LABOUR PAINS
This will be a remarkable achievement. It is barely credible, looking back over the Govern- ment's record, that it should be contemplating a general election with anything but gloomy resignation—incredible, indeed, in view of its record, that it should still be in office. Memories are so short that it is now forgotten that dis- satisfaction with Sir Anthony Eden's premier- ship had come to a head before Suez, with even the Conservative press denouncing him. Just where things went wrong over Suez itself is still a matter for argument, but nobody inside or outside the party now pretends that it was any- thing but an unmitigated disaster. There have been a series of economic crises, one pushing Mr. R. A. Butler out of the Treasury, another nearly wrecking the pound. Cabinet squabbles, leading to resignations and threats of resignations, have meant an atmosphere of continued in- stability. And there has been Cyprus. Yet the Government can claim to be in at least as good a position as it was in 1955 to fight a general election.
The reason is obvious: the lack of an alterna- tive Government. Even at the lowest ebb of their popularity, the Conservatives were not losing votes to Labour, The best that the Opposition has been able, Ito hope, for in the last few months is that it would, win by default—by Conservative abstentions, and, defections to the Liberal Party. But even befpre the Middle East crisis arose, this hope, wn.dashert by the publication in the News Chronicle of a Gallup Poll on the relative popu- larity of the parties, which suggested that had an election been held at the time, the Tories would have won. It can reasonably be assumed that their chances have been further improved by the Government's Jordan action, not so much because it has heartened their supporters (it may yet depress them) as because it has revealed con- tinuing divisions in the Labour Party.
The weakness of the party was strikingly demonstrated in the controversy over parlia- mentary privilege. This need not have been a matter for party concern : there was a free vote. But Labour MPs went into it as a party (though a divided one) and the effect of the adverse vote on them was remarkable. An atmosphere of rancorous gloom descended on them; Labour MPs who had voted against the party trend were reviled as traitors; one was told by a colleague that he had shared in the worst betrayal of the party since 1931. Labour MPs' later attitude. at question-time and in letters to the press, revealed a streak of petty childishness which not even their opponents had suspected.
Why? The most reasonable explanation, though it goes only part of the way, is that Opposition Members now find their job as go-betweens, as the link between their constituents and the administration, the most rewarding part of their work : indeed, often the only rewarding part of their work. Vital political issues have virtually disappeared; even when something controversial crops up like the Rent Act, the number of people it directly affects is so small,that it proves of little value politically. With the collapse of doctrinaire Socialism, and the adoption instead of a modified me-tooism, the range of controversy is being still further reduced; and where it exists, it is often on issues which may raise a rumpus at West- minister but have little interest for the electorate. The growth of rigidity in the party system with the consequent decline of the individual Member makes him even less of a force in the HouSe than he would like to be. The one field in which he has the illusion of power, and of popularity, is in his handling of the ideas, criticisms and com- plaints of his constituents. To deprive him of what he felt (even if wrongly) to be his full freedom to enjoy this last pleasure seemed a cruel trick.
The party's present dilemma has now been clearly revealed in its latest document Plan fol Progress: Labour's policy for Britain's economic expansion. At first sight the pamphlet represents a sensible attempt to effect a compromise be- tween doctrinaire Socialism, party politics and the economic facts of life. Its propoied changes are relatively modest; its attitude (though the authors cannot resist some 'tired old party jibes) on balance forward-looking. But on closer examination some of its ideas crumble away to the dust of their own inconsistencies. For example. it provides 'world league' tables, one showing the recent rise in 'production figures in different countries (Britain is near the bottom) and the other showing the rise in the cost of living in the same countries (Britain is at the top). The inference is obvious. But these tables reveal West Germany as the champion country : and nothing could be further from West German economic theory and practice than the ideas which the Labour Party puts forward in Plan for Progress.
The pamphlet is full of such inherent contra- dictions. It talks a lot about the need for efficiency (which is perhaps the reason why it has nothing to say about nationalisation). But at the same time it urges a return to the distributed profits tax, which has disappeared for the good reason that so long as it'lasted it made the financing of industry much less efficient. The authors claim to be anxious to strengthen Commonwealth ties; but they still hanker after a reversion to bulk- buying—something that only a few Common- wealth producers, the least efficient ones, would favour.
These inconsistencies are understandable: they can be attributed to the inevitable stresses arising in a period of transition. In other re- respects, too, Labour's unpopularity arises out of things over which it has little control. The unattached voter still tends to link the .Party with austerity; and though he observes that it has been trying to give a decent burial to its tired old dogmas, he is not sure whether some of the corpses are really dead. But undoubtedly the chief reason for Labour's failure 10 win friends and influence the unconverted is the shifty appearance given by the party's Persona. In trying to bring the disparate elements of. the Left into a coherent party, capable of offering a stable alternative government, Mr. Gaitskell can claim to have been surprisingly successful : but the end-result is unappetising.
The compromises for which he has been responsible, valuable though they have appeared to members of the party, have a tarnished look to the public. Within the party, for example, it must have been regarded as a triumph of diplo- macy when Mr. Aneurin Bevan, Mr. George Brown and others were induced to thrash out their differences in private, and produce for public Consumption a defence policy that it was possible for the party to defend. To colleagues this was a Matter for congratulation; but to the detached observer, it simply seemed that the heady prospect of power had created a spurious unity between men whose views were fundamentally irreconcil- able : a 'shaky foundation for a government. This Cynical attitude has been justified by the con- troversy within the party over the Lebanon / Jordan intervention; for all that it was prevented from becoming an open wound, it revealed that the divisions are still deep.
Unluckily for Labour, this does not affect Tory Popularity. The Conservative Party is the party of ad hoc; of pragmatism; of acceptance that what it has denounced as black can become, if not White, a workmanlike shade of grey. No such dispensation assists Labour. The party owes its strength largely to its belief in Socialist principle; 1931 confirmed it in the view that Utopia is to be attained only by sea-green incorruptibility. And in the process of trimming its sails to catch what few fitful political breezes are now blowing, it has lost its soul.
This is not the fault of its leader. Mr. Gaitskell , Was appointed Lord Attlee's successor to do a job which, in the main, he has succeeded in doing; fusing the party's discordant elements. But in doing it he has become too much the parliamen- tarian. Common sense should have warned him not to commit himself, as he did, so deeply in the ;Privilege question, where public opinion and the entire press were overwhelmingly against him; and Where there was no necessity (as it was not a party question) to .get involved. By this error he has done his reputation as a politician real damage. Still, in itself this would not seriously affect his future; and at the moment, he is the only man available for the job. It is the lack of strong sup- Port which is chiefly responsible for the party's decaying fortunes. , The decline in Mr. Aneurin Iiivan's prestige recently has been remarkable. Only a few months ago he was still the dominant personality in the Labour Party. But his influence in his own party has been sapped by persistent failures in the House, where he seems to have lost his touch. Admittedly he has made a good recovery from a precarious position during the Middle East crisis. But his grip on the electorate is now much weaker, He deserves credit for seeing that the old party game would no farther go; that the currents flow- ing against old-style Socialism were too strong even for him to swim against. But it would have been wiser for him on realising this to withdraw to his farm for a while, like Cincinnatus, to re- think and redesign his policy, rather than carry out his re-education in public, to the amusement of his enemies, and the mortification of his friends.
And after Mr. Bevan, who is there? Nobody of any stature. Apart from concern over the party's leadership, there is growing disillusion- ment in the trade union movement; only the powerful force of inertia keeps the two in some kind of partnership. The party's elder statesmen, too, the Morrisons and the Shinwells; who ought to be exercising a beneficent harmonising in- fluence, are thoroughly dissatisfied with its present condition. So are many of the more sensible Labour MPs—as the defections in the division on privilege showed.
It is much easier to diagnose the reasons for the sickness of the Labour Party than to suggest appropriate remedies. There is obviously little. that can be done for the moment; the structure of parliamentary parties is so ossified that no sudden change could be made even if it were desired. The possibility remains, too, that the congenital mad- ness of Tory foreign policy will land us eventually in a situation which not even Tories can for- give; or that unforeseen or in the shape of, say, a financial or trade crisis, will catch up with them; or that failure to hold down prices will dissipate their present relative popularity. In such circumstances the Labour Party might win the next election in spite of itself. But if it does not, its future becomes bleak. The trade union movement will be tempted to make the break; the Left will cry angrily We told you so' and redouble its efforts for a more dynamic Socialist policy; the ordinary Labour voter, without strong party feelings, will grow disheartened. The pros- pects of a revival of the Liberal Party, or of the emergence of some new-style radicalism, would then be even stronger than they are today.
Whatever happens, the present weakness of the Opposition is an unhealthy sign; good neither for the country nor for the Government, which has been allowed to get away with murder (and events in Cyprus make the phrase regrettably apt) while still retaining the support, if not the confidence, of the electorate. For the elector, though he pre- fers the devil he knows to the devil he exorcised seven years ago, is very far from satisfied with the workings of the parliamentary system. That he should be unmoved by the wailing of Labour Members when they pretend that their privilege exists for his protection is not simply an indication of his contempt for them : it is also a sign of his dissatisfaction with Westminster. When Conservatives congratulate themselves on the decline in Labour's fortunes, they should exercise restraint; for if they are not very careful, the same bell will toll for them.
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