The triumph of the Teds
Ferdinand Mount
Brighton The man on the Guardian night news desk immediately recognised the familiar treacly voice, at once genial and threatening. 'If you must write these effing stupid leaders asking where I stand,' the former Chancellor said, 'at least you might effing well print some of what I say.' Mr Healey's lecture was indeed worth printing as an explicit and robust defence of the mixed economy, freedom and sound money, and it was a worthy memorial to Sara Barker, who. as Labour's National Agent, had been a ferocious scourge of the Reds. No doubt it's the kind of speech Helmut Schmidt makes twice a day before lunch, but in the British Labour Party it had the tang of rarity — until this week.
Suddenly you can scarcely hear yourself speak for explicit and robust defences of the mixed economy etc, from Shirley Williams, Frank Chapple, Bill Rodgers, and most notably Jim Callaghan. There's no reluctance to stand up and be counted; they just don't count for quite enough any more. What's the use in roaring when you're already in the cage?
The new fad promoted in the Guardian and elsewhere is that Tony Benn has in some mysterious way 'won the argument'. Social democracy or the Labour Right has lost because it is 'ideologically bankrupt'. The dominance ofthe Leftwithin the party is said to be the embodiment of the intellectual triumph it has scored in capturing hearts and minds. This is not merely horsefeathers but pernicious horsefeat hers. Personally discredited the Labour moderates may be by their earlier equivocations, but they are nowhere near asdiscredited by history or logic as ist he socialism of the Labour Left. To pretend that the shift of power inside the Labour Party is the result of intellectual ferment is to cover up the unpleasant methods by which that shift was ac hieved— dece it, brutality towards sick old men and barefaced intellectual dishonesty, to name but a few.
Walking along the prom, you are mobbed by a gang of toughish eggs selling The Militant, the Trot — no. well, the militant left-wing journal. These stocky, , furrychinned characters greet each other with a flurry of 'Morning, Ted, morning Ted'. They all seem to be called Ted, perhaps on the principle of corporate anonymity by which waiters in certain West End clubs are all addressed as George or Charles—or perhaps as a tribute to their founder, Ted Grant, who coined 'Entryism' as the most painless way to take over the Labour Party, And there in their midst, if Lam not mistaken, is the man himself, the mole of moles, in a grubby black raincoat and looking a little weatherbeaten by the years, but a prince come into his own as his corps of Teds scamper out of the hazy sunshine into the Brighton Conference Centre, sporting their delegates' badges. They have indeed effected an entry.
In Sara Barker's day, these people would all have been on the 'proscribed list'; they would not have been allowed into the party at all. But the lethargy of the later Wilson years, masquerading as tolerance, allowed them in. And there they are in the constituency section of the hall, howling down every speaker from the Shadow Cabinet, even Michael Foot, applauding the slimy digs of Frank Allaun, this year's chairman. and Ron Hayward, the party's general secretary. who were running neck and neck for the Creep of the Conference award. Just when you thought nothing could outdo Mr Allaun's self-righteous whine, Mr Hayward asks a question: `Is this about to become a bit of Shakespeare — I come not to praise Callaghan but to bury him?' Meant to be a joke no doubt. In criticising Mr Callaghan for failing to observe conference decisions, Mr Hayward is simply acting in his capacity as custodian of conference decisions, and he has no thought of sucking up to new masters on the Left when he says that he is sick of hearing a section of the party described as Trotskyists and Marxists when they are simply 'activists'. For Ron is an honourable man.
Mr Callaghan was touching, even noble in defeat, blinking with the saggy smile of a punch-drunk boxer as the punishment continued without let-up for three days. All through the summer holidays, he has apparently been pacing up and down like Napoleon on Elba brooding on how to show 'ern. But it was all too late, and it is beginning to look too late for Mr Healey too. You cannot say that either of them lacks courage, but they lacked the zest or perhaps the imagination to fight the right battle at the right time. Now they are both starting to look like those old fortresses which stand eerily intact, guns polished, ammo neatly piled, while the little men from the hills have long ago sneaked past up the next ravine, without bothering to besiege.
Over and over again, the Right have said 'it isn't happening', or It isn't happening this year'. They cheer up when the newsreader says 'but there was comfort too at Brighton yesterday for Mr Callaghan'. The unconsoling truth is that things always hap pen with mesmerising slowness in the Labour Party. As Ian Mikardo said, in a performance which in other years would have been in the running for the Creep award: if it doesn't come this year, then next year and if not next year, then the year after that. Slowly, very slowly as in all the best horror stories from Poe onwards, the walls close in and the gleaming knife descends.
There were still people to be heard saying that re-selection doesn't really matter because most MPs would be safe and it was only importing 'a little bit of democracy' after all. That faith must have weakened when they saw the scenes of left-wing jubilation at the result of the vote. I saw two old lefties in tears. And Tony Benn, whose face is usually so appropriately composed, could not disguise his glee; I shouldn't think he's blushed like that since he was awarded his house colours at his unmentionable academy. The Left now need only a couple of dozen more MPs, perhaps less, to take control of the Parliamentary Party; and re-selection will enable the, er, activists to turf out at least that number of sitting moderates. Perhaps Mr Benn, however sweetly he woos the Partyl Conference as he did on Wednesday morning,might still have too many enemies in the Commons to benefit; Mr Silkin and Mr Shore were both staying mum and shaking hands a lot. But whoever won would be a puppet undergoing detailed daily control from the activists and now also lumbered witha manifesto dictated by the activists.
'Well, at least the inquiry will sort this lot out,' is the right wing's last hope. The five big union men on the Inquiry are supposed to produce a blueprint for reorganising the party to make it safe for democracy. Members of the new national executive would be elected two by two, from each region; every factory would have its own branch, swelling the moderate ranks; never again would the unions allow the party to become the prisoner of an unrepresentative minority.
This would indeed be a spectacular development arousing alarm and puzzle ment in equal proportions. Critics may question the merits, of having a Labour Party that was even more intimately beholden to and controlled by the most obstructive force in Britain. Labour sympathisers may wonder whether the trade union leaders in question have either the 'time, the cohesion or the talent to exercise such detailed control and tame the political obsessivcs on the NEC.
What may be forgotten is that there already exists a Party Organisation Inquiry Committee set up in January 1978 by an NEC composed much like the NEC elected this week. The Inquiry had four union members — David Basnett, Sir John Boyd, Moss Evans and Alan Fisher — much the same as the new inquiry will have, and it had a left-wing majority. Nothing much came out of it. mainly because of the impending election. Even now, it is not clear that the union leaders involved have any precise strategy in mind beyond 'saving Jim'. Some Labour MPs are optimistic; wart for the minority report, they say. Even if there is a left-wing majority on the Inquiry, the trade union minority can write their ow.n report and use the block vote to push It through at Blackpool next year. It's a nice thought, and nice thoughts are in short supply at the moment.
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