LABOUR AND THE HERETICS
OR most men Easter is a time for idleness and - pleasure, for Christians a religious festival, for Socialists an opportunity to hold conferences and pass resolutions. This year their conferences have been more interesting than usual, for they have reflected very clearly some of the difficulties which face the labour movement in this country. The importance of con- ference resolutions can indeed be easily exaggerated. They are not hampered by the doubts which afflict party leaders whose first thoughts must be for the reactions of the,electorate and the possibility of forming and carrying on a Government. The I.L.P. may con- gratulate the Indian National Congress on calling a general strike of peasants and workers on the eve of the inauguration of the new Constitution ; the I.L.P. has no immediate prospect of having to face the conse- quences of such an action. The Distributive and Allied Workers may pass a resolution in favour of the United Front.; the Union was giving expression to an emotional state rather than calculating the effect of the United Front on Labour's chances of office. The Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks may condemn the disaffiliation of the Socialist League by the Labour Party ; but they were condemning a policy approved by the. party conference and imposed on the party executive, by the tactics of Sir Stafford Cripps and his associates in the Workers' Front. The groups which compose it, small and themselves only united in opposi- tion to the Labour leaders, having left the Labour movement, invite the Labour movement to join them. A cursory glance at their journals should explain why the invitation is not accepted.
Yet, with all these reservations, Labour's Easter con- ferences reveal something of the dissatisfaction, to some extent the disillusion, in the ranks of the movement. The dissatisfaction is not surprising. It is clear from election results that the Labour Party has gained little support since 1935, and has far to go to recover even its position of 1929. Yet, by all calculations, Labour should be carried on a rising tide to victory. Economic prosperity has roused the workers from the apathy which comes with a slump. Trade union membership has increased, funds are replenished. Strike movements, always' a sign of working-class optimism, are on the increase. The Government has been in office for over six years ; the credit gained by overcoming the con- ditions which wrecked' the 1929 Labour Government has been depleted ; its record in foreign affairs has been an inviting target for criticism. At home, the depressed -areas remain depressed. Yet the Labour movement breeds merely apathy or dissension. The recently published short-term programme is hardly adequate to conquer that apathy ; in such circum- stances the Labour leaders, their critics may allege, can find nothing better to do than devote their energies to hunting out heretics, among whom is Labour's most brilliant Parliamentary debater.
The cause of this failure is not hard to find. On the issues which arouse the strongest passions, not merely in Socialists, but in all politically minded persons, the official Labour attitude is hardly to be distinguished from the Government's. Differences of emotional emphasis are not enough for a victorious political cam- paign; nor to sweep out of office rulers who, if neither very brilliant nor very successful, are at least known and familiar figures. The Labour Party may have a passionate belief in the cause of the Spanish Govern- ment; but it concurs in the policy of non-intervention. Labour may be convinced of the virtues of democracy and the evils of Fascism ; the danger of war persuades its leaders, like the Government, not to push their convictions to practical extremes. The Labour Party, like the Government, professes devotion to the League and the sanctity of treaties. Like the Government's, its devotion wanes with the possibility of war. Like the Government, Labour sees rearmament as an evil but a necessary evil ; and Mr. Bevin, like Mr. Chamber- lain, means to exploit its incidental advantages.
It is not surprising if Labour's more fervent followers find it uninspiring to see themselves pledged merely to a modified form of the Government's programme. The official line has been to regard these overheated Socialists as "a minority," extremists, "intellectuals," irresponsible, undisciplined. It has been customary to contrast this minority with the solid block of conservative Labour support in the trade unions, the co-operative societies and local Labour Parties, the Daily Herald's 2,000,000 readers. Yet already two of the great trade unions, the Miners' Federation and the Distributive and Allied Workers, have condemned the Party policy on the two crucial issues of the United Front and non-intervention. The Co-operative con- ference at Scarborough this week seems only to have been restrained from a similar condemnation by Mr. Alexander's warning that it would amount to a declaration of willingness to go to war in defence of the Spanish Government.
Spain is indeed the vital issue for Labour at the moment. Active support of the Spanish Government is the strength of the united front movement. The issue of the war, if it decides anything, will decide whether yet another country is to be dominated by Fascism ; and whether " international " Socialism is a farce or a reality. For those in the Labour movement who believe the fate of democracy here is bound up with the fate of Madrid it cannot but be a bitter reflection that the most active in fighting and working for Spain have been the "heretics." Their dead lie on Spanish battlefields, their money goes to Valencia, while the Labour Party is eloquent in defence of non-intervention. Labour is not wrong in its attitude ; its choice is right and wise. But the circumstances make it increasingly more difficult and more dangerous to hunt out and condemn the " heretics " ; the defence of the Labour leaders would no doubt be that the heretics left them little choice. But Labour is inevitably suffering the disadvantage so often attaching to moderates condemned to see the extremists catching the popular imagination—or some sections of it. Its consolation, and a real one, should lie in the consciousness that there are interests greater than those of party, and that in circumstances of peculiar doubt and difficulty it has pursued a course which has unquestionably contributed to the slow improvement in the international outlook.
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