British Labor's Crucial Meeting

...The only relic of the battle now is a modest paragraph in the Annual Report to the conference which tactfully seeks to draw a veil over the whole episode...

...This will probably go through without debate, though it is always possible that the victorious fundamentalists, and especially trade union leader Frank Cousins, will stage a brief, angry debate in order both to humiliate the revisionists still further and to warn them against any more such rash endeavors in the future...

...Lacking the militant Labor constituency representatives, it usually votes well to the right of the party conference—but this year the unilateralists were already assured enough block votes to defeat the platform, which supported the official policy of the Labor leadership...

...Even if some face-saving compromise were found, things would never be quite the same again...

...He would no doubt be challenged by some rival (perhaps Harold Wilson) fighting on the conference platform...

...By C. A. R. Crosland British Labor's Crucial Meeting Labor party policy is torn between left-wing militants and right-wing moderates London The 59th conference of the British Labor party, which opens today at the Spa Grand Hall in Scarborough, Yorkshire, may well prove to be the most fateful in the party's history...

...Moreover, some trade union leaders, conscious that Labor cannot win power for at least five years and agreeably surprised to find no sign of the expected Tory counter-offensive against the unions, have somewhat lost interest in Labor politics and have made less effort than usual to control their left-wing rank-and-file...

...the unilateralists would have suffered a severe rebuff...

...It now seems likely that Gaitskell, faced with such a situation, would not resign, but would offer himself for re-election to the leadership (which of course is by the Parliamentary group, not the conference)—on the strict understanding that despite the conference decision he would, if elected, continue to express a pro-NATO, anti-unilateralist policy...

...Thus, however partially, an important objective would be achieved: The Labor party would be seen by the country to be dominated neither by the block votes of the trade unions nor by an unrepresentative minority of left-wing activists...

...It was all right, apparently, to abandon all-out nationalization in practice: it was quite another matter to abandon the doctrinal, millennial commitment...

...First, what will happen if the conference, like the Trade Union Congress, passes two contradictory resolutions...

...Meanwhile the local constituency organizations, as in the past, are strongly for a left-wing, anti-Gaitskell defense policy...

...But one can speculate as to the consequences of the various possibilities by examining the background against which the conference is being held...

...Either way, however, the real decision has already been taken...

...The atmosphere would certainly be explosive...

...No doubt it can be partly explained by the emotional reaction to Labor's election defeat, a reaction which almost inevitably produces a swing to the left...

...Most political analysts believe that the Labor party, as at present organized, is on a declining electoral trend, due to underlying social and economic changes in British society...

...Middle-class standards and aspirations are spreading, and Labor's working-class image is increasingly an electoral liability as more people move—subjectively or objectively—up the social scale...

...This problem of dual roles scarcely arose in the past for the two bodies were seldom in conflict...

...Although his union had voted unequivocally for unilateralism, he persuaded his delegation (though only by his own vote) to vote both for the official resolution and the unilateralist one...

...But since Carron (or some other union leader) may do the same thing at the Labor party conference this week, the prospects for the Labor leaders are altered significantly...

...Most political analysts, as well as most moderates within the party, attributed Labor's defeat last October not to ill-chance or the exceptionally fine summer or the Queen's baby, but to more fundamental influences, two of which are directly relevant to the outcome of the conference...

...Paradoxically, therefore, a defeat for the leadership at the conference might not be unmitigated disaster—for from the resulting crisis and confusion there might, eventually, emerge a much-altered, radical Labor party attuned to the new realities of the 1960s...

...And, lastly, the sigh of relief and the longing for a quiet life after the recent crises which would inevitably follow a victory for the platform would create an atmosphere of comfort and complacency highly inimical to further changes in the party...

...The Parliamentary Labor group has, on the whole, responded to the changing mood: Just as it had a large "anti-Bevanite" majority in the past, so today it has a comfortable majority of moderates...

...It is against this background that we must consider the prospects for the Scarborough disarmament debate...

...At first sight this presages total disaster for the party...

...Angry resolutions poured into Transport House: trade union conferences, which would have resisted bitterly the nationalization of their own industries, went solemnly on record in favor of Classe 4: and the Labor C, A. R. Crosland is one of the British Labor party's most astute thinkers and parliamentarians...

...The largest single union, the Transport Workers, has been unilateralist ever since Frank Cousins succeeded to its leadership...

...As a result, both resolutions were carried, though to everyone's eyes except Carron's they were flatly contradictory...

...Neither he nor anyone else expected the storm which at once broke around his head...

...The Parliamentary leadership would have asserted at least some degree of independence and the policy-making role of the conference would be to some extent devalued...

...party, once lauded as the most flexible and empirical socialist party in the world, now showed itself to be the most dogmatic...

...Yet such an outcome would make the Labor party a laughingstock in the country...

...Gaitskell was forced to retreat, and in the end the entire endeavor was abandoned...

...This absurd result has hardly increased the esteem in which the trade union movement is held by the country at large...

...There has always been a strong pacifist wing in the Labor party, but the present trend goes far beyond this wing...

...And this fear was not exacdy diminished by the U-2 episode...

...Instead of the near-certainty of a defeat, there are now two other possibilities: victory for the platform (e.g., if Carron, despite his conference mandate, this time votes only for the platform), or again two contradictory resolutions...

...Both these factors focus attention on the respective roles, and the relative power, of the conference and the Parliamentary group...

...and the total subjection of the Parliamentary leadership to the union block votes and the left-wing militants of the conference would be patent for all to see...

...The past year has seen a marked swing toward "unilateralism" in the Labor movement...

...Convinced that the apparent commitment to all-out nationalization had been a major vote-loser, and a pointless one because Labor had long since abandoned any such policy in practice, he asked that it be revised...

...Second, the growing prosperity of the electorate has led to a marked retreat from extremist attitudes and only a rapidly diminishing minority now wants a militant left-wing policy...

...and the Parliamentary group's responsible, pro-NATO defense policy would have been formally endorsed for all the nation to see...

...Nor was this tide stemmed by Labor leaders' decision, after the Government's abandonment of the Blue Streak project last spring, to drop their previous support for an independent British strategic deterrent (a step long urged by such liberal, moderate papers as The Observer and The Economist...

...This represents the most subtle danger in the eyes of those who think that major structural changes are needed if the party is ever to recover from its decline...

...and a majority of trade union and constituency votes are now liable to be cast on the same side—against the Parliamentary leadership...

...Gaitskell would retain his position, without serious challenge, as leader of the party...

...What the final outcome of this would be no one can predict...

...They are convinced that the party will move from this trend only if major and radical changes can be made—in its class image, its basic doctrine, its organization and its internal distribution of power...

...Secondly, the leadership might win unequivocally, carrying its own resolution and defeating the unilateralist one...

...We should then have, for the first time in the party's history, a direct confrontation of the Parliamentary group and the conference...

...Whatever the reasons, unilateralism has gained ground rapidly inside the party during the past year...

...Two issues have dominated the debate inside the Labor party since its election defeat last October...

...For in no way did they waver in their support of NATO and the American strategic deterrent, and therefore the change had no appreciable effect on the unilateralists...

...Having lain in oblivion for many years, it was disinterred — perhaps unwisely — by party leader Hugh Gaitskell at last year's conference, held soon after the general election...

...At the last moment, however, the situation was dramatically altered by a totally unexpected action by William Carron, the right-wing Catholic leader of the engineers...

...and would seek to persuade the United States also to renounce the H-bomb, regardless of whether Russia did so or not...

...First, under the impact of the consumer-durables revolution and increased educational mobility, the number of voters who assign themselves automatically to the "working class" is gradually diminishing...

...Step by step...

...Yet in practice things might work out very differently...

...But to almost everyone's surprise it was joined this year by three of the other "Big Six" unions—the engineers, the railway-men and the distributive workers...

...still militantly left-wing, they are increasingly out of tune with the mood of the ordinary voter...

...It is not easy to say exactly why this trend toward near-pacificism has occurred in Britain but not in other Western European countries...

...and of course it would settle nothing...

...Moreover, it would be quite apparent to the country that the victory rested solely on manipulation of one of the big union's block votes (probably the engineers), and that the party's policy was being ultimately determined not by the Parliamentary leadership but by the unpredictable vagaries of conference voting...

...Thus the Party would face exactly the same damaging crisis next year and the year after...

...A reliable majority of right-wing trade union leaders, automatically casting their block votes of the conference on the side of the Parliamentary leadership and against the left-wing constituency militants, insured the victory of the former...

...Both sides would spend the whole of the next 12 months working and scheming for victory at the 1961 conference, and meanwhile the party would continue to present an appearance of utter confusion and division...

...The Trade Union Congress is traditionally the curtain-raiser to the party conference...

...Labor would then be formally committed to a muddled, near-pacifist defense policy, certainly alien to a large majority of voters...

...But today, with the emergence of Frank Cousins on the left and a revival of militancy in other unions, this historic alliance has partially collapsed...

...Unfortunately, though perhaps naturally, the more peaceful things are inside the party the greater this resistance to change, and the more fluid things are the greater the possibility of change...

...Hence, the more Labor's policy is openly determined by the block votes of the trade unions, and not by its representatives in Parliament, the more the party appears as a working-class party, and the less its electoral appeal...

...the nerve of the M.P.s might weaken over time under the pressure of their constituency militants...

...Gaitskell and his colleagues would either have to resign or recant...

...But at the moment the odds are heavily in favor of a Gaitskell victory under these circumstances...

...The first concerns Clause Four, the clause in the party constitution (drafted by Sidney Webb and Arthur Henderson in 1918) which commits the party to "the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange...

...But the local constituency activists at the conference have not responded similarly...

...The effect on the country would be most damaging, and the Liberals would gather a rich harvest of disillusioned Labor voters...

...there was also a sharp (though short-lived) move to the left after the catastrophic defeat of 1931...

...This is a word which means many different things to different people, but most typically it means that Britain would unilaterally renounce not only the independent British H-bomb (for which there is much to be said on both political and military grounds), but all nuclear weapons...

...A graduate of Trinity College, Oxford, and subsequently Lecturer in Economies there, he is also author of two widely read books, Britain's Economic Problem (1953) and The Future of Socialism (1956), and a contributor to many leading intellectual journals...

...But these changes meet with a colossal degree of resistance from the older, conservative elements in the party, who refuse to adapt themselves to the newly affluent society...

...In the short run, no doubt, this would ease the position of Gaitskell and the Parliamentary leadership, for they could argue that their policy had been endorsed, and in effect ignore the unilateralist resolution...

...The unilateralists, on any likely assessment of the votes, could lose by only a very small margin, and they would then simply redouble their efforts to win in 1961 or 1962...

...Vet on closer examination the position would still be far from ideal...

...One cannot speculate as to which is the most likely outcome, for the result will probably be in doubt up to the last moment...

...He is presently Member of Parliament for Grimsby...

...The second major issue—and the overriding one at this conference—will be disarmament...

...This, at first sight, obviously seems the ideal solution...

...would withdraw from its NATO responsibilities...

...There might, ironically, be another advantage to be derived from such a confrontation...

...Thus by the beginning of August the pundits prophesied a clear victory for the unilateralists at both the Trade Union Congress and the Labor Party Conference...

...Hence, again, the more Labor's policy is determined by the vocal militants of the conference over the moderates of the Parliament, the less the party's electoral appeal...

...The third possible outcome is clear defeat for the platform and victory for the unilateralists...

...Partly it is due also to the brilliant organizing efforts of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament—the most effective political pressure-group in Britain since World War II...

...Lastly, there is a genuine and deep-seated—though often muddled—fear that some incident might spark a nuclear conflagration...