Lockheed Ripples Spread

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• The Lockheed bribes scanHal continues to threaten the stability of bourgeois governments in several countries.

In Japan, former Prime Minister Tanaka is only the most prominent of 17 politicians and businessmen arrested in connection with the affair.

Tanaka, who resigned as Prime Minister in 1974 because of other shady deals, is accused of having accepted nearly £l million to use his power in promoting the sales of Lockheed aircraft.

Hira Hiyana, former chairman of Mambui Trading Corp. Lockheed's Japanese agent, is also among those charged.

The scandal has thrown Japan's right-wing ruling Liberal Democratic Party into extreme crisis just as they are about to face a general election.

A move is afoot to dump the (current Prime Minister, Takeo Miki, who has been too energetic in rooting out the parties to corruption.

The LDP leadership have always ¡amassed their wealth by means of (bribery and influence and any ¡serious investigation would certain¡ly uncover a whole series of 'Lockheeds' Millionaire Tanaka is already free on bail of, for him, a paltry £400,000.

If he ever is made to serve the maximum five-year penalty • for bribery, it will only be after years of appeals and wrangling in the Meanwhile he continues to sit in the lower house of the Japanese lezislature merrily 'representing the interests of his constituents' Last week Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and her consort, Prince Bernhard, were cruelly disturbed during their holiday on the Italian Riviera by news that the long awaited report by the Commission on whether Bernhard had taken bribes from Lockheed, had been handed over to the Dutch government.

The report will be published by the end of the month, and is likely to implicate Bernhard up to the ears.

Abdication by Queen Juliana is already being mooted. The contents of the report were no surprise to Bernhard.

He had seen it weeks before its delivery and had in fact spent the summer trying through his lawyer to get it changed!

The question is, did he succeed?

• UNDER HATS The Italians have been more successful in keeping things under their hats. During the run-up to the general election the press was fairly quiet about the involvement of a former Christian Democrat prime minister in local Lockheed affairs.

A parliamentary commission has finally been named to investigate, and is expected to make a sleepy start after the August holidays.

Its 20 members include seven from the Italian Communist Party who here their Stalinist policy of class collaboration instead of forcing the setting up of an independent workers' enquiry - the only way in which the real issues involving Lockheed and similar cases of corruption could be tackled.