British Labor's Defeat
P., S.
The British elections have created only a faint stir. For once, the expected took place largely as expected. A million and a half voters who in 1945 had supported the Labor Party simply...
...The right wing, consisting of younger technicians and "managerialists" who at many points overlap with the Young Tories, used the election as a means to step up their struggle to take over the party machine...
...The right wing of the party (Gaitskill and his friends) campaigned against the Bevanites...
...The Bevanites, who in some ways came off worst in the party's general humiliation, campaigned in dogmatic, bull-in-the-china-shop style...
...It chose a moment when the issues were blurred not only by a decided if temporary stabilization in the British economy itself, but also by an apparent world trend toward a stabilization of power relationships which passes for peaceful coexistence...
...That this is not easy we know only too well...
...British Toryism clearly outmaneuvered Labor on all fronts...
...in 1955 this militancy (diluted by neutralism and an approach to foreign policy that frequently bordered on crypto-Stalinism) proved a wet squib...
...S. P. Court Affirms Right to Travel The decision of the federal Court of Appeals in the case of Max Shachtman, chairman of the Independent Socialist League, against the Passport Division of the State Department has come too late for extensive comment in this issue of DISSENT...
...For once, the expected took place largely as expected...
...The Labor Party, its Fabian period at an end, has failed to develop a new outlook...
...Facing a world far more complicated and difficult than it or anyone else had ever imagined, the Labor Party has now the task of thinking out the meaning of socialist programs and values...
...The old Attlee leadership, using the bleached remnants of Fabian terminology, has managed to retain formal control of the party, but everyone knows that this is merely a temporary measure aimed at preventing an immediate party split...
...It skillfully picked both the time and the issues of the campaign...
...In 1951 the specific forms taken by Bevanite militancy (the stress on social welfare at home) could strike sparks...
...BEVAN'S CRITICISM THAT LACK Of militancy cost the British Labor Party the election of 1951 had considerable cogency, but it will not do this time...
...This important decision by the federal court proclaiming the right of all Americans to travel abroad freely is another welcome blow, among several recently struck by the traditionally conservative judiciary, against the increasingly arbitrary and arrogant actions of various government bodies...
...200...
...There are all kinds of youth in the Labor Party...
...The "prosperity" of England has made for the formation of a new labor aristocracy, and has encouraged middle-class sentiments among the sons and daughters of old-line trade unionists...
...Victory, of course, is far from assured and Shachtman still has a long way to go before obtaining his passport...
...The British elections have created only a faint stir...
...What is more, Labor itself dulled the issues by its continued acceptance of what is tantamount to a bipartisan foreign policy (a meeting "at the summit," manufacture of the H-Bomb as a deterrent to war, etc...
...The Bevanite house organ, Tribune, stopped at no antiAmerican vulgarity and even built its campaign around the most futile of strategies: Cry Havoc ("Six H-Bombs will destroy England...
...the left or pseudo-left (Bevan and his supporters) against the right wing...
...Aggressive militancy is no substitute for clarity of thought and program...
...Bevan flayed his opponents (in and out of the party) with more demagogy than intelligence...
...It is astonishing that, all things considered and not including abstentions, the actual shift in votes amounted to a mere two percent—which would indicate that the traditional loyalty of the British workers and other Labor Party supporters, while not as intense as it was ten years ago, was still there...
...Within a decade since its exhilarating victory of 1945 the leading socialist party of the world has lost its political dynamism...
...The Workers Defense League and lawyer Joseph L. Rauh brought the case to court...
...The Bevanite rebellion, at first so dynamic and hopeful, has bogged down in feuds, spite and phrases...
...at least it retains something of the democratic and moral tone of tra ditional socialist belief...
...the note by William Newman in this issue, whether one agrees or disagrees (as I do) with its political emphasis, similarly points to some of the difficulties facing the British Labor Party...
...THE TOTAL EFFECT OF THE STRUGGLE among the three loose groups within the Labor Party was to weaken if not paralyze its campaign and to expose the confusion and uncertainty that is today characteristic of almost all its leaders, left, right or center...
...Labor Action reports that the Attorney General has now offered the ISL a hearing, the first of its kind, on its listing...
...As for the social program of the Bevanites, decidedly underemphasized in this election, it could not now exert the impact it had in 1945, not only because the Conservatives have retained the essential features of Welfarism, but because they were substantially helped by the favorable economic situation of the last few years...
...The Tories have a practical scheme which, for the moment, "works...
...while the center group (Attlee and the oldsters) campaigned not at all...
...Why this should be so has been discussed in articles that have appeared in DISSENT over the past two years...
...The lesson...
...Bevan simply failed to consider how deeply the mood and outlook of the English people had changed since 1945, nor why these changes had taken place...
...But as for finding a new road for the party, it has nothing more to offer than the two groups—perhaps even less, since Gaitskill has his managerial perspective and Bevan his militant rhetoric, while Attlee has only his unchallenged personal decency...
...But through this case, which was largely ignored by the press before the decision, a road has at least been opened and, perhaps more important than the passport issue itself, a challenge to the infamous "subversive organizations" list has been launched...
...Here only a few words are necessary about the more immediate aspects of its defeat...
...Another, perhaps more decisive element must be mentioned: the split within the Labor Party itself...
...This is a fact of vast importance...
...This may have been calculated to win the praise of American journalists as a token of "responsibility," but was hardly a means of staking out clear issues upon which to arouse the British voters...
...Still, this lack of fighting campaign material cannot by itself account for Eden's victory...
...Nor does the suggestion of the aging centrists that the party revive itself by "putting youth into the leadership" help out...
...He campaigned in accordance with an image of himself, not in accordance with an analysis of England...
...And meanwhile the Conservatives, with a neat assist from the Eisenhower administration, took away the main demand of the Bevanites—a "meeting of the Big Four at the summit...
...As a result, much of the urgency with which social reforms were formerly advanced was no longer felt, either by the party speakers or by the party supporters...
...A million and a half voters who in 1945 had supported the Labor Party simply abstained from the ballot, thus allowing the solidly mobilized Conservatives to treble their margin in the House of Commons...
...Yet we must remember that twelve million people voted for the party that is identified with democratic socialism...
...By comparison to both the Bevan and Gaitskill groups, the Attlee center would now seem to merit a bit more sympathy than before...
...But in England at least the need is real: a great movement of socialist inclination remains as one of the two political forces in the country, and this very fact gives the problem of socialist revaluation a reality and urgency it cannot quite have in America...
...Their noisy anti-Bevanism is a barrage behind which they prepare for something more consequential: to demolish (or retire) Attlee and the party center...
...If the divisions within the party ruled out campaign effectiveness, the nature of these divisions rules out, for the present, the hope for political rearming...
...Nonetheless, the weaknesses of the center group within the party, at which he kept hammering, is incontestable...
...Which youth...
Vol. 2 • July 1955 • No. 3
