T.U.C. and Smart Alecs
The sudden re-opening of the quarrel within the Labour Party must displease the public almost as much as it did the more responsible members of the party executive. While half the members of Parliament are recurrently distracted by a faction fight the nation's business suffers. Whether the actual heart of the dispute is the propriety of Mr. Lincoln Evans's acceptance of a knighthood or the nature of the Labour Party's nationalis- ation policy does not matter very much. In either case the intellectual content of the argument is negligible. The trouble with the " smart Alecs " on the left edge of the Labour Party—that was Mr. Lincoln Evans' phrase for them in his speech at Scunthorpe at the week-end—is not that their political thinking is dangerously advanced in a revolutionary direction, but that it is dangerously stuck fast in a morass of ancient prejudices and discredited attitudes. But the positive content of Mr. Evans's speech was of more value than the piquancy of the circumstances, and he spoke up for that spirit of co-operation and common effort which is alive in both sides of industry today. There may be times when the cumbersome manoeuvres of the T.U.C. irritate not only the intelligentsia of the Labour movement on the political side, but it is an organisation well aware of its responsibilities to its own eight million members, to the country as a whole, and so to the Government in power, whatever its complexion. It is clear to all but the Bevanites that the T.U.C. would only sacrifice the respect and authority which it now commands if it extended the political battle to the floor of inchtitry. Certainly it is no secret that the Labour movement is in the middle of a difficult transitional period in which its ideas and policies must be adapted to changed and changing circum- stances. But the T.U.C. has fully accepted its new and heavier responsibilities, seeing industrial efficiency and increased pro- ductivity as inescapable conditions of national survival. And that is more important than the survival of Bevanism.
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