A Spectator's Notebook

Report from Blackpool

IT was widely believed on the special train bringing the dele- gates (not to mention us humble pencillers) back from the Labour Party Conference that everybody with any responsibility for the journey, from Sir Brian Robert- son upwards, had been bribed by Mr. Gaitskell to impress upon the left-wingers that nationalisation was by no means all they (the left-wingers) had been cracking it up to be. If the story was true, Mr. Gaitskell certainly got value for his money. That it took seven hours and twenty minutes to travel 226+ miles is easily ex-

, plained by the fact that for the first two-thirds of its journey it seemed to be calling regularly, every hour on the hour, at Shef- field; but I think something rather more elaborate in the way of an explanation is required for the fact that after the most rigor-

Which, looking at it from one point of view, is what was needed more than once during the two days in which the Labour Party groaned and travailed and laboured and eventually hatched vipers. To take the least serious but most irritating of all the things that brought me to the very gates of the funny-farm. the chairmanship of Mrs. Castle was so fantastically bad that I was moved at one point to inquire plaintively whether the job could not be handed over to Sir Arthur Comyns Carr, whose memorable ineptitude in the chair at the Liberal Assembly at Torquay could be at any rate partially excused on the grounds that he is twenty- nine years older than she is and slightly hard of hearing.

Mrs. Castle quacked and quavered and con- tradicted herself and allowed delegates to argue with her rulings and in general made one wonder what they teach Labour politicians these days. And if the television lights shining on the platform made it as usual impossible for anybody on it to see anything happening down in the hall, was it impossible to devise a more rational way of selecting delegates than by peering around for an hour or so every time the rostrum was vacated and then pointing to some ill-defined figure in the gloom without any guarantee that it would do anything but repeat the speech just made? After

all, at a Labour Conference—particularly one of this crucial sort--there are people whom it would be absurd not to call, and others whom it would be absurd to call successively. (And others whom it would be absurd to call at all—particularly some of those sepulchritudinous women=but I suppose if no incoherent idiots whatever got a chance to speak, the unrepresentative nature of the resultant debate would be apparent.) Some form of 'seeding' is essential if the pro- ceedings are not to become entirely farcical; yet it was not until well into Sunday that Babs even partially abandoned her pin-the-tail-on-the- donkey methods. It is true that on Saturday there was that glorious moment when she peered theatrically into the murk and cried 'Michael !,' whereupon Mr. Foot emerged coincidentally from the blackest and most invisible quarter at the back of the hall and strode purpose- fully to the rostrum for his attack on Mr. Gaitskell's leadership. But much as I would like to ascribe her performance in general to bias. I fear I must put it down to incompetence.

Which is more than can be said for her open- ing address, in which she put a bag over Mr. Gaitskell's head and called for volunteers to come and pull the ,neck tight. For some reason best known to itself, the Left in the Labour Party has decided that nationalisation is the Tabernacle, the Ark and the Scrolls (Mr. Mikardo, I believe, sleeps with a phylactery containing a copy of the Coal Mines Act strapped to his forehead), and that even if insistence on its retention as party policy should not enable them to win an election, which most of those nut-cases would hate to do anyway, it might at any rate eventually force Mr. Gaitskell out of the leadership, a prospect infinitely more pleasing to some.

Now Mrs. Castle's loyalty to her leader is un- questioned, or at any rate unquestionable, It is therefore only fair to assume that when she said. in the course of her chairman's speech, 'We have spent fifty years of political life proving to the people of this country that economic and social morality go hand in hand,' and then went on to insist that public ownership must be retained in the party's programme, she meant what she said. In which case I felt bound to ask her what, on the one hand, she thinks the word 'proving' means, or what, on the other, she imagines the result of the election to have been, 'Today.' she snarled (she reminds me of Charlotte Corday in the bath) 'we are making more television sets than houses to put them in. Millions of pounds are spent in encouraging our children to eat more sweets per head than any children in the world--while the Government starves the school dental service. [Here followed a terrifying account of what ts happening to the nippers, who appear to be Suffer- ing from every disease it is possible to have between the eyebrows and the Adam's apple. not excluding phossy-jaw.] But who is going to care about these things in a society whose values are dictated by the profit motive. . . .?'

Who, indeed? But who, if I might in turn ask Babs a question, is going. to get elected in a free society without getting people to vole for them in larger numbers than for their opponents? For Mrs. Castle's speech, it is important to remember, was not a speech made to accompany the announcement that she was retiring from politics - and would henceforth devote her energies exclu- sively to the reclamation of fallen women in Hong Kong; it was the speech made by the Chair- man of a great political party which has lost three successive General Elections, and seats at four, opening a conference ostensibly concerned with the lessons to be learnt from the latest of those defeats, together with the methods to be adopted in order to avoid another. As such, it was not merely useless; it was so shatteringly wrong- headed that 1 would have gone home at lunch time on Saturday if I could have faced the pros- pect of British Railways soup twice in two days. When are the kings of the Castles, not to mention the dirty rascals, going to realise that they cannot reMoUld our society nearer to their hearts' desire unless they can win an election? (On Guy Fawkes' Night, at the Tribune post-election meeting. I actually heard Mr. Harold Davies urging the Opposition to cut arms expenditure.) And when are they going to realise that the electorate not only refuses to accept that 'economic and social morality go hand in hand,' but that it refuses to accept that morality of any kind has anything to do with elections at all? It is almost embarrassing to have to spell it out for them, but spelt out it must be; if you want to nationalise steel and do a lot of sensible things besides, and the voters have shown on three successive occasions that they do not want you- to nationalise steel, the abandonment of your desire to nationalise steel is essential if you ever wish to be in a position to do the sensible things.

So the chairman made it clear where she stood, and after lunch Mr. Gaitskell made it clear where he stood. Reading his speech before he made it, I feared that it would not be sufficiently clear, that it was too larded with 'statesmanship' and all the old gamut of 'if I may say so with the utmost possible respect.' But in delivery it took on new dimensions and new significance, and one realised that the Labour Party was indeed at the cross- roads, and would now either follow Hugh Gaitskell into a new kind of future, or turn with- out him into futility and a slow decline. He told them, much to the distaste of many of them, that there would never again be a major slump in this country; he told them that nationalisation was only a means to an end, and not even a particu- larly important means; he told them that the people wanted material betterment, and that a party which despised them for it would eat the bitter bread of envy all its life. In short, Master Ridley played the man, and the thinness of the applause that followed his speech was a tribute to his playing.

After which, chaos was come again. Michael Foot's violent attack on the leadership brought hysterical cheers from the boneheads (and worse) that had screamed 'Yes!' when Mr. Gaitskell asked point-blank, 'Do we want to nationalise everything? Do we? Everything? Every farm and smallholding, every village shop, every little pub and garage?' Those of us privileged to know Mr. Foot know that he is in private one of the gentlest men alive, who would not swat a fly, even if it were perched on Mr. Gaitskell's head. Still, at Blackpool his speech was public; it and

its maker must be publicly judged. He had nothing but contempt and hatred for those who would bring the Labour Party up to date, and 'a fine, mad arrogance for those who abated a jot of the ancient faith; but Mr. Foot really must tell us precisely what his own brand of righteousness has achieved, apart from the conversion of a Labour majority of 3,483 into a Conservative majority of 6,454, which is not much to show for fifteen years or so of a political career.

Mr. Foot's speech set the key for Saturday; apart from a few rays of hope in the sensible and moderate speeches made by such bright hopes of the party as Mr. Dick Taverne, Mr. Mervyn Rees and Mr. Ivor Richard (hopes which can only be long-term ones), much of what was said after Mr. Gaitskell had sat down would be over-praised if I were to describe it as gibberish. (There was a man who claimed that the reason for the sliver of Labour success in Lancashire was the left-wing quality of candidates such as Mr. Frank Allaun.) It is true that the speakers called had been ludi- crously unrepresentative of the strength of the Labour Party; it is true, too, that the real fight-

ing will be done in private in the Executive, where Mr. Gaitskell will presumably go farther and fight harder than he did or could in his speech. But even so, when Sunday dawned I would not have been surprised to see the platform party assemble without its leader, and when the first speech of the morning came from Mr. Zilliacus, who is once again so far to the Left as to be practically unrecognisable, at any rate as a member of the Labour Party, I would have been even less sur- prised to see Mr. Gaitskell give the lot of them the high-sign and go home. .

And then, suddenly it changed. Suddenly, the conference swung round, and not by eastern windows only came in the light. And the man responsible for stemming the tide? Why, the honourable member for Leeds West; little Charlie Pannell, no less, and I never thought he had it in him. He rolled the Left over and stamped on its stomach; he leaped and danced upon its pros- trate form; he nailed Mr. Foot to the wall with one hand, and clouted the pathetic Mr. Cousins half-way to Southport with the other. And when the self-appointed Keepers of the Faith began to shout and boo to drown his voice, he clutched the microphone and yelled on, clear and brave and dead right, above the uproar. My scrupulous impartiality is a legend throughout five con- tinents, but when Mr. Pannell left the rostrum I not only applauded; I stamped upon the floor.

From. then on, Mr. Gaitskell had something to smile about. Mr. Denis Healey, who made the most thoughtful and sensible speech from the floor of the entire conference; Mr. Webber of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association; Mr. Carol Johnson; Mrs. Shirley Williams, one of the brightest of all the bright hopes; Mr. Alan Birch : one after the other they came up to talk sense at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour. Mr. Pannell had liberated the spirits of the real majority, and at last it was possible to hear the applause come volleying out for the defenders of the leadership. If there is gratitude on earth, Mr. Pannell must today have in his pocket such a letter from his leader as would cause even one as conceited as myself to blush.

Mr. Bevan tried hat4d to slam the door, but it was too late; the hinges were broken. His speech, which in manner was one of the most splendid orations I have ever heard, and in matter a pitiful succession of threadbare attitudes and windy platitudes, made it clear that Mr. Gaitskell, in the long hammering that lies ahead, will have to keep all his wits about him if he is to come safely through. You can kill ambition seventy times and seven, and yet it will twitch and stir; Mr. Bevan has forsworn all hopes of the leadership; but if Mr. Gaitskell should make one slip the oath may be forgotten. Mr. Gaitskell must cling to the fact that Mr. Bevan, if the choice is made stark enough, would rather be Foreign Secretary than Leader of the Opposition (which is more than can be said for some of the Left), and to the know- ledge that if it should come to a showdown, the Left must lose. Now, if Labour's leader keeps his head, refuses to buy Mr. Bevan's help at too high a price, calls every bluff that is made, and fights hard for what he knows to be the only chance to save the Labour Party, all will yet be well. If not—well, the Liberals were parading outside the hall, with placards and with leaflets. If this two- day inquest should reveal that Mr. Grimond is the residuary legatee of the deceased, the wreckers will have much to answer for to anybody still' left in the party.

BERNARD LEVIN