To the Editor:
It is difficult to envisage what fate Robert Moss is actually predicting for Britain in his article, “Anglocommunism?” [February]—and even more difficult to imagine whatever it is actually coming to pass.
Mr. Moss, if I follow him correctly, seems to regard the risk of a form of Third World “communism” in Britain as a real one. It is difficult to know what to make of such a theory. Among the wide variety of political systems of the newly independent states, only a tiny minority are rooted in Marxist ideology or follow in any significant way the model of the Soviet Union and its satellites. About the only common factor I can think of which is generally (but not universally) true of these states and the Communist countries is the fashion of very low rates of income tax; but I take it that Mr. Moss is not suggesting that we in Britain are likely to follow this course.
Nor do I find the telling of the beads of the 1848 Communist Manifesto—an incantatory activity not conducive to serious philosophical inquiry—of much help in understanding an industrially-advanced society like Britain’s. Which of our societies does not have free universal education, inheritance taxes, and a progressive income tax? These measures are not intrinsically undesirable, although there is widespread recognition in Britain (shared by the government) that the balance of indirect to direct taxation needs adjusting. Nor do the British admire some aspects of Eastern Europe for which the Communist Manifesto provides no guide—for instance, the suppression of individual human rights, a matter on which the British and American governments are, as usual, united.
Mr. Moss is not factually correct in implying that by comparison with other advanced-industrial (and democratic) countries Britain is overtaxed, public spending is unduly high, or that the proportion of overseas debt is excessive. Perhaps his only “statistic” which bears examination is the electoral unpopularity of the Communist party. Indeed, the main contribution of the Communists to the British political system is financial: in helping to defray the expenses of our general elections as their candidates continue to lose their deposits (£4,350 in the October 1974 election—£150 for every one of the 29 constituencies in which a Communist candidate stood).
The evidence over the past thirty years is that there has been an extension, not a restriction, of the principles of parliamentary democracy and the rights of citizens. Before the Crown Proceedings Act (1947), it was impossible for private citizens to sue the government. Before the Representation of the People Act (1949), a minority of privileged citizens had more than one vote. Before 1967, when the office of Parliamentary Commissioner was established, there was no independent means of inquiry into charges of maladministration by government departments; and the principle of such inquiry was extended to local government in 1972 and to the National Health Service in 1973. British governments have also established commissions for racial equality and for equal opportunity designed to extend the principle of non-discrimination to places of work; and legal aid introduced in 1949 has significantly increased the access of poorer citizens to the courts of law. None of these measures would have been possible had it not been for the widespread recognition in Britain that democracy is a good thing and that we should have more of it: in no way can they be equated with the evolution, if any, of government in Communist countries. I do not see many votes for anyone standing on a platform which sought, however indirectly, to suggest that the process be reversed.
There is always concern in Britain about the future of democracy and parliamentary government; we would be accused of complacency if it were otherwise. Mr. Moss stands in a long and honorable line of those who in modern times have voiced this concern. Fears of the future were common in that crucial period 1909-14 when party differences had provoked a constitutional crisis the like of which we have not seen since. Thus also the many worried voices raised in the 1930’s when Blackshirts appeared on the streets of London and a Communist or two was voted into Parliament.
The economic strains of the past few years have resurrected this concern, but there are grounds for confidence, expressed most recently by the OECD survey of Western economies, that Britain will soon be in easier water. And even in these hard times, there has been plenty of evidence of the fundamental sanity of British society. For example, there has been unprecedented cooperation among government, management, and labor on an industrial strategy to revive our base. In 1976 we had the lowest level of strikes for ten years, despite the economic sacrifices demanded of us all. The British press has continued to criticize government actions with incisiveness and verve. The BBC and independent television have continued to be free from government or corporate pressures. And Parliament, as recent events have shown, has lost none of its vigor.
COMMENTARY readers should be left in no doubt of the British attachment to freedom which we have had to defend at so much cost twice in this century.
Laurence O’Keeffe
Director General
British Information Services
New York City
____________
To the Editor:
. . . The United Kingdom, Robert Moss tells his readers, is bordering on a “police state”!. . . Under “currency fiddling and tax evasion” (i.e., fraud) he says: “The police-state powers that have been given to tax inspectors in Britain (who are now authorized to enter a man’s home at any hour of the day or night, confiscate documents, and interrogate his family) are signs . . . of the totalitarian drift in government. . . . Old ladies are arrested at Heathrow with their life savings in a suitcase; the chairman of a well-known finance house says in private that he is ready to move his entire operation abroad ‘within seven hours,’ and Bank of England officials are up on charges of currency fiddling.”
Well, well! It’s fiction Mr. Moss should take up as a writer. . . . The Revenue cannot, uninvited, “enter a man’s home” without having established its case before either a General or Special Commissioner of Tax (both of whom are independent of the Revenue). . . .
Coming now to “the chairman of a well-known finance house” who on a few days’ notice is ready to “move his entire operations abroad”—. . . he must know little or nothing about the legal aspects of such a transaction. Apart from the purely civil section of the Taxes Act . . . there is the truly frightening Section 482 . . . which makes it a criminal act for any part of a company’s trade or business to be transferred abroad without Treasury permission. The Crown has the right to issue “a warrant for the arrest of any person in respect to such an offense.” Both sections were put on the statute book by Conservative governments.
I do not need to deal with the antics of the old ladies and their suitcases, but the slur on our civil service in the reference to Bank of England officials who are “up on charges of currency fiddling” is deplorable. I know nothing of the details of the case, but any irregular conduct by a civil servant must be . . . extremely isolated. . . .
A. G. McBain
Glasgow, Scotland
____________
Robert Moss writes:
I agree with Laurence O’Keeffe that the reforms of the 1940’s that he mentions represented an extension of the rights of citizens. But I doubt whether he would describe more recent “reforms” like the closed shop in quite the same terms. He maintains that there will not be many votes for politicians who want to reverse the process. If he includes in “the process” the growth of state intervention in the economy and the erosion of private choice in social services, he is demonstrably wrong—as shown by the landslide by-election at Ashfield on April 28, in which a swing of 20.8 per cent to the Conservatives cost Labor a safe seat.
Of course there has always been “concern” in Britain about the future of democratic institutions. Concern is healthy. What is not is the Ottomanic torpor and complacency that has overcome too many people who should be working to guarantee that future and to revitalize a dying economy. Mr. O’Keeffe does not fault a single point of substance that was made in my article. Instead, he recalls those features of British life that suggest that we are not, after all, a Third World country. Well of course not—anyway, not yet. I meant to provoke, and am delighted to find that I succeeded. If a people comes to take its freedoms for granted, it will not enjoy them for long.
It is encouraging to find a Scot defending the probity of English civil servants. But A.G. McBain was obviously not reading the British press last December, when the arrest of a Bank of England official on charges of foreign-currency fraud received major headlines. The official involved was a certain John Wales, and according to the Daily Telegraph report of December 18, he and his co-conspirators had obtained about £1 million by fraud. Such cases may be exceptional, but they make nonsense of Mr. McBain’s suggestion that I am writing fiction. As for the chairman who told me about his preparations to move his operations abroad within seven hours, I was simply quoting what the man said—I do not profess to understand all the mechanics.