A) BRITAJN'S HOUR OF TRUTH

(An excerpt)

First, Nassau. Then De Gaulle. Blow follows blow. The Tory card-castle of illusions of Britain's future in the world lies in ruins. Nassau gave the final kick to the Fulton dream of the 'special relationship' with the United States. De Gaulle added his hearty kick against Anglo-Saxon interference in the West European Alliance. Even the Tory Central Office has lost its zest about the avalanche of paper literature it had been stacking up in readiness to put over the Common Market. The myth of nuclear 'independence' has exploded with a super-sonic bang. Backwoods Tory M.P.s have been besieging Cabinet Ministers with complaints that Britain has become an 'American outpost'. They have awoken, as usual, fifteen years late.

Icy Freeze and Power-Cuts

Simultaneously the economic blizzard has revealed a Government without a policy for the people. This hour of revelation of the consequences of Toryism (aided by Tory-Labourism) since the war may not be pleasant. But it can be salutary. Even the icy freeze-up and power-cuts, which (like a stage direction in a Shakespearean tragedy) have accompanied the grim political and economic fiascoes of the opening weeks of the year, have demonstrated to every house­hold the price of squandering the nation's resources to pour out millions on nuclear abortions or to bolster up

reactionary sultans against their peoples all over the world, while grudging and cutting down the necessary provision of capital to expand adequately electricity generation (of course with the customary barefaced attempt to blame it on the workers). Similarly the setbacks and buffeting and isolation of Britain in the international field have demonstrated the bankruptcy of the Fulton programme and the necessity to search for an alternative. High official mandarins have been given at this late hour the theme exercise to try to elabo­rate alternatives to the Common Market, at the same time as their efforts are stultified by the simultaneous provision that their search must remain blinkered and fettered within the confines of the cold war straightjacket and subservience to NATO and the United States. Along this road no solu­tion lies. The need is for a real, and not a sham alterna­tive. Exposure of the bankruptcy of Tory policy is not enough. This bankruptcy is becoming daily more plain to all. The Macmillan Tory Government has become a sitting duck for all to shoot at. What is most urgent now is to conduct the fight and win united support for the positive alternative programme which the present situation of Britain makes imperative. (Labour Monthly, 1963)