A Spectator's Notebook
A FORTNIGHT AGO I asked what proportion of Communists in a body makes it reasonable to suppose that they have practical control of it. The reference was to the Preparatory Committee of the International Conference on Regional Planning, of which a significant minority were Communist sympathisers. Subsequently the Home Office admitted that it had advised civil servants not to attend; and the chairman, Mrs. Pandit, withdrew. It is clear from reports—notably some comments by the Manchester Guardian's Local Government corre- spondent—that some members feel they have been victims of a witch hunt. The Home Office and the Spectator have been denounced for McCarthyism. Unfortunately the issue far from being clarified was still further confused by this week's BBC debate 'In The News.' The Tory speakers, under the misapprehension that the Government's aim was to prevent spies entering the country as delegates to the conference, tried to justify such a ban, citing the example of the notorious Sheffield Peace Conference: But the Government imposed no such ban, and it would have been objectionable if it had. The more Communists that see Britain at first hand the better. My objection was simply that an organisation—any Organisa- tion—should be captured and used by the Communists for their own ends. It may be true, as the conference's apologists have asserted, that the Regional Planning organisation is of no direct assistance to the party in the sense that the Electrical Trades Union is of direct assistance. But it is a well-known Com- munist principle that any organisation which can be controlled should be controlled; every little helps. It needs only a small but compact minority to achieve control. In this case, the figure of five Communist sympathisers out of a committee of fifteen seemed to me to suggest the, existence of a Com- munist front; and the proportion was certainly high enough to justify a warning to those who were attending in all inno- cence. There has been no suggestion that anybody who attended should be persecuted. It is not criminal, but merely stupid, to give aid to the party by letting it run an organisation of this kind.
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