The Challenge Challenged
It was clear enough from the beginning that the patchwork programme set out in Challenge to Britain was not the fruit of agreement within the Labour party. Nor, in spite of the national executive's best efforts, did it effectively cover up the widening split between the right and left wings of the party. It has become clearer still that if Challenge to Britain is to be accepted at the party conference later in the year (a doubtful assumption), it will only be after a tearing row between the %conservatives of the unions and the leftists of the Bevanite faction. At the biennial conference of the Transport and General Workers' Union this week Mr. Arthur Deakin, the general secretary, gave a foretaste of what the right wing's attitude will be. While the Bevanites cry " Good! But it can be a whole lot better " (to quote their weekly journal, which demands a much bigger dose of nation- alisation), Mr. Deakin pours the chilliest of water on the nationalisation proposals, and carries his union with him. It is not only that he cannot support, say, the proposal for the partial nationalisation of the chemical industry, or that he is aware of the conflict of`opinion about the proposals for the aircraft and machine tool industries; it is simply that no one is satisfied with the degree of success so far achieved in industries already nationalised. Some people, he suggested, are of the opinion that centralised control makes the top levels too remote; and the general public often feels that conditions have been improved for workers at the consumers' expense. He calls, in short, for caution, and for no precipitate action to be taken which might involve the Labour movement in confusion (in worse confusion, he might have said). Such mild observations as these are red rags to the Bevanites and other doctrinaire nationalisers who tail along after them. The chances of the Challenge to Britain preserving its original form in the altercation seem, in all the circumstances, pretty small.
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