A Letter from London: Bout of beastly weather: Girilal Jain

Charles Dickens has for long been an embarrassment to the British. Russians as The Times has recalled, “base their ideas of English life on his writing and see us still employing child labour, engaging in Eatonville elections, and all the rest of it. Americans too suspect that we have never got the sentiments expressed in certain pages of Martin Chuzzlewit out of our veins.” Now another sin has been nailed at his door.

Sir William Mabane, chairman of the British Travel and Holiday Association, has solemnly charged him with giving British weather a bad name. He said quite candidly “for that I put the initial blame on Charles Dickens and other novelists.” It is easy enough to appreciate Sir William’s difficulty. He has to persuade more and more people to visit Britain in spite of her weather. But not many will agree with him that British weather is better than its reputation. In fact, “What beastly weather. Isn’t it?” is quite a popular form of greeting here.

This year has been particularly bad. Snow and gales remained front-page news even in February. Then came the tidal waves that brought death and destruction in large parts of the coastal belt. March was one of coldest in recent years. Currently this “beastly weather” has virtually killed the Easter celebrations. Shopkeepers are complaining that bad weather has kept down their sales on this festive occasion. The Financial Times on Tuesday led with a story to say that retail sales in April were even lower than in March.

 

Potatoes

Shopkeepers are not the only people to feel the adverse effect of continuous bad weather. Everyone in this nation of potato-eaters has been hard hit. Crop was damaged which virtually meant scarcity and rise in the prices of over one hundred per cent in the case of new potatoes. Instead of selling at six pennies a pound as last year they now sell up to fifteen pennies a pound and the quality is indifferent. The British Parliament solemnly discussed this problem on Tuesday. It is a measure of the seriousness of the situation that the discussion continued till two on Wednesday morning and The Times ran a long editorial on this subject. Needless to say that the scarcity of potatoes has been a banner story in popular papers. Surely Sir William cannot blame all this on Dickens.

For the last three days I waited hopefully to hear the Conservative party leaders blame the weather for the debacle in the by-election in Derby North where their candidate was forced into third place through a drop in his share of votes from 47.2 to a bare 22.5 per cent. On polling day the weather was truly foul and the plea that many of the upper class Conservative supporters did not turn up at the booths owing to bad weather could have been plausible if not convincing. As it turns out the Conservatives have not produced any explanation at all for the drift of voters into the camp of “faceless men.”

The chairman of the Conservative party, Mr Iain McLeod, has a penchant for saying controversial things. He coined the expression “faceless men” to describe the Liberal party. Now like Sir Winston Churchill’s famous Gestapo speech of 1945, Mr McLeod’s speech has clearly become an embarrassment to his party. In Britain you cannot still kill a rival party with derisive adjectives. Last week he raised another hornet’s nest when he said that the next general election would be fought on the issue of Britain’s entry into the European Common Market. It was not unfair to expect him to bracket “faceless weather” with “faceless men” in the case of Derby North.

To say that Mr McLeod revels in provocative phrases and utterances is not to disparage him. In point of fact he is an able man of broad sympathies. It is widely felt he was the best Colonial Secretary Britain has had for decades. His sympathies lay with nationalist Africans in Northern Rhodesia though he was checkmated by a revolt by Tory backwoodsmen from delivering the goods. He does not share the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home’s antipathy towards the United Nations. He is often tipped as Mr Macmillan’s successor as Britain’s Prime Minister. Since he does not belong to the Tory stereotype the odds are heavily against him. In Mr Macmillan’s case blue-blooded Tories were taken by surprise. In Mr McLeod’s case they have been warned in advance.

On the question of Britain’s entry into the Common Market Mr McLeod merely stated the well-known fact that the Government is determined to see the current negotiations succeed. Only the Labour leader, Mr Hugh Gaitskell, was surprised. Apparently he has a tremendous capacity to be surprised. He exclaimed “how could he (Mr McLeod) know the terms when the real negotiations have scarcely begun? Or was the Government so desperately anxious that Britain should enter that they would accept any terms, however unfavourable, regardless of their promises to safeguard the interests of the Commonwealth, British agriculture and the European Free Trade Association countries?”

 

Surprise

There are three explanations for Mr Gaitskell’s surprise. First, he was merely politicking and therefore feigning surprise. Second, he has so far neglected his homework. Speeches by leading lights of the European Commission and America’s Under-Secretary of State, Mr George Ball, and the attitude of President de Gaulle should have left him in little doubt that the Commonwealth’s interests will not be safeguarded. Third, he was merely covering the absence of a Labour policy on this crucial issue. It is only now that the Labour shadow cabinet has begun to study the complications of joining the Common Market though many of its members have already taken up positions for or against it.

On Thursday the Government provided Mr Gaitskell an answer to his question, albeit indirectly. All national dailies ran stories giving the time-table of Britain’s entry into the Common Market. According to these strikingly uniform reports, the terms for entry will be known by August end. The Commonwealth Premiers would meet to discuss these terms in September. Britain will join the Six on January 1, 1963. Legislations would follow in the next session of Parliament. This would be completed by July. The Government thus would not be ready for general election till towards the end of 1963 or early ’64.

Curiously enough these reports follow the breakdown of talks between the Foreign Ministers of the Six in Paris Tuesday last on the form of political union. It is perfectly clear that the talks did not break down solely on the issue of federation versus confederation. An advocate of the federal approach, Dr Luns, the Dutch Foreign Minister, said last Wednesday: “We are prepared to put water in our supranational wine – at least when Britain is included.” The Belgian Foreign Minister, M. Spaak, would not agree to any solution at all till Britain’s entry was assured, not even a federal solution favoured by him.

The difference of approach among the Six on the question of united Europe’s relations with NATO also became obvious at the Paris talks. M. Spaak failed to persuade the French Foreign Minister to accept the American offer of a NATO deterrent in preference to a policy of going it alone. President de Gaulle obviously sticks to his concept of a third power under Franco-German hegemony. That explains the American anxiety to “push” Britain into the Market.

 

Cohesion

Mr David Bruce, the American Ambassador here, clearly expounded this view in a speech at Birmingham last Tuesday. This important speech has received little notice in London. As far as I am aware only The Daily Mail reported it. Mr Bruce said that America was keen Britain joined the Market though it would hurt her commercial interests because, “we need allies with more cohesion. You go into the Common Market and it might alter the political set-up in Europe.” He said: “It is absolutely impossible in a democratic set-up to have a country with the power my country possesses – economically, financially and politically – go on as a member of an alliance when you have no cohesion in the rest of the alliance,” adding, “because of the political skill, integrity as a nation and ability to manage people you would be the best Ace alongside us to bring this western world into cohesion.”

It is common knowledge that Washington does not like the prospects of proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is equally well-known that the Kennedy administration’s original enthusiasm for President de Gaulle has worn thin. The recent rumpus between Washington and Bonn over the leakage of the proposals Mr Dean Rusk was later to present to the Soviet Ambassador speaks for itself. A solution is sought in pushing the “reliable though poor British cousins” into Europe.

The Financial Times has best brought the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. It said editorially on Thursday: “The point which must be stressed is that the Brussels talks have become the key to the wider political issues which the West has to resolve. When Mr Macmillan sees President Kennedy after Easter, the two men will no longer be able to treat disarmament and NATO on the one hand, British membership of the Common Market and the future political organisation of Europe on the other, as separate issues. The breach in Paris has shown that all of these questions are now closely inter-related.”

The Times of India, 21 April 1962 

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