Political Commentary
BEFORE 1955 ends the Conservative Government will probably have appealed to the country and the events of the year which has now ended indicate what the pattern of the general election is likely to be. It will be a contest between two sets of managers. The debate at the election may be vigorous, but it will be about the myths of politics. Who has done most te forward the foreign policy which goes under the name of co-existence, not whether co-existence is desirable ? Who has pressed most earnestly for increases in pensions, not whether increases are supportable These are the kind of questions which have been argued on the floor of the House during the past year, and they will be the kind of questions which will provide the stuff of the argument at the general election. Apart from the oily two individual forces left in British politics, Se Winston Churchill and Mr. Aneurin Bevan, the Butskells 11 both sides will be fighting a mock battle with each other. Like Tweedledum and TWeedledee they will put on all the armour of the political nursery, the bolsters, the blankets, the hearth' rugs, the table-cloths, the dish-covers and the coal-scuttlee Like Tweedledee, they will hit everything they can see; or, like Tweedledum, everything within reach, whether they can see it or not. And, for all the difference between them, they might as well be fighting about a nice new rattle.
The only two men who are likely to lift the election on to a different plane are the Prime Minister and Mr. Bevan. Of the two, Sir Winston Churchill is in the stronger position. 1-10 is in full possession of his party and, one may as well repeat, of his wits. No movement against him can succeed because no one can point convincingly to any way in which the Govern' ment might be improved by his elimination. It is hard to believe that between now and the next election he will nor again intervene in foreign affairs as dramatically as he did oe May 11 of last year (when, opening a foreign affairs debate in the Commons, he said: . . . In spite of all the uncertainties and confusion in which world affairs are plunged. I believe 0 conference on the highest level should take place between the leading Powers without long delay!), and perhaps in a manner which might divide the parties on a major issue. Even if the international situation were to remain static during the coming year, that in itself would present a new situation to which Sir Winston Churchill would be certain to respond. The Prime Minister is still the most underestimated man. in British politics today. Even people close to politics worry far too much about the possible actions and reactions of the pigmies around him, and forget that here is one of the two men at Westminster today who can take hold of events and shake something new and unexpected out of them. At the beginning of 1955. I Would still say that the first man to watch (and not for his retirement) is Sir Winston Churchill, who has more creative Political genius in him than the rest of his Government put together.
The second man to watch is Mr. Aneurin Bevan. He has had a baffling year. He has both gained much and lost much. He has re-created—and the credit is his—a strong and effective left wing in the Labour Party; but in the very act of doing this he has made himself dispensable. A series of incredible Miscalculations, from his original resignation from Mr. Attlee's Government to his assault on Mr. Attlee this year and his resignation from the Shadow Cabinet, have produced this extraordinary position, that at the very moment when he should be more powerful than ever he has isolated himself as never before. 1954 was the year in which even his admirers began to talk of him as another Maxton---or (who knows ?) another M. John McGovern. But Mr. Bevan is a creative political force, like Sir Winston Churchill. He can turn a political situation inside out in a way which no one else imagined to bC possible. He can put his finger immediately—it seems by instinct—on the heart of a political issue. Here he is, the dominant personality in a party led by men who, like Finality Clem, have given up the struggle, and in the year of an election he is the one man in that party capable of finding an issue which would turn the battle into a real one. It might be an issue which would make the defeat of his party even more certain than it is at the moment. But it would be an issue • which, in the long run, would help to determine the course of British politics.
Watch Sir Winston Churchill and Mr. Bevan; apart from them, one can watch whom one likes, for it does not matter. The new men' in politics today, on both sides of the House, are terrifyingly uniform. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian has pointed out how much they look and dress alike. The alarming thing is that their outward appearance reflects their inner identity. One could really swap the young men who, in 1954, have been making their names as Conservative junior ministers with the young men who have been talked of as future Labour junior ministers, and it would not make a whit of difference. There is no evidence that Mr. Denis Healey, for example, is in politics for any different reason than, say, Mr. Anthony Nutting; or that Mr. Anthony Crosland wants to change society in any way that Mr. lain Macleod would not approve of. The two parties have become equal partners in the Establishment. The evidence is there in the debates of 1954. On none of the major issues—Suez, relations with Russia and China, pensions, even strikes—did the front benches, and their faithful retainers on the benches behind them, differ. It was only from the despised in the two parties, the eccentric Conservatives who still believe in Conservatism and the lunatic Socialists who still believe in Socialism, that the prevailing, flattening, deadening orthodoxy was challenged. Apart from them, no one in 1954 really cared.
TRIMMER
Previous page
