The Late New Left

By STEPHEN FAY

TIIE New Left is exhausted. n barely exists in capital letters any longer. The movement was started by students in 1956 after Suez. Their

heyday was during the unilateral disarmament debate at the Labour Party Conference in Scarborough in 1960. Their voice was loud, and it was listened to. Most people could hear little more than 'ban the bomb,' and `Gaitskell must go,' but there was depth, if not much definition, behind that glib façade.

Their main strength was derived front the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and their fortunes have followed the CND's closely. But they bit off a good deal more than de- fence policy. The task of the New Left was 'to try to make some principled critique of the quality of contemporary life, and to take a per-

spective on the socialist and humanist transfor- mation of our society,' the editors of the Uni- versities and Left Review wrote, in their typic- ally tortuous way.

In a way, the New Left was •a political and social Oxford movement. Their genesis was in Suez. The founding fathers, all Oxford students, wanted to institutionalise their disgust and anger at a political system whose leaders could do so unreal and irresponsible a thing. Moral and political uplift was needed. They were all socialists, but not of the Labour Party. Their guiding light was not anarchy; they were all com- mitted to 'socialist humanism.'

One of the first statements of belief came not from Oxford, but from Lindsay Anderson (writing on film criticism in 1956). He said : 'Less easily— or at least less often—remarked has been the steady draining away of vitality from what might be called the cultural left, its in- creasing modishness, and its more marked aver- sion from emotional simplicity or moral commit- ment.'

But if they thought the intellectuals were cul- turally impotent, they cried out against the wickedness, as well as the impotence, of the political left. The great hate figure of the New Left was Anthony Crosland. The most common subjects for their derision were Hugh Gaitskell, Encounter and John Raymond (the bourgeois critic in pink clothing).

The business of the New Left was protest. Their political roots were in it. 'Without CND supporters, Anti-Ugly protesters, African demon- strators. Free Cinema, and the Society for the Abolition of the Death Penalty we would be nowhere,' said an editorial in the last issue of the Universities and Left Review. Eventually, as the protesters faded away. the New Left ended tip nowhere.

The ULR was first published in 1957 in Oxford. Gradually the centre of gravity shifted to London, and the New Left began to embrace more disparate elements. They were no longer exclusively students, and the membership was older. The Review amalgamated with a dissident Marxist journal, the New Reasoner, and became the New Left Review, which was the most coherent and consistent mouthpiece the New Left ever had. It was first published three months after the 1959 general election when the Clause 4 and unilateralist debates were still intense.

The protest was also channelled through New Left Clubs. There were forty of them in 1960. Out of Apathy was published hopefully as the first of a series of New Left Books. This was their bible, and it started some of the doctrinal feuds which caused the schisms which this year and last have sapped the New Left of most of its strength. As the Marxist element became stronger, their influence waned.

Stuart Hall, who edited the first twelve issues • of the New Left Review, wrote their epitaph in 1959. 'The greatest danger in the coming years,' he said, 'could be that we fail to make socialists and yet have "success" in building an- other socialist sect.' The danger was not over- come. All that exists now is another socialist sect.

The sect is wholly without political influence. Transport House has dealt firmly with them. When the ideas of the New Left seemed to seeP into their home policy document, Signposts for the Sixties, they were rigorously censored, only to be published sadly in NLR. The Campaign for Democratic Socialism seems to have won any battle there was for the constituencies, again with help from Transport House. The frustra- tions of being on the New Left have forced some of its members, including Stuart Hall, into the Independent Nuclear Disarmament Election Campaign, which has been proscribed by Trans- port House. Others have quietly compromised, realised that they at least cannot beat the party bureaucracy, and joined it.

Their social influence is much less easy to be definite about. The greatest single success of the New Left is reflected in the recommenda- tions of the Pilkington Report (of which more later). That was published when the euphoria had faded away. The analyses of mass culture, and the influence of television, radio. news- papers and books upon it, will probably provide the most noticeable residue of their activities.

Their influence on the arts is quite impossible to define. Simply and obviously, they preferred the new to the old. But they were supporters of it rather than influences on it. They were more concerned with films than theatre. But the only active participant to get any sort of extended hearing in NLR was Arnold Wesker. Before pursuing the thread of influence. or lack of it, held by the New Left it is worth trying to discover just what they did think ah°Lit politics. society and the arts. It is often difficult to find out, for although the New Left was full of ideas they were rarely expressed clearly'. Inc absence, or ignorance of, even blatant disregard for style was one of the sins of writers on the New Left. But their attitudes cannot be divided siroPlY, into departments. Their political state of mind merged with the social and the artistic. An editorial in the first issue of NLR said : are convinced that politics, too narrowly conceive°. has been the main cause for the decline of social ism in this country, and one of the main reasons for the disaffection from socialist ideas among Young people in particular. The humanistic strengths of socialism—which are the founda- tions for a genuinely popular socialist move- ment—must be developed in cultural and social terms, as well as economic and political.' They Were relatively too well developed culturally and socially. The New Left was very short on Political and economic analysis.

11

The politics of the New Left were socialist, but that means too many things to too many Then, particularly socialists. E. P. Thompson, one of the editors of the New Reasoner, and the architect of much of the New Left's later (though not necessarily more mature) political thought, further described their work as 'an attempt to revalue the Marxist tradition.' Not all agreed With him. The right wing of the New Left pre- ferred to think of it as an attempt to revalue the British socialist tradition. Social democracy of the Fabian-Gaitskell-Crosland model was un- acceptable. 'The question is not shall we help Gaitskell but, much more relevantly, will Labour Miss the boat?' the ULR said in 1959. But their alternative was incomplete, often incoherent and ineffective. The boat did not ship much water. The basic political themes were class, capital- ism and CND. Their policies ended in calls for nationalisation of the means of distribution, pro- duction, n, and exchange, and 'positive neutralism.' They were anti-Common Market, anti-NATO, ,anti-Arnerican, and anti-power. But they were forced to recognise the importance of the last. ,k11. d try to explain how it was to be won. This 'tf not come easily to them (but it does not come easily to the Labour Party either). `The absence of any theory of transition to socialism is the consequence of the capitulation to capitalist policies,' E. P. Thompson wrote in , of Apathy. His own effort was a vague, half- naked theory of revolution. In practical terms If Went like this: Should the protest in Britain gain sufficient strength to force the country out of NATO, consequences will follow in rapid succession. The Americans might reply with economic sanctions. Britain would be faced with the alternatives of compliance or a far-reaching re-orientation of trade.... People would become aware of the historic choice presented to our Country, as they became aware during the Second World War. Ideological and political antagon- isms would sharpen. . . One choice would dis- close another, and with each decision a revolu- tionary situation might become more inescap- able. Events themselves would disclose to the people the possibility of the socialist alterna- tive; and if events were seconded by the agita- tion and initiatives of thousands of organised socialists in every area of life, the socialist sa 4 revolutio Parole. n would he carried through. 8 4forven the New Left was unable to stomach this a„tt, of 'democratic revolutionary strategy,' 114.ater Thompson retracted it in a way which :et have made some of his former colleagues r,," he Communist Party feel slightly proud. uailY the New Left found comfort in the Castro revolution. He was admired because he had ma

raged it. But not even in their wildest

dreams

.

bet,, could a workable analogy be drawn "een Britain and Cuba. The New Left was in e

.1.,"" staring enviously at Castro outside.

11 it' revolution had to be working-class.

They were the intellectuals who would, one assumes, lead it. But they were confronted by an apathetic working class, unaware, they thought, of political and social realities. Ralph Samuel, a sociologist and founding father of the New Left who is now with the Institute of Com- munity Studies, discovered that many of them were even voting Tory. So the condition of the working class had to be analysed.

Samuel wrote (in NLR): 'If socialism has weakened in this country it is not because of the "new opportunities" of the post-war prosperity or a pervasive power of the mass media. . . It is principally because socialists have not offered a meaningful picture of the society in which we live or an alternative vision of the socialist society which people can make. In re- constructing socialist ideas we will have to look again at the structure of class in this country, and

. . reject the idea of the manipulated masses.'

But the New Left could not fully accept this as a basic text. They never really rejected the idea of the manipulated masses, unwittingly seduced by commercial television. They contin- ued to think of the working class in romantic or literary terms, guided more by Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy than Samuel. 'It is the mythology of prosperity which in- duces apathy,' Stuart Hall said. Obviously Macmillan's 'you've never had it so good' en- raged and encouraged them. But they were never able to show many workers in, say, the engin- eering industries that it was untrue. Even the working class in less prosperous areas, in Scot- land and the North-East, could not be convinced. They were relatively much better off than they were in the Thirties, and although the New Left said this does not matter, it does to the work- ing class.

In the end their appeal for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism too often degenerated into an appeal for moral revulsion and revolu- tion. The closest comparison in contemporary 'Damn You, England!' politics is Lord Hailshatn, but the New Left did not go so far as to mention leadership.

They had a very proper left-wing obsession with capitalism. Charles Taylor, another found- ing father, and a Canadian, said in NLR: 'Before us stand the inhuman priorities of cap- italism: the only political question is how to understand and change them.' J. K. Galbraith with his easy definitions of public squalor and private affluence came as a godsend to the New Left. They contrasted public squalor—in wel- fare, education and urban development—with the affluence of mass production and consump- tion of consumer goods—new TV sets, washing machines and small cars. Rarely did they say that consumer goods should be sacrificed in the search for public affluence.

Public affluence was to be paid for by the re- sources of a nationalised economy. But among the grandiose schemes there was no detailed plan for harnessing the resources of the State. Plan- ning itself was enough. The profit motive was to go, the people were to own the industries in which they worked, and everything would be fine. Economic assumptions were rarely con- sidered seriously. They thought of industry, quite rightly, as being a tool of the society they would create, but they never seriously suggested the nature and organisation of industry after the apocalypse. No one asked : 'How will it work?' This was one of the better reasons their critics had for dismissing them as romantics.

Another was their failure to influence, or even understand, the trade union movement. They sympathised with its members, but not its institutions. They gave unknowing support to left-wing shop stewards. Industrial action was admired for its own sake. It was rarely analysed, and, when it was, the farce of the motor in- dutry's labour relations was held up as a good example to all socialist men.

The New Left was badly confused about means and ends. One example, probably without equal, is to be found in Kenneth Alexander's essay on economic and industrial action in Out of Apathy. He said: 'Some managements have tried to weaken the power of independent trade unionism by improving conditions of working and providing factory welfare services.' More an example of degraded intellect than degraded labour.

III

There was less confusion about their support for CND. Unilateralism was the easiest issue to which they could devote themselves. 'If any event has transformed the course, tempo, and tone of politics since the crucial dates of Suez and Hungary, it is the formation of CND, and the development of a body of people drawn into politics (many of them for the first time) around the fight against nuclear stupidity,' the ULR said.

They devoted themselves to it wholeheartedly in the earlier stages. Their vitriol was a product of faith. And at Scarborough in 1960 they were at their most confident and most successful. A

daily news-sheet was published to correct and chastise the platform and rally the faithful. But

when the platform refused to be chastised, and told CND supporters that the Parliamentary Party was not going to take any notice of them. their confidence began to wane. The one hope they had of influencing British politics power- fully by traditional methods was lost to them. Their victory was short-lived, and pyrrhic. Their Political alternatives became extreme or hys- terical. They either involved unreasoned attacks On intellectuals and politicians who opposed uni- lateralism (NATOpolitanism, Thompson called it), but their rage seemed to harden into apathetic fatalism. Or their attitudes dissolved into anarchy and the Committee of 100. The only positive alternative, 1NDEC, is not very far out of dreamland either.

Finally—NLR became one of the unilateralist movement's critics whilst retaining faith in its goals. The Committee of 100 was spurned and one of the best flip criticisms of CND was made m its pages. Nicolas Walter, in a recent issue of NLR, said: 'Advocates of nuclear dis- armament labour under two contradictory but complementary disadvantages—what they want 8 almost unattainable, and what they fear is almost unimaginable.' Running consistently through the debate on unilateralism was a plea for non-alignment and Positive neutralism, based on Nehru's model. This provided the raison d'etre of the New Left's dislike of the Common Market. They never really came to terms with the idea of the EEC. By the time the decision to apply for membership had been announced, the New Left was in de- cline, and their arguments against membership Were almost a repetition of those voiced often enough by the left wing of the Labour Party. Their myopia was partly based on the xenophobia common on the left. Britain was not a great enough power anyway to get away with Suez, they said. But it is a great enough power, It seems, to stand aloof from defence and eco- nomic arrangements, and constructively influence the defence and economic policies—and the economic standard of living—of the neutral and backward nations of the world. Another ex- ample of the New Left's desire to have their cake and eat it. But romantics often do. It might work for individuals, but it can never be in- Stitutionalised.

CrdtttrIV and Society was the title of another of the New Vit iams, one of texts. It was by Raymond of their archetypal figures. And it describes some of their recurring

themes—mass

culture, mass media and mass communications. Raymond Williams told them why. 'To under- stand this society, we have to look at its cul- ture, even for political answers. We have to ask just

of this pressure to unify us isn't ust

a kind of low level processing. They want to breed out the difference, so that we become more predictable and more manageable con- sumers and citizens, united in fact around nothing much, and the form of the unity con- als basic inhumanities : in respect, in educa- tion, in Work., adl-bey' were the establishment and its tools-- advertising, television, newspapers, books and gaziues. 'We' are the working class. The New hefts fear was that they would be irrevocably telr"Pled by the existence of commercial thevision, which would alter the priorities of e working class. Cars would become more im-

portant than education. Corrupted by education too: the New Left was insistent in its attacks on public schools, and even grammar schools, which stratified society, divided the working class, and fed the establishment. They dis- approved of popular newspapers because of their taste for phoney controversy, their flippancy, and their ability to mould others' taste by inflicting their own, which was degraded.

Their main attack was reserved for commer- cial television. And it was the most successful attack they made. The Pilkington Committee gave them their opportunity; they took it, pre- sented their evidence, and undoubtedly in- fluenced the Commission's proposals.

It is worth giving detail to show just how sim- ilar are the evidence and the Report. The Report says (in paragraph 207):

The role of the broadcasting organisation, as the Authority [the ITA] interpreted it to us, seemed to lack that positive and active quality which is essential to good broadcasting. We reject, too, its view that television will be shaped by society. A number of factors will operate to shape television, to form the character of the service but what must figure very largely are the attitudes, the convictions, the motives of those who provide the programmes.. . Their role is not passive; they in turn will be helping, however imperceptibly, to affect society.

Then (in paragraph 1055) :

The broadcasters must not only reflect society; they must pick out and focus on that which is significant—the best, because it is the best; the worst, so that we shall know it for what it is. . . . At the same time, the broad- casters must care about public tastes and atti- tudes in all their variety in all kinds of pro- grammes--in those which are designed to re- lax no less than those which are demanding; they must keep aware of them as they now are and of their capacity to change and develop.

The New Left Review told them, in evidence printed in their January-February, 1961, issue: The overwhelming majority of them [tele- vision programmes], especially on ITV, are innocent of invention or skill either in concep- tion or achievement; that even as 'escapism' or 'diversion' many are at best vapid and at worst positively harmful; that basically, their providers share a cynical and arrogant attitude toward popular culture. It is only when the concept of popular culture is treated with the respect—and enthusiasm—it deserves, and when the same care, seriousness and awareness of human dignity of the audience . . spreads through the whole range of production, that we are likely to get good- television in this country.

. . . only those who produce programmes can be held accountable for what is transmitted. And it is quite wrong for producers and pro- viders to try to shift the responsibility from their own shoulders to the audience . . . the problems of television can only be seen in their true perspective when the providers recognise, for better or worse. the responsibility for what they produce is, ultimately, their own.

At the conclusion of the New Left's evidence were a series of proposals which bear a striking

resemblance to the Pilkington Committee's recommendations. The BBC was to `be con-

firmed in its present definition of broadcasting as a public service,' it was to have the third channel, and the full proceeds of a £5 licence fee if necessary (the Committee recommended

£6). There was to be no coin-in-the-slot TV and no commercial radio.

But the most striking recommendation by the New Left deserves to be quoted in full. It said : `Drive some effective wedge between commer- cial advertising and the production of pro- grammes. It would be far preferable for firms to purchase advertising time direct from the Independent Television Authority, allowing the contracting companies to concentrate on the provision of high-quality programmes.' That has a very familiar ring.

It is difficult to believe that Mr. Richard Hoggart was not influenced by the evidence and conclusions presented by the New Left. Just as it is difficult to believe that his was not the major intellectual influence on the Committee. Whether the Committee was right, or wrong, or right for the wrong reasons, its Report stands as one of the New Left's few visible memorials.

It is doubtful whether there will be many more, for although their analysis of other forms

of communications was often interesting, their condemnation did not produce imaginable alternatives. Pilkington gave them the oppor- tunity to study the whole structure of an industry. There were no similar opportunities to criticise

advertising, or book publishing, newspapers or magazines (except, perhaps, the Shawcross Commission, which they seem to have ignored). Inevitably their suggestion (usually Raymond Williams's suggestion) was that there should be a publicly appointed council to supervise each industry. They would make sure the industry was democratic, which usually seemed to mean that anyone should have access to them, as authors or performers. And the councils would be responsible for the education of people in

appreciation of their medium. It was never clear whether the councils would teach people to

appreciate the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch, or whether they would do away with them and their like. Again the New Left was

short on detail.

The councils must have presented the New Left with a dilemma. They must have known that the chances of their working in contem- porary society were slight. The Press Council is a monument to their failure. They were forced back to the useless assumption that they would

work in their utopian society, when they would be run by people like themselves. They might. It is unlikely that anyone will ever know. Even after the New Left's strictures most people remain unsure about what should be done to educe the influence of mass media.

V The New Left were critics of the arts, rather than contributors to them. They were severe critics of criticism too. They joined the battle over commitment in criticism with great glee, but their own contribution was more by example than anything else. Stuart Hall, who was much more comfortable with books than politics, did theorise. He told his followers: 'The proposition that "literature is neutral and should be discussed in neutral terms" is a late liberal assumption.' Hall went on: 'What concerns us is not that literature is related to life and society, but how life gets into literature, and what it does to our values and attitudes when it gets there. We arc not concerned with politicised art.'

This surely is the concern of many late liberal critics too. The New Left and the late liberals might part company over what literature does to our values and attitudes when life gets there. The late liberals would say that life in literature is not to be condemned if it has literary quality, even if it corrupts. The New Left critics would condemn it for its decadence, saying possibly that it is a sure sign of the need for change.

The core of their argument was first stated in Lindsay Anderson's criticism of film criticism in Sight and Sound in 1956. He said: "The essence of the matter [committed criticism] is the importance we attach to our principles, and the extent to which we think they are relevant to our enjoyment of art.' The extent to which the New Left thought them relevant was consider- able. Often, it seemed, to the extent that they were willing to forgo enjoyment altogether. They tended to lack a sense of humour and a sense of style (neither of which is a bourgeois attribute, surely). The result often came out like this (from NLR): 'The scenes where Joe returns to Dufton are too tentative, and the working-class conservatism of his uncle and aunt is seen more as a sentimental attachment to the past than a possible growing point for the future.' Whither realism now?

The result was often similar in theatrical criticism. The heroes—John Arden was the greatest of them – were lauded for what they had to say, not the way they said it, rather than a combination of the two. This occasionally degenerated into praise for politics' sake, as with Shelagh Delaney's The Lion in Love, which was a poor slice of life. At this point New Left criti- cism was less honest than the bourgeois criti- cism it criticised. Equally so when they supported change simply because it resulted in something different. Traditional form and con- struction were being condemned because they were traditional.

But their dilemma about style was an even greater weakness. In the search for content, and the desire to apply committed criticism to it, they often forgot. or even condemned style. And style is an important method of communication. They rarely asked themselves how the content of some of the plays, films and novels they admired was to be communicated to the people whose interest was marginal, or whose minds needed changing.

The dilemma is best described in this quota- tion, about books, from The Uses of Literacy: 'If a writer fails to appeal on the first inade- quate reading, then he is at fault, and never the reader. The idea of literature as direct com- munication is paramount; there is no inter- mediate link. The writer does not stand before his experience and try to re-create it in a form of words, with which--rather than with the writer directly—the reader must seek an understanding according to its complexity. Complex—that is searching or taxing—literature must therefore be discounted; good writing cannot be popular today, and popular writing cannot generally explore experience.'

is one writer not better than another if he can re-create and communicate his experience quickly and directly? Many great writers have. And their quality increases their chances of popu- larity. It is a matter of style to some extent--just as it is, in the argument about commitment, a matter of principle to some extent. Similarly so in the theatre or the cinema (which have the added advantage of an intermediate link), where im- mediate communication is even more important. It is easier to read a book twice than it is to return to a play or a film. But by insisting on the primacy of content, to the virtual exclusion of style, the Ncw Left often seemed to condemn themselves to an artistic wasteland.

In a delightful understatement Alasdair McIntyre, one of the New Left's Trotskyites, said : 'There is not much enthusiasm abroad among intellectuals in our time for the day when the last king will be strangled in the entrails of the last priest.' True. Maybe this was one of the New Left's secret, minor enthusiasms. But there is not much enthusiasm among intellectuals, or others, of our time for the major enthusiasms of the New Left either. They have failed. Their magazine is in decline. After fifteen issues, it is smaller, more academic, and financially shaky. The clubs exist in little more than name. Any chance there might have been for a series of New Left Books has been abandoned. (Only one ap- peared after Out of Apathy, and that was a reprint of an American edition of Politics and the Novel by Irving Howe.) This article is an obituary, barely premature, of the Ncw Left.

There are three main reasons why they failed (and a host of minor ones, many of which seem to be personal). Their lack of style, which re- sulted in their inability to communicate their ideas widely; their lack of leadership, and their

My friends, it gives Inc great pleasure . SPECTATOR, SEPTEMBER 21, 1962 lack of respect for the idea of it; and their roman- ticism.

The last is really a criticism of their inability to throw romanticism off when the movement was in full swing. It is obviously a feature of most student movements. It is usually necessary to get them started and give them momentum. But it has to be tempered by a sense of realities and attention to detail if the movement is to have political and social influence when it is under way. The detail in their work on television is one reason why it was influential. Maybe the New Left never grew up; or maybe it grew too old too quickly when Marxism began to creep in. It is interesting that for all their talk about communications the New Left were never able to use them to their own ends. There was an unfortunate statement in an editorial in NLR which said : 'What we now need is a language sufficiently close to life—all aspects of it—to declare our discontent with the order.' They never found it.

The New Left was full of what the working class, as the fount of revolution, should, could, or must do, but they were unable to communicate with them. They had no style. What they wrote was usually tortuous, and their speech often con- tained that undercurrent of hatred which moti- vated some of their older members. At one point there was criticism (in the „NLR) of 'serious art tending to develop into an activity at once exclusive and arcane.' This applies equally well to their own prose. They ended tip by talking to themselves. The glib, the banal and the cliche were well used by the New 1-eft' but they were not of the rare variety which excites people to action. Possibly the language °I- , politics was too well known to them. The third fault is the most serious. Leadership was never mentioned, except with distaste. It was not just the leadership of the Labour Party they disliked so much, they disliked leadership for its own sake. It was undemocratic. It is tiring to imagine one of the New Left's many committees at work around a table trying to reach a conclu- sion in concert on the innocent assumption that it is undemocratic to do otherwise. Decisions are difficult to reach under such circumstances. Un- fortunately they are necessary, for democracy dis- integrates without them. But it is possible that the democratic politics of personality were dis- liked by the New Left because they never had experience of their fruits. There was no dominant character, only dominant characteristics. But for all that, the New Left was an important s symptom of British life in the Fifties. After of full employment economics seemed less 1 .01. portant (which they are not), culture and society much more important. For many people this `Nas, their first introduction to politics, and it will sibly influence many of them for the rest of trIele,

' political lives. Theirs was a revolt ag against

and against a static society. vere Their enemies were not well chosen, they ,1 ,s he

t

everywhere, in the Labour Party as well Conservative. Now their energies are exhans trade

'.

'I hey have either been sucked up by the _en tional British political machine, or they have beet by it as a meaningless political w e will Perhaps that is sad, but it happens. And It the stayksteemn.lore than the New Left to change