This has been exciting even if a little confusing fortnight. Two reporters went to jail because they placed their professional ethics and personal conscience above the interests of the State. They refused to disclose the source or sources of their information in connection with the Vassal espionage case. The BBC, on the other hand, got away with its open defiance of the interests of the State and even got applause for it. To the Government’s embarrassment it screened an interview with M. Georges Bidault, self-proclaimed chief of the terrorist underground organisation whose sole purpose is to assassinate President de Gaulle and subvert the French State.
Two Labour members of Parliament were threatened with assassination by OAS thugs prowling about in London just because they asked some innocuous questions about the uninvited house guest who arrived unannounced and left without notice. But no similar threat disturbed the sleep of the Conservative member who had described Bidault as an indiscriminate murderer. The OAS are an inconsistent lot! In their utter lack of gallantry they were un-French-like: one of the threatened members was a woman. The authorities duly posted a police guard outside her house. Only in conformity with the rules it did not carry any firearms.
These were not the only exciting and confusing events of the fortnight. Nearly a thousand students organised an assault on the Tower of London and seized it. Twenty-five Guardsmen of a Scots battalion disappeared from Windsor Castle to advertise their grievances against “lousy food” and excessive discipline. We were then told that a whole company of about seventy men was “on the brink of mutiny” because too many non-commissioned officers were “chasing too few Guardsmen from morning to night.” The crowning piece was the attempt by a newspaper reporter to present the grievances of the Guards to the commanding officer. In the thirties, on the much smaller evidence of the outcome of a debate in the Oxford Students Union, Hitler had concluded that the British had lost the will to fight.
Irate Teachers
The “mutinous mood” was not confined to that one company. Scores of servicemen tried to get out of the Army by announcing their intention to contest by-elections to the House of Commons. A committee had to be set up to vet their applications. On the civilian side the teachers were furious that the Minister for Education tried to tell them how best to distribute among themselves the additional 21million pounds a year that he was willing to provide. They wanted to spread it evenly and thus rather thinly, and the Minister wanted to use this “paltry” sum to attract better educated people to the profession by providing higher grades for them. The rate-payers were up in arms because the local bodies proposed a steep rise in the rates.
While the Education Minister, Sir Edward Boyne, could defy the Burnham committee of teachers without losing his job, Mr Macmillan could not treat the angry rate-payers equally cavalierly. The cabinet met twice to discuss the matter. If no gimmick was produced it was not for want of will. Mr Macmillan is known for his capacity to produce gimmicks and pass them off as long-term policies and these days he has been anxiously looking for some. The trouble was the discovery that the expenditure of the local bodies had risen to nearly 2,000 million pounds and could not be reduced. If the Government took over the education costs the control would automatically pass to it – a prospect that the British politicians shudder at for reasons I cannot divine. In any case to spare the rate-payer is to penalise the tax-payer and in most cases he is the same individual.
Spring Again
To put the fortnight in perspective, however, it must be said that spring is here at last. The long and dreary winter is only a bad memory if even its after effects in the form of reduced resistance to cold and cough and colossal electricity bills are still with us and what is called the Asian flu and gastric flu have assumed the proportions of an epidemic. It sounds mean to complain when the sun shines and the race meetings are resumed after an unprecedented break of 75 days. Football pools no longer have to appoint panels to decide the outcome of matches that were never played. Ironically one football firm dismissed 800 employees just as the bleak period was over. Even gambling contributes to keeping unemployment down.
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Even in the midst of all this excitement the echoes of the warning bell sounded by Lord Hailsham (Minister with five jobs) continue to arouse all truly “patriotic” Britons. He warned, “We are in the presence of a recruiting drive systematically and deliberately undertaken by American business, by American universities, and to a lesser extent, by the American Government, often initiated by talent scouts specially sent here, to buy British brains and pre-empt them for the service to the United States.” The American school system, he added, was so deficient that their universities, business and state services were “compelled to live parasitically on other people’s brains to supply their needs”.
Lord Hailsham’s warning of this “white slave trade” in scientists came in the wake of a report by the Royal Society (page 302). The report said nearly 600 qualified scientists and engineers went to America every year. In the last ten years over 500 Ph.D.’s emigrated to the United States. The greatest loss was among physicists and chemists, vanguard of the big technological developments in advanced countries. STOP POACHING shrieked the conservative Daily Mail in an eight-column banner headline in full agreement with Lord Hailsham and endorsed his criticism of the American education system. But not many others agreed with Lord Hailsham.
The British are rightly proud of their past achievements in the scientific field. They have had a galaxy of brilliant men from Newton to Rutherford. Last year four British scientists won Nobel Prizes, a unique distinction in the history of this distinguished prize. There was only one snag. The beginning of the research in this case was made possible only by a grant from an American foundation. This was one of scores of similar annual grants which total nearly two million dollars. A number of British scientists now in America have written letters to editors explaining why they emigrated. It is the same story over and over again – lack of funds and facilities, greater social respect.
The British Government has sent a team to the United, States to try to induce as many scientists as possible to come back. No informed person expects much in the nature of results. It does show however, the Government’s anxiety to stop this drain on scientific talent, a key to survival in these tough competitive times. The problem for India is not less acute. The number of Indian scientists, doctors, and engineers who prefer to work abroad for want of opportunities at home is sizable.
Many of the qualified young Indians realise that they cannot legitimately expect the same standard of payment and facilities at home as, say, in Britain or America or West Germany. They are prepared to accept that. If what they say is any guide they fear that in India it is the same old story of favouritism and red-tapism. If nothing else can be done the Indian mission should be persuaded to be a little less indifferent to young men who have been away for long years and want to find out what kind of opening they can expect on return. At present they are lucky if they get an acknowledgment of their letters.
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Ford works at Dagenham in south-east England has had more labour trouble and strikes than any other plant in the country. This plant has become a symbol of all that holds up Britain’s export drive and return to economic health. The management contends that the shop stewards, a key group in British industries, are under the influence of the Communists. The stewards naturally contest this though the existence of Communist cells is not denied. In the country as a whole unofficial strikes cause enormous damage. Something is wrong somewhere.
Solidarity, a journal of left-wing extremists, has now placed on record the technique that was employed in the work-to-rule campaign in the power industry at the height of the cold spell in January. One member of the amalgamated engineering union, known for the manner in which a well-organised Communist minority manipulated the election of office bearers in past years, has admitted that the discussions with the management over the interpretation of the rules were “reminiscent” of medieval theological disputes.
Examples of what work-to-rule mean are breathtaking. Drivers refused to move material beyond the tailboard of their vehicles and waited for labourers. Electricians refused to touch main fuses and waited for installation inspectors. If a job had to be attended to in a house workmen would refuse to use the householders’ ladder and wait for one to be brought from the depot on the plea that they were insured only for official equipment. Men left turbines unattended if they were not relieved by the tick of the clock. Quite an admission!
The Times of India, 17 March 1963