Labouring Classes

By BERNARD LEVIN IN case Mr. Gaitskell does not have enough to worry about al- ready, two recent studies of the Labour Party's electoral chances can be confidently recommended to him; when he has finished reading them he can always use them to rest his head on in the gas-oven. They are Mr. Anthony Crosland's Fabian pamphlet, Can Labour Win? (Fabian Society, 2s. 6d.), and the first part of Dr. Mark Abrams's three-part !tutly. Why Labour Has Lost Elections, published in the current issue of Socialist Commentary. Both are concerned largely with 'the image' (Mr. Crosland does us all a service by pointing out that, so far from this term being a coinage of the Public-relations men, its present sense was in- vented by Graham Wallas in 1908), though the second and third parts of Dr. Abrams's study are to deal respectively with 'The Effect of National- isation' and The Views of Young People.' And .130th, I think, have missed the point, or perhaps It would be more accurate to say that they have not fired at it.

On the face of it, their reasoning is impeccable. Both have gone to the heart of the reason for the Labour decline, which is the tendency of an increasing section of the working class to con- sider themselves as belonging to the middle class, and to be consequently shaken in their allegiance what they consider a working-class party. lir. Abrams, for instance, gave his interviewed Itthiects a list of sixteen statements and asked to which of the two main parties, if either, the statements applied.

1. stands mainly for working class.

2. Is out to help underdog.

3. Would extend welfare services.

4. Raise standard of living of ordinary people. 5. Would try to abolish class differences. 6. Would give more chances to person to better himself.

7. Would really work to prevent nuclear war.

8. Believes in fair treatment for all races.

9. Would do most for world peace. 10. Stands mainly for middle class.

11. Most satisfying for man with ideals.

12. Out for nation as a whole.

13. Would make the country more prosperous.

14. Has a clear-cut policy.

15. Really respects British traditions.

16. Has united team of top leaders.

Only five of the sixteen statements were chosen by a majority of Labour voters in the sample as being typical of the Labour Party, and the first four of these (in order or size of majority) were essentially 'class' statements. ('Is out to help underdog,' Would extend welfare services,' and the like.) 'When it comes,' says Dr. Abrams, 'to furthering harmoni- ous race relations, international peace, and domestic economic prosperity they find little to choose between Labour and Conservatives.' And these, it must be remembered, are Labour voters.

What follows is much worse. Asked to place themselves by class, something like a third of Labour's working-class supporters (classified by income and type of occupation) placed them- selves outside the working class entirely, and nearly a fifth of the labouring working class (the 'lowest' classification) placed themselves in the 'skilled working-class' category.

The conclusion is a matter of simple arith- metic. The Labour Party is very largely identified with the interests of a class to which many of its supporters no longer consider themselves to be- long. So they vote for a different party; indeed, the very act of voting non-Labour may well be one way of demonstrating to themselves that they are not, or not any longer, members of the working class.

Yet worse is to come. For Mr. Crosland, in his scrupulously fair, studiously polite, study points out that, quite apart from the attitude of ,voters to what they imagine their social class is or should be, the working class is actually growing smaller.

This up-grading of the labour force is certain to continue. The rise in manufacturing produc- tivity, which permits greater output to be achieved with a smaller industrial work-force; the continued relative growth of the distributive

and service trades; the spread of automation; the increase within large firms of research, merchandising, sales and office staff relative to the manual labour force--all these changes imply a continuing move away from a proletariat towards a salariat. In the United States, white- collar workers now exceed blue-collar workers in numbers; and Britain is moving in the same direction—as, indeed, are all advanced industrial countries.

Well, then. Dr. Abrams is not directly concerned with suggesting remedies for this state of affairs, as far as the Labour ,Party's electoral chances are concerned; but his implications are unmistak- able, and Mr. Crosland in any case makes them explicit. The Labour Party must seek to shed its class image, which has so misled the voters; it must endeavour to cease being associated in the public mind with the dead issues and attitudes on which it grew and thrived, and must begin to appeal in a different fashion entirely. Whether the Labour Party will actually do anything about this is another matter entirely; Mr. Crosland per- mits himself the exquisite understatement 'At the moment, the omens are not all perfectly hope- ful,' but the lunatic row over Clause Four should be an indication of the way the wind will blow; if the faithful will fight so hard for anything as obviously exploded as nationalisation, what will they do if Mr. Gaitskell threatens to take Keir Handle's cloth cap out and burn it?

And yet, as I say, I think there is a sense in which both Dr. Abrams and Mr. Crosland are wide of the point. For they both treat the class image of the Labour Party, like good social psychologists, as an essentially subjective pheno- menon. Has anybody considered the possibility that many of the charges brought against the Labour Party may be perfectly capable of objec- tive demonstration, and their validity of proof?

The Conservative Party has a more united team of top leaders than the Labour Party, clearly has raised the standard of living of ordinary people, is making the country more prosperous. But, equally, can it not be shown that the class image of the Labour Party, as exemplified in some of the earlier statements on the list, is justi- fied? The current spectacle of the trade unions rewriting the Labour Party's defence policy, for example; is that a coincidence? Or is it not rather evidence that the Labour Party is, in a real, not an 'image,' sense dominated by the narrow and essentially selfish outlook of the trade unions?

But if this is so, is not the plight of the Labour Party far worse even than it appears to be? It is bad enough, to be sure, if it is suffering from the electorate's misunderstanding of what it is and what it stands for. But what if the electorate does not misunderstand what the Labour Party is? What if it understands very well who and what controls and colours the Labour Party, and doesn't like what it understands? In that case, it is useless for the Labour Party to try to 'shed its class image'; for the class image is essentially part of it. All it can do is to disintegrate, in the hope that some of the resultant fragments will then put themselves together in a fundamentally different shape. It would be ironical if such a desirable and attractive series of events should be set in motion at Scarborough in the autumn, not because sufficient of Labour's 'united team of top leaders' realised that these things must be done, but because of the essentially separate row in the party over defence.