WHOSE FESTIVALP

Last Sunday the Festival of Light brought to a close its second London crusade against 'moral pollution' with a Trafalgar Square pray-in by about 5,000 assorted petty bourgeois, trendies and American Jesus pop groups.

Almost a year ago, shortly after the movement was launched by Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Longford and Mary Whitehouse, they were able to muster some 20,000.

That in itself is an indication that the vast majority of lower middle-class people are waiting on the sidelines, watching the ebbs and flows of the class struggle, before taking the plunge on of reaction.

The enormous potential power of the working class organized in its unions, has been demonstrated time and time again although still in a limited way, since the Festival of Light's first event in September 1971.

The biggest demonstrations have been those in support of the miners and the jailed dockers. Although the middle class didn't always have newspapers to see the events, they were undoubtedly glued to their televisions.

Nevertheless, a hard core of middle-class youth, together with a section of the Knightsbridge set and some businessmen, have been brought together to fight the enemy within'.

To be at one of the rallies held in London over a five-day period was no joke. The_crudity of the Festival for Jesus' was easy to laugh at. But the deadly seriousness of those present meant there was more to it than that. It was a most hostile environment for any socialist to be in.

We were told the invisible enemy residing in the hearts of men, the 'destroyers of society', had to be wiped out.

And for a movement created for the middle class-stricken by the break-up of capitalism, who have seen the Empire disappear, the pound float, money lose value daily, and the working class on the move —it just can't stop there.

Two things stood out in the reincarnation of the 'Dunkirk Miracle' which the Festival of Light attempted in London last week.

The first was relatively simple: the response to a Major-General who fervently tried to whip the strident nationalism of the Empire days: 'Is this the Britain for which my friends gave their lives in Burma?' he asked to wild applause.

The second was more complicated, but in its implica* ns more indicative of the kind of movement some very conscious people are trying to put together here.

This is the fantastic assertion that the entire rescue of the stranded British Expeditionary Force in 1940 was somehow the work of God, who with a mighty hand delivered the valiant British from the dastardly Hun.

Even the most pea-brained bourgeois historians do not Above left: Lord Longford on the 'Day of the Dunkirk Miracle' at Battersea Pier. Above right: Trafalgar Square pray-in. Left : Tower Hill rally.

make that claim. The story is well known how the British army escaped from France in an armada of rowing boats, pleasure steamers and ocean liners. Hitler prevented his generals from moving in with tanks and Goering attempted the impossible of trying to wipe an army out from the But to the Festival of Light it was a miracle.

This is not just bunk, it is bunk which by implication rejects reason, history and all the most basic conquests of human culture. It is very sinister bunk.

And around and about the London Festival I encountered some even more sinister ideas. One organizer talked to me seriously about the creation of 'supernatural men on earth' Here we really are back to the Herrenvolk.

None of the real ideologues of the movement like Whitehouse and Muggeridge, put in an appearance on the platforms during the festival. They seemed content to remain in the background and let the newly-converted American pop groups and folk singers have their way. This time the speakers were insurance men, estate agents and other representatives of the petty bourgeoisie.

But a 24-page edition of 'Buzz', put out especially for the festival, devoted two pages to the campaign for 'The Nationwide Petition for Public Decency' And In a speecn vy IVIIS And in Mary Whitehouse, which formed part of the feature, were to be heard loud and clear the anti-communist tones of the . Moral Rearmament Movement, which Whitehouse joined when she was 24.

The campaign petition urged the reform of the obscenity laws to become an instrument for the 'maintenance of public decency' and the inclusion of television within these laws. The further reactionary demand was made for the banning of sex education books for schoolchildren.

Without, naturally, explaining what 'public decency' actually is, the article launched straight into a speech made by Mrs Whitehouse to a 'prominent Bonn audience' last year in which all her virulent anti-communism and defence of capitalism comes straight out, clear as a bell. 'We would be foolish indeed not to realize that decadence within western culture plays straight into the hands of those who work towards tha dactresstion of marliaman. une aestrucuon o1 parnamentary democracy,' she said.

In evidence she cited an alleged directive by the Italian Communict Partur which on- communist rally wacu tIlcouraged Party members to place no obstacles in the path of pornographers because they 'eat at the very roots of bourgeois society'.

She praised Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew who described licentiousness as 'an attack on the body and soul' and it was criminally negligent' to permit it.

Here the main enemy is revealed as the forces of socialism. Licentiousness turns out to be an attack on capitalism.

Here is another passage which we are sure few of those taking part in the London Festival for Jesus would disagree with: 'The fight against pollution of the mind must be waged simultaneously with the training of the body. Today the whole of our public life may be compared to a hot-house for the forced growth of sexual notions and incitements. A glance at the bill-of-fare provided by our cinemas, playhouses and theatres, suffices to prove this is not the right food, especially for our young people.

'Hoardings and advertisement kiosks combine to attract the public in the most vulgar manner. Anyone who has not altogether lost contact with adolescent yearnings will realize that all this must have very grave consequences.

'This seductive and sensuous atmosphere puts notions into the heads of our youth which, at their age, ought still to be unknown to them ... But if for reasons of indolence or cowardice this fight is not fought to a finish we may imagine what conditions will be like 500 years hence.

'Little of God's • image bo left in human naturc, except to mock the Creator.' The book? 'Mein Kampf. The author? Adolf Hitler.

PAGE 8 Workers Press, Friday September 8, 1972 ND