Political Commentary
Foot wins the war
Patrick Cosgrave
The period of a contest for the leadership is a fevered time in any political party: the utterances of partisans, whether vindicated or embittered, should, at such a moment, be considered merely as utterances for the moment ; not as considered or judicious con- tributions to a philosophical discussion. But, that caveat entered, there was some- thing very striking about the broad grins on the faces of Mr Michael Foot's supporters on the evening of the day on which Mr Callaghan beat him by eight votes in the second ballot for the leadership of the Labour Party. Far from being disappointed, they were highly pleased with themselves; and predictions were being made, and sug- gestions proffered which, only weeks ago, would have seemed the wildest hyperbole.
`Michael will stay at St James's Square: that's where the action really is.' Come August Michael will be Leader of the House. Then he'll have charge of Cabinet com- mittees, you see.' 'Michael's ichael's always wanted to be Foreign Secretary. When Jim re- shuffles that's where he'll go.' 'Michael wants to revive the old Department of Economic Affairs: he could run it in a way George Brown couldn't.' There has even been a small Michael for Chancellor move.
At the moment of writing few indeed even of his most fervent supporters expect Mr Foot actually to defeat Mr Callaghan in the final ballot for the leadership. It could not happen, said Mr David Wood the other day, unless there has been a still undetected total change in the nature of the Parliamen- tary Labour Party. The PLP, Mr Wood added, has almost totally changed, but not quite. What remains extraordinary is the well-nigh total satisfaction of Mr Foot's motley army with the nature of his defeat. If we have not won the battle—their manner implies—we are well on the way to winning the war.
There is, of course, a method of dismiss- ing all this. Throughout the campaign Mr Callaghan has been virtually dumb, and those chosen to articulate for him have not been among the most distinguished lumi- naries of the Labour Party in Parliament : man for man they have not been in the same street for ability and charm as the campaign officers of either Mr Jenkins or Mr Foot. Their thesis now is, however, that all the prattle of a left-wing triumph is the merest romanticism. Large, brooding, silent, watch- ful, their man—they now imply—is merely waiting for Mr Foot's bubbly to go flat. In the end, they suggest, you will find that nothing has changed. And of course the Tribune boys are bursting with delight: so inured to defeat have they become over the years that any sort of good showing fills them with pleasure. Nothing to worry about, old boy: the Labour Party is no more left than it has ever been.
All this has the plausibility of any argu- ment that suggests that nothing ever changes very much in politics. My own conviction is that Mr Foot's campaign has changed things; and changed them utterly.
First, let us take Mr Callaghan's silence. There are two reasons for being silent in politics—because that seems the best tactical move; and because one has nothing to say. It seems more than probable that Mr Calla- ghan quite simply has had nothing to say. Throughout the campaign the supporters of Mr Foot and Mr Healey and Mr Benn and Mr Crosland and—especially these—Mr Jenkins all had a good deal that was coherent and even forceful to say in support of their favourite. They descanted on their man's policies, philosophy, virtues and charm. And if much of what they were saying seemed exaggerated and forced, there was nonethe- less, one could feel, something to it. Mr Callaghan's organisers spoke of him in the same tones as did the press—vague, vapor- ous and general. Mr Callaghan stands for something that is not Mr Foot; and no more can be said in his support.
Second, let us take that gleam in the col- lective eye of the Tribune group. In passing it should be said that no left-wing parliamen- tary campaign has ever been so well organ- ised, or possessed of so sure a touch. Mr Heifer has been unbelievably restrained; Mr Silkin impressively Machiavellian; and Mr Kinnock has demonstrated to a wider audience than the specialist how truly for- midable a figure he is: office, for him, cannot be far away. There has been a sharper and more sophisticated gloss to this left-wing effort than to any of its predecessors: there has been no bitterness, no recrimination, no paranoia; only charm and force and drive throughout. They are all men entering upon their inheritance.
And they are, of course, convinced that Mr Callaghan is no more than an emptY bottle, into which convictions and policies can be poured. From his slavish praise of Soviet Russia immediately after the war to his equally slavish praise of Dr Kissinger now, Mr Callaghan has blown where the wind listeth.
The one thing that nobody, friend or foe, can deny is Mr Callaghan's profound, in- deed infallible, instinct for trends in the Labour movement. Throughout his con- duct of its affairs (and for nearly thirty years he has, with rare moments of exception, been high in its counsels) he has invariably guessed in which direction the trend has been going; and has made sure to go along with it. This instinct explains how a man whose career has never been marked by any exceptional courage felt strong enough to defy Mr Wilson and the majority of the Cabinet in the controversy over trade union legislation in 1968: he knew and accurately measured the strength of Mr Jones and Mr Scanlon in the battle that was on then.
And now, of course, Mr Foot's excellent showing in the race for the leadership in- dicates no more and no less than that the Parliamentary Labour Party has begun to catch up with the Labour Party in the country. Since 1970 we have seen a steady drift leftwards at Labour conferences, in constituency parties, and in the complicated and even Byzantine world of affiliated Labour Party committees and fringe organ- isations. The press—frightened, on the whole, by these manifestations—has been wont to congratulate the PLP on its relative freedom from the infection; and it is fair to say that there has been a good deal of private—if very little public—denunciation of leftism on the part of Labour members of Parliament. Now, however, the strength the left has enjoyed in the country has been made manifest in Westminster. And Uncle Jim will look upon it and find it good; as he finds good whatever happens to be domi- nant in his party at any given moment.
What all this means for future policy is not completely clear. The choice made by what Mr Kinnock likes to call the 'liber- tarian' (as opposed to the totalitarian) left to back Mr Foot rather than Mr Benn was not made solely from the conviction that the sage of Hampstead and Ebbw Vale had stronger pulling power than the former Vis- count Stansgate: it was the expression of a preference for an instinctive rather than a programmatic Socialism. Mr Foot s strength in the new Cabinet is less likely to show itself in forward-looking and visionary industrial and economic policies than M. a series of choices made in the face of crists. The most important likely choice will be in favour of import controls; and who dares say that Mr Callaghan would oppose a measure so popular with the TUC? The voice may be the voice of Jim, but the hand will be the hand of Michael.
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