Back-Bencher
tHE news that Dick Crossman has been eased off the Opposition front bench should occa- sion little surprise; the wonder is that he has lasted so long. The resolute determination that his stream of political consciousness should be available in copious draughts to all who thirst after political wisdom, and the sporadic tactless- ness, have both conspired to make him one of the most expendable of Shadow Ministers; and only he could seriously have held the naïve belief that collective responsibility should apply only to the inner Shadow Cabinet, not to the outer Shadow Administration of which he hap- pened to be a member.
Yet the fact that his resignation comes over defence will turn out to be a political mistake; for this is one subject on which Mr. Crossman is certainly right. His thesis—as he put it in his letter to his party leader—is that 'the Labour Party should abandon its support for the policy of an independent British deterrent and declare itself against the costly and futile pretence that we are or ever can become an independent nuclear power.' For a nation to divest itself of control over its nuclear weapons, once it has got them, admittedly presents difficulties; but the general principle--that the pursuit of nuclear inde- pendence has failed in the past, and that it is leading us into dangerous and useless expense in the future—is surely sound.
The great majority of MPs on both sides of the House who have given serious thought to the subject (a small proportion, perhaps, but in due course they will become influential) are on Mr. Crossrnan's side : and so, it is safe to assume, would Mr. Gaitskell himself have been, if his attention had not been distracted by the squabble over Clause 4.
It looks as if Mr. Gaitskell has once again shown his unerring political sense of how to be forced into doing the right thing at the wrong time; for when the party is forced to fall back on the Crossman defence line, as in the near future it certainly will be, the fact that he was expelled not for his views but for the way he expressed them will have been forgotten.
Previous page
