MT 60 Yrs –\u00a02nd Year No 58 –\u00a0Friday \u2013 16th September 1955<\/p>\n
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A year ago, NMU publicly proclaimed his scrupuleux regard pour la verit\u00e9 (scrupulous regard for the truth). How do specific statements of his measure up to that bold claim? Let us look at Opinion du jour in Le Cern\u00e9en of June 3rd, where we can read Apr\u00e8s la guerre, le Gouvernement Churchill qui venait de sauver l\u2019Angleterre, a \u00e9t\u00e9 renvers\u00e9 b\u00eatement et injustement\u2026 (After the war, Churchill\u2019s Government, which had just saved England, was ungratefully and unjustly overthrown). How does this measure up with a \u201cscrupulous regard for truth\u201d. We will see. <\/span><\/p>\n Certainly Churchill led the wartime Coalition Government which was formed after Dunkirk, in 1940. But \u2013 the Government was supported by members of all parties, Labour and Liberal as well as Tory. It was the all-party Coalition Government, headed by Churchill as Prime Minister, which saved England.<\/span><\/p>\n When in 1945 the war in Europe ended, the Labour and Liberal members of the Government resigned. Churchill remained as Prime Minister and for a week headed a Tory Government \u2013 the \u201cCaretaker\u201d Government, as it was derisively known. This Government lasted the few weeks to the Dissolution of Parliament which was of course followed by the General Election. At this election, as is well known the Labour Party gained its resounding victory. People were not unjust or ungrateful \u2013 they wanted a break with the past, with the old ways of life. They saw in the Labour Party a party of hope and vision and progress, offering a new way of life; contrasting with the Tory Party which still in 1945 stood for privilege and the power of Mammon. Incidentally, a majority of Tory MP\u2019s had opposed Churchill and voted for the continuance of the Chamberlain Government in 1940! And, during the war, Churchill had been a great national leader; but the General Election campaign of 1945 revealed him as a mere party Cheap-Jack.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1945 the Churchill Government was renvers\u00e9; but it was a Tory Government pure and simple. It was not the Government which venait de sauver l\u2019Angleterre (had just saved England). An all-party Government saved England during the war; a Labour Government saved England and restored her prosperity after the war. The five years of Tory rule that have followed the Election of 1951 have undermined that prosperity so that Britain now faces a financial crisis which the Tories will deal with in their traditional time hallowed way \u2013 unemployment, restriction of the social services, short-time in industry.<\/span><\/p>\n No, NMU\u2019s boast of a scrupulous regard for truth falls down in the connexion. But further \u2013 in the same Opinion du jour we read that l\u2019\u00e9volution de la doctrine travailliste la porte inexorablement vers l\u2019\u00e9tat de l\u2019\u00e2me communiste (the evolution of Labour doctrine leads inevitably to the Communist state of mind). In this connexion, NMU refers to l\u2019exemple de Bevan (the example of Bevan). Perhaps NMU is unaware of Aneurin Bevan\u2019s implacable anti-Communism; of Bevan\u2019s statement, in the foreword to Denis Healey\u2019s The Curtain Falls, that \u201cThe Communist Party is the sworn inveterate enemy of the Socialist and Democratic parties. When it associates with them, it does so as a preliminary to destroying them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This statement of Bevan\u2019s is borne out by postwar events in Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia, to name but two countries where the communist parties have destroyed the social democratic parties. It was precisely because Czecho-Slovak and Hungarian social democracy was not leading to communism that the Czecho-Slovak and Hungarian Communist Parties engineered coups d\u2019\u00e9tat and seized power.<\/span><\/p>\n Once again therefore we find that the facts belie NMU\u2019s boast of the scrupuleux regard pour la verit\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>\n (MT 16 September 1955)<\/span> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \n *\u00a0 Published in print edition on 18 March 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MT 60 Yrs –\u00a02nd Year No 58 –\u00a0Friday \u2013 16th September 1955<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":6560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[3652,6664,76,77,75],"class_list":["post-4152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-aneurin-bevan","tag-churchill","tag-le-cerneen","tag-nmu","tag-peter-ibbotson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/MT-Logokk.jpg?fit=1200%2C880&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-14Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}