A Spectator's Notebook
I CAN PERFECTLY well understand why the reaction to the reports of the famous Labour Party dinner for Bulganin and Khrushchev—as they came through, first in a trickle and then in a flood—should have been confused. It was good, certainly, that a pair of tyrants should be reminded that even if the gifts they came bearing were increased a hundredfold they would not minimise the indignation which the ordinary people of this country feel at the gross injustices perpetrated everywhere behind the iron Curtain in the name of a 'people's democracy.' And yet—could not this have been raised privately, tactfully, persuasively, by Mr. Gaitskell, in the hope of convincing the Russian leaders that their habit of imprisoning, and on occa- sion butchering, political opponents is not one which endears them to the West? But when I thought of this high-minded confusion, I recalled a different sort of confusion which I saw at work in • Berlin the other week. A group of Labour MPs had been touring the grey desert of Eastern Germany and at the conclusion of their trip had permitted themselves, to be photographed with the peculiarly obnoxious puppets who exercise the Communist tyranny there, appearing not merely to condone but actually to approve the cruelties which their hosts daily inflict on their unfortunate subjects—and specially on Social Democrats. The effect of this upon Social Democrats in Berlin I could see for myself, and it took no great effort to imagine the additional load of despair which it must have placed on those still holding out, after so many years, farther behind the Iron Curtain. And so it seems to me, recalling this, foolish to quibble about the form in which the Labour Party's protest was made. It was made—and that is enough. Already many thousands of the persecuted in the satellite countries must realise that they have not been given up for lost after all
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