Elitism, democracy and Labour
Hugh Macpherson
Just as the Conservative party regularly produces ersatz heroes for the delectation of the British public — Supermac, Alec the Gentil, Churchill the Warrior — so the Labour party provides the villains. In the best British traditions the heroes are usually in the long run seen to have feet of clay and the villains often end up as the recipients of much public affection. Aneurin Bevan moved swiftly from being a hated Socialist who was kicked down the steps of a 'gentleman's ' club to splendid obituaries after his premature death. Ramsay MacDonald needed bodyguards at some of his early election campaigns but soon persuaded the duchesses to love him as much as he loved them. A statue of Keir Hardy adorns the corridors of the Commons where he was reviled from the time he moved an amendment to a congratulatory address to the Duchess of York on the birth of a child because 260 men and boys had died in a colliery disaster that very day. And now the latest in the line is the former viscount Stansgate, Mr Tony Benn.
In adapting his prejudices to the age — one of the great British virtues — Mr Benn is not only seen as a menace to society from the left but other things as well. For instance Mr Bernard Levin finds him eccentric and dangerous. The fact that Mr Benn upsets Mr Levin should not disturb the Labour party chairman too much for so also do spiders and so many other things that life is clearly a continuous form of convulsive therapy for the gifted little man.
Mr Benn's eccentricities, are, unfortunately for him, directed towards computers and space-age gadgets. If his tastes were of a more Regency flavour such as are adopted by Mr Jenkins, or if he had Mr Heath's compulsion to go down to the sea and win yacht races, or even if he indulged in some of the sartorial absurdities of Mr Thorpe, then this would have much greater appeal to the political press corps who are highly conservative in their political tastes.
Mr Benn is also criticised for using the Market issue in an unprincipled way to advance his political career. This again is most curious because in contrast it has been suggested that Mr Jenkins is a man of unbending principle who has stood by his liberal beliefs. Yet Mr Jenkins opposed almost every attempt at any form of consultation on the issue of the Market. He was against a special conference of the Labour party; he did not want an election on the issue; he was unhappy about the National Executive of the Labour party's commitment to renegotiate the terms and follow up with a consultative referendum. In a proletarian party he has been the elitist par excellence.
Others have suffered great harm to their political reputations in an attempt to keep the Labour party in one piece. The principal sufferer has been Mr Wilson and no doubt when he is safely dead, or the Master of some Oxbridge college or possibly both, books will be produced " rehabilitating " the reputation of the Labour leader. Mr Jenkins' role in all this has been divisive and at least as inconsistent as anyone else faced with the internal divisions of the Labour party on this major constitutional question.
When Mr Jenkins decided to resign as Deputy Leader of the Labour party last April on the issue of supporting a Tory backbench amendment in favour of a referendum his advisers gathered around him before the event and gazed at his conscience as if it were a prize marrow. He then cheerfully played out a charade of voting against the legislation in Parliament so long as he was sure that it would have no effect on the result. Further when he began his "Midlothian Campaign" speeches, which have now appeared in book form, his followers went around alerting the political press that this was an assault on the leadership of the party. This degenerated into farce when they pushed around immediately after saying that it was not, because, in fact, Mr Jenkins had taken cold feet.
To write a paragraph such as the preceeding one is an open invitation to some of Mr Jenkins' devotees to upbraid the writer as belonging to the school of gutter journalism. In the case of Mr Benn it is fair game. But any objective examination of the role of Mr Benn in the present controversy makes him an exemp lar of political honesty and consistency when compared with Mr Jenkins.
The problem that Mr Benn is prepared to face is the perennial one of the relationship between the party conference and the parliamentary party. He identified this problem ten years ago when, as the youngest member of the NEC he resigned because the then NEC refused to appoint representatives to meet the TGWU to try to hammer out some agreement on questions such as nuclear disarmament. Five days later came the victory for unilateralism at the Scarborough conference.
Nobody is in any doubt that the Labour conference, with its block vote, is an inperfect form of democracy, although Mr Jenkins did not seem to be so vociferous in his concern for minorities when the right-wing union block vote was used to discipline the Bevanites as he is now for himself and his beleagured colleagues. It would also be absurd for such a body to lay down policy in detail to a Labour government. But in terms of political reality the Labour Party could not survive if there was a direct disagreement between the party conference and the parliamentary party over a period of years.
Far from being a divisive force in the Labour party Mr Benn has simply faced up to this problem. Unless Mr Jenkins and his followers realise that they are in a minority in the party conference, the parliamentary party, the trade unions, the constituency parties, and, it seems, in the country itself, and act accordingly then it is they who will split the Labour party and not Mr Benn. The curious difficulty facing the Labour conference is not a massive division between the constituency parties and Parliament, as in some of the debates on Vietnam during the last government's term of office; or the unions and seme of the Parliamentary party as in the attempt to introduce an Industrial Relations Bill; but between a small elitist group inside the Labour party with its eyes on the leadership and the overwhelming majority of the party itself.
Inside the party there is distrust of the motion being presented by the NEC to renegotiate and consult the nation over Market entry. Many think it is just another desperate formula to get through this year's conference in one piece and then when, or if, the Labour party is returned to office it will be conveniently forgotten. This could lead to a great deal of support for the AUEW motion.
There is little doubt that Mr Benn is using the present situation to advance his political career which, like it or not, is what politics are about. If he were operating among a collection of saints this would be reprehensible. Fortunately he is not and if the Labour party comes out of next week's conference with damaging divisions the fault will not lie at the door of Mr Benn but of Mr Jenkins, For Mr Benn has one inestimable advantage and that is the overwhelming majority of his own party, and probably a majority of the
„relectorate, support his views. Mr Jenkins must comfort himself with the support of Mr Levin and the like who attend the Wexford Festival but are uneasy on Wigan Pier.
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