British Labor's Last Mass-Leader:

...Like his old bete noire, Winston Churchill...

...This is precisely the sort of symbolic issue which arouses atavistic loyalties out of all proportion to its significance...

...his capacity to exhilarate an audience, to get it to dream his dreams, was awe-inspiring...

...Involved is the delicate question of the relationship between the party conference and the Parliamentary Labor party: To what extent does a conference decision bind the actions of the party's MPs...

...alternative government of Great Britain...

...I have never admired the amalgam of cold-blooded opportunism and sectarian demagogy which Bevan utilized as his ideological springboard, but even his most confirmed opponents have never denied his superb talents and are forced to recognize the appalling gap left by his departure...

...moreover, it is just the sort of policy which tends to project among the electorate at large the disastrous image of the Labor party as a movement dominated by impractical, if not inane, sectarians...

...The party, Gaitskell feels, should modernize its doctrine of public ownership and, to symbolize its "new thinking," the old phraseology providing the goal of "common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange" should be revamped...

...Since the Labor defeat last fall— the third successive licking and the worst—all daggers have been unsheathed...

...This is a certain recipe for disaster...

...At the risk of seeming to embrace the "cult of personality," I would argue that British Labor's fundamental problem today is not the absence of a coherent, 24-karat socialist theory, but its lack of effective political leadership...

...BRITISH LABORS LAST MASS-LEADER By John P. Roche Death of 'Nye' Bevan leaves party without first-rate politician who can unify quarreling Socialist factions LONDON THE DEATH OF Aneurin Bevan comes as a bitter fillip to a Labor party already torn by internecine conflict and haunted by the prospect of remaining a permanent opposition...

...Political considerations aside, it is inconceivable that Gaitskell, George Brown, shadow Minister of Defense, Denis Healey, shadow Foreign Secretary (with Bevan's death, Healey has at least temporarily taken over this position), or Lord Clement Attlee, the de facto Labor leader in the House of Lords, could accept and support a policy of banning nuclear weapons...

...Whatever may have been his ideological drawbacks, he was the Welsh equivalent of a Mensch...

...Indeed, the one man capable of dealing with a runaway conference on its own terms and demagogically bringing it to its senses has just gone to his grave...

...The leadership seems to have lost touch with (if it has not bored) the movement: With the possible exception of James Callaghan, there does not appear to be a first-rate politician (one in touch with popular opinion rather than the anxieties that rack socialist circles in Hamp-stead) on the front bench...

...In a strange perverse way, they are incapable of that trust which alone can supply meaning and content to their intellectual aspirations—they are drawn to the stiletto as the alcoholic to the bottle...

...Ironically, never in its history has the party front bench been occupied by such intellectual talent as Gaitskell has mustered...

...It is a shame that in the course of his education Gaitskell never followed the sad career of that other great "clarifier," Eduard Bernstein...

...George Brown and James Callaghan also seem to be in the running, but Brown, a man cursed with aggressive sensitivities, has probably trod on too many toes, and Callaghan has probably weakened the very strong case that can be made on his merits by his American-style availability (pace Stuart Symington) as a "compromise candidate...

...But Gaitskell may well be casting a performance of C. P. Snow's The Masters rather than an JOHN P. ROCHE is Morris Hillquit Professor of Politics at Brandeis...

...Gaitskells position as leader is in no real jeopardy—there is no conceivable substitute—but he has contributed to his misfortunes by attempting to modify Clause 4 of the party constitution...

...This was to be expected...

...Yet, if the conference adopts this view, it will be extremely difficult for the Parliamentary Labor party to repudiate it...

...Nye" Bevan appears to have been the last of Labor's great mass-leaders...

...Gaitskell's enemies, such as Frank Cousins of the Transport and General Workers Union, R. H. S. Crossman and the Communists, rushed to denounce this betrayal of the glorious past...

...It begins to appear that a resolution calling for a British ban on nuclear arms will be passed by the party conference this autumn and Gaitskell will need all his resources and prestige to deal with this piece of pious hand-washing...

...But in Britain, as elsewhere in the West, as working-class discontent has withered away, socialist leadership has fallen more and more into the hands of intellectual mandarins to whom comradeship is abstract...

...His opponents in those unions, of course, led the attack, but the "backwoodsmen" picked it up...

...However great his other contributions may be, the clarifier is seldom an effective political leader...

...In logical, intellectual terms, Gaitskell's proposal was certainly sound, but it was a tactical disaster...

...But worse, it shattered his supporters: One right-wing trade union after another has rejected the proposal by overwhelming majorities after debates of an almost theological character...

...The main target has been Hugh Gaitskell, a brilliant, chilly isolate who has in fact done a fine job of leading the party in a period when history itself seems to have joined the anti-socialist conspiracy...

...A dour political analyst may suspect that there is an inverse correlation in politics between a movement's chances of attaining power and the intellectuality of its leadership...

...And if they refuse to trust each other, how can they expect to supply leadership to a democratic mass movement where collective trust is the essential ingredient...

...In a curious way, socialist movements—despite their heavy emphasis on theoretical considerations — developed strength on the foundation of human solidarity, of comradeship among the oppressed and deprived, rather than from principled precision...

...A political movement fundamentally appeals for em-pathetic trust, not for abstract, rationalized agreement...

...From the viewpoint of the Parliamentary leadership, banning nuclear weapons from British soil is absurd...

...But the choice of Bevan's successor as Deputy Leader may only exacerbate his problems...

...For a party conference to challenge the policy of the old leadership of Attlee, Ernest Bevin, and Sir Stafford Cripps was almost impossible (Bevin could even get his wretched Palestine policy through intact), but the Parliamentary leadership today is poorly equipped, politically speaking, to fight back...

...Union stalwarts who have not voiced a political sentiment for years wept in public for the soul of the party—Clause 4, which was probably unknown to most of them before the issue emerged, became enshrined in the Ark of the Covenant...

...With the ominous rumblings of the conference just over the horizon, Gaitskell needs help at the top...

...While intellectual considerations must play an important role in politics, politics is not at base an intellectual pastime...

...Bevan was essentially an Elizabethan figure, a man of heroic proportions, of passions—he had magic...

...There is no "natural" choice for this slot: Harold Wilson, a master of parliamentary fluff, seems to have the edge on the basis of his "old boy" status...

...If the party becomes identified in the public mind with the Aldermaston marchers, it will certainly be finished as an effective political force...

...Of course, socialist intellectuals believe in solidarity, but all too often the great dream of human comradeship has only served them as a convenient excuse for knifing each other...