POLITICAL COMMENTARY

A Leader in Search of a Party

By ALAN WATKINS

WELL, no one can say that Mr Harold Wilson has not been warned. The dis- illusion in the parliamentary Labour party is, or ought to be, public knowledge by now. The unrest on the back benches was first described by Mr Wilfrid Sendall in the Daily Express; he Was followed by Mr Maurice Edelman in the same paper; and on Sunday Mr Wilson received what was probably his worst press to date (though it seems that last week he summoned selected journalists to inform them that he was unworried by criticism from the parliamentary party). Unkinder things have, to be sure, been said in leading articles and by committed Con- servative commentators. What made Sunday's pieces on the Labour unease so significant was that their authors—Miss Nora Beloff, Mr James Margach and Mr Ian Waller—could by no stan- dards be considered as personally hostile to the Prime Minister; quite the reverse, in fact. Clearly something important is happening inside the Labour party; and 1 make no apology for tread- ing where others have trod before. Perhaps, who knows? some new interpretation, some fresh pattern, may have emerged by the time we have finished our journey through the Labour under- world.

The current mood of the Labour party is quite unlike anything the party has experienced before. By and large, it is unhelpful to compare the dis- sentients to the Keep Left group in the late 'forties or to the Bevanites in the early 'fifties or to the Clause 4 fundamentalists after 1959. There is, however, one useful comparison that can be made. The. Labour back-benchers are reacting to Mr Wilson in much the same way as the Conservative back-benchers reacted to Mr Harold Macmillan in 1961-63.

MacWilsonism, of course, is no new concept. Indeed today, if I remember rightly, is the first anniversary of the coining of the word (ah me, how the months go by). A year ago it was pos- sible to point to certain similarities between Mr Wilson and Mr Macmillan in the way they filled the office of Prime Minister. Today the com- parison can be extended in several directions. First, Mr Wilson is not only behaving like Mr Macmillan, but—what was not apparent in 1965 —producing the same kind of sceptical reaction in his parliamentary followers. And, secondly, Mr Wilson has gone much further than Mr Macmillan: he has built extensively upon Mr Macmillan's technique of appealing to the coun- try over the heads of his party supporters.

Let me elaborate both these points. is worth noting that the prevailing scepticism is induced only by Mr Wilson and a few of his colleagues, notably Mr Michael Stewart and Mr Denis Healey. Mr Stewart is thought to be subservient to the US State Department, Mr Healey to the US Defence Department. Mr Stewart bears the blame for the British attitude to Vietnam; while Mr Healey, it appears, is the only begetter of our friend from the Socialist Sunday school, the Merchant of Death. I would not give either of them much chance in a snap popularity poll conducted among Labour MPs.

But responsibility for currently disliked policies is only in a few cases ascribed to the minister nominally in control.. Dear old Mr Arthur Bottomley, for instance, emerges with

reputation unblemished from the about-turn on Rhodesia. Possibly this is because Mr Bottomley does not in any case know which way he is supposed to be facing. Again, neither Mr George Brown nor Mr George Thomson is blamed by the anti-Common Market group (which was re- cently revived under the chairmanship of Lord Blyton) for the Government's present come- hither posture over Europe. After all, it is pointed out, Mr Brown and Mr Thomson have been consistent. Unlike Mr Wilson, they have always been pro-European.

Thus it is that, on the Common Market, on Rhodesia, on the East of Suez policy and also on the seamen's strike, the Labour back-benchers have no doubt as to the identity of the villain they are meant to hiss. They observe him, black- cloaked, moustachioed, hobnobbing with the Merchant of Death one minute, Mr Ian Smith the next and Her Majesty the Queen all the time: Mr Harold Wilson.

We should try not to miss the serious point that is involved here. If one can speak of a revolt on the back benches—and I do not believe it is altogether too strong a word to use—it is not a revolt against the present Labour government. It is a revolt against the kind of leadership cur- rently being offered by Mr Wilson. In previous Labour party rebellions the case has been other- wise. The insurgents have seen themselves as representatives of the ordinary party members fighting a power-structure epitomised by the unions. All too often the encounters have appeared as revolts, not against an abuse of power, but a,gainst the existence of power as such.

There are several differences between those revolts of yesterday, which we journalists used to relish so much, and the revolt of today. For one thing, the unions are now fundamentally on the side of the rebels. For another thing, the bulk of the new parliamentary Labour party have no objection to power. On the contrary, one of their main complaints—and this is behind much of the agitation for parliamentary reform--:is that they are excluded from a share in it. Nor should we forget that new members such as Mr David Marquand and Mr J. P. Mackintosh have spent a good deal of their time trying to persuade their fellow-Socialists that there is nothing mysterious or wicked about power.

A further difference, which follows from the

above, is that as far as one can see the revolt does not come from the roots of the Labour move. ment. Admittedly there is very little evidence on this, but it seems that party members in the constituencies are no more agin the Government than they. usually are; possibly they are rather less so. Mr Wilson remains a heroic figure. The revolt is parliamentary, and it is intellectual; intellectual, not in the sense that all those %Nilo are disillusioned are 'intellectuals,' but in the sense that their disillusion proceeds from specific doubts as to the self-consistency of Mr Wilson's various policies.

Moreover, the present discontents unite chat used to be called the left and the right of the Labour party. It is.surely a very strange state of affairs when the ministers most generally pMised on the left include those former butts of Tribune, Mr Anthony Crosland and Mr Roy Jenkins. (Mr Jenkins is praised for his liberalism, Mr Cros- land for his uncompromising attitude over com- prehensive schools.) And it is if anything even stranger when this acclaim is extended to, of all people, Mr Christopher Mayhew and Mr Woodrow Wyatt. Where, one wonders, is it all going to end?

Mr Mayhew and Mr Wyatt are, of course, the chief exponents of British withdrawal East of Suez. And it is over this, rather than over Rhodesia or the Common Market or the seamen's strike, that one can see developing the most serious threat to Mr Wilson's position. The threat, it is true, does not exist in any very acute form at the, moment: but one can envisage cir- cumstances which would make the threat real enough. British troops, we have often been told, are in the Far East in order to fulfil our obliga- tions to Malaysia. Suppose that confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia comes to an end, as appears likely. Do we then bring the bciys home? Or—do We retain them in the Far East, using some vague phrase about `peace-keeping 'role'? If Mr Wilson chooses the latter, the suspicion will inevitably grow that there is a possibility of British troops being used in Vietnam. One cannot see the parlia- mentary Labour party accepting such a situation without pushing their protests to the uttermost limit.

Yet would they be prepared to go so far as to try to dislodge Mr Wilson? At the moment, certainly, the question appears fantastic. But we should be clear about precisely why it appears so. It is not because Mr Wilson has any solid base of support inside the party. It is because he has just won an election with a handsome majority and because he continues to command the overwhelming support of the country. As long as this happy state of affairs persists, so long can Mr Wilson afford to disregard the views of the Labour party in Parliament. But the public are fickle, they change their heroes and matters may look very different in three or four years' time. It is all very well to appeal to the country over the heads of your party when the country is with you; it is when the country is against you that your party becomes important.

I do not want to labour the parallel with Mr Macmillan : nevertheless, Mr Wilson's reputation in 1964-66 mirrors Mr Macmillan's reputation in 1957-59. Mr Wilson's triumph at the 1966 election is comparable to Mr Macmillan's in 1959. By 1961 the doubts about Mr Macmillan's leadership had set in, and two years later all was dust and ashes. The doubts about Mr Wilson have set in rather more quickly. Can he now prevent those doubts from going any further? Or will his career turn out simply to be a conflated version of Mr Macmillan's?