Political Commentary
Who will command the heights?
Patrick Cosgrave
There were, as everybody wrote at the time, twenty-six words in the Labour Party Nation al Executive's economic policy document stating the intention of nationalising twentylye major British companies when, and if, Labour returned to power. Mr Wilson took the strongest possible exception to this shop Ping list, and announced that he and the Shadow Cabinet would, under clause five of the Party's constitution, veto the inclusion of the Promise in any Labour manifesto. The row thus begun still rumbles on; and the meeting last week of the Parliamentary Labour Party, together with the publication by the Tribune group of a statement saying that the ideas
Put forward in the document "are the minimum that can be accepted in the struggle for .a Socialist Britain," suggests that it may yet attain serious proportions. Most of the argument will now centre around the constitution and powers of Labour's proposed National Enterprise Board. However, before discussing the likely elements in that argument, it would be as well to say another word about the twentynye companies and the veto. Some of the Labour left were enthusiastically insistent on „the twenty-five companies proposal (Mr riedgwood Benn turned up at a party wearing a tie with the number 25 emblazoned on it, though he *did not care to come out in open oPposition to his leader) less because of the s,LIPPosed socialistic and economic value of the proposal, than because its very specific nature would help to tie down the Shadow Cabinet when and if they became the Cabinet, and virtually nobody on the left thinks Mr Wilson and his senior colleagues are reliable in their promises, because of what happened between 1964 and 1970. In addition, however, since no Socialist would be a Socialist if he did not love a constitutional wrangle, many rapidly shifted their attention to the Constitutional implications of Mr Wilson's threatened veto. And it does seem that the left had a strong case here: clause five of the Party's constitution does not seem to me to give the Leader and the Shadow Cabinet the Power to veto anything in a National ExecuLive policy document: rather it says that the Shadow Cabinet and the NEC meeting together will determine the contents of the Party manifesto. True, in practice, Mr Wilson Is likely to command a majority at any such Ifleeting, but that is not the same as having a 'egal or constitutional right of veto. Thus the situation when the Parliamentary Party met to discuss the document. Some Ptositions then became clearer. It had been thought Olt before the meeting, by those closest 10 Mr Wilson, that the occasion Would mark the first step towards compromise on the part of the left, and that the end result of a process begun there would be the quiet dropping of the twenty-five companies proposal. Indeed, those on the right of the party concentrated in their speeches on that proposal, and guyed it with reference to to its electoral dangers, Dr Dickson Mabon suggesting that it Would go a long way to ensuring a 'Labour defeat; and Mr Robert Sheldon attacking the Transport House research department, who Worked so closely in alliance with the left on the policy draft. This suggestion of incipient electoral disaster was, however, immediately denounced by members of the Tribune group: "How long is the queue going to be at he polling booths in support of Tiny Rowland'?" asked Mr Ian Mikardo (it would begin,
on the evidence, with the devil of a lot of Lonrho shareholders); and he went on, "Capitalism today is a man-eating tiger. You are not going to tame it by stroking its fur, saying ' nice pussy ' and giving it a saucer of milk."
But it rapidly became clear that the senior spokesmen of the left were not, in fact greatly bothered by the twenty-five companies formula. That was a formula and no more. What they wanted was the sternest possible commitment to large scale nationalisation, through the proposed National Enterprise Board. With the exception of Mrs Judith Hart, who had chaired the sub-committee which first came up with the magic number, leftwing spokesmen — especially Mr Eric Heffer — concentrated on the NEB rather than on the twenty-five, and it seemed at one moment as though Mr Wilson was going to support them when, speaking of the old phrase about the commanding heights of the economy, he reminded his listeners that the commanding heights, as understood in 1945, were already in public hands but, "the commanding heights today are the great conglomerates, domestic and multi-national, unaccountable to anyone, not even the shareholders." The difficulty was, as the left saw immediately, that, in Mr Wilson's view of things, the NEB would not act to acquire these conglomerates, but would merely act as a fund holding body, a sort of old-fashioned Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, guiding resources, and dominating investment policy, but not acquiring and managing assets. Rather than an instrument of Socialist policy, it would be a method of pragmatic government intervention in industry. The distinction here is quite a fundamental one and, by revealing his hand at this stage, Mr Wilson made it certain that there will now be a long struggle over what the industrial policy of the next Labour government will be, a struggle in which the left will be able to fire to the best of their ability their second barrel of the constitutional row about the veto.
It is always an advantage to know one's mind; and whether or not one agrees with the left, or even sympathises with;, the motives which have led them to re-assertsb forcefully the old doctrines of nationalisation, one cannot doubt that their self-knowledge has brought them to a position of considerable advantage within the party, whether or not it would help them to win an election. Mr Wilson is known to feel bitter about the way in which the moderates and the right have failed to come to his aid with any clear statement of moderate policy; and he is cross at the fashion in which moderate and right wing spokesmen have concentrated so continually on the simple knocking of left wing policies.
The truth is, of course, that the right of the Labour Party have not, in the policy sense, advanced at all from the doctrines of public corporations and their supposed profitability, which were so popular last time Labour was in power, in spite of the fact that Mr Richard Marsh at least has made it clear that he no longer thinks his own corporation can be made profitable. The doctrines of the :left are clear, and unambiguous; those of the right fudged, uncertain, and likely to grant to the machinery of state even more discretionary powers than are available under the present government. If the right really believe that the policies of nationalisation would be electorally disastrous, then it's time they put their thinking caps on.
Previous page
