London Letter
Dear Editors:
I write this letter at a moment when
it
is almost certain to be over·
taken and swamped by events. We are still in the same state of frozen
crisis as we were three months ago. Cripps is still enigmatically in office,
gradually losing credit with the Left but believed by many to be waiting
his moment to leave the Government and proclaim a revolutionary policy.
Such a development as there has been is definitely in a reactionary direc·
tion. Many people besides myself have noticed an all-round increase
in
blimpishness, a drive against giving the war an anti-Fascist colour, a
general shedding of the phony radicalism of the past two .Years. The
India business twitched the masks off many faces, including Lord Rother·
mere's. This seems to violate the principle that every regime moves to
the Left in moments of disaster, and vice versa, for one could hardly
describe the last six months as triumphant. But something or other
appears to have made the blimps feel much more sure of themselves.
There are a few minor political happenings to record. Sir Richard
Acland's fairly radical Forward March group (a sort of Christian
Socialism) has amalgamated with Priestley's somewhat less radical 1941
Committee and the movement is calling itself Commonwealth. I believe
the amalgamation happened somewhat against Acland's will. They have
now been joined by Tom Wintringham, a useful demagogue, but I don't
think these people should be taken seriously, though they have won one
by-election. Trotskyism has at last got itself into the news owing to the
threatened prosecution of a weekly paper, the
Socialist Appeal.
I believe
this is still running, though in danger of suppression. I managed to get
hold of one copy of it- the usual stuff, but not a bad paper. The group
responsible for it are said to number 500. The Rothermere press is
especially active in chasing the Trotskyists. The
Sunday Dispatch
de·
nounces Trotskyism in almost exactly the terms used by the orthodox
Communists. The
Sunday Dispatch
is one of the very worst of the gutter
papers (murders, chorus girls' legs and the Union Jack) and belongs to
the press which before the war outdid all others in kow-towing to Fascism,
describing Hitler as late as the early months of 1939 as "a great gentle·
man." The
Daily Worker
has been de-suppressed and is to reappear on
September 7th. This was the necessary sequel to lifting the ban on the
Communist press in India. Communist literature at the moment is chiefly
concerned with urging the opening of a second front, but pamphlets are
also issued attacking all M.P.'s of whatever party who vote against the
Government. The anti·Trotskyist pamphlets now being issued are barely
distinguishable from those of the Spanish civil war period, but go some·
what further in mendacity. The Indian issue makes a certain amount of
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