Political Commentary
Losing the working-class image
Patrick Cosgrave
This week sees the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Labour Party and we are, at the same time, on the verge of the first anniversary of the beginning of Labour's latest spell in office. Now the last decade or so has seen British politics in a remarkably confused state, with both major parties going through periods of trauma, against the background of a destruction of most assumptions held by their senior members at least about Britain, its place in the world and the likely developments of its society. At the particular moment of the anniversary, moreover, the Conservative Party has decided to attempt to repair the confusion and misfortune that has fallen upon it recently, by a daring experiment in leadership: but Mrs Thatcher, though she has given every evidence of her intent to adopt vigour as the watchword of opposition strategy, has not been Leader long enough for the Tory Party to rid itself of the self-preoccupation which has marked its conduct since last February. And Labour, though not without its serious difficulties, therefore has the field more or less to itself as an object of interested scrutiny to those concerned with the arts of government. In other words labour has problems, but they are the problems of power. Most scrutiny applies itself to how Labour will resolve those problems; for the Tories do not for the Moment present an alternative government which is remotely convincing.
There is thus, in the evidence offered to the student of politics, a considerable gap. For we have become accustomed, in this country, when we analyse the virtues and failings of a party in power, to have at the back of our minds an alternative to that party, which is an equally potentially convincing government. The feeling that there is not one just now — though there may be one in even a few months time — means that we do not look as critically at the party of government as we ought to, because we are not convinced that there is an alternative to it. One important consequence of this mode of thinking is that the vocabulary and assumptions of the party in power come to dominate the stage of argument and, if these assumptions are hostile to the unconvincing Opposition party then that party, and not the governing party, suffers as a result and is put on the defensive. Let me give an example.
Much of the discussion about Mrs Thatcher as a possible leader of the opposition centred on her supposed wholly middle-class and wholly
. suburban character; and on the belief that those most enthusiastic for her success had the
same character and would enforce the fears and convictions (never very clearly defined) of that class if they came to power. Other Tories, knowing full well from the studies of Professor Robert McKenzie and others (and accepting the conventional sociological account of the British class system) that the Conservatives have always depended for power on a substantial working class vote reacted in fear to ;their beliefs about Mrs Thatcher and became convinced that her success would make the Conservatives a party of a class ghetto. At the same time some people — mainly supporters of Mrs Thatcher, but including many who had no particular party affiliations—were becoming worried about the crushing of the middle classes and became militant — and justifiably so in their defence. Mrs Thatcher, naturally, tried to point out that she represented-certain values, common to working and middle classes alike: but a defence is never, in politics, quite as convincing as an accusation.
All this has enabled us to gloss over the fact that Labour was a class party from its origins and remains, bitterly and militantly, a class party today. The Labour Party was founded with the intention, not of gaining justice for the working classes, but of establishing their dominance over all other classes. However, since it is literally impossible for any political system outside a tiny commune to run its affairs on the basis of participatory democracy, even among only one class, what has happened is that the Labour Party has become, over its seventy-five years of history, and with many stumblings, hesitations, failures and misunderstandings the party, not of the working class, but of the bureaucracy of the working class. And that bureaucracy, which is principally made up of trade union leaders and officials, is frighteningly totalitarian, and frighteningly intolerant of any outside criticism: it is also inimical to the interests of workers, which is something Tories must learn, believe, and hammer home.
Two of the stages by which this has happened must be mentioned. At the beginning the Parliamentary Labour Party was designed as an instrument of those outside Parliament to assert their interest inside Parliament. The attractions of the Westminster system of politics, however — good and bad — exercised an important influence over those elected and, in most cases, though they looked longingly back over their shoulders at their origins, they became convinced that they ought to try to represent the interests of the country as a whole. Thus, though quite naturally, Britain's march towards socialism has been led by Labour governments, the march has been neither swift, nor direct; and Labour outside the House of Commons has been increasingly dissatisfied by the performance of its representatives within.
But there is something more immediate. The Heath government, by its inability to handle relations with trade unions, and by the failure of the Industrial Relations Act, gave the unions a chance to feel their own power, the extent of which they might otherwise not have realised. But the first step in that direction was not taken by Mr Heath, but by Mr Wilson and Mrs Castle, with the fatal In Place of Strife White Paper. Mr Wilson embarked on his battle with the union bosses without any conception of what he would do if they defied him. He was thus humiliated, and resolved never again to confront a trade union. It is this resolution that marked a turning point in British politics. From that moment on the temptation of Labour leaders to consider the interests of the country in preference to the policies of the unions was killed. Some Labour politicians deplored this; others welcomed it.' But things could never be the same again. It is this fact that makes the social contract nonsense. A contract is something in the terms of which there is equality between partners; but there can be no equality when one party has determined never to oppose the interpretation of the other. To be sure Mr Healey has issued warnings about wage levels but even if the Government violated its own posture of submission to the unions and imposed a statutory wages policy it would be merely a temporary gesture of defiance: the freeze would not last long; the Government would crumble; and the unions would have more power than ever before. Concentration on incomes policies, and concentration on wage levels generally, prevent us seeing the truth about the British economy: but they serve the far more useful purpose of enabling trade union leaders to fight again and again on their own ground, and on ground where they know the government will give way. Even to discuss the existence of a myth dubbed the social contract conceals from us this frightening truth. But the trade unions are not the working class. A sort of conviction that they are influences even Tory politicians. It influences especially those who, in the last couple of years, . have begun to denounce the so-called monetarists in their own party, because they fear that monetarist remedies applied to the economy will cause unemployment, that unemployment will be electorally intolerable to the working class voter and that, therefore, a Tory Party with monetarist policies will never win an election. Here, of course, the dominance of all discussion by terms favourable to the Labour Party becomes important. The monetarist defence — that, even if their policies may create some unemploynent, continuing with the existing policies is bound to create very large-scale unemployment; so they, not their critics, are the humane politicians. But it is the repeated trade union emphasis on the unacceptability of unemployment that dominates all discussion.
Yet, the only interest in the state that can certainly be said to be a cause of unemployment is the trade union interest. Even if we accept, as I do, that excessive wage claims do not cause inflation — which is the result of an imbalance between government income and expenditure — many wage claims are excessive in terms of the profitability and financial viability of different companies and interests. But they are made nonetheless, and lead, if the companies are to survive, to contraction, and especially labour contraction, in both company and industry. Yet, none of this is spelled out or emphasised, and especially not by the Labour Party; for that party has long agreed to accept the basic framework of its philosophy from the . trade union bureaucracy. This, in its seventy-, five years of life the Labour Party has gone through three stages. First it had a generous impulse towards justice for the working classes. Then it became divided between allegiance to the nation and allegiance to the unions. Finally and now, whenever a real clash comes it is the instrument of a trade union bureaucracy; and the main effect of the power, of that bureaucracy is injustice, not only for al! citizens, but for the working classes. It is one e the great political ironies of our time.
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