THE LABOUR PARTY'S FUTURE
Sitt,—I think there is sound leading for post-war politics in your article " The Labour Party's Future." Party controversy is inevitable and healthy so long as human beings differ about what is good for them and each other, but it would be a step forward to rid it of its bitterness and unfair- ness ; and this would be assisted by your suggestion that the nation's leaders of all parties should not go right down into the thick of the election battle but, instead, make only positive and educational speeches, criticising each other (if at all) only with the utmost restraint. To many of the opposition-minded in the rank and file, this might stamp them merely as traitors—at first—but the nation would in time grasp the significance of their course—their realisation that they may have to work closely together when the battle is past.
I see three alternative ways open to us. (t) A coupon election—which, with you, I should deplore, and which would not really avoid the second alternative. (2) A return to the old game of treating as destined and perpetual enemies people with whom one has a good deal of common purpose. (3) A recognition that we are at a new stage in democratic evolution, which requires us to make a serious effort to hammer out the technique of what I have called elsewhere the " politics of agreement."
(1) and (2) are the easy ways, but to adopt them will put us in the danger that the idea of democracy, having won the biggest and most terrible war in history, may be discredited because its nominal adherents have not sufficiently understood it. If on the other hand we choose (3), which I am sure is the right way, we ought to do so in full realisation that the relaxing of party discipline may have to go so far as to create the need for new devices to maintain decisive and stable government and provide alternative governments in which the nation can have confidence should it lose confidence at any time in virtually all the office-holders of that moment.
The political genius and experience of this nation ought not to find it an impossible task to provide them.—Yours sincerely,
REGINALD A. SMITH.
34 Burnside Road, Gatley, Cheshire.
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