Political Commentary
The real Labour Party split
Patrick Cosgrave
I return this week to a subject I have touched on before, but never discussed at length — the real split in the Labour Party. With all the taradiddle there has been about the Common Market, and with the Lincoln by-election imminent, the press has been even more encouraged than usual to imagine that the serious division in the party is between the Wilsonites — or the left and the Jenkinsites — or pro-Marketeers. Though that was once a significant division, it is no longer so: it was cauterised when Mr Harold Lever returned to the Shadow Cabinet and, particularly with their ranks reduced by retirement from the House, there would be little prospect of the followers of Mr Jenkins creating much trouble for a future Labour Government, even if Mr Wilson actually set out to re-negotiate Mr Heath's terms of entry into the EEC. The real Labour split is far more profound, and too fundamental to be affected by a single passing issue, of whatever importance.
The split was symbolised the other week by the departure of Mr Eric Heifer from Labour's front bench. Mr Reg Prentice, who topped the Shadow Cabinet poll at the beginning of the session, is Labour's senior spokesman on industrial relations, and Mr Heifer was one of his assistants. Mr Prentice made it pretty plain that he could not go on working with Mr Heifer, unless the latter stopped, as he saw it, encouraging Trade Unionists to break the Industrial Relations Act. Mr Wilson, ever striving to keep the peace, offered Mr Heifer a differ ent post, which he declined. He then retired to the backbenches.
Mr Prentice and Mr Heifer are both distinguished find honourable spokesmen for two different streams of modern socialism.
Mr Prentice is a small, pudgy-faced, intense tight man: his remarkable integrity is un disputed, and his moderation is passionate.
Mr Heifer is a big, shambling, jolly fellow, Whose humour and forthrightness conceal a shrewd and radical brain. "I am a sys tematic Marxist," he proclaims to anybody Who aks him, though, as we shall see, he is not. Mr Prentice wants the unions to obey the law while it exists, and many suspect that he would prefer to reform the Industrial Relations Act rather than, as Labour have promised, repeal it. Mr Hafer wants to get rid of the thing, lock, stock and barrel. Yet their difference over industrial relations does not tell the story of the conflict between the two men, or between the two wings of the Labour Party.
Everything the Labour Party does or does not do now is conditioned by what they did, or failed to do, when they were in power. Further, lack of power tends to corrupt, and absolute lack of power cor rupts absolutely. Hence, there have been various trips to the outer shore of politics on the part of Mr Wilson and his friends, just as there were some fairly weird manifestations of Conservatism when Mr Heath was in opposition. But, underneath all the frenetic opposing for opposition's sake, the Parliamentary Labour Party is trying to ask two fundamental questions — how can we make sure, next time, that our leaders will not be men of straw; and what politics must we adopt to ensure that, next time, we will achieve our overall ends ?
The first of these questions would never be asked by a Tory Party in opposition: they would simply acquire new leaders, or concentrate wholly on the second question. That second question is to be answered for Labour, such as Mr Heifer insist, by the formulation, "much more of the old socialism ". By such as Mr Prentice (and, indeed, Mr Jenkins) it is to be answered in the search for new fields of policy: but power is to be regained, they also argue, only by an emphasis on responsibility and moderation.
'Mr Prentice and Mr Heifer may not be the most important figures in the argument, but their differences symbolise it. Mr Benn has gone wholly over to the school of thought represented by Mr Heifer; and the old left are, of course, to be found there as well. Mr Crosland is judiciously appraising the merits of both sides; while Mr Jenkins and Mr Prentice are firmly on the right. It is necessary, of course, to concentrate on the younger and less experienced men because, I suspect, the next Labour Cabinet, when and if there is one, will be as different from the last as Mr Heath's was from that of Sir Alec Douglas-Home. But it is also worth emphasising that, though the conflict is now taking place around indus trial relations, it is not really, about that thorny subject, but about the management of the national economy.
The economic and political philosophy which the last Labour Government tried to implement is best explained in Mr Cros land's book, The Conservative Enemy. The ideas put forward on the left are regularly propagated in the columns of Tribune. The contrast is between a basically Social Democratic model with a high degree of state intervention in industry — though it would be intervention of a permissive rather than a censorious kind — and an economy thoroughly socialised in the old Labour style, with an exceptionally large public sector and very high taxation. Of the Social Democratic model one can only say that it has been tried before, and if it is to be tried again it must surely be with different men — which is perhaps why Mr Crosland has been moving leftwards. A fully socialised economy on the British Labour pattern has never been tried.
There are two difficulties about the fully sccialist projection. The first concerns the unions and industrial relations, as well as Parliament. It is worth observing that the British left, like the Tory right in Parliament today, are the best parliamentary democrats around. It is the Tory centre and the Labour right who have consistently, over the years when in power, abused Parliament and its powers continually: the essence, one might say; of British parliamentary democracy is how undemocratic it is. But for all that men like Mr Foot and Mr Heifer are good parliament-men; for all that they upbraid and denounce Mr Heath's syndicalism, they do want to restore powers of totally free collective bargaining to gigantic and powerful unions, and they have no proposals alternative to those of Mr Heath for reforming trade union struc ture; and so far. as I can see there is no way in which the Labour left can match together a free trade union structure, a fully socialised economy, and a powerful parliament.
But there is an even more serious difficulty which both sides in the Labour Party face. For all his skill in winning a second general election, it has to be recognised that Mr Wilson destroyed the main hopes of his Government and movement in his first few months of power. This happened because he, his first Chancellor, Mr Callaghan, and the Treasury, all panicked between October and December 1964, when the international monetary system itself panicked at the sight of Labour's proposals. Whatever industrial and social policies the Labour Party now opts for, it is absolutely essential that, if they return to power, they enter office with a plan for running the Treasury which will both enable them to achieve such of their policy ends as are realistic and empower them to control, or at least ride out, the reaction of domestic and international business to those policies. There is no sign whatever that the Labour Party have been thinking that way; and it is almost inconceivable that they could do so while Mr Healey remains Shadow Chancellor, for he shows neither dignity in his bearing, nor perception of the nature and responsibilities of his job. Yet, as long as nothing constructive is done about this aspect of affairs — remember how dominating a figure lain Macleod was in the councils of the Conservative Opposition, how central he was to policy-making — a great hole will still gape in Labour's credibility, and all the strivings of the Heifers, the Prentices, the Croslands and the Foots will go to nothing.
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