Europe's New Marxism

...Armed with this precedent, a future Tory government will likewise be able to appeal to the public in order to restore the death penalty, repatriate "colored" immigrants and take other measures the Commons would not approve...

...This year's Labor manifesto promised the most sweeping nationalization proposals and antimarket measures since 1945...

...Grouchists are by and large peaceful folk, but the movement has a rowdy militant wing whose best-known spokesman is Jean-Paul Sartre...

...Add British Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe's summing-up of Britain's stance during the October Mideast war—"We behaved like bastards"—and you have a fair idea of the mood of many Western Europeans...

...The nationalization of steel, the abolition of the death penalty, full civic rights for "colored" immigrants, and the liberalization of legislation on homosexuality would all have been quashed if they had been presented directly to the electorate...

...Some junior officers are advocating a revolutionary reform of the Army aimed, they say, at closing the rift between the nation's military and its youth, and lessening France's dependence on nato...

...When Peter Shore, the Minister for Trade, announces a preference for "British Socialism," he really means he is willing to settle for less...

...Foot's public image is that of a hair-shirt egalitarian...

...One might understandably think the CBI supported the Tories during February's election, but in fact, the organization (notably its director general, Campbell Adamson) contributed to the Conservatives' defeat by lambasting the government's economic policy—in particular, its refusal to allow workers bigger pay increases...

...on autoroules— mainly to help Citroen sell its bigger models, cars that were already unprofitable before the fuel scare...

...Arms and food would be cached in every wooded and mountainous region to permit guerrilla operations against an invader...

...Prices are soaring, government officials are discredited, the unions are simmering, and the universities are restless...

...Italy: A current Italian half-joke says President Nixon is right to give a high priority to detente with the USSR...

...For a comprehensive survey of the phenomenon we shall have to rely on the PhD industry or the Playboy Foundation...

...Britain: The Conservative party is financed mainly by businessmen...

...Under pressure from his "Left," Wilson has half-promised to hold a referendum on EEC membership...

...Its guru is Groucho, its party line zaniness...

...Grouch-ism has captured much of Scandinavia and Britain...

...Britain's indecision about entering the fledgling EEC, in the years before General de Gaulle's veto, cost the nation dear in terms of industrial investment and jobs...

...Violence is necessary—it is the only way to achieve a new society, although I don't know what kind of society...

...It has, however, occurred to a few French military minds that Americans may, after all, be human...

...When a well-situated building is blasted, the businessmen buy the ruins at an advantageous price, confident of a fat profit once reconstruction becomes possible...

...Since British firms were determined to have access to the Common Market, they built new plants on the Continent rather than in England...

...The group used to be called the Federation of British Industry—FBI for short— until it and the American agency began receiving each other's mail...

...For what Labor "Left-wingers" most dislike about the EEC is that it involves too much hobnobbing with foreigners...

...I am also told the IRA Provisionals have entered the real-estate game...

...they are asserting themselves increasingly in France and Italy, too...

...The other day an officer asked me solemnly: "Do you think they [the Americans] may one day tire of holding an umbrella over people who are continually kicking them in the shins...

...France: Discontent is rife, Frenchmen will tell you, as they face a national election May 5 following the death of Georges Pompidou...

...Powell urged his followers to vote Labor...

...Right-wing Conservatives hope he will...

...It is an axiom of Paris' diplomatic and military policy that whereas France has the right to treat the United States as a potential enemy, the United States has the duty to defend France...

...It has no overt links with steam-age Marxism, though Trotskyites and Maoists are to be found in the movement...

...Dublin and Belfast businessmen are said to be advising them on the choice of targets...

...A fairly typical Grouchist hero is Mogens Glistrup, who recently persuaded 16 per cent of the Danish electorate to vote for the abolition of income tax, the Army and most of the civil service...

...speed limit imposed last autumn...

...Militant Grouchists dominate much of Northern Ireland and about 20 West German universities...

...The Provos' aim, comrades, is to build a "Socialist" Ireland...

...The "trade union" of British businessmen is the Confederation of British Industry...

...And he would rather have a loose free-trade association with colonialist Portugal than an intimate partnership with the Democratic Socialists of the EEC...

...Investment at home picked up after Britain finally joined...

...Labor has traditionally opposed referendums, knowing that public opinion is usually more conservative than the House of Commons...

...In the interim, the following random notes may be of interest...

...They admit privately that most Common Market countries are progressing faster than Britain and offer their workers higher pay, better social services and longer vacations...

...Prime Minister Harold Wilson's inclusion in his Cabinet of the Left-wing doomsayer Michael Foot has led some people to fear or hope that tumbrels will soon begin rumbling down Piccadilly...

...Meanwhile, bank robberies and street fights are earning Paris the nickname Chi-cago-sur-Seine...

...It is fueled by frustration and inflation...

...It is as much in evidence in ministerial circles and embassies as in pubs and backstreet committee rooms...

...It is spreading in Belgium, infiltrating Spain and even making inroads in the Vatican (where some ecclesiastical officials attribute Cardinal Mindszenty's forced retirement to collusion between the Pope and the Hungarian Communist government...

...In payment for services rendered, they help the terrorists obtain more explosives...

...Wilson having now raised doubts about continued membership, investment —needed to modernize the economy and ward off a slump—will again be diverted to the Continent...

...Anti-EEC crusader Enoch Powell is another Tory devoted to free enterprise and the market economy...

...In a recent interview, M. Sartre declared: "I can see no other solution than violence to get us out of our present situation...

...So the government has raised the speed limit to 85 m.p.h...

...The scheme would also, one suspects, favor guerrilla operations against any French government the conscripts and their young officers happened to dislike...

...The majority of the so-called Left-wingers in the new Labor government are actually populists and old-fashioned nationalists who look back nostalgically to the cheap commodities and captive markets of Britain's Commonwealth heyday...

...Even with zaniness rampant, I can't see the French establishment buying the idea...

...Recently he was asked what he considered a healthy society...

...After all, the Kremlin will soon have two seats in nato—Italy's and France's...

...The Secretary for Employment immediately replied: "Britain during the Second World War"—when (though he didn't say this) the na-' tion was in uniform and the masses were sirring and saluting their betters as never before...

...and that, even under the Gaullists, France has advanced further toward socialism than Britain by Labor's own criteria, nationalization and economic planning...

...It is a mood compounded of frustration and bewilderment, and tinged with shame that this potentially brilliant community, once so adept at colonizing the rest of the world, should suddenly seem incapable of sorting out its own affairs and respecting its own values...

...Under their plan, the Army would become a popular militia led by young officers (middle-aged officers would be transferred to the civil administration...

...Ireland: According to my secret sources (this is yet another NL exclusive), there are now more people in the British government who are sympathetic to the cause of Irish reunification at an early date than in Prime Minister Liam Cosgrave's cabinet in Dublin...

...One excellent piece of news in all the papers was that road accidents had diminished and tankerloads of petroleum were being saved as a result of a 55-m.p.h...

...Existing regiments would be broken up into self-contained companies composed of conscripts and based in hundreds of small camps...