Political commentary

Down the perspex tube

Ferdinand Mount

Wembley At a quarter-to-eleven, we were photographed by Mr Clive Jenkins. Clive was rushing around in his shirtsleeves snapping everyone and trying to look informal. Somehow he does not look quite so • nice with his jacket off. It was a treat to hear Mr Pat Wall from Shipley denounce 'the socalled democratic idea of one-man-onevote.' Part of the time, Mr Wall is outside the hall selling The Militant; part of the time, he is inside, denouncing so-called democracy; it's a matter of taste which is to be preferred.

'One-man-one-vote' is rather déjà vu here. Moss Evans for example prefers one-man-one-and-a-quarter-million votes, explaining that so-called democracy 'would attract card-carrying membership instead of active membership.' One of the sympathetic things about Moss is that he does not always quite seem to know what he is saying and he just stands there like an insulted pigeon until the guffaws have died down.

But I don't want to underestimate the unique happy family atmosphere. This was a very special party conference. True, there was one chap from Abingdon who denounced the entire assembly as fraudulent and corrupt. But, as the Morning Star rightly said, 'Not even this outrageous provocation could spoil the good humour of the proceedings.'

The only quibble might be that the voting system was a little complicated, and one or two delegates, such as M. Foot (Ebbw Vale), found it hard to follow. But anyone who was a wee bit baffled only had to come along at lunchtime to the briefing meeting of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. There was Joan Maynard in a wine-coloured suit and Tony Benn having a mug of tea and chewing a Mars bar or something (just like the rest of us, except that he seemed to have a different kind of mug for his tea) to explain it all for us.

Tony started by saying 'there's a slightly strange feeling about this meeting because we've reached the point where we're very near to victory.' Absolutely right. That's exactly how we felt too, slightly strange and just a little bit humbled by having already taken 'a great step forward for democracy', as Eric put it, and after lunch possibly 'changing history', according to Tony.

Anyway Joan said `so far, comrades, so good', which was nice, and then she told us all to vote for the progressive and splendid USDAW motion because it was the only motion that had got a majority in the conference. Clive had already withdrawn his own union's motion in favour of the USDAW motion. And then Tony also told us to vote for the USDAW motion because if we didn't and the USDAW motion got eliminated, then the USDAW people would not vote for the even more progres sive and splendid NEC motion but for the reactionary and appalling GMWU motion which still let Labour MPs have 50 per cent of the votes with only 25 per cent each for the constituency parties and the unions. I wondered why USDAW had produced such a progressive motion, seeing that shopworkers are normally so respectable and quiet-spoken. The answer turned out to be sheer ignorance. Their general secretary afterwards said he was very sorry. That's another nice thing about the Labour Party. There is always some union leader who comes straight out and says sorry. Usually it's the engineers, but this time they decided not to vote at all, just to show they couldn't be pushed around.

Then Tony said how awful the newspapers and television were and how they always distorted what he said. But we weren't to worry even if 'they have put us all in the bushes like Robert Mugabe' — I didn't quite follow that bit. Anyway, the point is that what the Labour Party needs is a rolling manifesto in which you can 'follow a policy through as though it were going through a perspex tube.'

There was some more after that, but that's the part that stuck in my mind. My only doubt is just how much the trade unions really care about all this democratic perspicuity. After all, Mr Evans's main objection to one-man-one-vote is that Individual membership has no industrial discipline basis.' A rolling perspex tube gathers no Moss.

After Tony sat down, a man in a soft brown leather jacket with a soft brown moustache told us all to be sure to vote for the USDAW resolution and tell all our friends to do the same.

I don't say it's simple, but after you heard it half-a-dozen times you began to cotton on. Obvious answer for GMWU forces, including M. Foot; switch a few votes to the NEC resolution to eliminate the USDAW resolution, thus freeing the poor bemused shopsvorkers to vote for the GMWU scheme, As it turned out, they only needed to switch a handful, less than 30,000. But they just could not keep up with the arithmetic.

That did not stop Mr Foot receiving the most heartfelt ovation any leader has had at a Labour Party conference in modern times. On the contrary, they just loved him for the way he politely didn't speak until after they had voted and the way he sportingly accepted their right to throw him out whenever they fancied it. Nothing succeeds like surrender. Never has the Red Flag been sung at the end with such genuine brio and by so many people who knew the words.

The Morning Star's man on the spot, claimed that 'Tory vultures, false friends in the media, and bad losers on the party's right who wanted or tried to push conference into making a bloody mess of it were disappointed.' I don't know about the others, but we vultures had quite a good day.

And bad losers on the Right have had a string of winning bets too. The handful of Right-wing Labour MPs who voted for Michael Foot as leader have succeeded beyond expectations in their aim of bringing the smash-up of the Labour Party closer quicker. Even they could not have expected that MPs' share of the electoral college would be so swiftly and dramatically reduced from 100 per cent, not to the expected 50 per cent or even 40 per cent, but to 30 per cent.

What will the Left do with its victory? In its present mood, I don't see how it can slow down the advance, even for the best tactical• reasons; a militant tendency is hard to demobilise. Which suggests that, even if not this week, the National Executive will eventually insist on the full rigours of reselection. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy was selling an entertaining booklet entitled HOw to select or reselect your MP by Mr Chris Mullin, who is Mr Benn's amanuensis and librarian.

Full-scale reselection is expected to eject another two dozen Right-wing Labour MPs, most of whom would be ready to stand as centre alliance MPs against official Labour candidates. This headstrong determination of the Left to push on to the end may turn out to be the social democrats' best hope of maintaining 'momentum' through the months leading up to the General Election. Right-wing ditherers will have less and less excuse to go on hedging.

Can Tony Benn be, prevented from standing against Denis Healey for the Deputy Leadership in the autumn under the new rules? And if Mr Healey loses, with him go the last shreds of the pretence that this is still the old Labour Party which is merely going through a temporary Leftwing phase. That is surely the moment at which men like Roy Mason and Merlyn Rees would have to make their excuses and leave.

Once the number of sitting Labour MPs who support the social democrats creeps over 20, then the new party will seem to have real substance. Or it may be that such fine calculations don't matter at all and that all will depend on the state of Mrs Thatcher's popularity at the time of the General Election, If the Tories are doing tolerably well, then the Liberal-social-democrat alliance would at best destroy the Labour Party, without itself winning more than 20 or 30 seats, but if the Tories are doing badly — ah then , We are in uncharted territory and that has its exhilarating side, especially for vultures.