5 JANUARY 1962, Page 18

Committee of 100-plus

By BERNA RD EVIN

But among the usual batch of such letters last week was one which raises a question or two worth exploring, outside the points in the letter itself. It is, of course, too long to print in full, but here are a few choice, and entirely repre- sentative, excerpts. 'I would like to explain to you,' the writer begins, 'why I think the Spectator worth only the contempt and anger of those who are working for peace and a sane use of the world's resources.' From then on, anything goes.

. . . you don't stand against the present system based upon profit, competition, force and the centralisation of power . . . you don't agitate for a social order based on production for need and the widest possible broadening of decision-making (including workers' control). . . . You are bought and sold before you start --by the capitalist-executive system . . . you end in complete acceptance and in hypocrisy and lies . . . like the enlightened bourgeoisie of. the last hundred years, strong in power but weak in mind . . you end by recommending the thing that causes what you fear . . . Cold War . . . NATO. structure . . . the rallying of the monopolies behind the steel, chemical and dollar curtain.. . . Kennedy and Macmillan say 'as a matter of prudent planning,' the West may resume tests. . . . I wouldn't trust those two to settle an argument between taxi-drivers. . . . So much for your inability to . . . think. The hypocrisy and lies next. If Britain gave up her nuclear weapons 'the Soviet machine would roll westwards' . . . repeating the sick myth of the business and owning classes ever since the Revolution. The lie has been told in their monopoly-owned papers for so long. . . . Khrushchev has said 'revolution is not for ex- port.' . . . Russia hangs on to the satellite countries as a line of defence against NATO. . . . This is the end of European culture . . . the filthy and perverting system that dominates the West.

And I bet you won't print this letter either.

Now I am not concerned (it would be difficult to be) with the contents of this letter, The hysteria, the assumption that people who dis- agree with the writer are liars and hypocrites, the foaming abuse, the invented quotation from the hero-Khrushchev, the uncontrollable desire to denigrate Western civilisation, the sweaty rubbish about the bourgeoisie and the workers' control. and the sick myth of the business classes and the monopoly papers and the dollar curtain and the capitalist-executive system—all this argues a mind so closed to reason, so paralysed in its fellow-travelling assumptions (I am parti- cularly fond of 'the filthy and perverting system that dominates the West'—a system so filthy and perverting, indeed, that people are shot dead every day trying to escape from the en- nobling system of the .East to join it), that it would be quite useless to attempt to get some sense into it. And the Spectator, which I think has espoused and fought for rather more good causes than the writer of the letter, can take care of itself. But what interests me about the letter is not its contents, but its provenance. For it comes from the Committee of 100, on its official notepaper, and is written by, or at any rate signed by someone styling himself, the Secretary of the Scottish Committee of 100.

Now a question or two to the Committee of 100 would seem here to be in order. First, do they know the sort of stuff that is being peddled in their name? Second, do they approve of it? Third, do they agree with it? I assume (though many would not) that the answer to all three of these questions is no. Whence there arises a fourth : what are they going to do about it? The Committee of 100 stands for direct action to bring about unilateral nuclear disarmament by this country; on that policy I make no comment.

• nor on whether its methods are likely to bring about its aims. But it consists for the most part. as far as I can see, of people who are as con- cerned as anybody else about the frightful danger the world is in, and who are convinced that they have the best ideas for lessening that danger. And that, I take it, is all. Support for the Com- mittee, or participation in its activities, does not imply the acceptance of any set of doctrines on Other political or quasi-political questions. People of different political persuasions and of none support it, and to be kicked by a police- man you need only to sit with it in Trafalgar Square.

Now the danger which faces an organisation of this kind must have been obvious to the organisers from the start. It is the same danger that has faced all such bodies since the early Thirties, and which has destroyed most of its predecessors. (Pas d'enneini h la gauche' has been a literally fatal slogan in the past, as many a dead German and Spanish social-democrat is unfortunately precluded from testifying.) The danger is that of the organisation's being used, or rather abused, from within, for purposes far removed from its declared ones. And this danger the Committee of 100 clearly faces.

Of course, what one individual who happens to be a member of it says in a letter to a news- paper is neither here nor there, as far as the Committee's policies are concerned. But in the first place, neutralism must not only be done, it must be manifestly seen to be done. And in the second place, unless this letter is a complete hoax, it comes from one who, as secretary of the Scottish section of the organisation, must presum- ably have some influence over its activities and policy, and is in a real sense representative of the organisation.

So 1 think the other officials and prominent members of the Committee of 100 must take the letter I have quoted more seriously than its face- value would demand. In theory, a citizen who, convinced that the Committee of 100 has the right answer to the threat of war, joins it, can do so from any point in the political spectrum, believing that the organisation stands firmly and equally against all possessors of nuclear weapons, all disturbers of the international peace. Yet he Will find, if he does so, that he is inevitably tainted, as things stand, with some touch of a belief that he has to `stand against the present System based upon profit,' that he must believe in `workers' control,' that those who disagree With him are 'bought and sold by the capitalist- executive system' and are hypocrites and liars, that the `monopolies' are `rallying' behind the 'dollar curtain,' that evidence of Soviet .expan- sionist tendencies is `the sick myth of the business and owning classes.' that Russia has satellites 'as a line of defence against NATO.' And also, in Passing, that the system which dominates the West is `filthy and perverting.' Do the rest of the members of the Committee of 100 believe these things? Do they really believe, to take that last example, that it is a filthy and perverting System which has poured out thousands of mil- lions of dollars and pounds (apdri from military expenditure) on food and technical help for poor lands, that operates, for all its faults, within the rule of law, with no lack of voices raised against the imperfections and injustices of that rule, that has freed six hundred million people from colonialism in fifteen years, while the opposing System has colonised a hundred and fifty million in the same time, that breaks the leader who ordered a Suez, while the leader who ordered a Hungary waxes only stronger?

I will not insult the intelligence of the Com- mittee's members by assuming even a possibility of doubt as to the answer. Yet they must face the fact that one purporting to speak in their name, and with (apparently) some considerable right to do so, does believe these things. And they must also face the consequent fad that some who might wish to support their work could be re- luctant to do so lest they be tarred by such a brush. The Committee of 100 wants to persuade all those outside it to share its views. Sooner or later, and preferably (for its own sake) sooner, it had better start making sure that those inside it share them too.