MINISTERS AT MARGATE
THE chief feature of the Labour Party Conference so far—the discussion on foreign affairs has not taken place as this is written—has been the contrast between the responsibility of the platform and the irresponsibility of the floor (exemplified particu- larly by the heavy vote in favour of equal pay for women in spite of the official warning that the country's finances at this particular juncture could not stand it). That is as it should be when the platform represents not merely the executive of the Party but the Government of the day. The relation between the two was rightly defined by Mr. Aneurin Bevan (whose position at the head of the poll for the executive for the second year in succes- sion is significant) when he insisted that while it was for the con- ference to lay down broad lines of policy it must be left to the Government to apply them and carry them out in detail. Altogether the Government has been facing the judgement of its friends, from many of whom it might well, and no doubt does, pray to be saved. In the main it can face that with confidence. It came into office to carry out a specific programme, and no one can complain that it has dallied about doing that. It has given its public what its public wanted, and the public in return has given it at by-elections support hardly less extensive than was accorded it in 1945. The country as a whole may or may not have cause to be satisfied with two years of Labour rule. It would be strange if the mass of the Labour Party was not satisfied to the full.
But what the country is concerned with is the Government, not the Party. The statistics of the latter's membership and the steps projected to propagate its doctrines throughout the land are matters for the Party alone. What the average citizen who may or may not be Labour in sympathy wants to know is the programme proposed for the remaining years of this Parliament. On the whole the answer except in one particular is reasonably reassuring. Mr. Noel-Baker's presidential address, more restrained and less pro- vocative than that of his predecessor, Prof. Laski, last year, was devoted mainly to a sober review of the Party's achievements in its two years of office. Some of his statements—as that "exports had beaten the target," were surprising, and some, as that but for the Socialist plans there would have been "rocketing prices, build- ing of all kinds except of houses to let for the people who won the war, senseless luxury imports from oversea, strikes and lock-outs and less coal" totally unwarranted. With the Labour Party's major objectives, as the President defined them—the creation of relation- ships of trust and confidence between States through the United Nations, the endeavour to keep united a Europe that threatens to split in two, the construction of a world-wide system of inter- national co-operation—no one can quarrel. And it is very much to the good that the world should be told through the mouth of the chosen spokesman of Labour that to think of this country as down and out is nonsense ; that "Britain's strength lies in her people, in her links with the Dominions and in her friendships with nations by whose side she stood for justice in the past. Her people are healthier, better educated, more inventive than ever before." All that is true, and it is very desirable that the truth should be widely proclaimed.
More important, by reason of the position the speakers hold, were the addresses of the Prime Minister and Mr. Morrison. Here are the two Parliamentary leaders who, with a vast majority sub- servient in all ordinary matters behind them, are legislating accord- ing to their will. They have legislated unwisely and they have legis- lated far too much. They have capitulated far too compliantly to demands for higher wages and shorter hours, and the claim that nationalisation of the coal industry has saved the industry has yet to be substantiated—as it may or may not be. The effect of the "Labour Faces the Future" nroaramme on the House of Corn- mons itself has been disastrous. Hard, unprecedently hard, though the House has been driven, never in its history has so much undis- cussed and undigested legislation been forced through under various forms of closure. For such precipitancy there can only lx , one excuse, the desire to *get major measures through the House of Commons in time to pass them, in case of need, over the Lords' veto before the end of the present Parliament. Actually the danger of the rejection by the Lords of any measure passed in due order.
even after an intolerable use of the closure, by the Commons is of the remotest ; a repetition of the conflicts of 1911 is improbable in the extreme. On all this both Mr. Attlee and Mr. Morrison defended themselves at Margate in language which suggested some prickings of an uneasy conscience. Mr. Attlee, in refusing to apolo- gise for the haste with which Bills had been piled one on another and rushed into law, laid significant emphasis on the importance of administration and the danger of over-driving the machine. The danger indeed is palpable. The Labour Government is at one and the same time vastly increasing the number of civil servants and seriously overworking many of them—though among the vast cohort there is evidence of many who through no fault of their own find too little to occupy their time. But if the expansion of bureaucratic personnel is a necessary evil the growth of bureau- cratic power is an evil without the necessity. It is a menace to individual freedom and there is little hope of relief from under the present Government.
What the Prime Minister implied regarding a slackening of the legislative pace Mr. Morrison, an instigator in the House but a moderator at Margate, fortunately confirmed. The speech in which he introduced the debate on man-power and economic policy on Wednesday was one of the sanest and most practical of the conference—though Mr. Dalton's declaration in favour of more austerity rather than more borrowed dollars was equally courageous, and with a form of courage that the conference appre- ciated. Mr. Morrison can, of course, be criticised. To dispossess the employing class on the ground that they have shown themselves incompetent and then solicit with smooth words their co-operation in running industry in a way they think disastrous is no doubt a technique to which apostles of the doctrine of nationalisation must resort, but the appeal in such circumstances cannot be particularly compelling. None the less Mr. Morrison did enunciate some sound doctrine. It is right and prudent to insist on austerity today in order that there may be abundance tomorrow. It is just to recognise the hardships that are being imposed on the so-called middle class while the so-called working class as a whole has achieved a standard of living better than it has ever before enjoyed. It is essential to drive home the need for increased production and emphasise the fact that demands for higher wages and shorter hours can result only in an intensified competition for a diminished supply of goods, and that for the country to live indefinitely on loans and on over- drafts means heading for economic disaster. If the Labour Con- ference digests those truths its delegates will not have journeyed to Margate in vain.
But the Conference will have small effect on the Govern- ment's plans. The Cabinet rules the country and it is no more likely to be deflected from its course by speeches at Margate than by speeches at Westminster—though at Westminster it did yield in the matter of conscription what there would have been no need to yield at Margate. The Government has virtually three years more before it, for Mr. Attlee disposed finally of the always un- founded rumours of an early General Election. Most of its pro- gramme has been carried through the Commons. Mr. Dalton speaks of the nationalisation of gas and (most disastrously) of the iron and steel industry as yet to come. In the next two sessions. therefore, there may be less legislative pressure and more concen- tration by Ministers on administration. But Parliament will pro-. vide the Prime Minister with problems. The " rebels " have cut no very impressive figure at Margate. They do not provoke the admiration of the solid trade unionists whose weight counts so heavily on a card-vote. Mr. Bevin can sit back and listen to their expositions of a Socialist, as opposed to a national, foreign policy, knowing that though a few strident voices are against him, the mass of silent votes is with him. The Prime Minister can count on the same thing in the House. Though some differences may grow more acute there is no danger of a secession large enough to be serious so far as this Parliament is concerned. Beyond that vision is confused, but there is nothing so far to justify the assump- tion that a Government of a different colour will be in office in 1950. Much no doubt may happen before then, but the millions who voted Labour last time have acquired power and will not lightly part with it. The hope must be that it will be exercised at Westminster predominantly by the relatively sober middle mass of the party. Unless country is put before party and academic party-doctrines it will go ill with the country.
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