LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week " paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR.]
t` THE IMPOTENT OPPOSITION "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Your leading article " An Impotent Opposition " puts, I take it, the point of view of the average lunch-gathering at the Reform Club disinterestedly anxious to restore the old Parliamentary sham-fight. " What one feels about Attlee," to paraphrase one of your sentences, " is that at present he is hardly paying his way." And you go on to pour scorn alike on the personal qualities of the Labour leaders and on the .electoral attractions of Socialism as a Party programme.
Well and good. Now if ever is the time to add your kick to the quota landed on the recumbent victims, and there is a certain force in your criticisms. The Labour leaders can plead,.it is true, that if they go bald-headed for the Government they meet the accusation of putting Party before Country, not to mention a sousing in petulant hysteria from Mr. Eden. They, can plead again that during long periods of opposition British Parties have frequently seemed to be on the verge of disintegration, as Disraeli and Campbell-Bannerman found, and as even Mr. Baldwin was beginning to find in 1930-31. Still I am ready to make you a present of the point that recent Labour disunity has been rather specially marked. I go on to concede that until unity within the Labour ranks is achieved the Labour Party will neither se:ure nor deserve a clear majority.
This, however, is but scratching the surface of the subject. The real question comes now. Suppose that the Labour ranks do become united and do convince the country that they intend to establish democratically a genuine Socialist society based on the destruction of class differences and on full Christian principles of equality. When if ever, will England give a majority to such a Party ? The dispassionate observer will feel that the last few years which you find so conclusive throw little new light on this problem. You point to the success of the National Government in the by-elections. Personally I should not feel at all happy about the big drop in my vote if I were the Conservative Central Office. But let that pass and let us assume that the National Government has done very well in these by-elections. Is there anything surprising about it if they have ? Wouldn't it be staggering if they hadn't ?
The national income is calculated to have increased faster in the last three years than in any other three years of our recorded history. The " sublimation " of our obligations under the Covenant has, on a short-run survey, reduced with dramatic prudence the chance of our being involved in War this week or next. Mr. Neville Chamberlain is understood " to have ironed out " the trade cycle no less successfully than the Americans ironed it out in 1928, and if in passing, he has ironed out a few etceteras, the Abyssinians among them, there is nevertheless, among " average " men in the street an enhanced feeling of security and comfort. In these circum- stances the. Government would have found it difficult, however hard they tried, to depress their vote much further or to make themselves really disliked.
But is it all going to last ? Will the vaunted rate of progress continue ? I chanced in 1930 to be among those deputed by the present Prime Minister to study the causes of, and remedies for, the World Depression. Our investigations had no sequel, except that the world sped past us in its descent from depression to crisis. But it is revealing no office secret to relate that if by 1932 the present Prime Minister had conceived a remedy he kept it dark from his bottle-washer. To the anxious eye of the faithful, the august intelligence of the Headmaster remained as void of a constructive solution as the addle-pate of the inky fag. That is, unless you count " Tariffs " and " Economy," which few Spectator readers will tell me have redeemed the world. And yet in a short-run sense the world, from the point of view of the " average " Englishman in the street, has been considerably redeemed under, and.presumably by, the National Government.
How have they done it ? How have they worked the miracle ? They slipped off the gold standard ; they slipped off the Covenant ; they slipped into the international anarchy ; they slipped into the arms race. Many a slip, admitted, but each one providentially adjusted, they tell us, to bring the cup to the lip. " Away then, with sophisters, economists, above all with calculators (and, of course, with logicians). We said it would come right, and it has." So a divine intervention has occurred ? So the Almighty has slipped in at the last minute on the side of his official proteges, solving the contradictions of Capitalism when the best brains of that system had been exhausted in vain, and popping up in goal with the home defence well beaten to ward off Karl Marx's final drive into the net ? It may be so, but it would be more than a trifle odd if it were. For my part I shall go on croaking (sincerely enough) the words of President Wilson on his way to the 1929 Peace Conference, " What I seem to see—with all my heart I hope that I am wrong—is a tragedy of disappointment."
But grant Mr. Chamberlain all his dreams. Grant him a world made increasingly rich and everlastingly peaceful by resort (long resisted of course, but none the less congenial on better acquaintance) to arms-racing, inflation and pre-War international dog-fighting. The fundamental case for Socialism remains unaffected. The elementary truth remains unshaken that any society founded on inequality and the class system is anti-Christian and morally wrong.
Mr. Watson in another part of your paper is satisfied tly_t he will never see an equalitarian, that is to say, a Christian Socialism in this country during his lifetime. I do not know his age, though his style suggests the high-powered veteran, so I make no guess about his chances. He may or may not be interested to hear that, joining the Labour Party ten months ago, I have found there discontent, disputation, if you are looking for it, dissension—but seldom despondency and never despair. Rather strikingly the opposite.
The feeling is strong among the millions of English Socialists that no less than the march of economic facts, the spread of education is, secularly considered, the decisive factor on their side. The fire dies out of the feudal salute, your hand goes to your cap with less than the old alacrity once your eyes are opened to the fact that one of your master's hands is reaching for his gun, and the other is picking your pocket.
" The flowing tide is with us " (as Mr. Gladstone said in 1886, proving, incidentally, right). But the triumph of Socialism when it does come will come through conversion and mental growth, not through the manipulation of static elements in British public opinion. It will not, please God, have to be achieved at the barricades, though it may conceivably have to be defended there. But it will be the product of deeper feelings, more rending changes than any capable of tabulation on the basis of August, 1937, statistics in an agreed report from a Study Group at Chatham House.—Yours, &c.,
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