Political Commentary
BY CHARLES CURRAN WRITE as British and French forces are moving to re- I occupy the Suez Canal. Nobody doubts that there will be resistance by Egypt. But the long-delayed build-up is now big enough to make reoccupation practicable.
Political controversy over the decision is, essentially, an argument in which most of the words are on one side and all the realities on the other.,This is manifest to anyone who looks beyond Westminster to the position of Israel. To represent her as an aggressor is to substitute words for realities. Few people have ever supposed that the incidence of mental deficiency in Tel Aviv is noticeably high; and fewer still can suppose it now. Neither Mr. Ben-Gurion nor his advisers can afford to make mistakes of judgement. Colonel Nasser has never made any secret of his resolve to wipe out his neighbour; and during the past few days he has put Israel on notice in a fashion that nobody—certainly not the members of her shrewd and watch- ful Government—could mistake. The military manoeuvrings of Cairo—the creation of a combined command with Jordan, the transfer of warplanes to Jordan—made it publicly plain that the blow was about to fall. (The Tel Aviv intelligence services, it is said, could amplify that statement considerably.) The worst that can be said of Israel is that she has sought to parry the blow before it overwhelmed her. But she is no more an aggres- sor than the householder who knocks the revolver from the burglar's hand.
But the realities that weigh so heavily on Tel Aviv weigh just as heavily in London. For each Government, though for differing reasons, the question is whether decision is to be dictated by the course of events or by the processes of debate. It was this question that confronted the House of Commons when Sir Anthony Eden made his statement on Tuesday. The Government insisted that the executive must act on the facts, that with war moving towards the Canal we had no choice but to protect our ships, our oil, our national interests, that the longer we delayed the more dangerous our position would become. But the Left wanted a decision to be formulated only when it had emerged from debate.
Mr. Gaitskell was told about the Prime Minister's statement fifteen minutes before it was made. (The fact that it was impossible to give him the longer period that is customary was in itself an indication of the speed with which events were on the move.) In those fifteen minutes he had to reach conclusions of gravity both for his party and for himself personally. It would be unfair to withhold sympathy from him, for this was indeed no matter for snap judgements. In his mind, no doubt. was the recollection of his speech on August 2, that unlucky utterance which he has been busily explaining away ever since. How was he to avoid falling into the pit of agreement with the Government this time?
Some of his followers were less troubled. They were the happy anti-colonialists, for whom Colonel Nasser is, and always will be, a cross between George Washington and a damsel in distress. But there were also those who know very well that Israel has a case, and that her case cannot be nega- tived with slogans; and there were those who might possibly support the Government's policy so long as they could at the same time oppose the Government. They were all curious to see how Mr. Gaitskell would contrive to create unity behind him.
He did it with skill—for most of the time. He gave the impression that he was talking much less to the Government than to the benches behind him. For he was apparently deter- mined to avoid the question 'Must we delay even though by delaying we create a situation of unmanageable danger?' You saw the full extent of Mr. Gaitskell's dexterity when the artless Mr. Alfred Robens spoke. Mr. Robens is too naive for dialec- tical fencing. 'The Prime Minister,' he insisted, 'would lose nothing by postponing this decision for forty-eight hours, during which time the Security Council would have made its decision.'
It is plain, of course, that Sir Anthony Eden has crossed his Rubicon. The need for decision has led him to act without giving him much time for consultation, either with the United States or with the Dominions. (It is said—but whether accur- ately or not, I do not pretend to know—that there is some divergence of vie\v over Suez between Australia's Foreign Minister and his Canberra Cabinet colleagues.) Of course it would have been better if the Prime Minister had had more time for consultation. But it would have been better still if there had been no crisis to consult about.
Meanwhile we must expect—and we shall certainly get--a great deal of hand-wringing from Washington. We shall bear it, no doubt, with our customary fortitude. Politicians do not forget, either in London or in Tel Aviv, that polling day in the Presidential elections falls next week. (If I were a cynic I would allow myself the reflection that Presidential elections have now become far too serious to be left to Americans only, and that Britain too should be allowed to join in.) By far the most important event of the week in our domestic politics has been the defeat of Mr. Joe Scott, the Communist candidate, in the election for a new general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. It is completely unexpected. A vast sigh of relief must have gone up from the Ministry of Labour in St. James's Square. For Mr. Scott's chances were rated as high as those of Mr. Eisenhower. Everything seemed in Mr. Scott's favour; including the fact that there were, oddly enough, no fewer than six other candi- dates to divide the anti-Communist vote between them. The shop stewards' organisation that the Communists manipulate in the engineering industry exerted itself to the full on behalf of the party nominee. Yet he got a mere 17,545 votes. For the Communist Party to be able to do no better than this is a startling defeat. It means checkmate in the fascinating game of industrial chess that the party has been playing inside the engineering industry. It is all the more significant since the AEU poll closed on October 8. The result is therefore not to be attributed to the changes caused in the climate of working- class opinion by events in Poland and Hungary.
Those changes are indeed extensive. They will have a pro- found effect on the mass level of our politics. At that level—as everyone familiar with it can confirm—the magnetism of the Workers' State has been prodigious; it has stretched far beyond the limits of the Communist Party. No argument could destroy it; only the Red Army could do that. Now the AEU executive itself passed a resolution this week 'welcoming the struggle for freedom and living standards of the Hungarian and Polish Peoples' (with Mr. Joe Scott as the only dissentient). More important still is the action of the TUC in sponsoring a trade union fund to help the anti-colonial rebels of the Soviet empire in the name of working-class solidarity.
The myth that has helped to form working-class opinion in this country for a generation past is now being demolished by the guns of the Red Army.
Previous page
