The British Left:

...The trade unions' antics regarding foreign policy will inevitably accentuate their own present unpopularity...

...They are enjoying this contemporary era of car ownership, personality expression and what I can only describe as "middle-classness...

...It is clear from both papers that Labor's crisis is partly due to Tory success in claiming to be the source of British prosperity and partly due to out-of-date issues and unfashionable party images...

...Crosland's "Can Labour Win...

...The Soviet record of misrepresentation and of violence, on the other hand, seems to be regarded as a fact of life, like Stromboli or a typhoon, something with which there can be no argument...

...This has precipitated severe strains on some of its allies and well-wishers, and has led some critics to challenge the honesty of the movement...

...The national mood at present is certainly non-ideological, a situation which penalized Labor...

...Again, it is the right-wing intellectuals who endorse a merger with Europe's economy, in company with the Liberals and a much larger group of Tories...

...Drawing on the studies of Mark Abrams and others, Crosland shows that Labor's decline as a vote-getter is serious and will get worse unless remedial steps are taken soon...

...The tone of a recent book by a New Left supporter, Dennis Potter, entitled The Glittering Coffin (London, 1960), gives unintentional aid and comfort to such critics...

...system, a new and powerful European Common Market, and the Soviet East...

...but not, as Crosland has pointed out, at the price of political obsolescence...

...and Soviet Russia, and 3)—and least—guard British vital interests...

...The present prosperity is real, if inadequate and uneven...

...The left wing complains that Britain is too comfortable and that this accounts for the public disinterest in longrange planning...

...Some serious thinkers in Labor's Left remain dissatisfied with the New Left, finding that although it represents a strong drive of young idealism, it is also fuzzy, negative and anti-political...

...Toward the first group, the Parliamentary Labor party has been cool...

...A revivified Labor press is another immediate need as evidenced by the fact that the Daily Herald's impact and circulation are both declining...

...The New Statesman makes unilateral nuclear disarmament a dreary argument...

...It may be a somewhat masochistic phenomenon of anti-imperialism in an era of declining imperalism, or perhaps it is a genuine cri du coeur in an age of dangerous complacency...

...The old class-conscious Labor party voter is not affected by this, but he is being replaced in the population by "sociallyambivalent, fluid, cross-pressured voters...

...On these subjects he has contributed to various learned journals (such as Journal of Modern History, Pacific Historical Review, Far Eastern Survey, etc...

...The consumption pattern is blurring class distinctions, especially among younger voters shifting into new towns, and among workers in the newer service trades and industries, the latter with a high ratio of staff to operatives...

...Materials for this article were collected on recent visit to England with the aid of research funds granted to Colgate University by the Carnegie Corporation and the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation...

...The Labor Left, ranging from the small extreme Victory for Socialism group through the Tribune group and followers of Crossman and some center members, is fighting hard and so far successfully to retain the Labor socialist character...

...Full employment and the Welfare State are now taken for granted and the Tories now even get some credit for their continuance...

...State Department and the Pentagon for almost the whole of the cold war situation and its attendant crises...

...Its influence among working people is difficult to appraise, but New Left adherents have been active in preaching the related anti-bomb movement in workingclass areas...

...Even the Co-operative Movement, by its unprogressive policies, does damage to the Labor party at election time...

...How this will affect the larger group of young voters remains to be seen...

...Trade unions seem to be steadily growing less popular in Britain, and this affects voters...

...Since then the Labor party Conference at Scarborough has turned sharply left, has restated the authority of the Conference and Executive over the parliamentary leadership, has given a thumping paper majority for unilateral disarmament, making it clear that the embattled Left is determined to unseat Gaitskell from leadership of the Parliamentary party and to make Labor—and if possible, Britain—neutralist...

...The literature of the Left gives evidence of confusion and schism...

...Enemies of Labor associate the party with nationalization, austerity and controls...

...He points out that there are still issues to be settled and he lists the following for a start: land-ownership, housing, education, a fair distribution of profits and of leisure and the general battle for equal opportunities...

...The party and the trade unions must initiate a program of up-to-date public relations...

...Crosland calls on the Labor party to look for issues which have meaning in the context of the '60s, and lists several as possibilities: 1) equal educational opportunities, 2) better town and country planning, 3) greater social service aid to right the imbalance between public and private spending, 4) more protection for consumers against the large producing interests, and 5) world disarmament and control of nuclear weapons...

...Society has changed...

...But he offers no solution regarding the large, divisive issues of nuclear weapons, NATO and British national defense, the future of socialism and nationalization...

...Colored by cultural isolationism and a defensive chauvinism which is anti-European, anti-Soviet and above all anti-American, they seem to have little relation to the old radical socialdemocratic internationalism...

...Long periods in opposition, Crossman feels, are inevitable and necessary, and not unhealthy as long as the Left in Britain remains a constant dynamic challenge to Government and does not sell its soul just to get elected...

...One of the chieftains of the Aldermaston movement, the Reverend Donald Soper (lately of Kingsway Hall in London and now in a pulpit in Notting Hill), makes a point of emphasizing the religious character of the campaign which he feels is often intentionally ignored by critics...

...The realistic policy for Britain, it then follows, is: 1) to avoid Britain's involvement in nuclear war...

...This is expected to replace the present wrong-headed but incurably lively, stratified British capitalism, not by revolution but by conversion, possibly abetted by disarmament, neutralism and depression...

...But it faces unavoidable complications, resulting from vague leadership, and a mixed character, resulting from a fusion of Marxists, pacifists, socialists and assorted undergraduates...

...This is an interpretation which evokes the spirit of the old Utopian Australian radicals far more than of the Levellers and Chartists with whom some of these young people identify themselves...

...The Labor newspapers are unimpressive and uninspired—and one must look to the independents, the Guardian and the Observer, for intelligent criticism of politics...

...This crisis may help to integrate CND, which has up to now grown slowly for lack of an organized opposition, and because of public apathy regarding the nuclear question...

...Some usually reliable TUC MPs and leaders have balked at the attempt to modernize the Labor party along the lines indicated by the class shifts and economic changes in Britain...

...2) disengagement in Europe...

...Soper makes the point that much of this support represents Quakers, Methodists, Anglicans and Catholics, in addition to Buddhists and others of many faiths...

...or—given sufficient international anarchy—the messianic emotionalism of the Aldermaston marchers may capture the British Left...

...Planning as a technique of national growth is out of fashion...

...The New Left Group, which centers on the New Left Review (previously the Universities and Left Review), seems to feel itself faced with this dilemma: how to equate idealism with action, and still remain outside the conventional structures of persuasion and power...

...A larger, stronger staff should be built up at Transport House...

...withdraws to become an isolated island of prosperity, Britain, he feels, will have to come to terms with the Soviet world...

...He adds the comment that during the first CND demonstrations, the Home Office, remembering Marie Antoinette, strengthened the guard at Buckingham Palace...

...and 2) disillusioned Communists and fellow travelers who abandoned Communism at the time of the Soviet repression of Hungary...

...One may say that a "vulgar detribalization" in the best sense of the phrase is taking place...

...He feels that the Labor party has used nationalization as a vague threat, now calling for state controls of this industry and now for another...

...Crossman's paper opens with a denunciation of the right-wing revisionists for seeking to change the objectives and the role of the Labor party, to make Labor an alternative team or shadow government, not anti-establishment but within the establishment, a sort of British version of the U. S. Democratic party...

...But the recent record of young voters generally indicates that they reject the old class image of the Labor party, and respond favorably to the new money-oriented class structure, to an increase of private enterprise and a deemphasis of welfare state planning...

...This attack on Gaitskell's foreign policy position is in one sense the price he must pay for supporting the right-wing revisionists' attempt to rewrite Clause Four of the party constitution and to weaken the working-class image and character of the party...

...Its supporters include many of the New Left, a number of Left-Labor MPs in or on the fringes of the Victory for Socialism group, and considerable elements among trade union leadership, and beyond this a good many thousands of young and old of all classes and regions of the United Kingdom...

...AMONG THE RECENT group of Fabian Tracts concerned with Labor's schisms, two are particularly noteworthy: R.H.S...

...These developments may weaken Labor's appeal to the public—an appeal which has been fading through the past three general elections...

...Crosland feels that there is little time left to argue about this...

...The idealistic tradition would not be lost, and would stand in reserve for a possible period ahead when the strong materialism of the moment has receded...

...He argues that the Eastern totalitarian world has quietly been winning the political and social race for world mastery and that Britain will sooner or later find that, as the Soviet bloc has claimed, nationalized industry is more productive, efficient and capable of expansion...

...In this situation Crosland feels that the Labor party must change its image—but not its principles—and this is not an easy task...

...It is stated clearly in two pamphlets: Laborite MP Frank Allaun's "New Moves in the ?-Bomb Struggle," and John Rex's "Britain Without the Bomb...

...Gaitskell is an exceedingly able man, but he has never had the charisma which only Aneurin Bevan among the senior ranks possessed...

...The duel between Crossman and Crosland has caused alarm and has led to attempts at compromise such as the plan produced by Morgan Phillips, the secretary of the Labor party...

...The Holy Loch dispute may test this opinion...

...Charles S. Blackton is Professor of History and Director of Foreign Area Studies at Colgate University, and his major areas of interest have been Great Britain, the Commonwealth of Nations and the contemporary Far East...

...But Crossman's real pitch is the case for nationalization...

...One may suspect that the Left, after nine years out of office, has almost acquired the habit of being in opposition...

...3) no nuclear arms for Germany...

...As Crossman sees it, only an immediate shift from private oligopoly to nationalized industrial power can make this inevitable concession less than a crushing disaster...

...As the last slowly takes more power and the U.S...

...The proposals in the field of international affairs, however, seem to ignore Britain's security and economic situation...

...It has probably attracted some young intellectuals...

...bomber bases in Britain...

...But he adds that, by 1964, the Tories may lose their claim to a prosperity which will by then have become a matter taken for granted...

...The view is advanced by some British radicals that Britain is at root a conservative society, which turns to the reform Left only briefly after severe crises...

...Among such beneficiaries of Britain's prosperity, the trend is to register Labor and vote Tory...

...UP TO THE PRESENT, radical-minded young people in Britain have shown a tendency to reject the formal political alternatives and even politics itself...

...Discounting a good deal of unfair criticism of the New Left, one must point out that their aims are not always anchored to cause and effect...

...4) a ban on nuclear tests...

...This has intensified a long-standingmalaise in the structural aspects of the Labor party, specifically: a profound disagreement on the question of where the power to make fundamental party policy resides...

...Voting in Britain is determined by: 1) social class position, 2) people's general view and satisfaction with regard to the society in which they live, and 3) the party images...

...The Parliamentary Labor party must be granted direct representation on the Labor party National Executive...

...The Fabian Tracts are generally excellent, presenting a variety of positions...

...The voters identify the Conservative party with higher wages, freer spending and improved living conditions...

...Furthermore, this tendency carries over to personifying the Americans as the State Department or Joint Chiefs of Staff...

...On the other hand, the Parliamentary party still reluctantly accepts Gaitskell's mandate to support NATO and reject the idea of unilateral disarmament...

...Trade unions need to present themselves effectively to the public, to curb their growing unpopularity...

...Socialist Commentary, in contrast, is lively but reflects mainly the right-wing positions...

...The image of the Labor party, as Crosland points out, is not a vote-getter...

...There may well be industries which should be nationalized but at present there is no clear evidence that they should be...

...But the confusion has grown thicker...

...Alternatively the New Left may finally coalesce as an independent left-radical center of criticism—the preference of older Marxists in the movement...

...Since the 1959 election Gaitskell and the revisionists have repeatedly tried to free the Parliamentary party from what they feel is the tyranny of the party conference and executive and from excessive influence of the Labor constituencies and trade unions which tend to impose traditional socialist views, and to reassert the working-class and trade union character of the Labor party...

...The recent setback for Gaitskell and the intellectual revisionists seems to provide no solution for the dilemma of the British Left...

...The New Leftists call for a socialist, egalitarian society, Marxist but non-violent...

...Both CND and the New Left are reactions to the failure and disunity of the Labor Party...

...Crosland's paper is both better written and more tightly reasoned, and he sticks to his subject: How Labor should try to realize its basically socialist aims in practice by working to win the next general election...

...Originally committed to a policy of simple denunciation of nuclear weapons, it has edged over to the position of rejecting NATO...

...The CND argument at its strongest is simply that everyone is really anti-bomb...

...He might well have added a sixth: entrance into the European Communities...

...But the CND has a program, the only important plan advanced by any group not associated with the parties in Britain at present...

...Its support derives from two groups: 1) undergraduates who want a new radical program...

...The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, annually dramatized by the Aldermaston marches, is, in contrast, a rather dynamic phenomenon and the nearest thing to a grass-roots movement in Britain...

...Unity through compromise has been recently attempted by Morgan Phillips, the party secretary...

...Supporters identify Labor with full employment, fair shares, the Welfare State and the National Health Service...

...This means careful studies, carefully checked...

...This, he feels, would be a tragic price to pay for attempting to live in the 1960s in terms of the 1930s...

...Labor, then, must re-emerge as "a broadly-based national, peoples' party," no longer solely a one-class interest...

...CND is, in fact, a source of deep embarrassment to Labor and, in the words of Desmond Donnelly, MP, has become "the soft underbelly of the British Left...

...Although the CND structure is rather loose, it seems well organized for its purposes and is capable of expanding into a groundswell of mass protest in the event of a crisis...

...The cult of character seems not to interest them, nor does the class war...

...They do suggest that Britain align itself with India, Ghana and Yugoslavia as a leader of the uncommitted nations...

...If faced with a choice of voting for Konni Zilliacus (extreme left), Crossman (left) or Crosland (rightwing) they might reject them all and abstain from voting...

...The movement remains simple and emotional, and until recently has not been involved in additional issues...

...It is worth taking a look, then, at the independent and still isolationist young groups to which Labor's left is now directing an appeal...

...The New Left may become a force in the Labor party if Labor turns left again, since Labor is courting youth...

...Crossman challenges this approach and the theory of pendulum swing in British elections—which, he declares, has been almost inoperative since 1884...

...Tory voters see their party as the symbol of lower taxes, free enterprise and patriotism, and foes of the Tories point out their cloven hoofs —unemployment, big business in the saddle and a record of fighting Welfare State measures which the public has nevertheless wanted and appreciated...

...Within the Parliamentary party, the struggle has focused on the two issues: 1) a national defense policy for Labor, and 2) the continuation of a socialist policy of nationalization in the party constitution...

...An emotional commitment of the Left to the ideas and especially the phrases of the '30s and an equally emotional tendency at moments of crises to judge the cold war in terms of the 19th-century class war has defeated the modernizers of Labor's right wing, and has made acceptance of the Gaitskell position on defense seem uncertain and probably temporary...

...The working-class character is a drawback in a society where white collars will soon equal in numbers the sweatier blues...

...Over 40 Labor MP's have endorsed unilateral nuclear disarmament and they have been joined by such trade union leaders as Frank Cousins...

...Presumably they want a fresh deal, a new analysis, modern values...

...The Labor party must stop acting as if it opposes prosperity and make intelligent proposals for better distribution of the new affluence...

...Rex declares that the Macmillan Government's view of accommodation with Russia as analogous to appeasement of Hitler is a "wrong application of lessons learned too late...

...He estimates that the Labor party will lose approximately 2 per cent of its voters in each succeeding election, and will—if the present course of chaos and division continues—throw the future opportunity to· the Liberal party...

...What, then, has happened to leadership in the Parliamentary Labor party...

...Lack of rigidity has given rise to the view that CND is in fact really a general social protest, powered by the new working-class undergraduate and don who resent the survival of social barriers at the universities and in other areas of modern British life— barriers which have grown taller since 1951...

...Their energies have been drawn off into such activities as the New Left groups or the allied Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (the "Aldermaston" movement), both somewhat chauvinist and isolationist...

...To win re-election Labor must become a unified national party, but without becoming politically obsolete The British Left By Charles S. Blackton The Labor party and the British Left generally suffer from being the outsiders in an era of prosperity and of public disinterest with issues...

...Britain will have to choose among the U.S...

...Only periodic great crises let in radical governments, he finds, and they lose their mandate from the public usually within the first five years...

...Class lines are becoming blurred and opportunity is replacing security somewhat as the individual objective...

...The recent victories of Labor's left-wing in the TUC and Scarborough suggest that an attempt is being made particularly to bring young radicals and intellectuals back into the Labor camp...

...At present, nationalization is a common symbol of Labor to a growing number of voters along with other unpopular images such as austerity, controls, inflation and bureaucracy...

...Such are some of the steps which would modernize and make effective again the Labor party image in Britain...

...But Labor will probably not face another general election for several years, and its strategists hope to recover some lost ground among voters in general and among the younger generation in particular...

...More strong young candidates—especially from trade unions, which represent the emergent social groups—are needed in a house representation which is now on an average older than that of Government's party...

...The second (CND) may grow into a future mass movement, but Parliamentary Labor dares not exploit it...

...Phillips has drafted a program for democratic socialism...

...Some illustrations of the New Left position as stated in Out of Apathy (edited by E. P. Thompson) indicate a deep desire to plan above the belly level, and to organize a society dedicated to human dignity and creativity...

...Bevan's death has removed the last working-class leader and has in consequence temporarily reduced the significance of the Labor party...

...Several contradictory programs have been proposed to heal the party illness, notably those of R. H. S. Grossman, C. A. R. Crosland, and of the small extreme left-wing Victory for Socialism group...

...2) act diplomatically to avert nuclear war between the U.S...

...This may be an aspect of the movement, but there is reason to believe that much of the young strength of CND is idealistic—rather than socially embittered or frustrated...

...Briefly, the program comprises several points: 1) Unilateral nuclear disarmament for Britain...

...The Labor party is solidly anti-Communist, but its left wing is in a mood to be periodically deceived by Soviet propaganda, a reaction usually followed by a retreat to a more rational position...

...Past views also seem to govern Labor's negative reaction toward British entry into the European Common Market, which it is claimed would be at the price of both the British economy and that of the Commonwealth and their interacting interests...

...Upon the outcome of this contest rests the future of British radicalism...

...he calls for a revival of the enthusiasm of the '40s, its creed and militant idealism, to be combined with comprehension of the conditions of the '60s...

...All this while the Tories have annexed the image of prosperity "along with the Queen, the Union Jack and the Deity...

...Liberal critics add the harsh comment that ferment among second-class intellectuals is rarely significant in the long run...

...The literature of CND, as also much of the New Left literature, is marred by a tendency to blame the U.S...

...If no accommodation is reached within the Labor party in all its aspects, a new radical creed may emerge from the young...

...The Left is seriously divided within itself on specific issues such as unilateral disarmament, preservation of the nationalization clause in the party constitution, the allocation of power within the party structure and the question of leadership within the Parliamentary Labor party...

...It has strengthened the hold of the trade unions and left socialists on the party, but both of these elements are unpopular among the voting public...

...Labor needs unity...

...The recent Trades Union Congress conference managed to pass: 1) a resolution endorsing unilateral nuclear disarmament—and by implication a move away from NATO and into neutralism, and 2) a contradictory resolution supporting Hugh Gaitskell's foreign policy position which approves nuclear weapons, NATO and, for the present, U.S...

...Labor as a whole is badly riven and nothing is really decided...

...Even though Britain is—on paper—the most socialist major state in Europe, which may constitute an impediment to merger with Western Europe, the British temper is capitalistic, consumer-centered and politically rather insular...

...The New Left people are active on the New Statesman, in the Fabians and Young Fabian groups and in print generally, as well as particularly active in the Aldermaston movement (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), which aims at unilateral disarmament for Britain and secession from NATO...

...For this group Blake's New Jerusalem had better have central heating...

...The theory continues as follows: The Aldermaston marches, non-Soviet Marxism and Gandhian non-violence are expected to lead to unilateral nuclear disarmament, Britain's withdrawal from "Natopolis," and a period of British isolation, followed by hard times, unemployment, another bloodless socioeconomic revolution and the ultimate emergence of an egalitarian Britain...

...So its captains have no choice but to continue their civil war—with all the penalties which this implies—until they become an effective, national political party...

...This opinion is nourished on the belief that the partisans of the New Left Review are principally able but chagrined undergraduates of working-class origin who have turned left because they feel left out of the still-stratified society of universities...

...A far larger group of non-radical new and recent voters seem to be—for the time being—beyond the reach of the Left...

...The CND claims some 450 branches and about 100,000 followers...

...But since they agree on little else, these papers deserve summary...

...Issues such as Cuba or the missile bases and NATO are thus explained easily as part of a persistent American threat to world peace...

...and he has also been awarded Fulbright and Social Science Research Council grants to study the areas on the spot...

...He warns that these issues will be hard to capture—since the Tories have been shrewdly moving leftward since 1951, disappointing many Socialist supporters who expected a Tory shift toward reaction...

...The climate has become favorable for recruiting by the insurgents of the Left and has resulted in the shift of trade union support toward the anti-NATO position, the anti-bomb movement and the anti-Gaitskell camp...

...Crossman's "Labour in the Affluent Society" and C.A.R...

...But it should be added that, as Raymond Williams stated to me, the young members of the New Left are not really partisans of the left wing of Labor as it now stands...

...Yet the British, a pragmatic people, may be wise to hold to the position that planning must satisfy national needs rather than merely fulfill certain ideological demands of the left wing of socialism...

...Rejection of NATO is beginning to emerge as a CND policy because, it is claimed, NATO is nuclear and nothing else...