of all reforms, good or bad, associated with Papandreou, is increasing the number of opponents who might have been tolerant if the regime had sustained its claim to be above party politics.

The regime promised a renaissance, a clean slate. The promise was doomed in the first few weeks by the purge in which so many people, many of them harmless liberals, lost their jobs. Inevitably a military party has formed round the junta, consisting of the naive, who thought they could tame the colonels, and the power-hungry. The main- tenance of an anti-communist fever is in their interests; it tends to justify the continued state of emergency, the censorship, the arrests, the extension of government powers and patronage over every area of Greek life. The sheer num- bers of people sacked, arrested or simply humiliated by continual abuse, have made the clean slate impossible for years to come. Even if the regime falls, there will be too many scores to settle.

By reviving the 'certificates of social views' on which the jobs of public functionaries de- pend (the system, though never abolished, was beginning to lapse under Papandreou), the regime, so far from wiping the slate clean, has opened up the lives of all candidates for public service to police inspection and approval.- A fresh start would have meant burning these humiliating documents. The System puts into the hands of the police a terrifying power to grant or withdraw the means of livelihood of

ordinary, patriotic Greeks. It is a bureaucracy of a far more sinister kind than that which the regime claims to be attacking.

Cultural life is, of course, at a low ebb. But

publishing is stagnant. Apart from the ban on existing left-wing books and books translated by left-wing authors, no publisher is going to - risk printing a work which may be refused by the censorship. Most of the 'little magazines' have folded up. The press censorship, and the closing down of Kathimerini, Mesimvrini, Eleftheria and other papers, have caused a fall in total circulation of about 40 per cent, which hits the old liberal papers hardest. The right- wing papers have actually gained ground, since the Greeks still have to read something, and there are obvious advantages in reading a paper which claims to be close to the seat of power. The rise of Eleftheros Kosmos, from around 10,000 to perhaps 60,000, has been phenomenal.

Its editor, Savvas Konstandopoulos, with the paper a year or two ago with a vigorous campaign on behalf of Mr Karaman- lis, then as now in retirement in Paris. While continuing to remind his readers from time to time of the existence of Karamanlis, Kon- standopoulos has succeeded in becoming the junta's megaphone. They may not like him, but they need him.

The worst muddle is in education. Papan- dreou's reforms in 1964, while not faultless, were a serious attempt to liberalise the system by abolishing compulsory Latin, introducing the new mathematics, commissioning cleanly

printed and finely illustrated textbooks in place of the dreary things then in use, and pro- posing the use of demotiki, the spoken lan- guage, at all levels in education.

Most of Papandreou's reforms of the content of education were sensible; but the problem

of inadequate facilities, cramped buildings and lack of trained teachers for the sciences and technical education remained, and were not helped by his benevolent institution of free education at all levels. Even the site of Patras university, founded under Papandreou, has not yet been decided on. So one can welcome this regime's announcement of a crash programme for school buildings, and hope that it is im- plemented. If only building were all that they were doing!

Children are lectured on the principles and aims of the revolution. A new generation is being indoctrinated in the theory that leftists are not Greeks. Several hundred teachers have been suspended or dismissed, most of them in secondary education, where the teacher- pupil ratio is one of the worst in Europe. Most of the Papandreou reforms have been dismantled, and since the regime has not had time to produce its own textbooks, some of the Papandreou books are still in use and some of the pre-1964 warhorses have been pressed back into service. The school meals introduced by Papandreou have been abolished, and -the direct subsidies promised in their place will not

all reach the children's stomachs in the form of food. Katharevousa, the purist language, is

back as the official language from the fourth elementary grade upwards. Teachers who spoke of a heartening new spirit in the schools since 1964 are now baffled and angry, and pupils who last year learned one spelling for demotic Greek are now presented with the same book differently spelled.

Typical phrases in the present ideological vocabulary are 'the destiny of the Greek race,' `the deeds of our glorious ancestors,' the National family,' to which communists and fellow-travellers are continually urged to return, and, of course, the 'Hellenic-Christian virtues.' There has been a lot of jargon, too, about the 'historic inevitability' of the revolu- tion of 21 April—a phrase perhaps dug out from dim recesses of memory by those sup- porters of the regime who dabbled with marxism in their youth. There is an absurd as well as a dangerous side to this extreme nationalism. The absurdity is that the Greeks are an extremely nationalistic people anyway, with a deep-rooted and often irritating con- ception of themselves and their role in world history, and need absolutely no encouragement to study the deeds of their illustrious forebears. The danger is that the Hellenic-Christian ideals prescribed today lack the single most impor- tant ingredient in the Greeks' conception of themselves—freedom.

Freedom is part of what it means to be a Greek. The young Greek novelist Vassilikos, whose banned book, Z, is a fictional recon- struction of the murder of Lambrakis, the EDA cleputy, in 1963, said in Paris recently when questioned on his use of the term `Greekness' in the book : 'It is a word which is dear to us Greeks. It signifies our dream. Greekness is the freedom which we would like to have in our country and which we have never com- pletely had. We have only had the chance to breathe democracy at intervals.' To each his own Greekness. By persisting in a Greekness which excludes freedom, the government is en- listing, the national pride of the Greeks against it. It realises this, and talks of real freedom, as opposed to licence, 'disciplined freedom,' in Pattalcos's latest phrase.

The danger for the government is not yet acute; perhaps even now it could be averted if the Greeks were given what Vassilikos calls a 'safety valve'—a few nominal relaxations, the opportunity to argue freely in the press.. The safety valve on which the government pins its hopes is the constitution promised for next year. To make quite sure that it is, in Colonel Papadopoulos's words, 'as perfect as possible for contemporary societies,' the regime has not only pointed out to the constitutional com- mission, in an open letter from the Prime Minister, the areas where changes must be made, but also reserves the right to 'elaborate' the commission's draft before submitting it to the Greek people for approval.

The Greeks who oppose this regime are divided. The activists, those who are printing leaflets and occasionally throwing bombs, see the enemy as the junta, the police, the King and what thcy call the 'economic oligarchy' of some two or three hundred powerful families. They tend to be labelled indiscriminately as commu'hisls by the government, which is in- correct, though it is, of course,, true that there will be strenuous communist attempts to take over the leadership of any underground resis- stance movement. The passivists—the vast majority, including the old, the tired, and the politicians who remain at large—arc hopefully waiting for something to turn up. They have a touching faith in international pressure, though the most that this is likely to achieve is the avoidance of open militarisation of the gov- ernment. They look to the King, even if in the past they have opposed him, to put pressure on the junta for a democratic solution.

But the King's position is steadily being under- mined. He, like the junta, has pledged him- self to a return to parliamentary life. He sym- pathises with their anti-communism but not with their open suppression of democracy. On any individual issue, such as the notorious case of the 400 officers whose dismissal the junta demanded, the King feels that the time for an open break has not yet come. In this case he gave in and signed a decree dismissing more than 200. But with each concession his power decreases. The danger of bloodshed, which is said to have deterred him from appealing to the army on 21 April, would now be still greater should he provoke an open. breach. But the King, even if a frail reed, is still the best influence which the Greeks now possess with the junta. His prestige in the army and with the conservative half of the nation means the government cannot afford an open break.

It is no good for the Greeks to sit back and hope that the King may by magic persuade the military regime to retire. There must be an alternative government ready. Of the 300 members of the last parliament, those of EDA, the party of the extreme left, are out of the running, either in jail or abroad. So are some of the centre. Of the rest, in the Centre Union and the conservative ERE, only one, Mr Kanel- lopoulos, has openly declared himself against the regime, and the majority are waiting with a sort of fatalistic expectancy for the old political game to start up again. Although some third parties have been working for a rapprochement, the leaders of ERE and the centre do not seem prepared to cooperate. The present dissension of the politicians plays into the hands of the junta and of those political figures of the extreme right, such as Mr Pipinelis, who see themselves as leaders of 'successor' governments. If at the vital moment —and a split within the junta or a. reaction within the army could bring it about—the King's choice is limited to Pipinelis and his like, the outlook for Greece is grim. Significantly, Mr Pipinelis has this week become the first of the politicians to join the junta, as Foreign Minister.

A number of conservative politicians have made the journey to Paris to confer with Mr Karamanlis, who sits in retirement, nursing a grudge against the Greek people for dismissing him from office. The difficulties in the way of a Karamanlis government are formidable —his own chilly relations with the royal family, his reluctance to take on the job without a clear mandate and a free hand, the deep resentment worked up against him in the minds of the centre supporters in the course of Papandreou's 'relentless struggle' for his dis- missal in 1961-63. Life under Karamanlis, which the left used to label 'concealed fascism,' seems in retrospect a bed of roses—an incomplete democracy perhaps, but one which allowed the possibility of change. If not the best prime minister Greece could possibly have, he-is still the best prime minister she is likely to get when and if the junta cracks. Despite the Observer's suggestion of Archbishop Makarios, there is no one else in sight.

But there is a quality of desperation about such speculations here. The Greeks must specu- late, there is nothing else to do. Behind all the talk of 'solutions,' there is among moderate Greeks a deep sadness, that enough of their politicians failed them in the past to lend sub- stance to the regime's talk of 'phavlocracy' (debased government); that so many Greeks have found it in their heart to support this government; that the soldiers are riding a tiger they cannot now dismount.