Blackpool Commentary
Gaitskell's Troubles Begin
By BERNARD LEVIN Conference, it will be realised, was badly in need of something to electrify it. But what would you? I remember having tea at the House of Commons and discussing the news that the AEU decision to abandon unilateralism had put the Leader over the top. 'Will you be going to Blackpool?' asked a fellow bun-eater. 1 replied (and I could hardly have said more) that I would. i longed, I explained, to see Mr. Wilson's face. he other figure at the tea-table stirred. 'Which face?' he inquired earnestly. We shall see which one in a moment. But in 'bat tea-table scene lay much of the reason for the curiously low temperature of the conference. 11 last year's vote had been repeated, it would have meant that the division and demoralisation °f the party had gone so far and so deep that its (1Isln1egration, at any rate as a party which Mr. , aaskell could usefully lead, would have become Inevitable. This, it had long since become clear, 'would not happen. The votes on the Polaris base culd on facilities for German troops could be re- carded as minor irritants: what mattered was the massive defeat of the straightforward uni- laterttlist motions. Mr. Gaitskell's position, it seemed, was secure. The prospect of shedding his blood on the ulackpool sands having receded, therefore, all the conspiritors could be seen wearing virtuous ,..who, me?' expressions wherever one looked. Yu'. Wilson will not, I think, be standing for the 1.eadership this year, and the enchanting spectacle of this reach-me-down Claudius, fresh from pouring vials of poison in people's !`trs, appealing at the eve-of-Conference rally for an. end' to rancour' now that he might be the recipient of some of it, would have brought tears °" laughter to the eyes of the very donkeys on the sands. Mr. Wilson may rest assured: words without thoughts never to Heaven go. Not that Mr. Gaitskell's troubles are over. In- deed, they may only just be getting into their s ,151, as I shall presently suggest in more detail. ,` i` Is clear, for instance; that the vigorous hoe- ..11g Which began after Scarborough, and which resulted in the overturn of the unilateralists, has scarcely touched the roots of the party.. It is true that, Mrs. Jeger having been replaced by Miss Herbison in the Women's Section, Mr. Gaitskell now has a bare majority of supporters on his own Executive. But Mr. Mikardo, in the Constituency Section, not only retained his seat, but actually moved up a place in the voting, pushing Mr. Callaghan to the bottom, and it was touch and go until late on Wednesday whether he might have become, God save the mark, chairman of the party.
Nor is this all, nor indeed is it the worst. Com- pare the debate here on the disaffiliation of the ETU with the debate on their expulsion from the TUC at Portsmouth. There, the Communists were heard in a contemptuous silence; broken only by a roar of healthy laughter at such charm- ing mots as Mr. Goldberg's 'I have always re- garded ballot-rigging with loathing and con- tempt'; and • Mr. John Byrne, that lonely and courageous fighter for decency against corrup- tion, was applauded all the way to the rostrum. When the Labour Party discussed the ETU, on the other hand, the same Mr. Goldberg (whom Mr. Justice Winn described as a 'not very scru- pulous henchman of Mr. Haxell's) was repeatedly cheered and applauded for the same lies.
- Of course, it is not only these people who are the trouble with the Labour Party: indeed they are a squalid nuisance rather than a genuine threat. Nor is it diehards like Mr. Michael Foot or blowhards like Mr. Frank Cousins. It is true that Mr. Cousins had his annual attack of the screaming willies, -starting with a preliminary. or warning, spasm on Tuesday. After Mr: Gait- skell's imposing and skilful speech at the end of the two-day home policy debate (he neatly agreed with Mr. Wilson no fewer than five times, even calling him Harold once, in order to pin down that butterfly's elusive loyalty) Mr. Cousins actually called a press conference to denounce his leader fcir pointing out that 30 per cent. of the Transport and General Workers' Union voted Tory. But the significance of Tuesday's incident lay not in Mr. Cousins's accession or dementia but in the enthusiastic volley of applause that Mr. Gaitskell's remark received from a party, many of whose members seemed finally, and not before time, to have come to the conclusion that Mr. Frank Cousins is what Holden Caulfield would call a royal pain in the ass. The signifi- cance of what occurred in Wednesday's defence debate, however, was reversed: on that occasion, the speech was more important than the demon- stration. After stewing for a night in his own wounded amour-propre, he came to the rostrum so broken up with rage and punctured pride. that I began to fear that he would bite the micro- phone off its stand and eat it. The incoherence and spleen of his first seven or eight minutes, a pathetic jumble of defences to charges nobody had made, actually brought him something I have never known him get before—the slow handclap and a volley of boos. This was too much for his minority of supporters, and the counter-demonstration a smaller minority of them had organised for him earlier went so far as to end in a performance of 'He's a Jolly Good Fellow'—as strikingly inapposite a sentiment as could be imagined in the circumstances.
But the scene revealed the bankruptcy of the 1.eft, and the exclusiveness of their preoccupation with destroying the leader they hate. If they were forced to demonstrate so vociferously in sup- port of something as nasty and silly as Mr. Cousins's speech, it was a clear sign that they have nothing better to hope for from overt action, and that consequently Mr. Gaitskell has nothing worse to fear. But it is at this point that Mr. Gaitskell's troubles begin. For what he has to fear, and what is wrong with the Labour Party, was demonstrated very clearly by the fraternal address from the Chairman of the TUC, Mr. Ted Hill, in whom there appears to be a brain-for-weight ratio that has not been seen on earth since the death Of the last ichthyosaurus.' Mr. Hill. in his speech, was at pains to denounce those who have gone abroad to have their ships built more cheaply and more quickly than in British shipyards. Why was it necessary, he demanded, to have these ships built abroad? In- deed, why was it necessary to have them built at all? It was a massive (and enthusiastically applauded) demonstration that the Labour Party will simply never enter the twentieth century while the Ted Hills have any power in it.
For under the surface little has changed. There are still two parties, and tail is still fighting dog to see which shall wag the other. Mr. Gaitskell had his expected majority on Wednes- day over the reversal of the Scarborough vote. His closing speech, though it was not so exciting as his great last-ditch defence last year, nor as powerful as Mr. George Brown's magnificent opening in the morning this year, was telling, crisp and effective, and was even applauded, 1 was delighted to note, by Mr. Wilson, who had remained placidly puffing his pipe last year while the demonstration for the leader he hoped to replace rolled cheering on.
But the crucial debate in the Labour Party is not that between unilateralists and multilateralists, and never has been. It is between those who want to make it a modern, progressive, viable alternative to the Tories and those who want it to go on clinging, as the band slides farther down the tilting boat-deck, to doctrines that have been out-of-date for decades, and that have been re- peatedly and decisively rejected by the electorate.
And this debate Mr. Gaitskell is almost as far from winning as ever. He fought and won on unilateralism; ostensibly he won on domestic policy too. But he knows he could not win a similar fight over the fundamental nature of the party. He went as far as he could, of course: he will go farther come election time. And if he should ever be Prime Minister he would go much farther still. But the irony of his situation is that without going all the way he never will be Prime Minister.
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