TUC Commentary
To Hell or Blackpool
'MIND your backs, please, mind your backs.' In a pet already (the handle of my suitcase had just fallen off), I determined not to mind my back at so peremptory a command. But then I glanced over my shoulder, and all was forgiven. It was the beer : two gigantic trolleys loaded to the gunwales and beyond with that mysterious liquor which, when sufficiently warmed, would be served to the 996 thirsty and clamorous delegates to the 89th Trades Union Congress.
For this was Blackpool, the City of Dreadful Day. If Black- pool did not exist it would not be necessary to invent it; Hell would provide a perfectly ade- quate substitute. Is there any other place in the world that is even remotely comparable? Is there anywhere, has there been anywhen, a culture and a society like this? Impossible; Blackpool is unique. For seven miles—seven long and terrible miles—the 'front' stretches. Hotel a n d boarding-house, boarding-house and hotel, on and on without a single break it goes, while the tram clangs its way on, and the pas- senger begins to think—nay, to be quite cer- tain—that he must have died without knowing it and gone straight to the seventh circle of the Inferno. The only trees for seven miles are made of plywood and electric light bulbs; and when there are no plywood trees there are fairy-tale scenes, tableaux of the four seasons, castles, fat ladies—all gigantic, all plywood, all studded with electric lights, all of a hideousness, a vulgarity, an unimaginable, depthless, ferocious ugliness that stuns the mind and leaves it reeling. The shops, from one end of the town to the other, sell gew- gaws and rubbish, the landladies—there are, some say, seventy thousand landladies in Blackpool— hang like leeches on the million fools who come here to enjoy themselves—and do—the taxi- drivers forget to switch the clock on and make up a fancy fare when they arrive at your destination, and poor Taper wanders disconsolate as a cloud, beseeching the delegates to spare a thought for the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who suffered gladly that their fellow-men might be enabled to lead full, rich lives, and are no doubt suffering still.
Besides, take the Mayor, who welcomed the delegates on Monday, bellowing things like 'A person is as old as they feel, and I'm still a young man, I'm fifty-one and I 'ope you return invig- orated to your loved ones and it's later than you think.'
Though, mind you, when Sir Tom Williamson came to deliver the presidential address things were not a whole lot better. For years, through the era of Bevin and Deakin, one has thought of Tom Williamson's million votes and the ruthless, cold-eyed skill with which he wields them. But close up he gives the impression of the highly respectable under-manager of a very small green- grocery in one of the less busy market towns of Cumberland. And it was somehow fitting that Sir Tom should be President of this particular Con- gress. Control Mr. Cousins? Stop unofficial strikes? Clean up Briggs? Run the country? The fact is, the TUC controls nothing and nobody, and is no more capable of imposing its collective will (which it in any case does not have) on any- one with sufficient strength or guile to defend himself than a decapitated chicken is capable of making a speech. True, the TUC runs around vigorously in circles; but so, for that matter, does a decapitated chicken. It would be no bad thing if Mr. Macmillan, if he can spare the time from shooting grouse and holding Cabinet meetings on the Wolfenden Report, were to pop up to Black- pool and spend an hour or two in the Visitors' Gallery. 'What great devils filled the sky,' wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'yet fell at a pistol flash.' Well, these great devils are busy giving the impression that one wouldn't even have to flash a pistol.
Take Mr. Gaitskell, for instance. Before you take him, though, spare a moment to savour to the full the tale of Mr. Gaitskell's Two Arrivals. Due to arrive in Blackpool at 5.45 on Monday, he had naturally provoked a good deal of curiosity. The reception committee at the station, therefore, was not unimpressive. Mr. Gaitskell, however, knows a trick worth two of that; he left the train at Preston and sidled in by road. Your correspondent, however, knows a trick worth four of that, and managed to roll up one drive of the Imperial Hotel in a droschke at the precise moment that the Right Honourable Gentleman rolled up the other in a car. By now a fine state of confusion reigned, and the President, who should have been on hand to welcome him (the Right Honourable Gentleman, that is, not your correspondent), was nowhere to be seen. 'Sir Tom, Sir Tom,' called a number of anxious voices, and in a moment Sir Tom duly appeared. Only it was the wrong Sir Tom; this one was the spherical O'Brien, never backward in coming forward, who informed Mr. Gaitskell that he was looking dis- gustingly healthy and attributed this to his youth. Enter, finally, the right Sir Tom, and after the photographs ('Just put your arm round his shoul- ders, please'), Mr. Gaitskell was ready to answer questions, if ready is the right word, which it certainly isn't. No, he had not come to Blackpool to try to patch up the row breyving over his nationalisation plans. Yes, he had simply come up to dine with his union, the NUGMW. (It is under- stood that there is a section of this body which organises university lecturers, and it is to this that he belongs. It is,not known who is the f.o.c.) Yes, he would attend Congress. No, he had no comment on Mr. Campbell's amendment for Brighton, urging the party to chase the Gaitskel plan up a tree. Yes, he had only just got bad from Yugoslavia. Yes, he would put his anal round Sir Tom again. No, he had not had his tea Yes, he would like some.
That was Mr. Gaitskell's first arrival. The second took place after this famous dinner, anew dance at which had been the sole cause of his visit to Blackpool. (It has not proved possible to obtain Mr. Gaitskell's opinion of the rendering of 'The Rose of Tralee' that followed the meal.) Ile came to the Imperial to be interviewed by ITN. There was the usual breathless hush in the lobby; delegates wandered casually by, Morgan Phillips moved gently to and fro, the excitement mounted and the tension rose. A bustle, a stir, a commo' tion; the revolving doors began to revolve. He comes! He comes! And into the hall there stepped none other than Mr. R. H. S. Crossrnan. Nobody said a word (except the hall porter, who directed him to Reception), but it was a moment to be treasured; the lion daring to show his fact in the den of Daniels.
But Mr. Gaitskell had not come to Blackpool to provide sport for me, any more than he had come to attend the dinner of the NUGMW. with or without the Rose of Tralee. He had come to make it clear that he wasn't going to stand anY nonsense from anybody. No doubt he would do his share of horse-trading in the smoke-filled rooms; but Mr. Gaitskell is determined to get his nationalisation plan through the Labour Party Conference, and if the TUC doesn't like it the TUC can go and take, as the wits of Blackpool put it, a long walk on a short pier. It strikes me that Mr. Gaitskell has taken the measure of these 996 characters (or rather, as I shall suggest in a moment, of 995 of them) and found that he had yards of tape-measure left over when he had finished the job. Asked whether he would amend the plan if the TUC made it plain that they didn't care for it, he replied curtly that he would not, as this was a matter for the Labour Party. And Mr. Gaitskell is by no means treading the wine- press single-footed; on Monday afternoon his Jane the Baptist, Peggy Herbison, had spoken as maternal delegate from the Labour Party, and in the course of her speech had brandished a stiletto of her own. A tiny stiletto, true; but she had been careful to be seen trying the point. Complaints and criticism, she said, 'would be welcome, pro. vided they were 'friendly and constructive,' and have no doubt that Miss Herbison had sufficient wit to hide her smiles when Mr. Campbell's motion in the afternoon's secret session (they really are a lot of babies!), calling for a re,.ieW of the whole trades union structure in this coun- try, was heavily defeated. Bro. Campbell no doubt reflects that he lives to,fight another day; but the stiletto will be sharper still at Brighton.
It all depends on Frankie, the 996th man. Since Frankie first appeared over the horizon, opinion has built up so strongly around him that I was careful, as soon as I arrived in Blackpool, to pop round to the chemist's for a shot of Cousins- prophylaxis. But it must have been lying too long in the back room, for the effect wore off rapidly. When Mr. Cousins came to move the resolution on pensions, designed to please everybody a little and the old age pensioners a lot, he was applauded from the floor all the way to the rostrum, and not , merely by the TGWU hoods in the middle. lock. Up on the platform Mr. Ted Hill tucked in his tummy and clapped with a will. Mr. Cousins spoke; he is no orator (John Horner, only half an hour earlier, had made rings round anything Frankie is capable of), but the hall was pin-still throughout, for the first time in the conference, and at the end Mr. Hill was not the only member of the platform to join the rank and file in the applause. Depend on it, for all the straws in their hair, some of those fellows can see a few more in the wind.
But can Mr. Gaitskell? Well, men may sleep, as Bardolph knew; and they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say knives have edges. You do not get one foot on the peak of Parnassus and then allow some Sherpa who has come up by teleferique to shove you off it. If Frankie wants a bloody nose, he will get one. But I guess that fie doesn't; that (with or without the horse-trading) the Transport Workers' vote at Brighton, to the last hundred thousand, will be behind the Gaitskell' plan. And then let joy be unconfined. Meanwhile, on to the end of Con- gress, and the formal interment of wage restraint, and another speech from Mr. Cousins, and the train back to a civilisation where the lights and the landladies will be nothing but a bad dream.
TAPER
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