Belated Discovery

In matters of civil rights, Britain is as jealous of its virtue as a girl with a fallen sister; the fallen sister, Britons make clear, is the U.S.

But last week some Britons shrieked that freedom was in peril, others clucked that care must be exercised. For the first time, Britons were grappling with the problem that the U.S. had been sweating out for years amidst British taunts of "McCarthyism": the importance of a man's associations and beliefs.

The case involved John Lang, a 46-year-old assistant solicitor who had worked five years for Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd.. Britain's chief maker of chemicals. Last fortnight I.C.I, fired Lang. Reason: the Ministry of Supply had notified the company that all secret government contracts would be withdrawn unless Lang was removed from contact with them.

Lang refused to resign, demanded a hearing from Ministry officials--and got one. His wife and friends were also heard, and Britons weighed the fragmentary, inconclusive sort of evidence that has troubled so many Americans in the past few years. Lang pointed out that he had served during the war in the Intelligence Corps, in what he called "high-grade security work." He had briefly been a member of the British-Soviet Friendship Society, and assistant treasurer of the socialist Haldane Society at a time when many Laborite lawyers had quit in disgust at its espousal of Communist causes (Lang himself quit in 1950 over the society's support of Communist charges of germ warfare in Korea). His wife had been an open member of the Communist Party off and on since 1931, resigning finally a year before her marriage to Lang in 1951. Declared Lang: "It became quite clear that the only point remaining in doubt was the question of my wife's association with the Communist Party before my marriage . . . There has never been any suggestion that I have ever had any Communist sympathies whatsoever."

Last week in Parliament a group of Liberal and Labor M.P.s peppered Minister of Supply Reginald Maudling with indignant questions. Able young Reggie

Maudling insisted that the government knew what it was about, and refused to divulge all he knew. But he did deny that Lang was being blacklisted solely for his wife's views. The House accepted his explanation. Britain was learning, only five years after Diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean took off for Russia, that security in the face of Communism is a problem more complicated than it had once been ready to admit.

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