BRITISH LABOR CHANGES COURSE
Rose, Richard
British Labor Changes Course by RICHARD ROSE London THE British Labor Party is moving away from its traditional Socialist emphasis upon nationalization. It is also moving closer to victory in the...
...Labor pamphleteers are attacking some phases of "The Establishment," or, as A.J.P...
...Socialists like Emanuel Shin-well and Jennie Lee are conservative in that they hold to the party's past dream of the future—a dream of a classless society achieved through wholesale nationalization...
...For years some of these same union leaders have spoken of the internal contradictions of capitalism...
...Union leaders give primary allegiance to their members, not to their political bedfellows...
...How long the unpredictable Bevan will remain quiet after the next election is hard to say, because at heart the only job he wants is Gaitskell's...
...A new pension scheme, which promises a worker half his average annual income upon retirement, is to be financed by heavy investment of compulsory contributions in common stocks...
...Since succeeding Clement Attlee two years ago he has won the respect of his colleagues in the House of Commons by his energy, his stability, and his skill at intra-party maneuvering...
...Gaitskell recognizes that Labor must woo the considerable group of floating voters...
...Americans need not worry about a Labor government overthrowing the Anglo-American alliance...
...This indicates the extent to which Labor Party leaders have convinced themselves that the managerial revolution has replaced the workers' revolution...
...Labor's present economic policy is based so strongly upon the presumption of continued economic prosperity that a drop in the country's highly vulnerable standard of living would produce political reactions...
...Many of them are Bevanites...
...At the Brighton conference this year Gaitskell had the backing of five of the six big unions on key issues...
...Inheritance taxes will go up...
...Ernest Jones, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, has pointed out that "The mine workers must be as independent of the National Coal Board as they were of the former coal owners...
...Party leaders have learned that a strike is still a strike, even when called by workers against a "workers'" government...
...As a member of the House he is kept in close touch with sentiment in the country at large, unlike some of the Socialist practitioners of "parlorthink...
...Their head, Aneurin Bevan, is now the very model of amiability, in one broad gesture bowing deferentially to Mr...
...Labor leaders appreciate the necessity of having powerful American forces engaged throughout the world at the present time...
...Gaitskell terms this change the best way s to reach the old Socialist ends of ; equality and industrial democracy...
...Labor, too, is committed to modification of the present class-oriented education system, although the plans are still vague...
...The party is pledged to token nationalization of water, a return to rent control, and re-nationalization of iron and steel and road transport...
...If an election were held tomorrow, the Labor Party would more likely win by default than by acclamation...
...Yet perhaps this interest in social politics is a tacit admission that the Labor Party has little freedom of action in the face of Britain's most urgent problems—productivity, inflation, the balance of payments, defense, and colonial devolution...
...Harold Wilson, the likely Chancellor of the Exchequer when Labor comes to power, has been vague about details but firm in assuring business that government shareholding—increasingly employed by Social Democrats in Scandinavian countries—will not be a backdoor means of nationalization...
...Gaitskell and simultaneously reaching out for the job of Foreign Secretary in the next Labor government...
...Taylor, an Oxford don, calls it, "The Thing...
...Only 18 months ago he was denouncing party "docility...
...A Conservative government's decision to have a "showdown" with the trade unions would encourge union militancy and lead to union demands for the next Labor government to crack down on industry...
...Now union leaders must face the internal contradictions of Socialism...
...The special interests of the trade union members are not always identical with the national interest...
...Since they do not produce much money or many votes, they are conciliated but not consulted...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, is engaged in special research In London...
...They do most of the organizational dirty work and much of the talking...
...Significantly a former Cabinet minister, Arthur Woodburn, has pointed out that what the electorate wants from the Socialists is a "businesslike" program...
...Several of his lieutenants have also been converted, and are happily dreaming of top Cabinet jobs...
...The new program is carrying the day because Gaitskell has captured the support of the two commanding elements in the Labor Party—the members of Parliament and the trade union leaders...
...The new program is meant as bait for the apathetic...
...This treatment of sanctified doctrine with judicious irreverence has caused some party members to complain of "selling a birthright for a mess of politics," but protest has not noticeably slowed the rightward process...
...Bevan scornfully said such a step would leave him, as Foreign Secretary, "naked and only fit for preaching sermons...
...rn Britain it makes quite a difference, because party leaders can and do guarantee passage of their proposals by parliamentary discipline...
...The Labor Party will sooner or later face another internal contradiction as a result of approving government ownership of stocks...
...It is difficult to tell why the fiery Welshman is curbing his tongue...
...The new Labor line is a defeat for those who are radical in national terms but conservative in party terms...
...Given a drastic change in the country's condition, Labor could swing sharply left, although the present platform has committed it to almost three years of reformist legislative routine...
...Gaitskell said at the conference, "Comrades, we do not want to satisfy a few thousand militant party workers at the risk of alienating more than half the electorate...
...Nevertheless, Hugh Gaitskell, the prospective Labor Prime Minister, has succeeded in committing the party to the radical course of de-emphasizing nationalization and emphasizing government purchase of stocks and bonds for income and capital gains...
...Someday a Labor government will find itself profiting as a minority stockholder in a firm with bad labor relations or in a firm having trouble with the government of a newly independent colony...
...While many of the evangelist Socialists are inclined to be proud of the old-fashioned gospel, the practical party politicians are not...
...At the present time Bevanites are leaderless as well as powerless because they have been decapitated, in effect...
...Party leaders say they cannot be specific about nationalizing other industries now because, lacking office, they lack information...
...Union leaders have found that a boss is still a boss, even when he has been appointed by a Labor government...
...They are radical, on the other hand, because this policy would, if put into effect, completely transform Britain...
...Nationalization, they hoped, would build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land...
...For decades anti-capitalism has been an article of faith in the Labor Party...
...What happens in fact is that six men representing the six largest unions together cast more than half the 6,830,000 votes in the party...
...Some have charged government shareholding will, at best, bring profits without responsibility...
...By-election trends have been runRICHARD ROSE, formerly on the staff of the St...
...Bevan, however, has a sentimental hankering to make Britain less of a shield for America and more a bridge between America and Russia...
...ing heavily against the government, but not that strongly in favor of Labor...
...But Gaitskell, asserting a conviction that "we are going to have a mixed economy for years to come," this year secured approval at the annual party conference in Brighton of a pamphlet that declares the great majority of the nation's large firms are serving the country well and need not be subject to detailed supervision...
...What talk there is about public ownership seems partly a ritual in honor of ancestral gods and partly a warning to British businessmen that the party will again fight capitalism if corporations flaunt the national interest...
...Now he is docile himself...
...Moderation has come upon the party in time for the next election...
...Socialist Commentary pointed out that Socialism has always been trying to reduce the capitalist's swag, not to share in it...
...Professor Arthur Lewis, a Labor-ite economist, has said, "Socialism is about equality...
...The change has not been made without comment...
...The policy documents have just enough vagueness to permit an abrupt change in direction if temperatures rise in the political boilers, putting pressure on the leaders to stage a "re-evaluation...
...So long as Gaitskell can offer the prospect of Cabinet berths, there is every reason to believe that party unity will prevail...
...The party proposes a national investment board to hold stocks received as death duties...
...Labor leaders are not only prepared to live with capitalism but also to like it—at least when its profits are shared with the national treasury...
...As Anthony Crosland, a theorist of the new Socialism of moderation, has pointed out, the most fruitful field for Labor endeavor now is not so much economic policy as social policy...
...The Labor Party is now behind a policy calling for Britain to suspend H-bomb tests temporarily as the first step in a drive for worldwide cessation of such tests...
...They can do this because each union casts its vote as a solid block...
...While Tory candidates are losing up to one-third of their 1955 supporters, Labor candidates have failed to register appreciable gains as most disgruntled Tories and independents vote Liberal or not at all...
...The backing of the major trade unions is important because major policy decisions are made by a vote of the party membership...
...In Herbert Morrison's words, "The Labor Party was not organized as a political suicide club...
...Undoubtedly Labor will seek to narrow income differentials by legislation curbing tax-free capital gains and the business practice of giving top employes liberal untaxed expense account allowances in lieu of heavily taxed salary increases...
...A person well versed in American politics might ask: "What difference does the party platform make...
...It is also moving closer to victory in the next British general election...
...In a dramatic debate at the October conference, the Party's still active pacifists called for Britain to show "moral leadership" by unilaterally abandoning the H-bomb...
...No one has suggested what Labor would do with its shares if the "inevitable" capitalist depression really did arrive...
...Furthermore, current planning within the Labor Party concentrates heavily upon pensions, schools, and rents, just those things that a British government can control and can use as voter bait...
...Its Socialist ideology, formulated in response to Nineteenth Century capitalism, has been discarded in favor of an approach geared to Twentieth Century capitalism...
...Today nationalization is here but Jerusalem isn't...
...The New Statesman has run a cartoon showing workers parading under the banner, "Workers of the World—Invest...
...This is the oligarchy of Parliament, aristocracy, finance, society, and the academic world that sets the tone of Britain's public life...
...The rank-and-file party members in the constituencies are more representative of the Socialist, contrasted with the Labor, element in the party...
Vol. 21 • December 1957 • No. 12
