Political Commentary
THI3 significant fact about the richly comic episode of the 1945 telegram is that it has had not the slightest effect on the Position of Sir Winston Churchill. The gentlemanly charges (!if senility which have been thrown at his head--openly by Mr. Herbert Morrison, in sly undertones by The Times—have left no mark. Even the Conservative members of Parliament Who are usually most ready to seize any stick to beat their leader have realised that this one would break in their hands. No prophecy could have been wider of the mark than Mr. Hector McNeil's suggestion that the movement in the Con- servative Party to oust the Prime Minister would now gather strength. There have seldom been fewer murmurings against him in the Conservative Party, whose members, like the country at large, are content to enjoy the picture of Lord Montgomery searching in his attic, through the faded photo- graphs of Ltineberg Heath, through the old stirring Orders of the Day, in the hope of finding a telegram which may (or may nut) be among the trophies. It is almost too funny for words, certainly too funny to be made into a serious political issue. ivir. Attlee, for one, realised this from the start, and he has himself added to the humour of the situation by his contemp- tuous handling of the Parliamentary Labour Party. There is 00 doubt that last week he left the meeting of the Party with the impression that he would, however reluctantly, raise the question of the telegram during Monday's debate on the Address. In the event he said nothing at all. And now, from Nairobi, has .come Sir Hartley Shawcross's defence of the Prime Minister. The poor Labour Party ! It is divided even when Sir Winston Churchill drops a brick.
It seems doubtful, too, whether it is going to be able to hold together over the more serious question of the increased contributions to National Insurance. The apparent coincidence ,Of the views of the TUC and those of the left wing in the Labour Party should not be allowed to deceive. At most it is "IY a coincidence and not an agreement. The attitude (1,,I Mr. Bevan and his followers recalls the first struggle in the hour Party over exactly this question. It was before the Z14-18 war, when the insurance schemeg were being intro- '11ced for the first time, and they provoked one of the most 1:,!IPortant divisions in the early days of the Labour Party. The l„neoretical Socialists, led at the time by Philip Snowden, argued Tat contributory schemes should be opposed. There is no u°11ht that Snowden and his colleagues were right, from the strictly Socialist point of view. Contributory insurance schemes are not only a non-Socialist conception but a definitely anti- Socialist conception. Snowden was defeated, and it is barely too much to say that from that moment there ceased to be any possibility of the Labour Party ever committing itself to a genuinely Socialist policy. But the Socialist campaign has gone on within its body, and the attack by the left wing of the Labour MPs on the increased contributions is inspired by this fundamental Socialist objection to contributory schemes as such. This is not true of the attitude of the TUC, which is merely asking for a restoration of the cut in the Exchequer grant which would in its turn affect the size of employees' contributions. The TUC is primarily concerned with the size of the Exchequer grant, only incidentally with the question of contributions.
The size of the increased benefits which the Government is offering has put the Labour Party in a fix. It dare not delay, or even appear to delay, the passage of the Bill : hence the decision of the Parliamentary Labour Party, against the advice of Mr. Bevan, not to oppose the Bill on second reading, but merely to move _amendments in committee or to the financial resolution. It is significant that neither Mr. Gaitskell nor Mr. Griffiths have yet shown any eagerness to join the attack on the Government's proposals, when, as the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the former Minisler of National Insurance, they should provide its spear-point. No doubt, of course, they will join it. But Mr. Gaitskell, who is a man of much firmer opinions than Mr. Griffiths, has always believed that the main danger of Bevanism is not that it might commit a future Labour Government to extravagant projects of nationalisation —he was right in this, as Challenge to Britain shows—but that it might commit it to financially insupportable schemes of social welfare. It will not be an enthusiastic Mr. Gaitskell who will argue the case for an increase in the Exchequer grant, and he will certainly give no welcome to the views of Mr. Bevan. Once again the Labour Party is going to be actually, even if not superficially, divided on a major political issue. The attitude of the TUC may provide some common ground on which all sections may stand, but it will be far too small a plot from which to launch a full-scale assault on the Government. In the'country, moreover, the fact of the increased benefits is going to loom much larger than the debate about the size of the contributions.
On this, as on so much else, the Labour Party suffers from having no clear idea of what it wants to do when it is again back in power. In the debate on the Address, Mr. Crookshank was able to make sport of the Opposition's amendment about the removal of controls. Again and again, in his almost forgotten debating manner of the days before the war, he asked the Opposition to answer his question, whether they intended to re-impose the controls which the Conservative Government has removed. There was no answer. Again, it is only Mr. Gaitskell among the Opposition leaders who has been frank enough to face this question openly. (His party piece on Tuesday should not be taken too seriously.) As long as two years ago he was asking the Labour Party to face up to its predicament on this question : to realise that the country is enjoying its increased freedom of choice, even though this may mean higher costs; that this freedom has been made possible only by certain finaticial and economic policies which the Labour Party in the past rejected; and that if it is not going to re-impose the old controls it must do some candid re-thinking about the fundamentals of its financial and economic policies. This re-thinking 'has not been done, and it has not been done in any other important field of political controversy. The answer for an Opposition in such a case ? To make as much fuss as possible about day-to-day trivia: the nine-year old telegram, for example, and the writ for a by-election which everyone expected, and which any efficient party organisation would have been ready for. As Sir Winston Churchill said, some people are hard up for things to talk about.
TRIMMER
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