HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION
SIR.—E,ien if voters who are not interested in politics could be assumed to make an electoral. choice • on strictly rational grounds, there are some of us in the Labour Party who might find Desmond Donnelly's diagnosis of our troubles inadequate and his pre- scription plain poison...As it is he seems to be talking to the Wind.
There are grounds for thinking that the way people vote is governed largely by unverbalised assumptions stemming from deeply subjective factors having little relation to "ordinary logic. One of these factors is undoubtedly a strong desire for security; which ex- plains why Conservative governments in one guise or another were able to rule almost without inter- ruption between the two World Wars, despite tre- mendous unemployment and widespread poverty; people preferred the security feeling conjured up by the Crown, the flag and one of the smoking acces- sories of the then Leader of the Conservative Party to the wild uncertainties (Post Office Savings! The Gold Standard!) they envisaged from Labour rule.
The war blew the gaff on a lot of this. Insecurity became so universal that the symbols and the jargon changed and people had to look in new directions. The talk was of the UN, freedom from want, social security and economic planning, and since Labour was identified with these it gained office.
Now there is no sense of security at all. Even the dimmest is aware of the meaning of the bombs, and all but the dimmest apprehends the trouble brewing in the backward countries where, in the face of rapidly growing populations and increasing political awareness (are there any villages now without a radio?), poverty is growing in absolute as well as relative terms. Millions are still being born to starve whilst elsewhere productive capacity is being more and more geared to the service of artificially created consumer desires. In our one-world community today the disparity between rich and poor is far greater than it was in Britain during the most oppressive stages of the industrial revolution. In face of this threatening social explosion Donnelly should widen his horizons before throwing the concept of equality overboard, and if he still insists he should take time off to give us his alternative. But let him not talk of freedom, of which equality is but the first fruit; let him rather reflect, how much work in economics, psychology, sociology and, indeed, any
field of study which impinges on human relation- ships would be possible if equality were not accepted, however implicitly, as a first premise.
The old security symbols have lost their power. There are new ones to hand (perhaps the UN flag is one), but until the Labour Party shows some promise of tackling effectively the great problems of the world which today bestir men's minds it will continue to
lose support.—Yours faithfully, JOHN PAPWORTH
International Secretary International Society for Socialist Studies
Previous page
