Political commentary
Mr Benn's ishoo
Charles Moore
Chesterfield
Politics is getting too clever. If can- didates and political parties give the im- pression that they do not really want to win, voters become bewildered. Why are they standing, then? is the inevitable and reasonable question; and, since the answer is complicated, not many voters will stay to listen to it. In Chesterfield, the motives of all the main parties are in doubt. The Con- servatives are said to be holding back their effort in order to help get Mr Benn back. Worldly Liberals (of whom there are more than one might think) like to confide in you that their preferred result would be a Labour victory over their candidate, but by only 100 votes. As for Labour, desires are even more confused. Before Mr Benn's selection, those close to Mr Kinnock were working to prevent it. Now Mr Kinnock takes the step, still fairly uncommon for a Leader of the Opposition, of visiting the by-election constituency, yet arrives, and gives a press conference, without the can- didate. A particularly good sight here on Monday was the large figure of Mr Michael Cocks. Mr Cocks, who is the Labour Chief Whip, was the man who forced Mr Benn out of a safe seat in Bristol and so, without intending it, to Chesterfield. Mr Cocks was here to 'support' Mr Benn — at lunchtime he was wandering the town asking, with a cynical grin, the way to the Labour Com- mittee Rooms. By four o'clock he was doz- ing on the station platform waiting for the London train. It might be fair of the press to say that Labour is bringing its 'big guns' into Chesterfield, but it is hard to know which way they are pointing.
It is an Alliance commonplace of the campaign that Mr Benn is 'using Chester- field for his own purposes'. One hears the same thing said by traditional Labour Chesterfield voters themselves. But at least it is transparent what Mr Benn's purposes are — he wants to get back into Parliament, a purpose which he shares with 99 per cent of main party candidates at every election. Of course he says things like, 'We're here to talk about Chesterfield', and it may be, as is often true of candidates, that he has become genuinely fond of the place, but you could not say that he was deceiving the electors. The parties themselves are the deceivers. Why are they wasting so much of the public's time and even a bit of its money, competing for something that they do not want?
Perhaps, for once, Mr Benn's famous and irritating distinction between the `ishoos' and the 'personalities' might help. The Chesterfield by-election is 'about' Tony Benn, both for the voters and for the parties. Desperate to talk up its recovery under Mr Kinnock, Labour attributes almost magical destructive powers to Mr Benn. The Conservatives and the Alliance also believe that he is their best vote- winner. These beliefs are more or less or- thodox among politicians, and so are repeated by the press. They have also been absorbed by the small mob of children that has made Mr Benn its Pied Piper and runs cheering and shrieking after him round Chesterfield market. But although Mr Benn must be a great nuisance for his party, his power is not very great, and will not be even if he gets back to Westminster. He will give the Left back its voice: but if Mr Kinnock, himself supposed to be a voice of the Left, cannot manage such a threat, he will not deserve to continue as leader. Mr Benn's personality has never blocked Labour's road to Number Ten.
What Mr Benn does represent is one side of an argument in which Labour is always engaged — the argument about whether the British people want socialism. This is the great, perhaps at bottom the only ishoo for Labour, and it absorbs so much of its energies that the British people themselves do not get much of a look-in. I do not know what the ishoos are for the people of Chesterfield. Probably they are as various as elsewhere — jobs, housing, the state of schools, as well as thousands of particular problems about which no generalisation can be made. Many of these questions may have political solutions, and some voters may prefer the solutions advanced by socialists, but one can be certain that it is the solutions and not the -ism that they are after. A socialist cannot admit this, and so argues round and round the point forever.
If you are a Christian evangeliser, you believe in man's innate sinfulness, and therefore have a satisfactory explanation for the recalcitrance of those you wish to convert. If you are a socialist, however, you believe in the innate goodness and receptivi- ty of the class for whom you are struggling, and so you have to look for another way of explaining why the workers so seldom want to listen to you. This is easily done if you are prepared to go far enough in rejecting the existing organisation of society. A Leninist has no difficulty in explaining how capitalist oppression induces false con- sciousness so that every display of the popular will is actually illusory. The pro- blems arise for those socialists who dislike the idea of getting their way with guns, and respect democratic elections. If those elec- tions really are democratic, how could the voters reject socialist candidates?
Since Labour lost so tremendously in June, this argument has been raging more strongly and wordily than ever. Professor Eric Hobsbawn hinted in Marxism Today that it might be time to form a Popular Front of those opposed to Thatcherism. In the March issue of New Socialist, Professor Raymond Williams agrees that Mrs Thatch- er's is 'a very dangerous right-wing govern- ment', but concludes that no compromise should be made with the existing 'popular ground' of politics on which Labour was defeated. He thinks that the only way to win is by working out and making 'the full contemporary intellectual argument for socialism', and thus persuading the people to eschew false gods. Among politicians in the Labour party, there seem to be three views. The Foot/Kinnock view is to rely on eloquence and repetition to make the argu- ment of which Professor Williams speaks. The Healey/Hattersley line is to drop the argument as quickly and quietly as possible. The Benn line is to expose the way that ex- isting structures repress and distort the argument, and to call on people to over- throw those structures by 'taking power (precise extent of illegality not defined)• Those of us who are not socialists and are not in the Labour party, i.e. most people in Britain and even in Chesterfield, become impatient with the discussions because we think we know the answer. The British peo- ple, working or any other class, do not want socialism because they never want any political creed, and they do not want the results of thorough-going socialism because, those are detrimental to their happiness and their interest. Except perhaps in the 1940s, these have always been obvious facts about British life, and one would have thought that, after June. 1983, they would have been blindingly obvious. Mr Benn thinks that he can keep the great, debate alive by bringing in Christ and Wal Tyler and lecturing the voters of Chester- field about the tradition to which he thinks he is heir. What he forgets is that almos"° politician arouses interest because of the intrinsic value of what he says, but because of the position from which he says it. The arguments of politicians are interesting because they relate to what is going to hair pen next, People only put up with the Left s penchant for debates if the existing or future government of the country is inOlv: ed. As Labour recedes, the debates become
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more academic, but without the advantage of real academic!argumentl that !is intellee,, tually rigorous. This by-election just isn quite important enough. One of the many difficulties abo,uit. occupying the space once graced by Fe,c1,0 nand Mount is that one feels challenge follow his custom of predicting electi, results. Chesterfield is a particularly triclYs one because of the perfidy of Mr Ben all opponents in wanting him to win. 1 °Ik guess that Mr Benn will win from the Liberal by 3-4,000 votes; but if you want to place a bet, consult Mr Mount.
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