The New Shape of Politics: British Labor in 1960
Plastrik, Stanley
There is a strong temptation to make the best of British Labor's defeat. After all, the popular vote shows a Tory margin of only 1½ million votes out of 30 million and a careful breakdown...
...No doubt, the right-wing would phrase things very differently, but these are among the major differences and now, in the post-election stock-taking, they are becoming sharper than ever...
...Will we be content to jog along as we are already doing, all the while sinking into a comfortable second-rateness...
...Because of its continued influence in the constituency parties, it has largely molded this "reaffirmation" into stress upon the desirability for nationalization of industry...
...And perhaps most important of all, there is the problem of generations: the fact that the militant "old timers" of Labor are aging and dying while their sons and daughters, even those who remain faithful to the party, see the world with usooy uzlfi aui to aaumiodun aq,L) •sp.zepums aagio Sq jai pue saAa .zagio at the Top lies not in the question, is there really room at the top?, but rather in its insight into the forces driving a son of the working class away from what his father had passed on as his heritage...
...For that matter, why shouldn't they...
...0 ELECTIONS COME AND GO, but this one has left in its wake the most acute problem the BLP has ever known—its whole future...
...Why then should socialists lose heart...
...In its moment of defeat we tend to forget this, along with the paradox that England's present Conservative government owes everything it lays claim to (full employment, social services, the Commonwealth) to the accomplishments of the first Labor Government...
...those who attained adulthood during the past ten years and whose material conditions of life have led to a relative contentment or, at the very least, fear of any political adventure...
...d) Finally and most important, at the present moment there is no will or drive for state power on the part of the working class anywhere...
...In fact, the privilege of ruling is precisely what it receives in exchange for these assurances...
...Most of them are heavily in debt...
...another to envisage a merger with the Liberal Party in which the image of socialism would, to all effects and purposes, be dead...
...Crossland seem to go in this direction...
...No sooner were the elections over than the autopsy began...
...Thomas Balogh, the socialist economist, writes in the New Statesman that the BLP has to do some thinking, not merely re-thinking...
...Besides, the facts argue against any quick Labor comeback: three defeats in a row, a declining portion of the popular vote from 48 per cent in 1945 to 43.8 per cent in 1959...
...much has been made of its TV "New Look," but that strikes me as both artificial and depressing...
...A general air of material prosperity meant an uphill fight and the BLP was set for anything but that type of campaign...
...What is needed is careful examination of the whole question which faces the Labor Party: how can a new and revitalized image of a socialist future be devised, so as to make sense to the loyal followers of the party and to appeal to the electorate...
...If the Labor Party's appeal to its own traditions accounted for much of its success, this rallying to the sacred name of Keir Hardie and the Red Flag cannot, in the modern world, suffice...
...It will be a sad day if the electorate plumps for the former...
...Jr NATIONALIZATION of the key industries, or to put it in other language, public ownership and management, is not the sacred goal which the Labor Party left-wing claims it to be, one cannot blandly dismiss it and still—at least without the most serious reflection—call oneself a socialist...
...In an article published in the New Statesman, September 26, 1959, the sociologist Peter Townsend summarizes these issues from a left-wing Laborite point of view: piecemeal reform vs...
...For this, neither a fundamentalist reaffirmation of public ownership nor an opportunist dismissal of it, will suffice...
...and (b) it is bewildered about ultimates...
...plans for bringing about many of these changes exist...
...To cry for more nationalization in the name of "socialist fundamentals," as does the left wing, is to obscure the issues...
...It is one thing to consider tactical alliances with the Liberals involving elections and immediate issues...
...It failed that is, to give nationalization a distinctively "socialist content...
...But by this standard the British Labor Party was in a weak position...
...In this sense, we are all involved in the discussion already underway in the British Labor movement...
...This would so fly in the face of the Labor Party's tradition and practice as to mean an entirely different kind of movement...
...Rhetoric formed the other extreme in the Labor appeal...
...others will be made in the future...
...a proposal for new taxation for further redistribution of income vs...
...This cannot be answered, of course, but the road back to political power now seems a long and hard one...
...The question of nationalization should be posed in terms of its usefulness for achieving precisely those ends that Gaitskill and Crossland propose...
...The Labor Party is turning inward and we may expect that there will now be a period of both sharp factional struggle and, more important, of serious intellectual debate...
...by Frank Cousins, a leader of the British Trade Union Congress endorsing a series of radical "dont's" (don't deal with the Liberals, don't drop nationalization, don't attack trade union militancy)—the left wing not only encourages the growing split between the parliamentary party and the local constituencies, it also ensures that the debate will be conducted in the terms of yesterday instead of today...
...Finally, the party was hurt by a running internal struggle over issues of the greatest seriousness...
...It would be folly to count upon some crass Tory stupidity...
...and here follows a sample from Socialist Commentary, the journal of the party's parliamentary leadership: In this election, therefore, the choice before the voters is unusually clearcut...
...In regard to the first, the Conservatives managed to sustain the popular image of Labor as the niggardly party devoted to restrictions, controls, priorities, and bureaucracy...
...right-wing emphasis upon expanding production and built-in incentives...
...The need for profound structural changes and reforms in British society has not vanished...
...Now the left wing of the Labor Party vigorously rejects such propositions and, in response to the electoral defeat, has recently launched a campaign for the "reaffirmation of socialism...
...May it not be necessary that for their new, pragmatic kind of socialism, for achieving the ends they specify—equality, social planning, the end of exploitative class feeling—nationalization will still remain necessary, at least with regard to certain basic industries...
...Not that this passage from our friends of Socialist Commentary contains anything but the truth...
...c) The issue of nationalization or public ownership of industry no longer arouses intense political feeling...
...That the election would be lost became apparent early in the campaign when a working class woman past her prime was quoted as saying, in bitter tones, "They [the young people] have forgotten about the thirties...
...The employment of public relations advisors and British-style hucksters has very little to do with the search for a new political image...
...Those—and I am no exception I6 —who once sneered at Fabian doctrine, English empiricism and moderation in the name of the "vanguard" party were forced to reexamine their views...
...The formal party position for renationalization of the steel industry, as well as road transport and large concerns under poor management, was quickly buried...
...attachment to social and moral principles...
...Well, the electorate did "plump" for the former...
...If we are to be perfectly honest about the problem, does democratic socialism as such, in any organized party or form, have a future...
...As a general rule we may say that the clearer a party's view of its goals are, and the sharper its vision of the future, then the clearer will be that party's self-image in the present...
...Either they are paying heavy mortgage fees for purchase of their homes, or they are paying off on time for household articles, modern accessories or even on cars...
...But thinking must start with an attempt to grasp reality...
...I would suggest the following propositions as a starting point: a) Those countries of Western Europe, including England, having the largest number of wage-earners and/or salaried people have never given more than 50 per cent of their vote to any democratic socialist party...
...In this sense, I would say that, as socialists, we should feel closer and more sympathetic than ever to our friends, indeed our party, in England...
...After all, the popular vote shows a Tory margin of only 1½ million votes out of 30 million and a careful breakdown indicates that, within many electoral districts, a shift of a few hundred or, at worse, a few thousand votes would have elected a Labor MP rather than his opponent...
...Foreign policy (Suez, Cyprus, Africa) met with indifference...
...There is only a desire for peace (coexistence), well-being (progress), consumption (economic expansion) and pleasure (private life...
...the freezing of labor legislation...
...Or do we want to infuse a new vitality into our society, a new direction and sense of purpose...
...Powerful though it is, the Labor Party finds itself now confronted by the very problems that have been troubling us in DISSENT these past five or six years...
...There is a strong temptation to make the best of British Labor's defeat...
...This means that anywhere up to one-half of the wage-earners and salaried population regularly vote for the conservative party of their country...
...But it is an outlook which supposes the virtual disappearance of urgent social and economic problems demanding concrete proposals from the Labor Party (education, housing, poverty), and perhaps more important, it means the abandonment of the vision of a socialist society qualitatively distinct from the present society, even though the steps taken toward it may be gradual and uncertain...
...expansion of the economy...
...The issues...
...In my opinion, nothing could be more misleading or likely to end in an exchange of banalities...
...it is just that it seems so representative of the self-defeating vagueness and the generally defensive stance which the Labor Party assumed throughout the campaign...
...What is more, this party proceeded to carry out a good part of its election program: India, the welfare state, socialized medicine, economic planning...
...There are a number of influential and intelligent leaders in the Labor Party who see the party's future as a sort of civil rights organization, held together by a vague adhesion to a set of spiritual values...
...the Conservatives have also learned from the Suez fiasco and their new leadership has a keen understanding of Britain's true weight in the world...
...As a result, the BLP campaign seemed to fall be tween two extremes: one made up of a series of comparatively minor and secondary points such as pensions, social security, etc., and the other consisting of vague programmatic abstractions...
...b) We must now acknowledge that a conservative government, provided it holds office during a period of economic stability and growth, can assure a reasonable state of well-being and social peace to the population it governs...
...Two contradictory feelings dwell within them: satisfaction at seeing their material prospects improving and fear of being unable to meet their obligations...
...THE CAMPAIGN itself provided a series of paradoxes...
...In a sense, Labor created the circumstances for its own defeat...
...By so posing the issue—by the Tribune, left wing organ, speaking of the need for "militant socialist spirit...
...Equally dubious is the tendency of the extreme right of the party toward some sort of fusion with the revived Liberal Party...
...Progressive Toryism" has learned this lesson...
...And of course they have...
...But to drop it simply because for the moment it has little popular appeal and because a good number of the right-wing intellectuals in the Labor Party don't have a particularly intense socialist outlook, is politically irresponsible...
...To them the Labor Party represented an invitation to attempt social and political experiments for which they felt no inclination...
...And who cannot remember the sense of elation we felt at the stunning defeat our party administered to Winston Churchill...
...It could not start any political offensive since (a) its immediate campaign issues had been stolen from under its nose (peace offensive, summit, etc...
...It is even more understandable if we reflect for a moment on what the British Labor Party has meant for democratic socialists since, let us say, its 1945 triumph...
...Stuart Hall, editor of Universities & Left Review, writes discerningly of the more "advanced" and sophisticated youth: A fast-talking, smooth-running, hustling generation with an ad-lib gift of the gab, quick sensitivities and responses, and an acquired taste for theModern Jazz Quartet...
...In regard to immediate issues, Labor was outmaneuvered...
...Nationalization of industry is a possible means toward several ends: toward effective social planning, toward the diminution of the power of private capital, toward the spread of democracy into economic life...
...Defeated forever, irrevocably...
...They are the 'prosperity' boys—not in the sense that they have a fortune stashed away, but in that they are familiar with the in-and-out flow of money...
...There is, I say, a strong desire among many of us to think along such lines...
...the party's alleged neglect of the remaining poor of England...
...Aneuran Bevan stated: The principal cause for Labor's check must be sought, in my opinion, in the attitude of the electors between twenty-one and thirty years of age...
...a charge that the party had entered a "truce" in regard to the continuing struggle for social equality...
...As disillusion with revolutionary Marxism (Leninism, Trotskyism) mounted in the 30s and 40s, the stock of British Labor rose correspondingly...
...The views of C.A.R...
...It would be folly to suppose that such changes are possible if nationalization is abandoned in advance, just as it would be folly to suppose that nationalization per se can insure them...
...The present left-right lineup, frozen as it tends to be around old formulas, is not very promising...
...Agreed...
...And may not nationalization, in the sense democratic socialists have understood it—that is, not as the vehicle of new bureaucratic controls but in the context of some form of workers participation in industrial life —touch closely upon such "abstractions" as the liberty and democracy about which Crossland correctly speaks...
...In essence, fulfilling of material needs and desires...
...This is partly the fault of democratic socialism itself since, in those nations where it either controlled or influenced nationalization (England, France and Western Germany) after the last war, it failed to convince either the workers or the population at large that there was much reason to choose a bureaucratic state nationalization from above as against the "normal" bureaucracy of private industry...
Vol. 7 • January 1960 • No. 1
