Political Commentary

Social democrat, vintage1940 John Grigg

IcirtY Crosland's stroke is much more than a Personal tragedy. Brilliant politicians are now in short supply, but he is undoubtedly nne of the few remaining. And whatever one MaY think of his performance in more recent Years, there is no denying his originality and courage during the earlier stages of his career.

He has been an outstanding example and exIDonent of democratic socialism, a phi losoPhY which has lately come under heavy fire fr,ont both the extreme left and the 'radical right'—from those, in other words, who share the strange belief that what the country needs is more sharply polarised political conflict.

1939-40 he was active in the Oxford L'niversity Labour Club, beginning as a fellow-traveller but then reacting strongly a, gainst the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. During the Finnish war he became even more anti-Soviet, while Denis Healey, still a cornargued that the safety of the Soviet Union necessitated the acquisition of large chunks of Finnish territory. In the spring of 1940 the Labour Party exDelled the communist-controlled UniversLitY Labour Federation, to which the Oxford ahour Club was affiliated, and there was a fierce debate in the Club to decide whether or Incit to break with the ULF out of loyalty to dr! osPort House. The vote went against, n,ing so, and the large anti-communist Tinnrity then formed their own Democratic eckflist Club, with Crosland as its first ellairtnan. Other foundation members of the breakrClub were Roy Jenkins, Anthony asiott (sadly drowned last year while serving arnbassador to Israel), David Ginsburg '1)(2e, Present Labour MP for Dewsbury) and wnkilio Williams (fellow of Nuffield College, biu° has just completed Gaitskell's official ail°gr,aPhY). They were supported by nearly G

the Labour dons, including Patrick

Prclon Walker, A. L. Rowse, and A. D. tinA,• J. P. Taylor recalls two young Labour an'ergraduates asking him to give an in6gural address to the Democratic Socialist thub. He told them—characteristicallye at he was firmly anti-communist but

firmly pro-Russian. All the same

e 'Persisted and he gave the address. The ergraduates were Roy Jenkins and Tony rosland.

the nis Healey stayed on as a hard-finer in his truncated Labour Club, and even after extrYears away at the war still sounded quite 194serne at the Labour Party conference in Co,,.; though he had meanwhile left the „unist Party. But his career as a "flinrnant anti-communist began soon after

wards, when he joined Transport House as backroom boy dealing with foreign affairs, during the period of Ernest Bevin's foreign secretaryship. Another hard-liner who remained in the Labour Club at the time of the 1940 split was Edmund Dell. Like Healey, he has since moved to a very different ideological position.

In the 1950s Crosland was the leading intellectual revisionist of the left, seeking to persuade his party that nationalisation was a blind alley, and that they should concentrate instead upon achieving greater social equality and improving the general quality of life. Naturally he became a friend and acolyte of Gaitskel I, who certainly permitted an atmosphere of social equality in his own circle. One evening at his London home he went over to a group including Crosland and, seeing their glasses empty, said 'I'm sure you must be saying I'm a rotten host.' 'Oh, no,' replied Crosland cheerfully, 'we were only saying you were a rotten leader of the Labour Party,' No friend of Crosland's has ever taken such remarks in bad part. They are not intended to wound.

If Gaitskell rather than Wilson had formed the Labour Government of 1964. Crosland would probably have got on faster than he did. When the Government was formed, he did not immediately receive a senior appointment and in the crisis of 1967 the Treasury went to his old associate and rival, Roy Jenkins. Jenkins was no closer to Wilson than he was, but perhaps he was rather more tactful with colleagues and slightly less prone to make them feel inferior.

The Crossman diary makes out that Jenkins was more effective in Cabinet, and has this to say of Crosland's performance there: 'He's extremely able, his contributions in Cabinet are always relevant and usually wise, and yet he's constantly putting up pro

posals which get defeated . . He is fifteen times the man Fred Mulley is but dim little Mulley boring away at his departmental brief gets the Department's way even though he's a bore, whereas despite his brilliance Tony often doesn't succeed in helping his Department.'

Pique at Jenkins's advancement may have contributed to his trimming behaviour on the Common Market issue when Labour were in opposition again after 1970. But there may be a deeper explanation of the change which many at this time observed in his attitude towards politics. Like Macmillan, he was exceptionally brave during his early years as an MP, and never afraid to challenge the sacred cows of his party. But, also like Macmillan, he may have tended to overcompensate when at last he attained power, becoming perhaps rather more worldly-wise and, at times, opportunistic than he need have been.

Beyond question, his handling of the Clay Cross councillors compares unfavourably with Jenkins's handling of the Shrewsbury pickets, and would not (one feels) have been approved by himself twenty years before. Yet it would be wrong to suggest that he has forsaken all his principles and ceased fundamentally to be the man he was. He has never pretended to have changed his mind about the futility of unlimited nationalisation, and has commented typically : suppose they want to make Marks and Spencer as efficient as the Co-op.'

As Foreign Secretary one of his first acts was to end the Cod War, and it was not an easy thing for the MP for Grimsby to do. Defending his agreement with Iceland in the House of Commons he displayed all his qualities of lucidity and adroitness, together with an ill-concealed contempt for those who were trying to exploit the trawlermen's grievances. To listen to him was to realise how formidable he could still be, morally as well as intellectually. And his recent speech to the European Parliament satisfied his audience that he was still a good European after all.

It is now more obvious than ever that the burden, in particular, on the three top members of a modern British government has become almost intolerable. The Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary have a huge work-load, which is aggravated by an amount of foreign travel which their predecessors before the age of jet flights never had to face.

Lord Halifax, after a late night conference while he was Foreign Secretary, complained to Kingsley Martin that such meetings did him no good. 'They spoil your eye for the high birds.' But he was working in a more leisurely age, and besides he was a peer, with no late night sittings in the House of Commons to compound the exhaustion of his official work.

Macmillan appointed a peer to the Foreign Office, and the experiment was by no means unsuccessful. But it is clearly preferable for the Foreign Secretary to be available for questioning in the House of Commons, and there will always be a bias against appointing peers to the job.

The departure of Roy Jenkins to Brussels, and now Tony Crosland's stroke, have deprived British social democrats of their natural leaders. The torch is passing to Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers, though of course the Prime Minister will support them as much as a man can who has to hold together a coalition of ideological opposites.

They can derive some inspiration from what happened at Oxford in 1940, and some comfort from knowing that Denis Healey and Edmund Dell are now on the right side. But nobody can be complacent about the outlook for British politics when he asks himself which young MP today could write, under the age of forty, a book like The Future of Socialism.