Voices of Europe; W. Grigor McClelland

Voices of Europe in this program Milton Mayer American broadcaster and lecture author and professor of social research from the University of Frankfurt travels to Newcastle one of the great ports on the east coast of England where he interviews Mr W Gregor MCCLELLAND The president of a chain of 58 grocery stores. Not as you may think to find out how to run a chain of grocery stores but rather to find out something about communist China and communist Russia. Mr McClelland as an English businessman in the spring of 1952 attended the Moscow economic conference and then went on to Peking where besides meeting government and non-government Chinese he witnessed Pekingese made a celebration. Here is Milton mayor Mr McClellan. May I ask you why you went to Moscow and Peking. You don't look very much like a communist to me. Of course I'm not a communist. I'm a British businessman and in my business I try to make decisions. After hearing both sides

on the knowledge of the facts and that's why I went to these countries to listen to communists. You would think that Russia was a paradise on earth and to listen to any communists you would think it was one big concentration camp. Which is it. Well it's not. In fact the thing that struck me most about Russia was the MO manatee of life. I watched people going about their business shopping walking along the streets going to thousands cinema I went to one cinema with them. I went into the houses. I poked around Moscow. I saw all school children and so on. And people are going about their business and bringing up families in Russia very much the same way as they are anywhere else in the world. Of course Mr McClelland one could have said the same thing after a visit to Nazi Germany or

Fascist Italy or Spain. Providing one didn't see the prisons the concentration camps or the cemeteries concentration camps is something I didn't ask about and nor asked to be taken to because they could so very easily have refused and I didn't quite see how I could pin them dumb. If I met with a blank denial Also I didn't mention in Moscow the name of Trotsky or of Yugoslavia. But I asked them just about everything else and I'll. And I got in every case I think frankenfood and Freon. So what did you find in Russia Mr. McClellan that in your view as an Englishman you thought was bad. Well I was shocked at the luxury I found in the midst of poverty. I'd expected in Russia much less inequality of income.

But you get people who can have a flat in Moscow and a villa in the country and a large car and so forth. I should make it clear that it's not the same thing in China where the leaders and top men live very simply. Would you say that this appearance of luxury and the tremendous differences between rich and poor in Russia represented a recrudescence of capitalism. No I don't think the capitalism is the same as inequality of income. And I think the Russians would say that this is just a stage and in this present stage of the development it's necessary to have inequality as an incentive. This stage has lasted a long time so it halves they say that they can't get on to the next stage without a certain basic standard of living. And that's what they hope to accomplish

with the present projects of what they call peaceful construction. Another bad thing I found about Russia was the distortion in the press. We got regular daily press extracts translated and circulated by the British embassy. I'll give you an example. The British lawyer boy DAW who was one of the British participants in the conference. In his speech to the conference gave a boost to the British welfare state and he pointed out that although food was scarce in Britain it was rationed and the price was subsidized so that the poorest could get as much as the richest. The Russian newspaper Pravda reporting this speech simply said Lord Boyd or stated that food was scarce in Britain. Well if we do get cases of distortion like that in our country I don't know about

those. And it might even happen in the American press in some corners of it. Then another bad thing I found was of course that there wasn't very much freedom to criticize the government on major matters of policy. You can't get up in the Red Square. I don't say that Stalin is an idiot. But taking it by and large I should say that the more free more democracy in Russia the common man about the things he knows most about. Like the administration of the factory he works in them there is in Great Britain a low less democracy about the nature of public issues. Mr McClelland. How much can you say in Red Square on political issues. Well I don't know I've never tried it. We did it as it happens I have an impromptu public meeting. It happened this way. We were going

back to our hotel for one day and one of the British stopped on the steps of the hotel to Pep the head of the little guy. There were always crowds of kids around the hotel because the foreigners who went around Moscow without any caps on in this weather were objects of interest. And in a moment quite a crowd had collected largely school grows and we found ourselves having a public meeting. They were asking us questions through an interpreter about our country. Some very intelligent questions there were for example what happens to a child in Britain whose father was killed in the war. And what are you doing about peace in Britain. What kinds of questions did you ask them about their country and their lives. Well we spent most of our time asking questions according to our interests. For example the columnists in the British. Team asked a lot of

questions about the management of Russian industry and then when we went round factories or youth centers or schools or kindergartens we were incessantly asking questions about whatever took our interest. Did Pardon me. Did you ask them questions about the amount of personal liberty they enjoy. This is a very difficult question. We ask lots of questions about it. It can be said for example that they've got freedom of worship. I spend one Sunday morning in a Baptist church in Moscow. There was a service which lasted for two and a half hours and there was a congregation of 2000 which crowded in of the dollars and most of the congregations stood. It's of interest by the way that I'm still in correspondence with the Baptists leaders and I took back as a present from my school the hymn book and my old school have sent

them its hymn book. I can't get that freedom of worship to the extent that you found it existing is one of the brighter signs in Russia where there are others. Yes I think that there's been a good deal of relaxation recently with the increase in standard of living. But I believe that as long as present international tension goes on there will still be abnormal is scared of spies and saboteurs and the whole restrictions designed to counteract that sort of activity will remain very severe. Another good thing I found about Russia which came as something of a surprise to me was the high level of cultural activity that the ordinary people. To a party we saw some magnificent ballet in the Moscow State Theatre and

in books and in the cinema and so on. There was a similar high level. There were no gangster films. There were no comic books. None of what I think you in America call soap opera. In fact I can't explain to you how much the Americans the Russians despise this sort of literature and activity and they can't understand why we give such freedom to our commercial interests. To put it in front of our youth particularly when we're so worried about juvenile delinquency. Mr. McLelland you did I assume. I feel that you were inside a dictatorship an iron dictatorship. Did You Know That. I felt that we were in a country where there was only apparatus and dictatorship but that it wasn't being you lose. It wasn't necessary at the moment

because of the propaganda that is to say you had all the organs of propaganda in the hands of the state and therefore you didn't need to use the weapons of enforcement because you were able to create enthusiasm in the people. That is that the Russians after their 30 years of it are by and large good communists or good communists subject suddenly the whole generation has been through communist schools and university is how much freedom of movement did you personally have Mr. McClellan. Well when I was in Moscow I went all over the place on my own sometimes with an interpreter. But a lot of I didn't want one. And I used the Underground Railway the busses that taxes and so on I went to the houses shops cinemas and places of entertainment and all that. And on the journey across Siberia into China.

We had a free day at a place called Cook school in the heart of Siberia and I even hitchhiked a truck in order to get into the town. And so you got into China. And what major differences would you say you found during your visit in China between Chinese and Russian communism. In the first place of the Chinese revolution is at a much earlier stage and I think the still much more of the real revolution refer up and spirit of equality in China than in Russia. For example the Chinese generals don't wear any medals. There's a great feeling of equality and of being one with the common man. And then in the second place I think the Chinese character is going to affect very

much the development of this new society of building in China. I found in my brief contact with the Chinese that they had a much greater poise than the Russians the Russians seem rather nouveau Rishi in activities whereas you mediately feel in China that they've got 4000 years of civilization behind them. I think speaking as an Englishman they've got a more English sense of humor and I think they've got a greater sensitivity in personal relationships than the Russians. And all these speeches are blending with communism and the result is something new. In the third place the Chinese have had much closer contact with Westerners in the last 30 years than the Russians have. And this is left its mark chiefly a mark of resentment. I'll give you a single example. One of the leading Chinese communist had to whom I met

had had formally a great admiration for Western Civilization. In fact he went to Chicago to study economics. There you found his yellow skin a great handicap in fact he told me he'd have to walk around Chicago for two days before you could get anybody to give him a haircut. And I think that sort of thing explains a lot in the present Chinese attitude. Mr. McLelland in China too as in Russia you were living under what from your English and my American standpoint would be an iron dictatorship. Did you find any more or less personal freedom personal liberty in China than in Russia. Well you got to remember that a revolution has just taken place in China and

to my mind the amazing thing is that so little of suffering has been associated with it. Not so much for those who stuck out against the revenue from things have gone hard and they don't have any personal liberty. But it's been a popular revolution. And the ordinary people who by and large support it. I found it an increase of personal liberty and that's what they mean when they talk of the coming of the communists as the liberation. But they do they are do they not think of personal liberty in our terms or do they think of personal liberty strictly in an economic terms. You've got to remember that the vast mass of the Chinese are very poor peasants scraping a subsistence from the soil and very much subject to the weather to keep them free from family in the whole flood. And therefore they think chiefly of

economic security. And so it means a great deal of them that the new government has managed to stop inflation has successfully fought corruption and has redistributed the land that was formerly by a few landlords. An example all of the way Land reform is popular was given to me when we asked a Chinese communist whether he feared the chyme Kai shek would make an invasion on the mainland. And he replied there's nothing about it. And when I asked him what he meant by saying there wasn't a hope of it he said well you see we had our land reform in this country. Now in every district of China our land is set aside for soldiers returning from abroad. Lao is trying how Shaq dared to set foot on the mainland with an army he would find that army melt away as his previous owners have done.

Now here is another example of something that the Chinese Communists have done. They've cleaned out the sewers in Peking. It's difficult for us with our Western Civilization to realize what a lot it is meant to the ordinary people to get a government at last which would clean up a sow's. Mr. McClelland our taxes in China the taxes on the individuals income higher are lower than they were before the revolution or do you know I don't know except that I think that must be looked up because the people have a say in the the Kuomintang had too many taxes the communists have too many meetings. This was told me by a Chinese communist which shows that they can laugh at some of the practices in this case the practice of having a lot of meetings I dare say that

a poor man would prefer a lot of meetings to a lot of taxes. I think he would as well as and a man who's business. Necessarily makes a student of economics out of him. Mr McClelland what sort of economic change. Radical economic change if any do you find in China. Well the major change is concerned with the land because the land is the big problem in China. I could see this problem as I flew in from Mongolia. There was vast tracts of densely populated brown earth with no trees with no rivers because the locusts never hadn't been melted long. Most of the water courses were already dry. And the great problem is water. And the Chinese communists are planting a lot of trees

having hundreds of thousands of peasants working to dam rivers and control the flow for irrigation and inland transports. And they're managing to distribute new tools with metal tips to the peasants. As I found out when I tackled what a peasant about when he got the tools he was carrying on. All this means a very big increase in agricultural production and there are recently having surpluses available for international trade and that in turn I should suppose raises perhaps one of the most serious questions of all namely the question of trade between the Western nations and Communist China and the other communist nations. And if I am not mistaken there is considerable sympathy among you Englishman

for and increase of trade. I think that would be true for all that is our present refusal to trade with the Chinese Communists leading to in the first place it throws them into the arms of Russia. May I interrupt there Mr. McClellan and ask you if. There would have been a chance to have separated the Chinese from the Russian communists aren't they thrown into one another's arms anyway by their common ideal of communism. I don't think we could have separated them in the same way as Tito and his Yugoslavia separated from Russia. But there is a moderate wing and an extremist wing in the Chinese Communist Party and our present policies have played into the hands of the extremists. Instead in the second place our refusal to trade means there is a tendency to

all talk or self-sufficiency in exactly the same way as there was enough in Germany and that can have an ugly come and in the good place. Our refusal to trade of course prevents them developing that country and keeps them in the dark polity that they're in. But then lists this prevention of the development of their country. I take it is part of the Cold War policy to prevent communism from growing stronger. Yes I think it is but I don't think it's the way to prevent communism from growing stronger because surely the basis of communism the soil in which it grows is poverty and a lack of credit impoverishes people on both sides of the aisle. And you're not going to make people less keen on communists by

keeping them in poverty. You're going to make them keener communists. No I think that the only hope lies in recognizing facts and in dealing with these people. Pardon me Mr. McClellan when you talk about recognizing facts and dealing with these people when you talk about recognizing facts and dealing with these people. Do you indicate that the West is not now recognizing facts and dealing with them. Are you criticizing you know the way in which the West recognises facts or the way in which it deals with them. I think there are two facts we've got to recognize in the first place. In countries like China communism has a very great appeal and of the communists in China are the to stare. We

don't recognize what a great AP or communism hooks up to people of these countries unless we realize that in the countries of the so-called free world there isn't a great deal of freedom in many parts of the new Got to mention space. Egypt of Persia malaria South Africa and of the same memory regime in Korea. For you to recognize I think that that is not what we would call a democracy. Indeed not. And yet the historical circumstances of our time seem to have thrown you Englishman and us Americans into a situation where we find ourselves most storing up every possible resistance to communism we can find no matter how shall I say undemocratic it may be.

Have we another choice in your view. I think we have. I think that hope lies in pursuing policies which would clean up the western world. I think that one of the ways of avoiding the danger of communism is to stop both storing up corrupt regimes and I think that another thing we can do is to surround the communist countries with a less antagonistic attitude because all I saw in Russia and in China that made me think that a relaxation of international tension would lead to a more liberal policies being pursued inside these countries. For example the outbreak of the Korean War meant an intensification of the antiphon drive and it meant that China went on with her program faster

and therefore more ruthlessly than she would otherwise have done. But Mr McClelland the the policy that you seem to be advocating is one which many perhaps most Americans would call a policy of appeasement of. And my own criticism of it at this point in our discussion is that it takes a somewhat nebulous form. I wonder if I could ask you to suggest two or three major steps which you would advocate being taken by the West and perhaps a step or two which the individual Englishman or American could take to reduce the tension which carries with it the threat which

terrifies all of us. Yes I'll do that in the first place I think that it's important to use every channel open to us to maintain contact with these countries on the other side of the cut. I found that when I went to Moscow a lot of people said that anyone who goes to Moscow must be a communist. I think that's part of the attitude in which we can get a relaxation of tension. Then I think that we've got to create the conditions. Well we can talk to these people for example. We've got to have the United Nations as a real world forum for settling international tensions. And you can't have that so long as communist China is excluded from membership. How in your view are we to develop it if we all just sit around the table and discuss

with the communists the middy of this who's which divide us and which you won't expect me to go into now and discuss with some trance of reaching a settlement. We've got to enter that discussion in the right frame of mind. It's a frame of mind that I'm thinking of which avoids slogans and if I may say so the word appeasement which you fling at me just now is just another slogan. We've got to avoid writing off half the world as just go and read. We've got to stop thinking of the communists just as the little red devils. I recognize that there are human beings with a point of view a coherent and firmly held point of view of that. And we've got to make an effort of imaginative insight so's to understand this point of view. We can't expect this new frame of mind to be

developed by our governments. In our democratic countries. You and I have got to develop it ourselves. We've got to develop it in spite of the difficulties. And there are difficulties for how easy is it for an Englishman or an American to make a serious study of the Communist point of view. The social pressure against it at 10 or 8 in my camp in my country is very intense but can we not withstand this pressure for after all it is a matter of life and death a matter of life and death not just for the communist world not for our half of the world but for the whole world together. Thank you Mr. McClellan. Milton Mayer has been interviewing Mr. W. Gregory McClelland an English chain store president and member of the British team to the Moscow economic conference in the spring of 952. The program you have just heard is made possible under a grant from the fund for adult education

an independent organization established by the Ford Foundation. These programs are prepared and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This program was introduced by Norman McKee and this is e ne e betake network.