CORRESPONDENCE

A DELEGATE'S IMPRESSIONS AT THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE.

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

SIR,-4 am well aware of the broad and tolerant interest towards public affairs which both you and your readers have always adopted. Hence I feel that the impressions of an ordinary rank and file delegate at the Conference of the Labour Party may be of interest. That Conference has, of course, received great attention from the Press, but that attention has been concentrated almost wholly upon one of its decisions--the decision to reaffirm, and reinforce by definition, last year's resolution which refused the application of the Communist Party for affiliation and sought to exclude individual Communists from the ranks of the Labour Party.

Such emphasis was, of course, inevitable and natural, after the Red Scare which has played so decisive a part in our recent political history. The public had every right to know whether or not a resort to physical force in order to achieve political ends was a contingency which the Labour Movement was prepared to contemplate. The public has received the most decisive answer possible. Whether a part of the Press will accept that answer or will continue to strive to brand With uneonstitutionalism economic doctrines which are found inconvenient remains to be seen. This concentration on the Communist issue has somewhat obscured other and, in the long run, probably more significant tendencies which were revealed at Liverpool.

First, there was the sudden and dramatic reassertion of Mr. MacDonald's leadership. The Press has indeed noticed this phenomenon, but it seems hardly to have grasped its full significance. The important fact is not that Mr. MacDonald's terse and vigorous speeches crushed his opponents in debate, nor that the Conference, which gave the impression of having made up its mind Icing before it heard any speeches from either side, supported him with overwhelming majorities. It is rather that Mr. MacDonald has once more seen his oppor- tunity to give a clear, constructive lead to the Labour Party.

Whatever our personal opinions may be, whatever political party we may have chosen as the best instrument for the expression of these opinions, Mr. MacDonald must inevitably present one of the most interesting personalities in our public life. During the last twelve months, it is true, events have given him little opportunity. The country has turned else- where for guidance and leadership. But now it is evident that he feels that he has something to contribute to our counsels, which the nation world do well to hear. This was the impression which one carried away from two speeches delivered by him on successive evenings. On both occasions he held and thrilled vast audiences with what were in essence almost philosophical discourses. He expounded, perhaps, a simple philosophy to those great gatherings of simple men and women ; it was a philosophy practical and ethical, rather than subtle or metaphysical—a philosophy quintessentially Scottish. Yet something very deep in the character of the British people will respond to it.

At any rate, for good or ill, according to our political faith, Mr. MacDonald is back upon the centre of the stage again.

The Labour Party is once more conscious of active and vigorous leadership. And it is impossible to overestimate the

Importance of leadership in the case of an extremely young party. Labour has increased in numbers so rapidly that it has hardly had the opportunity to crystallize into a firm mould. Without vigorous leadership it might become a formless and incoherent mass, incapable of swift decisions and disciplined action.

Mr. MacDonald is quite obviously, even to his opponents, a man of mental ability and strength of character. There is an element of the unexpected in his character. A com- bination of the subtle diplomat with the homely Scotsman ; a blending of the Downing Street MacDonald with what an old friend has called " the fireside MacDonald." And with all there is a coming and going of that inner fire which, when

it is present, illuminates all he says and does. He seems now for the first time since the General Election to have recovered all his physical vitality. Each day, after six or seven hours of the Conference, he delivered full dress speeches to great meetings. Yet the end of the week seemed to find him unwearied, receptive to new impressions, seeking new ideas. Our political prophets, of both camps, must not leave Mr. MacDonald out of their calculations.

There were other tendencies at Liverpool, however, besides the anti-Communist wave and Mr. MacDonald's dominance.

The leaders of the party did not achieve their victory over the dissentients merely by attacking them. They had to provide an alternative policy by which the party might hope to obtain the ends it has in view. This the executive sought to do by its series of resolutions, which were headed " The Labour Party and the Nation." These resolutions really represented a complete programme of evolutionary Socialism.

Whether or not it is the best programme which could be devised for the transformation of our present order of Society into the social commonwealth of the future is, of course, a matter of opinion. In any case it is a programme, a fairly detailed declaration of policy, and it has been accepted, after some amendment, by the whole party. Thus Labour has rejected a policy of violence and disruption, but equally emphatically it has rejected a return to Liberalism. It has, in short, committed itself finally to a policy of Evolutionary Socialism—to what Mr. Sidney Webb has called " the inevitability of gradualness." Those people who object to the whole principle and fundamental's of the Socialist point of view will, certainly and legitimately, find themselves more than ever opposed to the Labour Party. As Mr. MacDonakt has said, Liverpool clarified the position. It served to show, both to friends and enemies, exactly where Labour stood. The party is now embarked on the extremely difficult task of the practical application of the Socialist attitude of mind to the problems before us. Its leaders realize fully the great difficulties of a policy of evolutionary Socialism, but they feel that such a policy is the only one which can provide solutions of our national problems. Yet another aspect of

the Labour Party was presented at Liverpool. British Labour is essentially a working class movement and not

merely a Socialist society. It is the modem manifestation of the great and historic struggle against economic adversity by which the British working people have sought a wider and higher life for themselves. It is not too much to say that men and women of every shade of political opinion have sympathized with, and have assisted, this movement for working class emancipation—emancipation not so much from any other class as from the more powerful chains of ignorance and superstition.

It is this movement which is giving us the remarkable men who are to be found in the Trade Union and Labour Movement. The Press has been recently asking us the question : " Is England Done ? " I cannot help thinking that if some of our alarmed journalists would see and hear such men as, for example, Mr. Herbert Smith, the President of the Miners' Federation, they would be somewhat reassured. Even though they disagreed with everything they heard him say, they could scarcely feel anything but admiration for that short, stocky figure, standing up so resolutely, his old cloth cap in his pocket, for what he holds to be " the rights " of his miners.

Mr. Smith is not, one is compelled to feel, the product of decadent nation. Nor would the community be wise to attempt the coercion of the million miners he so exactly