P e ru ’s new press 1; aw: Francis A. Maurovich Berlin conference: from a correspondent In m em ory o f a maker: 1 Peter Levi Follies and grottoes: Neville B raybrooke The changing English village: Margaret Spufford
Turning a blind eye to the future King George vi, in his radio broadcast to the nation on Christmas day 1939, quoted some verses that began, “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown’.” The imagery was particularly appropriate to the occasion, for it was the first Christmas of the war, and even if that catastrophe had as yet scarcely touched the people of this country, they knew well that that would not be the position for long. They were on the edge of “the unknown.” The message the king’s chosen verses went on to convey was therefore appropriate too, for it spoke of the importance of a sense of dependence and trust, in the face of crisis. So also today, when we stand at the gate of another year, and as at no time since the war are as conscious of treading into the unknown, indeed in some respects more so even than in 1939, the question remains: On what can the people of this country depend now—in what can they put their trust?
a “slump” or was it “hyperinflation”?) than to determine the true causes of our sliding into it and to prescribe effective means of preventing any further deterioration. “The outlook,” the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, “had darkened a good deal even in the five weeks since the Budget debate,” and, he coolly went on to prophesy, “recovery could be postponed until 1976”—but only, it seems, because he could think of nothing to forecast for 1975 except still further progress towards the abyss. As for 1976, the only specific ingredient of recovery then that he mentioned was the tenuous expectation that North Sea oil might be flowing “ around about” that year. And the very uncertainty of the terms he used in referring to a development of such importance, not two or three decades but only a little more than a year hence, is surely symptomatic of the kind of muddling along that nowadays passes for government. All in all, this latest Commons debate was one more exhibition of utter irresponsibility by both government and opposition, for which the whole House must therefore stand condemned. It served only to underline very clearly the great disadvantage under which the nation now struggles, even by comparison with the war years.
Our disadvantage, even by comparison with 1939, was well expressed by the title of a recent article in The Times by Jo Grimond: “The crisis is past and the worst may be yet to come.” For we are, as he went on to explain, “sliding into disintegration.” Nothing could more surely demonstrate that we have, in the present Labour administration, a government that makes a virtue out of the pursuit of irrelevances, and a Conservative opposition whose ineffectualness is surely without parallel in living memory, than their response to Mr Grimond’s warning. In the most recent Commons debate on “ the economy,” only a few days before Christmas, both the main government and opposition spokesmen, Mr Healey and Mr Heath—when they were not indulging in mutual personal abuse—appeared more concerned about the name that was to be put to the disintegration process (was it a “recession” or was it
Often at that period too it must have seemed that disintegration was at hand, in the sense that defeat would certainly have meant the dissolution of the nation. But at least we were not then sliding into disintegration. If disintegration had come, it would have come in spite of us. Now it is difficult to think of any action that is being taken on our behalf—or of any that has been taken throughout the past twelve months—of which it could fairly be said, if national disaster befell us, that that was in spite of what we had done, rather than because of what we had not done. Even such action as is being taken by the government, which appears to have some superficial relevance to
