Political commentary

Labour in search of a prole

Charles Moore

Even before Mr Hattersley swore (or, as 1–:/the case may have been, did not swear) at Mr Foot, the experts were agreed that Mr Kinnock would become the next leader of the Labour party. Mr Kinnock is a man with no experience, offering to lead a party which needs every sort of sophisticated skill to climb back to office. Why should his suc- cess be more assured than that of any Labour leadership candidate since Harold Wilson opposed George Brown?

After all, the man with the sophisticated skill is there for the asking in the substantial shape of Mr Hattersley. He has been minister for a fantastic number of things, through one cannot quite remember which. He is clever and tough and moderate. He likes cricket and has assiduously projected what is supposed to be the sine qua non of success in the t.v. age — 'personality'.

But Mr Hattersley is said to be fighting the wrong campaign, of which the alterca- tion with Mr Foot was only the most dramatic example. Instead of patronising Mr Kinnock into second place, praising his charms and dynamism but suggesting that he needs to be brought on by a more heavyweight senior, Mr Hattersely has been antagonistic. He has castigated Labour for being inward-looking, demanded reform of the constitution and called for the reversal of manifesto policies. His supporters believe that these are truths that the party must hear, but their relation seems to have repelled more than it has attracted.

The question which Labour asks uneasily of Mr Hattersley is Mrs Thatcher's famous one of members of her party, 'Is he one of us?' Although he has been at such pains to lay bare his roots, Mr Hattersley has never quite established authentic Labour creden- tials. His quality of seeming to be on the make, his metropolitan air, his enthusiasm for office are none of them quite the thing. He protests that he could never be a member of another party; Mr Kinnock does not have to protest at all.

When Michael Foot toured the country during the election, shouting the same speech to packed meetings of supporters, he was rapturously received as part of the myth of the Labour movement. That would never happen to Mr Hattersley. It already happens to Mr Kinnock. He is an all- and only Labour product. He has Welsh Labour windy eloquence (of which Mr Foot had a sort of Oxford version). He has the required mixture of wit and puritanism. He is personable and smart, but not slick. You can imagine prospective mothers-in-law thinking that he would do well in the world for their daughters and that he would be brave and sincere and ready to suffer for what he believed. As a success representing

a people that have failed, he has a romantic aura.

So for every self-indulgent reason, Labour likes Mr Kinnock. But there are other reasons, too. Although Mr Foot has wrapped his mantle dangerously tight round him, Mr Kinnock is regarded as just the man to do well what Mr Foot did so badly — win the voters through the televi- sion. When interviewed, he can be restrain- ed from waffling as he cannot when on the platform, and his charm and energy and decency come across.

His Labour authenticity is also a real asset, as well as having sentimental appeal. It stands a chance of uniting a party which must reduce at least its public disagreements if it is to survive. Mr Kinnock's readiness to work with 'anyone who wants Labour to win' is more convincing than that of Mr Hattersley, though it does rather depend for its effectiveness on Mr Hattersley beating Mr Meacher for the deputy leader- ship. Some Kinnockites think that Mr Hat- tcrsley's aggressive campaigning is letting Mr Meacher in.

After that strenuous effort to be fair to Labour's preference, however, one still has to say that it is ridiculous to choose such a leader. By doing so, Labour shows that it is not thinking of a Prime Minister. It refuses to accept that its manifesto and its policies led to its defeat, and it rejects the argument that there is quite a large number of people in the Labour party simply has to be beaten. Of course it is true that Mr Kinnock hates the hard Left, and vice versa, but what will he do about them? He will cer- tainly be without the assistance of Mr John Golding on the National Executive, and may lose its majority 'soft' Left and Right which is at present in control. It is difficult to see how Mr Kinnock could muster the authority of a Jim Callaghan simply to ig- nore the Executive.

Perhaps there just isn't anyone who could do the job. There are at least three components of the Labour party, and none has much in common with the other. There is the trade union-based party of people like Callaghan and Golding, rather rough and unideological and concerned to better the lot of the working man. This element is in poor shape, and after Mr Tebbit's ballots on political funds next year may have to reorganise itself entirely, but it is the raison d'etre of Labour. Then there are the socialists, who have stretched from the Lef- tish bits of Shirley Williams through Michael Foot to revolutionaries. They have frequently been well-born and well- educated and as frequently impractical and unpopular, but they have given Labour something to say; indeed they have supplied

almost all of its public language that has not come from the third element — the social democrats, called by Mr Hattersley, who should know, 'the social ameliorators of the soggy middle ground'. The social democrats within Labour were never very large numerically, but were vital in staffing Labour governments. Crosland and Jenkins and Healey made Labour a party fit for Cabinet ministers to live in.

This has always been rum coalition, and never really a successful one. Although un- til recently it was customary to regard Labour as being on a par with the Tories as a party of government, the truth is that it has only twice in its life won unequivocal electoral victories — in 1945 and 1966, and 1945 was in most unusual circumstances. It always took tireless political skills to hold Labour together and win: more often than not, they were not enough. Now that so many social democrats have left, apparently taking three million votes with them, Labour's base is smaller, but its composi- tion no more homogeneous.

There might be one way that Labour could thrive without social democracy. It could follow a sort of unacademic version of Mr Peter Shore. What is unsocialist about high defence spending, whether con- ventional or nuclear, or about opposing im- migration and sternly punishing violent crime? Such policies would appeal to work- ing class preoccupations and sort perfectly well with welfarism and a planned economy and protection. But this will never happen. Tender Fabian sensibilities have stopped it in the past, and now they seem to have soured into an extremism which takes the form of being anti-British. Some of the Labour Left wanted Argentina to win; almost all of them want the British beaten in Northern Ireland (hence the entertain- ment laid on for Gerry Adams in Parlia- ment on Tuesday).

Anti-Britishness has even spread itself in- to a hatred of ordinary British people. In last week's Tribune, a poem appeared en- titled 'The New Prole', I'm a carefree floating voter Basking daily in The Sun Politics are bloody boring- Bums and tits are far more fun

Be like me, man; grin, be jolly. Social justice? Kiss my ass! I've a mortgage and a Datsun I'm no longer working class!

Judging by his choice of colloquialisms, the poet, Donald Kear, thinks that the new pro- le speaks like a black American Bertie Wooster; but the lack of acute social obser- vation is made up for by the purity of the rage at the once poor man who can now af- ford a car and a house. The Donald Kear wing of the Labour party does not want to 'mobilise the radical majority' in this coun- try which Mr Hattersley keeps talking about, because it believes, quite correctly, that it does not exist. Mr Kinnock will not be able to conjure it into life.