Labor at Dunkirk

...The main reason for Labor's loss of popularity in the '50s was that more and more working-class people moved subjectively, even if not objectively, into the middle class...

...But it suddenly became an issue the moment Gordon Walker appeared there—not because of anything he said or did, not even because his Conservative opponent deliberately exploited it, but simply because he was Gordon Walker...

...But in spite of the differences between them, both results suggest—as the General Election also suggested—that the familiar politics of class affiliation in England is beginning to give way to a new and much more volatile politics...

...At Smethwick the name Gordon Walker became a Pavlovian bell summoning up all the fears and hatred involved in the immigration issue itself...

...But in those constituencies it seems likely that the Tories have already reaped all the advantage from the immigration issue which is there to be reaped, and in most of the rest of the country it is not a genuine social problem at all...

...And once it became an issue, Labor voters in Leyton reacted as Labor voters at Smethwick had reacted before...

...For the one solid and undeniable fact about those two by-elections is that thousands of traditional Labor voters either stayed at home or in some cases voted Conservative...

...But this has not been because the actions themselves have been mistaken or unnecessary...

...Leyton could turn out to be Labor's Dunkirk rather than its Waterloo...

...AFTER THE LEYTON DEFEAT Labor at Dunkirk By David Marquand LONDON Three days after the January 21 Leyton by-election in which the Labor Foreign Secretary was dramatically defeated in his race for what had previously been regarded as a safe Labor seat, a cartoon by "Haro" appeared in the Sunday Observer...

...The moral of Leyton seems to me to be the same...

...In spite of its immediate economic difficulties, the government has managed to lay the foundations of a long-term economic plan, and it may even succeed in working out an acceptable incomes policy...

...In one sense, then, Leyton tells us only what we knew already: that if colored immigration becomes an issue in an election, some Labor voters are likely to be seduced from their traditional allegiance...

...Immigration does not seem to have been a subject of unduly great concern at Leyton before the byelection...

...It is not a new feature, however, and it contains no new dangers for the Labor Party...

...It was an obvious comment, for Labor's promised "Hundred Days" of dynamic government came to an end on the day the cartoon was published...

...But this does not mean that they have been a failure...

...In most constituencies immigration has been an important issue only where there is an immigrant community in the area confronting people in their daily lives...

...The reasons for Labor's decline were not the same in both constituencies...

...At the moment of writing, the answer is still wrapped in mystery...

...And the reason why it failed to win a landslide victory as it did in 1945 was simply that its new votes from the professional class coincided with this loss of old votes from the working class...

...And he had lost his seat solely because the local Conservatives had fought the election on the issue of colored immigration...

...Most British voters vote according to what they believe to be their class affiliation...

...The most effective argument, of course, is not talk but action...

...In the end these less spectacular achievements matter infinitely more for the future of this country than all the clamor about the import surcharges and the headlines about the run on the pound last November...

...In spite of Wilson's panache on reaching Downing Street, the Hundred Days have inevitably had a slightly defensive air about them...

...For the Leyton by-election took place solely because Patrick Gordon Walker had lost his seat at Smethwick in the General Election...

...This was true of Smethwick in last fall's General Election, and it was true of many other midland constituencies where Labor did relatively badly...

...So far Labor's attempts to argue by action have been less effective than most Labor supporters must have hoped...

...Whether it was also an apt comment remains to be seen, and the answer to that question is now the most urgent topic on the political agenda of this country...

...It is necessary to argue and to persuade...

...Some Labor voters were equally disturbed about the reason which had made it necessary for him to be persuaded at all...

...in which their previous MP, a popular figure in the constituency, had been persuaded to make way for a stranger who had just been defeated somewhere else...

...And the Foreign Secretary was followed to Leyton by a motley crew of racists who tried to break up his meetings and who provoked a running sore of headlines in the press...

...Even so, one point seems fairly clear...

...It had no caption and showed only two mute figures: on one side Harold Wilson, on the other Napoleon...

...It won because its traditional "cloth cap" image was, to some extent, replaced by the new "technocratic'- image projected by Harold Wilson...

...Many Labor voters were deeply disturbed by the way DAVID MARQUAND writes for the Manchester Guardian, Encounter, the New Statesman and the Spectator, as well as other journals in England...

...But if the immediate electoral significance of Leyton is hopelessly obscure, the long-term implications are clearer...

...The moral of Dunkirk, after all, was that if you want to turn defeat into victory you must behave as though it actually was victory...

...This is an ugly and depressing feature of political behavior in this country...

...Then why did Labor win last October...

...Electoral sociology is still in its infancy in this country, and it is therefore exceedingly hazardous to speculate about the wider social implication of any British election...

...The reason, I believe, was not that it suddenly halted the erosion of its working-class support but that it gained new supporters among professional people and white-collar workers who had not voted Labor since 1945...

...Workingclass people who think of themselves as working-class usually vote Labor...

...By-elections are in any case notoriously dangerous guides to the political temperature of the country as a whole, and in this particular byelection the circumstances were almost unique...

...It failed to win handsomely because that process had not gone far enough...

...In Nuneaton it may have been that the Labor candidate, Frank Cousins, was formerly one of the most "traditional" trade union leaders in the country— a symbol of old style working-class militancy rather than of new style technical efficiency...

...Working-class people who think of themselves as middle-class are apt to vote Conservative...

...Instead of marching bravely toward the new Britain it promised during the election campaign, the government has been forced to spend much of its time mending the gaping holes which its predecessors left behind in the economic defenses of the old Britain...

...In this new politics it is no longer enough for either the Laborites under Wilson or the Tories under former Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home to count on the automatic solidarity of great blocks of voters...

...WHATEVER ELSE Leyton may have done, it seems to me indisputable that it has reinforced that pattern—the more so since it coincided with another by-election at Nuneaton in which Labor's majority fell from 11,000 to 5,000...

...It has been because the economic crisis which the government inherited turned out to be far more serious than anyone had expected...

...If the government can succeed in making its positive achievements loom larger than its negative ones, and if it keeps its nerve, there is no reason why it should not be able to stay in power...

...In Leyton the principal cause was immigration...