Death of a Conference
POLITICAL COMMENTARY
By ALAN WATKINS
THE man sitting at the end of the row reserved for newspapermen had large shoes and a card marked Tress' thrust rather too osten- tatiously into his breast pocket. I did not recog- nise him as a colleague; nor did he carry a note- book. A few minutes earlier in the proceedings, at the beginning of the Prime Minister's speech, he, together with two other ostensible pressmen, had fallen upon an Empire Loyalist demon- strator with what was in the circumstances an uncalled-for display of zeal, and had handed him over to the Labour party stewards. It occurred to me to approach this new ornament of the pro- fession and say: 'You are Lobby Lad of the plain clothes branch and I demand my prize.' I did not, however, take this course. In view of the jumpy state of the authorities—a harmless but bearded television man was told 'We don't want any trouble here'—it was impossible to predicate the exact consequences of such a move. And, conscious as ever of my duty towards my readers, I was not particularly anxious to suffer the same fate as the Empire Loyalist.
I begin with this vignette of Labour at Brighton for two reasons, one specific and the other more general. The specific point involved is that it is one thing to protect the Prime Minister from assassination : quite another to use the machinery of the state to maintain order at a private Labour party meeting. The development has sinister pos- sibilities. Moreover, if plain-clothes policemen really do have to be present in such profusion, there does not seem to be any very compelling reason why they should be allowed to pass them- selves off as journalists. Possibly the matter should be taken up by the NUJ.
More generally, however, the incident sym- bolised and captured the whole atmosphere of this conference. It was an atmosphere not so much of rebellion or even of disillusion as of alienation. The delegates did not quite know what was expected of them. Never has the division between the Labour government and the Labour party been so painfully apparent It is important to realise that this division is not a clear one. Indeed, the unease and the frustra- tion of the conference derived in part from this lack of clarity as to what precisely its functions should be. And at the root of this confusion lay Mr Harold Wilson—his personality, and the curious relationship in which he has always stood to the constituency parties. Mr Wilson, unlike, say, Hugh Gaitskell, has always been a great conference man. He liked the delegates, and they liked him. The love affair is now over. And it has been broken off not by the delegates but by Mr Wilson. Certainly there was a profound un- happiness about the July measures and their consequences. At the same time there remained a fund of affection for Mr Wilson personally.
If on Tuesday he had told the conference, in as much detail as he decently could, precisely why the Government acted as it did last July, there is no doubt that he would have gained a much warmer reception. But Mr Wilson did not elect to take this course. 'What's the betting,' inquired one Labour MP on Monday evening, 'that Harold doesn't once mention the run on sterling in his speech?' Nor did he. He attempted instead to make 'Conservatism' the latest dirty word. He rebuked Mr Desmond Donnelly for writing critical articles in the SPECTATOR. (At first he was going to mention the SPECTATOR by name, but later changed his mind.) He engaged in that abuse of the newspapers which is obligatory in any major conference speech, even though he has in the past few weeks had a more favourable press than for a long time. Above all, he delineated a scene of frantic governmental activity. No institution, with the possible excep- tion of Lord Soper, was being left unquestioned. It was a picture which left many simple dele- gates puzzled and some ministers sceptical. 'I never knew,' said one member of the Cabinet, 'that we were doing all those exciting things.'
Admittedly Mr Wilson was in a difficulty. He could not very well repeat his TUC speech. He had a try to give some hope for the future. The criticism is not that he looked ahead to some happy age; this was clearly the only practical political course open to him. But he did not take the conference into his confidence. Just as on Monday the main events took place outside the conference hall, so on Tuesday Mr Wilson was speaking over the heads of the delegates to a wider audience. The conference is still important to Mr Wilson. It is important because it is a mammoth television studio.
At any rate, on the evening before his speech Mr Wilson seemed completely unworried about the impression he was going to give the delegates. At Mr Clive Jenkins's party he was a picture of affability and unconcern. First he chatted to Mr Jenkins. Then he asked Mr Michael Foot about his book-writing activities. Some minutes later he could be observed in animated but civil con- versation with Mr Ian Mikardo. Of course Mr Wilson had good reason to feel pleased with himself. A few hours previously he had enjoyed his coup with the BMC workers at the Grand Hotel. His attendance at the ASSET party similarly was a wonderful piece of public relations. Here he was, going into the very deepest of enemy country, after most people had said : 'He won't come this year.' Nor was it only his sense of public relations that was displayed by this visit Mr Wilson is also a curiously de- tached man in his personal relations. Not that he is cold. It is just that (unlike, say, Mr George Brown) he is capable of making a separation be- tween a man's political and personal capacities.
Altogether the impression which the Prime Minister now gives is one of utter self-confi- dence: if you like, of arrogance. It is this quality which came across on Tuesday. The references to the Scarborough speech of 1963 (in private, Mr Wilson increasingly harks back to Scar- borough) were breathtaking in their effrontery. Mr Wilson, in short, does not very much care any longer what he says to the Labour party conference. And the conference uneasily grasped this.
Mr Richard Crossman has also grasped the position. Hence his speech of Sunday evening, in which he said that the ordinary party members should generate ideas for the Government to put into practice. ('We'd all be expelled,' said some- one, in the best heckle of the week.) Mr Cros- man was here giving expression to an oft- repeated and sincerely held conviction about party democracy. At the same time he was en- gaging in his favourite pastime of psychological warfare. He wanted to make the delegates feel that they were still of some importance, poor things. Did the exercise succeed? Not entirely, even though subsequent conference speeches made Mr Crossman's seem exciting in retrospect Most of his audience looked frankly apprehen- sive about the prospect of having to provide ideas for anyone. And the debates that followed, on Monday and Tuesday, were gloomy in the extreme.
Wednesday's debate was not so gloomy. In- deed, it was quite a distinguished occasion. First we had Mr James Callaghan, making the kind of speech which, a few members of the Executive thought, Mr Wilson should have made on Tues- day. (It was argued by some Ministers that the Prime Minister should make two speeches at conference. However, he decided against this on the ground, odd as it may sound, that he did not want to appear a one-man band.) But Mr Callaghan's principal argument was, in essence, the same as Mr Wilson's: that the unem- ployment caused by the Government's deflation- ary policies was not really unemployment at all, but something else entirely. It was, said Mr Callaghan—and Mr Ray Gunter was later to echo this—a redeployment in the cause of the scientific revolution foreshadowed three years ago at Scarborough. A bankers' ramp? Perish the thought, said the chaste Mr Callaghan. The only trouble was that Britain was not in balance 'Salvation,' he said proudly, 'is not to be found in the defensive attitudes of the past.' Which, coming from a Chancellor who is resorting to the most defensive attitudes that the past can throw up, must rank as one of the funniest sayings of the week.
The conference, however, did not see it in quite this humorous light. The conference, after all, is not a particularly humorous body. This is some- thing which Mr Clive Jenkins has yet to learn There is nothing more calculated to arouse the suspicion of a Labour party worker than a good joke. In terms of hard conference cash, a prayer composed by Lord Soper is worth more any day. The conference is sentimental, and it is trusting. but nevertheless on this occasion it had a sus- picion that it was being bullied. 'Our opinions are not being given the consideration they desen e.' said cne delegate plaintively.
It was left to Mr Foot to give real expression to this discontent. He is perhaps the only speaker on the left who has political star-quality. And his appearance at the rostrum was oddly poignant. Throughout the day fair had been called foul, and foul fair: Mr Foot called things by the:r proper names. He won the applause, but the machine won the principal vote.
And, at the end of the day, the impression with which I was left was one of brutality. I do not think this is too strong a word to use. Cer- tainly the debate itself was, as these things go in the party of brotherly love, not particularly vicious, though there was some of the usual squabbling between spokesmen for various unions: But the truth is that, in the eyes of Mr Wilson and the Government, the Labour con- ference is now irrelevant. Mr Wilson on Tuesday, and Mr Callaghan on Wednesday, both made this abundantly clear. I would suggest the setting up of a society for the prevention of cruelty to con- ferences.
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