The Educators
TliE views of Anthony Greenwood tend to I attract more attention outside the Labour Party than within it. The space which the press devoted on Monday to his message to his con- stituency party must have been the envy of many a colleague; but it was little help for all that. After attributing the party's troubles to the 1954 deci- sion to endorse German rearmament—the damage of which, he claims, took five years to repair— he argues that 'the next few years should be de- voted to a great campaign of Socialist education and propaganda—not to an orgy of introspection. But whatever the reasons for Labour's election defeat, nobody could attribute it to a failure to tell the people—in glossy and attractive brochures, as well as in slick television programmes. If Mr. Greenwood's own contributions, notably his elec- tion broadcast, failed to make the required impact, does he seriously imagine that the electorate is going to be impressed with the same stuff rehashed and warmed up for 1964?
The Labour Party has no alternative; it must indulge in introspection, however painful the process is going to be; and Mr. Gaitskell is right to insist upon it. Whether he was wise to make his tactical withdrawal from the advanced Crosland position, by announcing he still believes that steel among other things should be nationalised, is another matter; as we argued last week, this is pre- cisely the kind of qualification which makes the uncommitted voter, who is genuinely anxious for an alternative to the Conservatives, sceptical of Labour's ability to break with its past.
Mr. Gaitskell's second thoughts have been more sensible. As he told the Ruskin Fellowship meeting on Monday, his critics cannot have it both ways: 'it cannot be held at one and the same time that the dispute is utterly unimportant and yet that it also raises fundamental moral issues.' The Tribtow view—that Clause Four is fundamental—and the Wilson /Crossman /Green- wood view--that it is irrelevant—cannot both be right; and until the Labour Party decides which is right, it cannot expect to attract back the voters it has lost.
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