THE END OF BEVANISM?
That is another matter. It depends partly on policies and Partly on persons. As to policies, one of the reasons why the Bevanites were defeated at Scarborough—and let us be thankful for it--was that the Executive were talking rather better sense than their opponents and securing the genuine assent of the delegates to policies which were more realistic than anything the Bevanites could ever offer. But it would be foolish to Place complete reliance for the future on the chance that reason Will prevail in the Labour Party. There is always the drift to the left to be considered—the drift, that is to say, in Mr. Bevan's direction. There is always the prevalence of nonsense in the constituency parties, enshrined this year in fifty resolutions against German rearmament in the original agenda. There is the fact that Mr. Attlee and the other responsible leaders of the party have contributed their own share of nonsense to Labour policy, particularly in their recent pronouncements on China. It will not be sufficient for the Executive to stand still. It will be necessary for it deliberately to widen the gap which separates it from Bevanism. That will require a great deal of determination and still more political skill.
, In the matter of personalities, everything points to two men —Mr. Attlee and Mr. Gaitskell. We have had in the past few weeks a demonstration of Mr. Attlee's well-known attribute of tactical shrewdness. He touched pitch in China, and he was not undefiled, but he came back in closer control of his party than he would have been if he had allowed Mr. Bevan to travel without him. He won the vote for SEATO on Monday by a well-timed speech. And he won the vote on German rearmament on Tuesday by exploiting his own recent success with his party. So much for tactics. At the next stage Mr. Attlee's second political attribute must come into play—ruth- lessness in party discipline. Mr. Bevan being down, Mr. Attlee must keep him down—and, after Mr. Attlee, Mr. Gaitskell.
On the day after his defeat Mr. Bevan returned single-handed to the attack, drawing together all the demagogic power at his command and seeking to extract from the conference every ounce of sympathy for him as the one man willing to stand against the machine. His exile into the wilderness conferred on him freedom of speech and since Mr. Bevan can be relied on to convert freedom into license, his performance was a fiery one. His attack on the leadership waS unrestrained and nobody could have been in much doubt as to the identity of the `desiccated calculating machine' who, according to Mr. Bevan, must now lead the party. The fact remains that the ' machine' has calculated well enough to put Mr. Bevan where he belongs,
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