A Letter from London. Mr. Macmillan’s tall claim: Girilal Jain

In the course of his speech to the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association in New York on April 27 the British Prime Minister, Mr. Macmillan, claimed that the “two nations” of which Disraeli spoke one hundred years ago was a thing of the past and “we are one nation now”. He said: “Nor has this been done by levelling down so much as by levelling up.”

Like all half-truths this claim cannot stand close scrutiny. It is true that Britain has a higher standard of living than most European countries including West Germany, but over two million people depend for survival on national assistance allowances. A recent sample survey showed that four per cent of the persons included in it were in poverty and another eleven per cent only marginally better off. This would account for 7.5 million in Great Britain. This staggering figure mocks at the claim that Britain is already an ideal welfare slate. Most of the poor are old people for whom the British family system does not make adequate provision.

In a series of articles, the New Left Review has brought out certain staggering facts about the slum clearance programme. These articles disclosed that at the present rate of slum clearance it will take the Birmingham Council 33 years to clear houses listed unfit in 1955. Similarly Manchester will take 46 years, Liverpool 94 years and Pembroke 480 years. The 1955 estimates were even then said to be rough. More comprehensive surveys today would disclose that the magnitude of the problem is far bigger than indicated in 1955. Several hundred thousand houses are without baths and water.

Unemployment

About two per cent of the country’s working force remains unemployed despite Mr. Macmillan’s claim that there is “broadly full and sometimes overfull employment.” It is another matter that some Conservative economists regard unemployment up to five per cent essential to act as a brake on militant trade union leaders. The present state of turmoil among all categories of working people from civil servants to dockers and nurses and teachers against the wage-freeze amidst steady rise in the cost of living tells its own story.

Mr. Macmillan’s reference to the process of levelling up and not levelling down hides the important fact that in this traditionally class conscious society there exists truly “fantastically unequal distribution of wealth.” This is not a quotation from a rabid leftist paper. The description is that of the Economic Editor of The Observer.

On the basis of inland revenue figures nearly half of this country’s wealth is owned by just two per cent of the population. In the January issue of Labour Research, inland revenue figures were modified in the light of the research done by two eminent professors of economics. These modified figures revealed that one per cent of the population over the age of twenty-five (327,000) owned no less than 43 per cent of the total wealth; five per cent (1.6 million) 71 per cent.

In spite of this continuing concentration of wealth in a small minority of the population, Mr. Macmillan is on solid ground in claiming that “class war, as we used to call it, is dead or nearly dead. It has very few exponents outside some amiable members of the upper class or a few eccentric intellectuals.” This is best illustrated by the steady narrowing of differences in the contents of the programmes of the Conservative and Labour parties even though their approach to problems remains of necessity different.

There are scores of reasons why the Labour party has become increasingly less militant. Unlike the West German Socialists, it has not publicly repudiated the programme of nationalisation of industries. But in effect its position is not strikingly different from those of the German and other western European socialists. It is always dangerous to draw general conclusions from specific situations but it does seem to me that the cause of democratic socialism as men like Harold Laski propounded is a lost one.

Russian Poet

Outside of a small circle of people interested in Soviet affairs not many people in this country could have heard of the young (barely 18) Soviet poet, Eugene Evtushenko, before he arrived here a week ago. He has proved to be the most popular Russian to visit Britain since the first astronaut, Major Gagarin, was mobbed and kissed by women in London streets over a year ago. The full glare of publicity has been turned on this undoubtedly remarkable man.

Evtushenko had been labelled “Russia’s Angry Young Man” even before he landed here. So impressive was the turnout of reporters and photographers to receive him at the airport that many passengers joined them in the firm belief that the controversial Elizabeth Taylor was descending on London. Apparently some of them expected him to begin his visit with a denunciation of the communist system. Though from the first day it has been clear he is not going to oblige and that he isn’t such an angry young man after all, almost everything he has done including a visit to vegetable market has been reported at length.

The Daily Herald published one of his most controversial poems, “Babi Yar”, which exposes remnants of anti-Semitism in Russia. Babi Yar is the name of a small place where 90,000 Jews were massacred by Nazi troops during the war. Evtushenko is not a Jew. As he himself says in this poem, “No Jewish blood runs in my veins, but in their stubborn malice all anti-Semitists see in me a Jew because I am real Russian.”

This phrase, “real Russian,” sums up his attitude in many ways. He represents the force of non-conformity and protest in his own society. He attacks abuses of communism but not the system itself. He is the idol of the youth in his country but he is no Beatnik or his Russian counterpart Stilyagi.

Another person who has been compelling attention this week is Mr. Hugh Cudlipp who as its editor made the Daily Mirror Britain’s most popular daily. Among members of the journalistic fraternity in India he is better known as author of Publish And Be Damned, one of those rare titles which disclose not only the contents of the book but the personality of the writer as well. This time the title is At Your Peril. It is not quite so revealing but the contents are. In At Your Peril, Mr. Cudlipp has recounted the sensational story of how Daily Mirror took over Odhams in I960 to become “the world’s biggest business in world publishing.”

The Take-Over

Like many major developments the Daily Mirror group’s bid to take over Odhams grew out of a rather humble beginning. Two women’s magazines run by two groups were losing £700,000 annually. The Daily Mirror’s proprietor, Mr. Cecil King, proposed to the chairman of Odhams that both the magazines close down. This led to further talks and the final takeover of Odhams by the Mirror group over the head of its directors, a feat Imperial Chemical tried to repeat unsuccessfully this year with Courtaulds, The two women’s magazines are of course long since dead and Mr Cecil King regards The Daily Herald which still continues to support the Labour party as a “cross I bear.” It will also be closed down when the stipulated period over.

Equally important, Mr. Cudlipp gives a recipe for a popular paper. It is a queer combination of superficial radicalism. (The Mirror was opposed to the Suez misadventure of Sir Anthony Eden and even supports the Labour party against the Conservatives), pursuit of members of the royal family, aristocrats and entertainers, exposure of specific abuses by bureaucracy and of cases of cruelty and indifference with sex and crime thrown in with lots of pictures. And as Mr. Cudlipp tells us, he believes in “calling a spade a bulldozer.” The paper sells five million copies and it is estimated that fourteen million read it.

The Times of India, 5 May 1962

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