LONDON LETTER
469
tionalises land, coal mines, railways, public utilities and banks, (b) of–
fers India immediate Dominion Status (this is a minimum), and (c)
purges the bureaucracy, the army, the Diplomatic Service etc., so
thoroughly as to forestall sabotage from the Right. The symptoms to
watch for are an all-round swapping of ambassadors, the abolition of
the India Office and, after Parliament reassembles, a battle with the
House of Lords.
If
these don't happen, it is a good bet that no really
radical economic change is intended. But the success or failure of the
government does not depend solely on its willingness to fullfil its pro–
mises. It also has to re-educate public opinion at short notice, which to
a large extent means fighting against its own past propaganda.
The weakness of all leftwing parties is their inability to tell the
truth about the immediate future. When you are in opposition, and are
trying to win support for a new economic and political programme, it is
your job to make people discontented, and you almost inevitably do it
by telling them that they will be better off in a material sense when the
new programme is introduced. You probably don't tell them, what may
very well be true, that they won't experience any benefit
immediately,
but only after, say, twenty years. The British people have never been
warned, i.e. by the Left, that the introduction of Socialism may mean
a serious drop in the standard of living. Nearly all left wingers, from
Laborites to Trotskyists, would regard it as political suicide to say any
such thing. Yet in my opinion it is probably true, at least in the case
of a country like Britain, which lives partly by exploiting the colored
peoples. To continue exploiting them is incompatible with the spirit of
Socialism, while to stop doing so would entail a difficult reconstruction
period during which our own standard of living might fall catastrophical–
ly. In one form and another this problem comes up again and again,
and, except for the minority who have travelled outside Europe, I have
never met an English Socialist who would face it. The stock answer is
that we should lose nothing by liberating India and the colonies, since
they would then develop more rapidly and their purchasing power would
increase, which would be to our advantage-all true enough, but over–
looking the interim period, which is the crux of the matter. The colored
peoples themselves are not to be fobbed off with such easy answers, and
indeed they are inclined to think of British prosperity as more dependent
on imperialist exploitation than it actually is. When the Beveridge Report
was first published, it had to be somewhat soft-pedailed in the news bul–
letins to India. There was danger that it would cause serious resentment,
the likeliest Indian reaction being: "They are making themselves com–
fortable at our expense."
Similarly, the calamity of the war, and the impoverishment of the
world as a whole, have not been fully brought home to the British peo–
ple. I think they grasp that the reconversion of industry will be a big
