148
PARTISAN REVIEW
LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGER
CONVICTION. Edited by Normon MocKenzie. MocGibbon
&
Kee. 18sh.
Conviction,
a symposium of twelve essays by Socialist in–
tellectuals affiliated with the Labour Party, has won the respectful and
sympathetic attention of the reviewers, not excluding those writing for
the more highbrow Conservative journals. 'On the whole this welcome
is deserved, for the book does strike a new note. It is a far more serious
and significant production than its absurd companion volume,
Declara–
tion-that
manifesto of literary Existentialism-and-water; and at the
same time it avoids the faults of dullness and conventionality which
have come to be associated with Fabianism. All the contributors are
under forty, and what they have to say about the Welfare State, and
the post-war world in general, has a freshness not to be found in offi–
cial Labour Party literature. Some of the essays are strikingly good;
Mr. Peter Townsend has already made a mark with his analysis of the
enduring problem of poverty; Mr. Raymond Williams and Mr. Richard
Hoggart are thought-provoking on the subject of popular culture; and
there is a first-rate essay on political philosophy by Miss Iris Murdoch.
Even the lesser contributions are at least distinguished by an infusion
of genuine seriousness.
All the same, there are several things wrong with
Conviction,
and
it may do no harm to note these deficiencies, since they are linked to
one of the chief problems the authors are concerned with-the need to
evolve a genuinely modern consciousness. In the first place, the book
is oddly parochial in tone and content. Aside from the customary
references to Suez and
Cyprus~both
supposed to demonstrate the moral
delinquency of Conservatism, though in fact the seeds of trouble were
sown under the Labour Government-the outside world is disposed of
in two of the weakest essays among the collection: an autobiographical
skit on the Foreign Office and a pseudo-Orwellian sketch of savagery
and repression in Kenya. There is nothing whatsoever on the USSR,
nothing on America, nothing on Asia, nothing on Europe--one has the
feeling that the authors would gladly consign all these troublesome
areas to perdition, their real concern being with such things as educa–
tion and the operation of the health service. This may
be
an under–
standable attitude, but it is almost a caricature of the insularity now
standard among a certain type of Labour Party supporter. By compari–
son, the Fabians have become world-minded, whatever their other faults.
To compare this volume with the 1957
Fabian International Essays
is to
