DOUGLAS HYDE'S AvmmAAAAA COLUMN

BELOVED REBEL LABOUR'S FUTURE
HE paradox that was George Lansbury—the man who had the face and heart of Father Christmas but who carried a red flag in his pocket— is the paradox of the British Labour Movement as a whole.
It is what makes Continental Socialists — with their Marxist outlook and bitter anti-clericalism —despair of their British comrades. It is what makes it possible for the party to be attacked from the Right for its revolutionary tendencies and, at the same time, to be sniped at from the Left for failing to face up to the full implications of its own Socialism.
"Good George Lansbury" combined most of the contradictory trends which are to be found within his party. He was a Christian (an Anglican), yet he associated for much of his time with men who. though their aims were the same, were agnostics Or were actually hostile to religion: and he knowingly let himself be used by the Communists.
He was a pacifist who believed in the power of love, yet he waged the class war with enthusiasm, and must have known that if he succeeded in raising the workers' " militancy" to his own pitch. violence would be almost inevitable.
But, with all his inconsistencies, he was one of the must-loved politicians of his day, for the good in him was plain for all to see. If he sometimes got too angry, it was always on behalf of someone else — never himself. If he used had weapons it was at least for the underprivileged that he so fearlessly and untiringly did battle. His methods may often have been bad, his motives were always good.
ON WRONG SIDE
IN The Life of George Lansbury (Longmans, 2Is.), which his sonin-law, Raymond Postgate (who did not share Lansbury's religious convictions) has now written, and which i have just been reading. we see these many different sides of the man who at one time edited the Daily Herald and later led the Parliamentary Labour Party in the House of Commons.
As biography it is magnificent, but it is a great deal more than just one man's life. It is the story of the most important period in the Ile of the British Labour movement, from 1859 to 1940. To anyone who wants to understand the Party to which so many Catholics are said to give their votes this is " must " reading.
One paradox which will at once strike any student of Catholic social teaching is that so often the right people were an the wrong side and the wrong ones on the right side.
Lansbury the Christian was among those responsible for the adoption of those very Socialist aspects of the Labour Party policy which most trouble thinking Catholics. Those who opposed him, and who left to themselves would have made it a Labour party pure and simple with which no one could quarrel on Christhin grounds, were many of them agnostics. TODAY the picture is perhaps not so confused. The majority of the doctrinaire Socialists and the Leftwing of the party are materialists. If they are permitted to dominate it, they will turn it into a party which will have the approval of every Continental anti-clerical and the condemnation of the Church.
The only effective , constructive opposition to them is likely to coma from Christians exerting a direct influence upon its policies through the constituency parties, or an indirect one (but one which can be decisive) through the affiliated trade unions.
Unless those Catholics who find themselves able in conscience today to support the Labour Party exert their full influence upon its policies, then the day may very well come when, having fallen into the hands of the Marxists and materialists, it will be a party to which no Catholic may give his allegiance.
But that is up to the Catholics who support it.
FOR REFUGEES
A READER in Bath tells rue that " in the Abbey there last Christ
mas " a Christmas tree was set up to which the public was invited te bring gifts for refugees, particularly warro clothing." The response was generous.
"Could not we in our Catholic churches." she continues, " bring such gifts to the Crib, especially gifts for the babies and young children among the refugees whose plight is so pitiful . . was not the Holy Family itself a refugee family?"
This seems to me to be a perfectly good suggestion if it can he organised in time, and the Arab Relief Fund would seem to be the natural recipient for such gifts so that they could go to Christian refugees expelled from the Holy Land.
A DENIAL
OW briskly the British Communists respond to the directives of the Corninform.
'The Cominforrn Journal of Nov'ember 23 contained a directive to which I referred in this column last weak, Which said: "Special attention should be devoted to the masses of Catholic working people and to their organisations."
By this week the Daily Worker was already making a visible daily effort in this direction. But it slipped up, for in Tuesday's issue it pi ominently displayed an item which said: " Cardinal Griffia has agreed to a special Mass in Westminster Cathedral on Thursday morning for prayers for divine guidance for a solution to problems created by the present unhappy situation in Britain's tire berT:nigbaedress.
of the Fire Brigades' Union are, of course, at present involved in an industrial dispute.
But Mgr. Collingwood, Cathedral Administrator. next day indignantly denied the story. " It is not true," he told rue. There will he no official Mass for firemen on Thursday and no special arrangements of any sort haTvehebecelenrgmyeadueds members of Catholic organisations must, 1 fear, expect ITHHC of this sort of thing.