Let's Be Fair to Mr. Bevan
In Place of Fear. By Aneurin Bevan. (Heinemann. 10s. 6d.)
WHEN Mr. Aneurin Bevan complains of the excessive interest taken by the popular Press in his private life he obviously has right on his side. It is true that, in his speeches and in his present book, he makes full use of his personal sufferings in early life, thus displaying a certain inconsistency in this matter. But let us try to ignore both the argument and the inconsistency. Mr. Bevan also complains that the Press wrongly attributes to him a personal ambition to be the leader of the Labour Party. Here again he has a right to complain. There is no final proof that leadership of the Labour Party is his primary aim. It is true that, as the present book shows, he has never shown much reverence for party leaders. It is true that his characteristic combination of emotional violence with intellectual slipperiness makes him an extraordinarily difficult man to discipline and therefore makes it appear that he would never be really happy except at the head of his party. But again, let us give Mr. Bevan the benefit of every doubt. Let it be conceded that he should stand or fall by the strength or weakness of his political philosophy.
We then have to take the earliest opportunity to study Mr. Bevan's ideas closely. His book seems at first to provide that opportunity. But, in that respect it is a disappointment. It is not a unified and closely reasoned statement. It is a rather long and rather disjointed pronouncement, in which Mr. Bevan's exposition of his guiding political principles is interspersed with his views on a number of current questions. These are apparently selected at random. They range from the scope of Governmental action (which Mr. Bevan thinks should be very wide indeed) to the office facilities to be pro- vided for M.P.s, the detailed working of a free health service, the world supply of raw materials and Mr. Bevan's views on the inter- national situation—a subject to which, it must be said in fairness, he does not seem to have devoted much time or systematic thought, It is therefore difficult to trace any consistent line of reasoning through this book. On the other hand it is perfectly easy to trace a line of emotional dynamism—Mr. Bevan's furious indignation at the tricks which he asserts are played on the working classes by the other classes. But most people are now familiar with Mr. Bevan's fury. Some are getting a little bored with it. It is time for its rational basis, if any, to be disclosed. But this book hardly does that. It is not so much a book as an extended pamphlet or a collection of items from speeches past and to come. But let us make one last concession.
Let us lean over backwards to be fair. Let us not criticise this book for failing to do what it does not set out to do. This is not a gravely considered exposition of Mr. Bevan's political philosophy. It is a tract for the times—his immediate answer to immediate problems. Let it be judged accordingly.
And that is the last concession I feel inclined to make. It is more than enough. Politically the book is not persuasive. Its insistence from the first page on class war—that is the whole assumption underlying Mr. Bevan's well-known search for the seat of real power—is a gross over-simplification which, if accepted, could only split the country beyond repair. The more sensible of Mr. Bevan's political opponents are determined not to fight on his chosen ground, his field of class warfare,-and in that they are taking a proper view of the national interest. Economically the book is so crude, and so partial in its analysis, that much of it amounts to sheer non- sense. With all his insistence on redistribution—a process which has been proved over and over again to be near its limit of significance for the average standard of living—Mr. Bevan forgets the material basis of prosperity in an ever-expanding output of goods and services. Indeed there is a chapter in which he deplores the rate at which raw materials are being used up, making next to no allowance for the infinite resource and ingenuity of mankind—a position which makes his frequent protestations of warm human regard for comfort and elegance lOok a little one-sided. As to the foundation of all economic thinking—the scientific allocation of scarce means between alternative ends—he doesn't bother much about it. His method of securing the right distribution of resources is hit-and-miss all the time. He explicitly lays down as.a maxim for social action " 1 know what I am trying to do, but what I have actually done I shall not know until I have done it."
It is impossible to enter into rational argument with a man who continually indulges in loose thinking of this order—who simply does not care into what absurdities and disasters his policy may be leading him. But on the other hand it is impossible to ignore him. His emotional violence and his clear realisation that the continual move- ment to .the left within the Labour Party is a powerful trend to be exploited make him formidable—but not as an intellectual. On the intellectual side he is always vulnerable. He describes—almost boasts of—the gaps in his education. It would not be fair to attack him on that ground. He got more out of the Tredegar Workmen's Library than most men would have done. But an education devoted to the search for power and not to the search for truth is twisted from the start.- Mr. Bevan can be forgiven the gaps in his knowledge, but not his passionate persistence in errors of judgement.
WALTER TAPLIN.
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