Labour on the Wrong Leg
The best excuse that can be made for the resolutions for the Forty-ninth Annual Conference of the Labour Party, published this week, is that they were drawn up before the attack on South Korea took place. It has been made, and it is not good enough. In any case, it only covers the resolutions which one after the other deplore a drift towards war but have little more to offer by way of a solution than the banning of atomic bombs. Judged by this document the local Labour Party organisations have little to bring to the question of foreign policy except a few platitudes and slogans which might have been invented, and have in fact been persistently used, by the Communist Party. It is equally bankrupt on any other branch of policy. The forty-odd resolutions for putting wages up and profits down do not reveal any kind of economic thinking except loose thinking. The long list of appeals to the Government to bring about a reduction in the cost of living show no realisation that the Govern- ment's own spending policy might have something to do with the rise of prices. All the resolutions on Socialism and nationalisation assert that there should be more of both, whatever the majority of the electorate may want at the moment. In fact, whatever this document may do, it certainly will not unite the country at a critical moment, or a ry. ether moment. So much arrogance and dogmatism might just he bearable if there were any real evidence that they were backed with clear thinking. Instead 'there is all too much sheer fantasy, like the proposal " To introduce legislation opening the books of all private and state enterprises to the inspection of the Trade Unions or their representatives," or the gem of bogus economics from Northampton, " This Conference regrets the failure of the Government to control rising prices which inevitably reduce the workers' share of the national income and which becomes pro- gressively disproportionate to their contribution to increased production." There is no more hope here than there is grammar.
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