A Trip to Scarborough

After the Bombardment

By BERNARD LEVIN EvEN in such a Giitterdain- ',wrung as we have witnessed this week there have been inter- vals of comic relief amid the oceans of high drama, deep tragedy and throbbing passion, when the passing-bell for a moment fell silent and the cap and bells could be heard. It would have moved an Easter Island statue to laughter, for instance, to see Mr. Wedgwood Benn, his fair hair giving off St. Elmo's Fire, striding round the ever- diminishing circle of those who were willing to listen to him, telling them that the Labour Party was in danger—a fact which it is to be presumed had hitherto escaped their notice. Mr. Gaitskell, it is said, was closeted with him for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and hopes that the Leader might have strangled him and stuffed his corpse into a dumb-waiter ran high on all sides: alas, he reappeared unharmed—apart from a flush on his cheek—speaking shrilly of Mr. Gaitskell's inflexibility. He went straight to Mr. Cousins; but Mr. Cousins, for all his faults, knows what to do in that sort of situation, and shortly afterwards Mr. Benn was seen to recoil into. the middle of the carpet as though he had been struck down with peritonitis. `Do you know what he called me?' he gasped incredulously; 'he called me a peace emissary from the Hamp- stead Set But there were not many such moments. The simple truth is that what happened at Scar- borough this week was not funny. For one thing, too much of it tasted foul in the mouth: he would be an easily amused man, for instance, who found Canon Collins funny any longer. The spectacle of the Precentor of St. Paul's, a man who sweats Christian charity as a stone sweats blood, leading a parade through Scarborough which ended up outside the headquarters hotel chanting that well-known passage from the Sermon on the Mount, 'Gaitskell Must Go,' must have turned the stomachs of others besides those who prefer a rather less secular Christianity than the kind the Canon peddles.

But for another, and more general, thing, what has happened is not funny, because it means that the Labour Party has come within inches of ceasing, perhaps for a generation, perhaps for ever, to be an effective force in the political life of this country. And this is not funny, because it means that the want 'of such a party, which was rarely greater, may remain as long unfilled. 11 is not only the commanding heights of the economy that will remain unsealed while no effective radical challenge to the Tories is made: the foothills will remain untouched, too.

The sensational closeness of the voting on uni- lateralism means that this can still be avoided, that a real radical challenge can be created out of the sound core of the Labour Party, if neces- sary allied with the Liberals. Even this, of course, will take years.

Which is not to say that it is impossible. And—before the dramatic events of Wednesday —there were already at Scarborough burrowers at work trying to head off the danger of sense breaking in. I argued last week that Mr. Grimond's present policy is an unambiguous call to such members of the Labour Party as will follow Mr. Gaitskell to unite with the Liberals to preseht the country with a radical alternative to Conservatism. At Eastbourne, Mr. Grimond went so far as to change the peroration of his final speech to the Liberal Conference; instead of ending with the appeal to his followers to go out and win over the 6 per cent. of Tory and Labour voters who would suffice to make the Liberals the second party (which is the way in which the advance copies of his speech had ended), he called as he sat down for 'a real progressive party of the Left.'

But if some kind of an alliance between 3 Leftless Labour Party and the Liberals were to be the pattern that emerges after Scar- borough, it would hardly suit the book of those who went there with the sole intention of over- throwing Mr. Gaitskell and not at all that of those who saw themselves as inheriting the leadership of the party when he had been. SO Mr. Harold Wilson was quick, even before the conference opened, to maximise his chances. He told a pre-conference demonstration that nobodY should tolerate the siren voices which had been urging that what was needed was to engineer a split, expel the Left and, come to terms with the Liberals. And during that same speech Mr. Wil- son began to talk very blandly about acceptia majority decisions when they had been made. Fearing. no doubt, that this might still be air' biguous and lead people to suppose that he would stand by his leader when the chips were down, he underlined the same point in his speed! in Tuesday's debate on 'Labour in the Sixties.

Then. on Wednesday, when Mr. Sam Watson I, concluded his massive and sombre case for the leadership's policy of collective defence baseelm on the nuclear deterrent, and up on the platforol even Mr. Driberg, who opposes this polia, clapped in recognition of a b{ave, fine speechy Mr. Wilson. who the night before had been In", sisting that he had worked tirelessly for the leadership's defence policy, carefully refrained1 from demonstrating his support of it visibly and, , for the record, even by a token handclap; and when Mr. Gaitskell, at the end of that clebalci' was given his gigantic ovation, Mr. Wilson al? plauded perfunctorily for a couple of seconds' and and then sat aloof while the demonstration roiled: cheering on. At the crucial meeting held f°' before the conference opened to decide the executive's attitude to the various motions, the little fellow voted against Mr. Gaitskell to pro' duce a single-vote majority by which the CNCC1V Live was compelled to accept the resolution declaring the conference the 'final authority' over policy.

to am afraid,' said one who has been close la Mr. Gaitskell throughout the crisis, 'that We Must be prepared for Mr. Wilson to behave very badly when the vote is over.' There could have been little reason, on the part of those who have followed his career, to expect anything else even before. But while Mr. Wilson may not be Compelled by loyalty to stand as firm as he is capable of doing, he may—for he is no fool— be warned by events to do so. He would be vfheerayrteuuniuwaise to underestimate the enormous that the Parliamentary Party took fro the close vote and the strength it gives them to fight back. The movement to depose Mr. Gaitskell was already beginning to retreat by tea-time on Wednesday, and though it may Yet succeed, it is now far more likely that he Will, if he is bloody, bold and resolute, manage "e Yen if it takes him until next year's conference • to reimpose his will on his party, trim it at te edges (and the reimposition means nothing Wp°In that), and carry on. In which case, the Parliamentary Party, in the mood in which it the be when Parliament reassembles and after h e tremendous hammer-blow speech in which Mr. George Brown during the defence debate ,,,ntnhed off the fence and went right down the tnle for the leadership, may also send Mr. Wilson parking When the election for deputy leader is u• So Mr. Wilson may end up as neither king ainrusptricince; it is enough to make a lifelong fall to his knees before the mocking isdoin of Providence.

And always, if the party should split badly for 1,, Gaitskell, there is the other alternative wait- 118- A stormy night at Eastbourne, on the eve of stnpeeaLibbelyral Conference, preceded a day of un- ka glorious Indian summer. Stretching a You might say the sameof the Liberals. ar.eY may not be moving mountains yet, but they di' Moving molehills with impressive speed and teaistPriinae°utedt:h. The lessons of Torquay had been W I could not go ten paces in any direction a delegate stopping me to ask if I did not think that the Eastbourne Conference was not gong better than the shambles that their previous nference had been. Much criticism is to be heard of the Standing Committee which virtually "8 the Liberal Party now; but the fact remains theat • It has stamped upon the party a pattern of snse, orderliness, vigour, unity and practicality that it has not had before. And the chair, put hh day into -a different pair of firm and capable Street backed up the four Butchers of Victoria Arthur Deakina ruthlessness that would have made h Deakin faint. Libl.Yriical of the conference control was the b erals' own nuclear-disarmament debate: Mr. ,,,tiald Wade was put up, with a sensible, ;riderate and scrupulously courteous speech. He tile ivered it slowly and coolly, and the tempera- Gre as he did so tangibly fell. When Colonel Ctsrt-Phillips took the rostrum to swing the Labour into the same futile dead-end as the ahvaur Party was about to enter, his chances :34°,d.r4 thin. By the time he finished a speech (to Y lacking in the fire and point we expected Ill him, they had almost vanished.- And to make certainty doubly, cruelly, certain, the Executive a few speeches later put up Mr. Jeremy Thorpe to steamroller the Lort-Phillips men into oblivion with a speech of mercilessly brilliant polemical effectiveness, and Colonel Lort-Phillips went down 78-607.

It was not only the platform that had its eyes on the future: for the first time, it Was the delegates, too. At this moment, it was essential that the Liberals appear sensible, practical, radical people. And that, by and large, was what happened. Of course, the cruel gap between their few men of stature and the youngsters who are coming along as fast as the years will let them is still apparent. Of course, too, men like Mr. Byers, Mr. Mark Bonham Carter, Mr. Grimond himself stand out terrify- ingly far above the ruck of their followers. And, of course, they have pitifully little to offer in any bargain they may try to strike with a Labour Party that must take huge risks to strike any at all.

But Eastbourne suggested, however faintly, that it might be done and Scarborough suggests, however confusedly, that sooner or later it must be. Even if enough votes can be swung back behind Mr. Gaitskell by next year's conference to endorse the policy which he said unequivo- cally he would go on propounding as long as the Parliamentary Party backed him, the Labour Party cannot live with one of its limbs gone cannibal and gnawing at its body. The hatred and venom; the proudly expressed intentions of treachery; the leading figures who did not even bother, in the lounge of the Headquarters hotel, to lower their voices as they told me that 'Hugh must go,' and that `Gaitskell is the only barrier to the unity of the Party'; the maniac glee of the Left when it thought it had Mr. Gaitskell on the run; the figure of Mr. Cousins deaf and blind with self-esteem, striding about with a distant, unreachable smile on his face, and the air of a pigmy Samson about to pull down the temple on the heads of men better than himself;, the repeated refusal of the leading figures of the Left to say privately or publicly what they wanted to do when they had smashed their party's leader, insisting that that noble aim was an end in itself; minor moments of horror amid the major ones, as when Mr. Arthur Woodburn was shouted down when he tried, gently and good-humouredly, to defend the value of univer- sity education; the total inability dis,,layed by almost everybody at the conference to realise the plight in which the party stood, even apart from the split on defence; the bored and lacka- daisical air with which attacks on the Govern- ment were greeted by men who were interested only in attacking one another; the agonising re- appraisal going on amongst many of the younger and more modern delegates—MPs and others— as to whether it was worth continuing at all in active work for a Labour Party that could behave like this; all these signs mounted to a clear and unequivocal warning to Mr. Gaitskell that, if he can hold the bulk of his party with him, he must do it only on terms that enable him to destroy the fundamentalists and go forward into the twen- tieth century.

Still, these reflections were overshadowed, when the long day dawned, by darker ones. On Tues- day night the AEU went into caucus to decide whether it would repeat its manoeuvre pf the TUC Congress and vote both ways. On and on rolled their debate, as the rest of the town waited the news and the Mayor's Dance almost died out for lack of those who would leave their listening posts to trip the light fantastic. At last, caucus broke up and the news came through. The AEU would vote for its own resolution, for Mr. Cousins's in effect identically unilateralist motion, and, against the executive's NATO line. Rien ne va plus.

Came the dawn (only an hour or two, I may say, after we had gone to bed). The hall—suffo- cating, oven-hot and filthy at the best of times— was unbearably full and tense. The visitors' gal- leries had been packed by Communists and Cam- paigners; Mr. Gaitskell was given a rousing reception by the floor—a farewell cheer by men who thought he was finished, and were to learn better before the day was done; the lines were drawn; and battle commenced.

Mr. Sam Watson is by no means an intellectual giant; and although he is a vigorous and quite lucid speaker, he is no orator. But when he sat down, after half an hour commending the execu- tive's policy to a conference which he said him- self had already made up its mind to reject it, there could be no more doubt about the nature of the challenge made to the Labour Party's leadership, and no more doubt about the leader- ship's counter-challenge to its opponents. Mr. Cousins's own speech was broken and incoherent, feeble and vague, and caused dismay to his supporters and a momentary heartening to the leadership's defenders. The pathetic wheel- horse put up by the AEU to move their resolu- tion, after Mr. Carron (who would normally, of course, have moved such a motion himself) had refused to do so on the grounds of con- science, was even worse; and so far, if the voting had been susceptible of change by the speaking, the platform would have been winning hands down.

The balance, as the long day wore on, moved ever more strongly to the side of those who were trying to keep the Labour Party in the hands of men who alone could save it. Indeed, the only effective speech from the opposition during the early period of the morning came from Mr. John Horner, who used to sit in the Communist corner and has for years now been regularly deputed to pull out the plums of the unilateralists.

On the whole, the platform had a big credit balance of good speeches. Mr. Philip Noel-Baker, much moved and much moving, very near tears as he left the rostrum; Mr. Tom Williamson, catcalled and abused as he carried the fight, for the first time, into the opposite camp, telling them a few unpalatable truths about the extent to which the policy they were proposing would lose Labour and trade-union support; Mr. John Hynd, who reminded those who were attacking the West Germans in terms that would have been extravagant coming from Herr Ulbricht that they might do worse than think about the former Nazis in the Eastern half of Germany; Mr. John Webber, as always, brief, dry and straight to the point. The last speech before lunch came from Mr. Michael Foot, greeted with a huge yell of sup- port from those, some of whom seriously think of him as a possible leader of the Labour Party. Mr. Foot is almost the only one of the leaders of the anti-Gaitskell campaign who is personally likeable; and he makes up for a good few of his unsavoury associates. His brilliant, impas- sioned oratory set the conference afire for the first time in the day; and left me once again to reflect how utterly impossible it is for those of us who know him to refuse admiration and love for this man's personality. And, of course, how equally impossible it is for us to refuse dis- agreement for the fabulously idiotic views that he holds on almost every political question he has ever considered in his life.

After lunch, the fire was down. As the after- noon shadows stretched themselves there were few speeches to excite deep 'feelings, though late in the long, weary day, came Jim. Mr. Griffiths has stood like a rock with his leader throughout the crisis, proudly proclaiming his loyalty whilst others with more cause to be grate- ful to Mr. Gaitskell were double-edging their words. His loyalty did not fail him no*w.

And then, Hugh Gaitskell. He is no Bevan when it comes to public speaking; but this was surely one of the finest orations he will ever give. He mingled emotion with reason; he did not budge; he did not equivocate; he did not retreat a single inch; and when he thought Com- munists were Communists he said so, and when he thought hypocrites were hypocrites he said that„ too. He stood there, a good, brave man, doing good bravely, and he fully deserved the ovation, the chorus and the cheers he got at the end. He fully deserved, too, the total of votes —far, far higher than anybody could possibly have expected—that he got when the heads were counted.

The leadership is cautious, as befits men in so dangerous a situation. But many of the Left are clearly unhappy at their failure to gain the over- whelming victory many of them were confidently expecting. And Mr. Cousins in particular whose motion scraped through by 40,000 votes out of six and a half million, by far the smallest majority of all, suffers a sharp and long-overdue rebuff. I looked in at the Tribune meeting a few hours after the defence debate, expecting a triumphant victory celebration. Instead, I found men subdued and uncertain, and an audience far less enthusiastic than at any of these rallies I have seen. It was typical of the atmosphere that Mr. Foot, winding up the meeting, should begin with a long and painfully unconvincing exposi- tion of the victory that Socialism had achieved, not on Wednesday over the Bomb, but on Tues- day over the Revisionists. Then he went through the motions of claiming the unilateralist vote as victory as had Mr. Mikardo, who also added an uneasy warning against 'shabby procedural wangles.' But somehow, the fire was burning low.

Their victory, in fact, is hollow, and by all the signs they know it. And now that the struggle is carried to another arena, where judgment and loyalty are in greater supply, there is even the possibility that what they may have got out of this day's work will. prove by next year to have been the foundation stone of total .defeat. For the leadership, which woke up on Wednesday morning as men who do not expect to see the sun go down, the Scarborough Conference of 1960 could have been a deal great worse.