Brighton Commentary
Snowball Rolling
ONE thing that emerged from the Labour Party Conference (apart from a substantial number of delegates when Mr. James Griffiths got up to speak) was that if you give a man a vigorous shove in the small of the back when he is standing on the white cliffs of Dover and looking in the direction of France, it is useless thereafter to lean over the edge and shout 'Don't hurt yourself' at his descending figure.
Let me make myself clear. The public-opinion polls recently began to suggest that the Rent Act would be a potent factor in the next General Election. The Gloucester by-election (incidentally, a fortnight ago I saw Colonel Lort-Phillips given a hero's welcome by the Liberals, on Tuesday I saw Mr. Jack Diamond get the same treatment from the Labour Party, and I live in hopes of seeing Mr. Francis Dashwood receive a standing ovation from the Tories next week) made this virtually certain, and Taper then removed all doubt by giving the theory his inzprintatur. Now Mr. Gaitskell can hit a barn door with a field-gun at ten yards' range, and even if he couldn't there are those around him who are not averse to pulling the trigger (or whatever you call the thing that fires a field-gun) for him. The Labour Con- ference therefore opened with a very loud bang, caused by a firm promise to tear up the Rent Act, and stuff Mr. Henry (We said, she said') Brooke with the pieces. (But has it occurred to these fellows that Mr. Brooke is already stuffed? Be- cause if he isn't he gives a remarkably good im- personation of someone who is.) Sometime, however, between the publication of the Executive's Emergency Resolution and the discussion of it by the conference, it seeped through to Mr. Gaitskell that half the delegates in Brighton were rushing about telling each other that the minute the Labour Party was returned to power all rents were to be abolished, and every- body was going to live rent-free (in Mayfair) for ever after. It is true that the resolution did not actually say that, but give a dog a couple of lines, as the saying goes, and he will read between them. It therefore became necessary for both Miss Bacon, who moved the resolution, and Mr. Anthony ('Top-of-the-poll') Greenwood, who re- plied to the debate for the Executive, to spend half their time—indeed, rather more than half— explaining that the resolution didn't mean what it said, or that if it did then what it said was jolly sensible and realistic. (Mr. Greenwood, by the way, is the only man in the Labour Party—and apart from myself the only man in England—who knows that there is no such word as 'impractical' in the language.) But the damage, it seems to me, has been done. Mr. Gaitskell has allowed himself to be stampeded, by the prospect of immediate electoral advantage, into a promise of action even more foolish and harmful than the Tory promises of denationalisation. Never mind what the reso- lution said; never mind what he thinks he means by 'repeal'; never mind what he will actually do when he gets there; the Labour Party is now com- mitted to fighting the next election with 'Repeal the Rent Act' embroidered on its banner, and Mr. Gaitskell knows as well as I do that there is no room on a banner for ifs and buts, quite apart from any consideration of the feelings of Sister Anna, who will after all be carrying it.
But the pity of it, Iago! Oh, Iago, the pity of it, Iago! And just how great a pity was brought forcibly home to me on Tuesday night. Forsaking the Tribune meeting (which is always good for a laugh if nothing else), not to mention my dinner, I came up to London for the launching of Cross- bow, the Bow Group's new quarterly organ of Tory thought (the idea of 500 junior Hailshams rampaging about fair turns my blood to water). Now the Prime Minister was at this gathering and said a few words. (He was introduced, if I may digress for a moment, by Mr. Geoffrey Howe. Mr. Howe is the chairman of the Bow Group, and as impertinent a young whipper-snapper as ever needed his breeks dusting; he spent a good deal of his speech insulting Lord Altrincham in a par- ticularly offensive, ham-fisted and naive manner, though Lord Altrincham is one of the leading contributors to this first issue of the magazine— which was, after all, what the meeting was about.) Mr. Macmillan said, among other things, this : . . . there isn't going to be an election. I am not at all surprised that Mr. Gaitskell and his friends should expect me to hold one, for, after all, there is a good precedent for it. When they got into trouble in 1951 they were very quick to run away from it, and throw the burden upon somebody else. • It was some months ago that I wrote that gr. Macmillan, faced with the choice of being a small-sized statesman or a large-sized party polltician, had chosen the latter role. This was all very well while the Tory Party was still wondering what had hit it, but nonsense like the bit I have just quoted (Mr. Attlee went to the country be• cause he had a majority of five and the govern- ment of the country was becoming impossible), like the jaunty air of unconcern, begins to wear a little thin with the Bank rate at 7 per cent. The whistling in the dark, in fact, is becoming deafen' ing. That, however, is Mr. Macmillan's funeral; but safe back in my Brighton snuggery I shed tears for the chance that Mr. Gaitskell was busy wasting. For, apart from the fact that the shabbY kind of jiggery-pokery contained in the Labour Party's conferential behaviour over the Rent Bill cuts no ice with Taper (a factor I can hardlY expect to weigh very heavily with Mr. Gaitskell), when it comes to ice-cutting with the electorate at large Mr. Macmillan can give Mr. Gaitskell a start and a beating with his moustaches tied be- hind his back. Has it, in words of one syllable (pace Strix) occurred to Mr. Gaitskell that if his party wins the next General Election there will be a lot of people who are going to expect Iowa' rents, and that he is going to have to disappoint them? And if it has, has it further occurred to him that this state of affairs is largely his own fault?
Because this is one thing he can't blame on Frankie-boy. The straws in that particular wind, which were only fluttering at Blackpool, were blowing so thick and fast in Brighton that you could hardly see the end of the pier. Applauded to the rostrum and heard in an electric silence throughout (and he isn't a particularly good speaker, as I have already pointed out), Mr. Cousins is rapidly assuming the outlines of a sergeant-major in the Prretorian Guard. One of these days he is going to be in a position to have the Emperor butchered -at his nod, and if the Emperor is wise Sergeant-Major Frank will be given rather more than a new toga at Lupercal, It was Mr. Cousins who set the tone, on the first day of the conference, of the debate on economic affairs, and it was his million votes, and the snoW- ball they started, which swamped the opposition on the nationalisation proposals. Only the very simple, of course, imagine that those million votes weren't safely in the bag before any of them got anywhere near Brighton, but when the snoW- ball started rolling is irrelevant; what is important is that it rolled. When Mr. Shinwell finished his slam bang at the executive—he went so far as lo accuse them of being a set of reformed characters, and pointed at Nye as he did so—he was chee:.ed to the echo all the way back to his seat. But MI • Cousins wasn't cheering; Mr. Birch wasn't cheer- ing; Mr. Ernest Jones wasn't cheering; Sir Toni Williamson wasn't cheering; Mr. Carron wasn't cheering; and in the afternoon, Herbert and Manny entered the tumbril along with the NUR and Jennie Lee, and went, singing gaily, to the knife.
Frankie was careful to leave a good feW ambiguities sticking out all over his speech; but up on the platform, impassive behind the dark glasses that shielded him alike from the glare of the television lights and from those who can recognise a satisfied smile when they see one, Nit Gaitskell put his fingertips together and dreamed his dreams. In this harsh world you don't get anything for nothing, and even if you do you don't give anything for nothing. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I have a question to ask : What Post, in the next Labour Cabinet, will Mr. Cousins have? Oh, I know it isn't-as cut-and-dried as all that; doubtless nothing has been put into Words, let alone writing. But I saw Mr. Cousins oh the speaker's rostrum and I saw the way the conference rose to him; and what with Mr. Bevan in his new responsible-statesman suit (and my word! but doesn't it fit badly !), the Left will be wanting a new idol any day now. What if they should find the idol already squatting on the altar of the household gods? For there are strange things to be done (and to be seen, I fear) before we go to Westminster by way of Brighton Pier.
TAPER
Previous page
