May Day Revels
It may perhaps be a little cold-blooded to ask where Mr. Attlee's speech at Norwich last Sunday was leading. The first of May is by tradition the day on which Socialists rally, acclaim their own future, and defy all opposition. The orations made are not normally meant to stand scrutiny by logicians. But what Mr. Attlee said will, on the face of it, not even stand scrutiny by the moderate school in the Labour Party, who, led by Mr. Morrison, are carefully suggesting that the process of State control has gone far enough for the time- being. The Prime Minister said that " freedom can only be secured in an organised society where the blind economic forces are controlled in the interests of all." This definition of freedom in terms of State control may perhaps be forgiven. So may the expletive. All economic forces are blind, in May Day speeches, just as all competi- tion is vicious and all private enterprise wasteful. But the economic forces to which Mr. Attlee referred include such items as the level of prices, rates of wages and the rate of interest. Will the Prime Minister not allow his sword to sleep in his hand until he has cut these things from the present economy, where they still play a con- siderable part ? If he will not, then the co-operative societies and the trade unions, who still value their influence on prices and wages, must mark his words. In fact they seem to have done so, and the result is an increasing unwillingness at Transport House to hold down the persisfent wage demands, coupled with a defiant resolution from the Co-operative Congress, in which the right of the co- operative societies to self-government is asserted. Mr. Attlee him-
self may find it more difficult on later May Days to-defend the Budget as he did on this one, for the logical conclusion of his argument is that twenty shillings in the pound, and not eight, will have to be disbursed by the State. But, again, logic is perhaps not appropriate. The Prime Minister himself indicated that it was not, by saying in the same speech, " We are not the slaves of abstract formulae." But nonsense is inappropriate in any speech by a Prime Minister on any day, and particularly at a time when Mr. Morrison was concentrating on getting his audience at Lewisham to show more enthusiasm t!..4 election times.
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