Behind the New Curtain

Among Britain's left-wing and labor weeklies, knocking the U.S. has become so popular that many other Fleet Streeters have become worried by the anti-American chorus. Last week in the New Republic, Michael Curtis of the liberal London News Chronicle (circ. 1,600,000) took a searching look at the reasons for the "new kind of anti-Americanism in this country" that forms an "Atlantic Curtain" between the two countries.

"Anti-Americanism is ... most marked on the Left among the 'intellectuals' and among working [class] people," wrote Curtis. A big reason is that the Labor government has not the close relations with Washington that the Conservatives had, because Labor has not made the effort to get acquainted. And while there are plenty of organizations that "exist to keep Anglo-American relations sweet" on the well-to-do level, "on the workers' level there are none. But there does exist a constant and active propaganda . . . beamed on the working people [and] organized by the Communist Party.

"It is supported by fellow travelers and pacifists of the old school, who are not Communists, but often genuine liberals ... It has influenced men and women who would be appalled if they were told they were echoing Communist patter."

Too many Britons, says Curtis, still rely on shopworn Marxist notions for their ideas of America, do not understand American capitalism's "evolutionary nature." "They refuse to believe that capitalism is capable of adaptation. British Socialists, for example, would hate to admit that at least two items of labor policy, the Anti-Monopoly Commission and Morrison's Mutual Aid Program, stem directly from American political practice . . . The queer myth about modern America ... could not exist if such leaders of the C.I.O. as Walter Reuther and Phil Murray were at all well known here . . . Productivity teams which Britain and Europe have sent to the U.S. to learn American industrial methods have been 'sold' something much more vital than technical know-how. You have shown the real America to ordinary working people . . . Yet we still have touched only the fringe of the problem."

In putting his finger on reasons for anti-Americanism, Newsman Curtis had overlooked an important one in his own bailiwick. If the British popular press improved its poor job of covering the U.S. and devoted more space to interpreting America's "evolutionary capitalism," Communist propaganda would not have so much ignorance to feed upon.

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