Correspondents' Correspondence

...Bitter Medicine MADRID—A Spanish doctor told me recently he was thinking of emigrating to France He would not be able to practice medicine there, but his wife had inherited some money and they were hoping to be able to buy a pharmacy "or some other kind of shop " He is a surgeon in a busy city hospital and I protested that it would be a crime to waste his medical talents So he told me how much he earns about three-quarters the wages of a French laborer, even less than some manual workers in this country I heard the other day of one provincial administration that pays garbage men $115 a month and physicians in the public health service $100 Though some Spanish doctors are rich—mainly specialists with private practices in major cities—the majority are both underpaid and overworked Of five general practitioners I have known the last few years, only two own cars, one has a motorcycle, the others do their rounds on foot In theory, the national health service provides all workers and their families with free or cheap medical attention and free medicine, but not enough beds and other facilities are available in public hospitals, and the devotion of the medical corps has to make up for official parsimony Before this year, the doctors' response to this exploitation was to put up with it (and, perhaps, try to earn money on the side) or to emigrate During the last few months, however, many have resorted to collective action in efforts to improve conditions in the health service and to uphold their own self-respect Last spring nearly 2,000 hospital physicians went on strike in a trial of strength that secured a few minor administrative improvements This fall more than 100 doctors in Barcelona defied the authorities by issuing a joint declaration revealing that there were several cases of cholera in the city (The government's information services, which control television and radio and keep the press in line, had been suppressing the news so as not to scare away tourists ) At the same time, hospital staffs in several Spanish cities staged work stoppages in support of a number of Madrid psychiatrists who had shut themselves in their clinic Until recently, most Catholic priests and teachers in Spain were hostile to psychiatry Even old father Freud is still considered a danng young radical south of the Pyrenees A professor of psychiatry was arrested here a few weeks ago for circulating a sexual-education questionnaire to students The social secur-ity system does not provide free mental treatment, and Spain has fewer places for mental patients per capita than any other country in Europe Most mental homes are run by religious orders for paying guests More than 250,000 poor locos are coped with by their families, the state intervenes only if they become violent Over the last four or five yeais the situation has improved In 1969 the provincial authorities opened a clinic for short-term mental treatment in Madrid and a big hospital, for chrome cases, nine miles outside the capital Yet this summer, for economic leasons, officials decided to prune the out-patient seivice, the only one of its kind in the city, and to reduce the number of beds from an already inadequate 158 to 80 When the staff psychiatrists protested, several of them were dismissed for "indiscipline " They replied by holding the lock-in The police appeared on the scene, unusually hesitant and obviously unsure what kind of Red a psychiatrist might be Then other doctors laid down their thermometers By mid-September some 2,000 physicians and several hundred nurses and other medical workers were on strike, and illegal assemblies were being held in hospital buildings to demand less "arbitrary authoritarianism," greater concern for the sick, and the subordination of economic considerations to social needs While the scalpel may not be mightier than the sword, it's an uncomfortable thing to sit on And few bureaucrats can even tie bandages Inevitably, the authorities have climbed down They have conceded more small reforms and the dismissed psychiatrists are expected to be reinstated any day now The illegal workers' commissions and other clandestine groups have watched all this with wonder in their eyes "Clato," they say, "doctors are doctors the police can't wade into them with clubs and gas grenades as if they were ordinary human beings, but there must be some kind of lesson in this for us" —Ray Alan Lingering Liberals LONDON—As it does every fall, the Liberal party conference rated full tv and newspaper coverage?though it is increasingly hard to see why Only 300 delegates attended, and these few had to be shepherded to the front of the auditorium so their massed ranks could be seen on the home screen Indeed, some think it remarkable that there are any Liberals at all, theoretically the party should have been dead long ago The reasons for the Liberals' rapid decline from their last great triumph, in 1906, to a bad third behind the Tories and Labor by the end of World War I are fairly evident The 1867 enfranchisement of the working class—the largest voting bloc in the country, already well-organized in its trade unions and cooperatives—naturally led to competition for its support Then as now, the Conservatives reckoned that the "patriotic" or so-called "deference" vote among the workers (statisticians today put it at about one-third) would be more likely to go to them, as the party of Empire, than to the Liberals And once a Labor party was formed—in 1893, later than in most European countries?it became clear that the bulk of the remainder would leave the Liberals in the end After all, to the working class the Liberals were the party of the landowning Whigs and the Manchester and Birmingham capitalists—their most direct opponents True, for a long time the large Nonconformist vote, in its strongholds of Wales, Scotiand and the North, continued to be Liberal But after the turn of the century religious differences gave way to social conflict, and the great days of Gladstone did not return The capitalists were beginning to see their true interest as lying with the Conservatives, and the Whigs themselves, the great landowners who had dominated the Liberal party, were heading the same way Nonetheless, it is estimated that a reservoir of 2-3 million Liberal voters still exists m the country?about 10-15 per cent of the electorate Who are these people9 No one knows for sure Some of them, no doubt, are simply traditionalists, studies show that the British tend to vote as their parents did Others represent the remnants of the old capitalist and Nonconformist vote Others, again, are intellectuals who have a distaste for the mammoths of Left and Right A curious new faction of disaffected youth, soon nicknamed the Red Guard, sprang up in the party during the '60s It had almost nothing in common with traditional Liberalism, and some regulars at the recent conference called for their wholesale expulsion as "anarchists" and "Trotskyists " Yet the true strength of the party lies elsewhere One has only to look at the distribution of the Liberal seats m Parliament (there are now but five, whereas under a system of proportional representation there would be nearer 50) They are from the so-called "Celtic fringe" Cornwall and Devon, Wales and Scotland (not, of course, Ulster) While these areas are historically Liberal, they are also among the most depressed in Britain, and the situation may get worse when Whitehall joins the Common Market—of which the Liberals, ironically, are keen advocates Thus, with the exception of Devon and Cornwall, the Liberals now have no toehold in England whatsoever This suggests that the much-trumpeted Liberal "revival" after Suez, culminating in the unexpected 1962 victory in the London commuter town of Orpington, was merely a middle-class "Poujadiste" protest vote against a dying Conservative government It was a freak, one not likely to recur No wonder, then, that there should be renewed talk of the "death of the Liberal party " My own guess is that the Liberals will, like old soldiers, just fade away Their traditional bastions on the Celtic fringe can probably be held for some time?though they have new rivals in the Welsh and Scottish Nationalists And their appeal to the young (in this respect the Liberals are rather similar to the Communist party) will presumably continue But, like the Communists, they suffer from an extremely high turnover rate, and it is entirely possible that no Liberals will sit at Westminster in 1980—John Mander Gray Homecoming NEW YORK—A return to the States, after more than four years m Asia is slightly anticlimactic Having heard so much about pornography, violence in the streets, the declining "quality of life," et al, I was somewhat surprised to find that most people are still functioning normally The "revolution" assorted radicals have announced is nowhere in sight These remarks might seem deeply insensitive in the aftermath of Attica That tragedy, however, has already been consigned to history, the date when so many hostages and prisoners were killed will perhaps take its place on multiple-choice tests Moreover, despite all the "color," "reaction," and "investigation" stories that have been written, did Attica really move anyone not directly involved...

...Certainly it has become a topic of conversation and even a cause for relatively minor demonstrations But do New Yoikers—or Americans in general—really care...

...My impression, from talking to many different kinds of people, is that Attica was basically a "happening," just like the recurrent disturbances in Saigon, political campaigns in the U S , or the debate over admittmg mainland China to the UN The cataclysmic story, if one exists, is the economy Everywhere I go in the city, I hear mutterrngs about the price of this and that, the fare from here to there, the amount of tipping necessary for decent service, the job squeeze One can intellectual-lze over Attica and Mylai, yet it is housing, food and clothing that are the gut issues The "revolution" will not come until a significant percentage of us—and I do not mean only those below the official "poverty line"—feel we simply don't have enough of these commodities Judging by what I have seen, New Yorkers at least are far from reaching that point, but they might well get there over the course of the next decade What, after all, have Nixon's wage-and-pnce actions accomplished except to postpone the crunch9 Nevertheless, those I meet m restaurants, hotel lobbies and bus stations do not seem to blame the President in particular What could he do9 If prices keep nsmg and jobs grow more scarce, the popular reaction may begin to focus on individual leaders Then the "revolutionaries,' after more happenings, each bloodier than the last, might be able to wage the kind of struggle that the newsmagazines and intellectual journals seemed to be describing only a few months ago Meanwhile, it appears we are in for a period of steady, gradual decline, unless some statesman emerges with the kind of imagination somehow lacking in American life since the assassination of President Kennedy nearly eight years ago For all their talk of "horror" and "tragedy," newsmen revel in the excitement of an event like Attica In contrast, the deterioration of our society does not make for sensational copy Neither is there much drama to be found in a faltering economy?just gray foreboding and images, long forgotten, of breadlines and cold, lifeless mornings —Donald Kirk...