DOUBTERS DELAY MOVE INTO EEC
By Michael de la Bedoyere
IT has been disappointing to read of the objections made by Trade Unions to Britain's
entry into the Common Market. This is all the more unfortunate
in that the present electoral weakness of the Conservatives sug gests across the Channel that Labour might conceivably be the next British government. And if under such a government the Trade Unions were determined to continue looking to the past instead of the future, Britain would at best become a very difficult partner in the Common Market.
In point of fact, worker and trade union rights are well established in the Common Market countries. as well as is the Christian concept of a just wage and proper welfare provisions. Details in different countries may differ, and the British tradition will also differ. But the time is past when any Western country can afford to exploit the worker, even if in Britain as elsewhere too little attention is paid to the rights and the welfare of those who cannot defend themselves through union bargaining power. One suspects that the doubters, like Mr. Cousins, are still falling for the perennial Labour disease of always looking back to what has been achieved and established because they lack the courage to partake enthusiastically in the building of a better future for whole communities and for the world. The worker commitment is psychologically so strong that they cannot see that the worker's future is bound up with national and international prosperity of the future.
Alas, this narrowness is shared by too many people in this country when it is a question of the political future of Europe. The idea of Britain yielding even an iota of her sovereignty is deeply repellent. Il is another case of looking back instead of to the future. There are risks in every move forward indeed there are serious Christian risks, since Christian principles are very far from being first in the queue even in nominally Catholic countries. But all this constitutes a challenge to both Christian and secularist: it is no excuse for digging one's heels in and look over one's shoulder.
M R A : Raising our standards
ONE is glad to learn that Patrick Wolrige-Gordon won his battle against the Al deenshire Conservatives who sought to have their mere rejected at the next election cause of his close association the Moral Rearmament mu ment.
There are differing views at that movement, but while ideology may in certain respect! a danger to Catholics who cc confuse moral aims with sd natural truths, there is little di. that the movement has don great deal to foster a higher si of moral ideals and service in in countries.
In Britain — or indeed ever Scotland — we have little c: for satisfaction about the spirt and moral idealism expre today either in public or in pri life. Indeed many of us, Cate and Christian, could profit by spirit and service of M.R.A., our practical criticism of it ese be more soundly based if troubled to follow its exar where we legitimately can ins of simply abusing it. Of cm there will be excesses and stuff ties — even perhaps dark con but none of this prevents choosing and imitating the be! We cannot imagine how member of parliament w weaken his service to his stituency and to his country publicly professing to raise it standards in public and private Rather it is the failure to do in public and business life w injures the welfare of the con and if Christians today generally well-respected, stiff( little political persecution, n not one of the reasons he the their public and professional I they are too little active Christ too much passive ones ou church and home?
PUBLICITY: Letter from Rome
TALKING of publicity Christianity, one welo an increased interest in religi( the Guardian.
One noted in particular a F letter entitled "A Union o: Christians." In it were rep the very important words of dinal Bea about "pea coexistence" and a "real uni' all humanity". The whole v. the Cardinal said, "trembles alarm before its own discos and conquests which threat, with unprecedented catactro And the Cardinal added that i today essential to mobilise those forces which agree at on the plane of the religious of the idea of God, and o existence of a set of ethical a Certainly it would not possible to exclude from the dinal's words the applicatio his appeal to the perils fie whole world of the nuclear : mere race.
The CND march has been criticised and praised; it has described as still purposeful purposeless. But no one ca away from the witness of M Matsuhara from Hiroshima was only 12 (when the bomt in a school of 320 children only 55 of that number a alive . . Last year we lost than 50 people from rad diseases, including leukaerni cancer."