8 OCTOBER 1977, Page 4

Political Commentary

Barbapapa rules

Ferdinand Mount

Brighton 'One of the problems that face all of us is that we live in the world as it is and not as we would like it to be'. Ah yes, when you come to think about it, so we do. But it's not the sort of thing Labour delegates used to troop down to Brighton to hear, certainly not from a registered fire-breathing extremist like Hugh Scanlon. Labour Party con ferences are traditionally dominated by Armageddon-spotters and Jerusalembuilders, levellers, anabaptists and anti fluoridationists. Not this year. The weirdos in baggy mauve jerseys still proclaim, in the alto register, the end of capitalism as we know it. But their shrill fulminations expire in the vast empty spaces of Brighton's new stalinist conference hall. Realism, dour and heavy as a wet Monday in Salford, hangs over us. I mean the kind of realism that stresses the brute facts of power and glories in them. 'What,' said Joe Gormley with his usual post-prandial acuity, 'do we mean by workers' control? We really mean the control of industry by us'. That's a nice knockdown sort of realism for you.

In fact, the reality-principle has been knocking the pleasure-principle all round the ring here. Reference was made by Tony Benn and Jim Callaghan to the high ideals and inspiring vision of this great movement of ours. The highest ideal turned out to be winning the next election. And the most inspiring vision was the prospect of laying hands on all that oil for socialist redistribution. 'The gross value of oil resources is over £200,000 million,' said the Prime Minister, splashing about in the stuff like James Dean in Giant when the black gold spurts out of the ground, `L200,000 million. Go on putting the noughts on. You still won't get to the end of it.' What would R.H. Tawney have made of that lip:smacking? And in the meantime, while waiting for the glug-glug of the New Socialist Dawn, let us get reflation going and thus dish the Tories.

The dominant language of this conference has been the language of horsetrading not of political argument. Mr Scanlon again: 'The trade union movement has delivered the goods. And we expect Denis to pick up the tab.' Denis promised to pick it up. Baronial courtesies were exchanged. Union leaders thanked ministers for protecting their powers and where possible adding to them. Ministers thanked union leaders for their co-operation. No capo mafioso could have been more solid and respectable in outward demeanour, more observant of the proprieties due to a preelection rally. Indeed, Jack Jones's jeremiad about the sybaritic habits of Labour leaders had the ring of an old don lamenting that the next generation had gone soft. The solidity and weight of this alliance between the Labour government and the trade union leadership remains the most striking fact in British politics, dwarfing everything else. Its Influence presses upon all important economic and social decisions, slowly gathering mass as it rolls inexorably forward to occupy some fresh corner of society, accommodating itself to the shape of that corner like a bureaucratic Barbapapa. The miners want Drax B and another £3.7 billion poured into the coal industry, but they don't want to run the National Coal Board. So be it. The postmen do want to run the Post Office. And the steelworkers want to run the British Steel Corporation. Let them.

The mechanics of this process are obscured by the conventional division between wild Left extremists and sensible Right moderates. What we are seeing in reality is an intertwining of the bureaucratic with the ideological interests. It is in the interest of both the moderate trade union official and the militant ideologue to secure more members, more funds and more power for their union. They are all on the same gravy-train. By re-presenting 'political' demands as demands for 'industrial democracy' or 'trade union rights', they. remove the inflammatory red trappings. And by negotiating these industrial reforms step by step, industry by industry, they defuse the explosive potential of an allat-once transfer of power in industry. In this way, the reactionaries can be gradually numbed into a state of irremediable ennui — not so much socialism by stealth as revolution by boredom.

Personally, Left and Right may hate each other, but that has not prevented a kind of sullen working agreement between them. By their shared allegiance to the social contract — that is, to the primacy of the trade union imperative — Left and Right are able to operate a common programme. Because this is now so well established, it is tempting to turn away from it and focus on more immediate uncertainties such as the future of the Lib-Lab Pact and the balance between Left and Right in the Parliamentary Party — factors which would decide how much of Labour's Programme 1976 would be immediately implemented if Labour were to form another minority government in the next parliament. But these checks and balances can only delay not abort Labour's plans for drastic extensions of State control. The arguments will continue to concern only the tactics and not the merits of introducing full-blooded socialism. Mr Callaghan and Mrs Williams object to the timing, seldom if ever to the principle. It's usually when not whether. The relative absence of open splits in the party then does not mean that the reassuring social democrats are dictating the course of events. It means rather that they have taeitly consented to take part in a long march to socialism on condition that the march is slow, properly stewarded and doesn't frighten the police horses.

The party's weakness in the country may actually help this process. The halving of individual membership over the past 20 years has not only enabled the Left to take over moribund constituency parties, it has enabled the leadership to pay less and less attention to the mass membership and added to the political as well as to the financial leverage of the trade unions.

Just how different the party has already become can be gathered from just a handful of the straws bristling in the high winds along the seafront. . .a Labour Party Young Socialist pamphlet published from Transport House to celebrate the Sixtieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution and 'the no-nonsense position of the Bolsheviks'. . .the refusal of the Labour Party (the governing party of this country) to let two journalists into the conference because they had offended their union. . .the treatment of the leader of Scunthorpe Council, a loyal Labour man all his life, who exposed the shenanigans of the local Trots, was expelled from the Labour Party and despite the repeated recommendation of the Party's Organisation Sub-Committee had his expulsion upheld by the National Executive Committee after three members of that great democratic body had been down to Scunthorpe to confer with the said Trots. . .and, last but not least picturesque, the presence of so many honoured guests at the Conference from such fine bodies of men as the Socialist Workers' Party of Hungary, the Yugoslav League of Communists and the Communist Parties of Bulgaria, France, Italy, Romania and Italy. For the pleasure of their company we have to thank Mr Ian Mikardo and Labour's International Committee who were encouraged by the success of Comrade Boris Ponomarev's visit to Britain last year to extend the glad hand of friendship a little wider. Fraternal greetings then to Teodor Palimaka and Bogumil Sujka. Hi, Mirca Lupescu (No relation to the late Madame Lupescu? No, I thought not). Hullo and welcome to Jacques Denis, Giorgio Napolitano, old Uncle Santiago Carrillo and all. You will find that, as with many British goods, we cannot guarantee the delivery date of the British people's republic, though we shall doubtless get there in the end. Meanwhile, you will have to get used to our little ways. For instance, where our Russian comrades would say to the capitalists 'We will bury you', in Britain the correct line is to say 'We won't bury you.'