Lett-over Left
T Raymond Challinor, Tont Baisiow, Silvan Jones elephone-Tapping
Patrick Marrinan Unnatural Childbirth
Preludin Ralph McCarthy
Isabel Quigly News of the World
Beer and Scuffles A. Whittaker Scottish Poetry Roger Falk David Craig, Tom Scott. W. Grant Waugh /".roin Caesar to Arthur Int Geoffrey A she fitir Appare
Harold S. Beardow
With Mac Through Africa John Biggs-Davison, MP LEVT-OVER LEFT Sni.—Anthony Crosland' is indiscreet to delve into the controversies of 1950, ferreting for quotations With which to hit the Labour Left. He wrote in the aPeciator on October 24, 1958:
Broadly one may say that the revisionist
Period is over that is, the business of giving the Labour Party a policy attuned to mid- twentieth-century conditions is more or less complete. On the theoretical plane this period began with the New Fabian Essays, and con- tinued with analytical work by Mr. Strachey, the Socialist Union group, and myself. On the practical plane it culminated in the recent series of Labour Party statements, all bearing the marks of Mr. Gaitskell's personal influence. So Mr. Crosland's dramatic change of front was occasioned by the general election. But the elec- toaraittsekene rejected the Labour Party—and its Right-wing, policy statements. Mr. Crosland con- cludes that the Labour Party needs an even more R uight-vving policy, the danger being' the Left. But the Left's policies were never put to the electorate. 'Ir. Crosland appears to forget that in the 1950s, a decade of Labour defeats, the party's strength eontinually declined as its policies became increas- ingly Right-wing.
.rhe Labour Party's trouble is not, as you main- 'am editorially, that it has the albatross of pub!ic "alership round its neck. The real trouble started
You doubtless know The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner—with the murder of the albatross. It began When the party leadership, having tried unsuccess- fully to expunge public ownership from the party's rileY, was then forced to try to make the electorate belie in something it didn't believe in itself. Tho !-ert does not oppose Mr. Gaitskell out of spite, out because he does not unequivocally accept public cownership, which is the basis of Socialism and the ornerstone of the party's constitution.—Yours faith- fu RAYMOND CDALLINOR I5 High Street, Silverdale, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stags
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