The Bomb has become the issue of the age. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is Britain's biggest mass movement since Chartism. The revolt against nuclear defence policy is the groundswell behind a socialist movement of a new kind—the movement which is taking shape as Britain's "New Left."

These were the key points in an address delivered by Conrad Bellinger, Victoria graduate and former "Salient" editor, to the Labour Club's A.G.M. on March 23.

Bollinger described the British political scene as he had observed it in the course of 12 months' stay in London. A stay that had included personal contact with the nuclear disarmament and colonial freedom movements and the London New Left Club, and personalities such as Fenner Brockway, M.P., Rev. Michael Scott, and Edward Thompson, editor of the "New Reasoner."

Right, Left And Centre

After a racy summary of the forces behind the Right ("The British Conservative Party is as much of a thieves' kitchen as the New Zealand National Party— more so, perhaps, because the stakes are bigger") and the Centre ("The absence of a tradition like that of British liberalism, in New Zealand, is conspicuous and deplorable—it means that on a host of issues the British Liberal Party is well to the left of the New Zealand Labour Party"), he gave a detailed analysis of the Left. He described, what he called, the "Old Left" as, "two prominent monoliths, and a lot of loose gravel." In the first category are the lumbering party more prominent), and the Communists (the more monolithic). In the second category he placed the tiny splinter groups and sects that have detached themselves from both.

There were, he claimed, some healthy forces inside both the "monoliths" and the splinter groups had also made many positive contributions. The most promising sign on the Left, however, was taking the form of a deep dissatisfaction with the rigidity and bureaucratic control of the "Old Left." This was principally associated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, whose Aldermaston March last Easter attracted thousands and thousands of serious young people, and whose policies have been adopted by trade unions never considered subject to "leftist" influence.

The "New Left" Press

The journal "Universities and Left Review." run mainly by young students and concerning itself with issues of culture and society, has been described as "the first authentic voice of the postwar generations." Its amalgamation with " The New Reasoner," a quarterly founded by the "revisionists" who left the Communist Party on humanist grounds in the year of the Hungarian uprising and Khrushchev's secret speech, had given the "New Left" a worthy mouthpiece. The Labour Left weekly "Tribune" is also becoming more and more a "New Left" journal, and groups like Dr. Donald Soper's new Christian Socialist movement are tending in the same direction.

Not Purely Marxist

While he believed that Marx's economic ideas would form the basis of any worthwhile Socialist movement. Conrad Bollinger said he did not believe the "New Left" would be purely Marxist, Trotskyite, Christian, Pacifist, or any of the other adjectives that went with the various movements that were converging to form it. He said it was restoring socialism to its original aims; summed up in William Morris's epigram that "No man is good enough to be another man's master."

(Hector MacNeill has been reelected Chairman of the Club and Alan Andrews installed as Secretary.)