The schizophrenia of Labour.
Patrick Cosgrave
Before writing about the internal problems of the Labour Party and its strains and stresses it is as well to get one important thing clear: there is nothing inherently unworkable about the economic policy of the party as laid down at successive conferences. In the view of many commentators, including myself, it is a misconceived policy, because the huge element of nationalisation and state control which it contains is bound to reduce personal freedom and the total wealth of the country, as well as limit our freedom of action abroad. It is said that the programme will — or would — be ruinously expensive, but there is no reason why this should be so, if the business is taken fairly slowly, and compensation kept reasonably low. And a totally socialist economic policy, including the nationalisation of land and of an increasingly large number of top British companies, though it might greatly contract the economic horizons of Britain, could, if resolutely administered, stabilise the economic situation — and the social situation — in this country, and in the present bewildering series of inflationary crises which we have been enduring, stability might be judged devoutly to be wished. Finally, at a time when some of the grosser social inequalities of our time are increasingly spotlighted, and found increasingly unacceptable by numbers of intelligent and passionate young people, a truly socialist policy could remedy some of these inequalities by a process of levelling down.
That puts the matter as fairly as I can. I appreciate, of course, that there are powerful elements in the Labour Party which believe that the programme is unworkable and, if not unworkable, at least electorally disastrous. Their scepticism contributes powerfully to the determination of those who favour the programme so to bind the party to it with cords of steel that the alliance between politicians and programme would be unbreakable, as does a deep feeling that runs through the party at every level that, the last Wilson government having been so untrue to its pledges, having been so easily swept offcourse, that, next time, the leadership must not be allowed to escape from Socialist commitments.
It is impossible to be certain, but my own belief is that the extreme distrust of the electorate for the Labour Party, as manifested particularly in the recent by-elections, is more due to the memory of the record than it is to the policies being promulgated. The policies are unpopular, where they are understood — or, as their advocates often claim, imperfectly understood — but they are, after all, merely a development of some of the implications of the Labour programme as propounded in 1963 and 1964. The real electoral difficulty of what is still the main opposition party is the memory of its last period of office, and its failure since then to produce measures of such impact and men of such freshness. as to overcome that memory.
That having been said, it remains the case that the Labour party is a deeply schizophrenic organisation. Its members equate policies .and ideas of different weight, and import into the business of politics notions and beliefs which have little use in the practical business of government, and the presence of which there give rise to very serious contradictions. They believe, too many of them, that aspiration is the same as achievment, and their concentration on the matter in hand is weakened by an unwearying propensity for intrigue and manoeuvre. So
convinced are they, moreover, that their policies and philosophy are unanswerably right that they fail to see such writing as appeared on the walls of Govan the other day; and, finally. Labour politicians are too capable of taking action for the wrong reasons.
One or two recent events can illustrate these propositions. There was, for example, the failure of Mr Fred Peart to gain election to the Shadow Cabinet. Mr Peart has his detractors as well as his admirers, and many insist that he is the very quintessence of Yesterday's Men. But he is a kindly and able Labour politician of much experience, and nastier and more unreliable people did gain election. It is perfectly clear that the principal reason why Mr Peart was not elected was that he was Shadow ,spokesman on defence matters. It is also the case that he has some business connections (though he declared them from the beginning, and was the first leading Opposition spokesman so to declare the nature of his extra-mural activities) which were found repugnant because they seemed to produce large rewards, not for Mr Peart, but for some of his business colleagues. At the National Executive Mr Peart had run into the bitter and fanatical opposition of Mr Frank Allaun, largely because he was unalterably opposed to the huge defence cuts which the pacifist wing demanded; and he had met, on the one hand, the Criticism of unions who, likewise, declared themselves left-wing pacifists, but also gained their congratulations, because his defence policy would keep jobs at the docks and elsewhere.
Somebody had to go to allow Mr Jenkins in: that it was Mr Peart had nothing to do with his ability or his record, and everything to do with how the doctrinal prejudices of the moment fell.
There was, then, a disproportion of,
judgement. In that case, the folly was on the left. But another gladiator fell in recent weeks, when Mr Willie Hamilton and a pro-European group packed the Parliamentary Affairs Committee in order to get rid of Mr Michael English, its anti-Market chairman (that ver' dict, by the way, may well be reversed if, as appears, another ballot is held).-What Mr Hamilton and his thugs did was employ the perfectly legal, but morally questionable. method of bringing to the election meeting a number of MPs who had a perfect right to attend and vote, but whose attendance and casting of a vote was thought to be improper because they rarely, if ever, showed up at the meeting. The Europeans were taking a real risk, since the forbearance of their left-wing colleagues during the period of strife over the Market has been remarkable, but they were righteous in their cause — and righteousness. as in the case of choosing Mr Peart for defeat. was all. That Mr English is a distinguished parliamentarian, that it was his acuteness which discovered and revealed the possibilitY that one or two of the foothills of the butter mountain could be made available under EEC rules at cheap prices to British pensioners all this availed him nothing. He was wrong in doctrine, and anything could be done to get rid of him. Labour left wingers have n° monopoly of theology. You cannot imagine Tories making cal' culations like that, or behaving *like that To be sure, Tories can be ruthless, much mere ruthless than Labour; and to be ,sure Mr Nicholas Ridley, a former minister of great gifts, was defeated in an attempt to gain re" election to the chairmanship of a Tory back. bench committee, not least because his repeated criticisms of the Government were believed to be rocking the boat. But all that was in the hard-headed calculation that in unity lies strength, and unity is essential to the gaining of power, their unwavering cow centration on which has served the Tory PartY well. For all the procedural manoeuvres, and minute Machiavellian knowledge of commit' tee politics and intrigues, Labour politicians are children compared with the Conservaties in the business of acquiring real powe'r. But the most depressing experience frail the Labour point of view was their reaction to the by-election results. Many members seemed stunned, but those who were not were prepared to generalise. One MP, of great practical and electoral experience, told Me repeatedly tbat the Edinburgh North city' paign was the finest he had ever seen, was, in fact, perfect, and could not be improved upon. I gently pointed out that the swing from Toil to Labour was only 0.3 per cent, hardlY a distinguished achievement eighteen months, before the last possible date of a genet's' election. He gazed at me uncomprehendinglY and began to give me a breakdown of the metbods used in the nonpareil campaign in, Edinburgh. His response was not untypical: Govan, it seems, can be explained away by the inadequacies of the candidate and the local machine, Edinburgh was perfect. Everybody knows that the Labour PartY was created to give the trade union movement a foothold in Parliament. It has been thought that those origins were long outgroWn' though they are much less so than is often suggested. What has not been lost is the terrible trade union capacity for frequentlY
meaningless intrigue and internecine dispute' The rivalries within the party attract far more attention and energy than does the business
of convincing the electorate, and are ifl5. tinctively felt to be of equal importance. Yefl the British electorate never votes for a divided
party, and this truth is ignored. It is a san spectacle, the present Labour Party and, as one acute and disinterested judge observed to me last week, "Our rows are not as dramatic now as they were in the days of Nye Bevan and Hugh Gaitskell, but they are More bitter. There lies Labour's problem.
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