BRITISH LABOR HUNTS A PROGRAM

...Traditionally, under Fabian influence, Labor had envisaged a slow and steady extension of social ownership and reform, within a capitalist system that had reserves of wealth and was not threatened with any immediate collapse...

...of increasing engineering output by 25 per cent...

...This view is shared by Hugh Gaitskell, the economist of the party Right, Douglas Jay, the economist of the Centre, and Harold Wilson, who has been the most prominent of the Bevanite economists...

...But both wings of the Labor Party now are beginning to talk the same language again...

...If the Labor Party can succeed in producing an agreed program along the lines I have described above, it will still have a difficult task in carrying the electorate with it...

...Thirdly, such a program—which will not be easy to sell to an electorate which does not yet feel any sense of imminent disaster—will be politically possible only if it is accompanied by social justice...

...Ill A Five-Year Plan of this kind not only means a sharp reversal of the present government's attempt to restore a free economy...

...Up to 1939, Labor was essentially an opposition party...

...also makes sense in terms of Britain's precarious position...

...And so the argument for nationalization no longer hinges merely upon anti-capitalist or anti-monopoly grounds, but upon the need to build a modern, internationally competitive economy...

...There is talk of raising steel capacity from 15 million tons to 20 millions over a five year period...

...These, indeed, are precisely the terms in which the Labor Party is beginning to think...

...there have been personal quarrels, arguments about past policy, differences on tactics, but no head-on clash over the party's future...

...Such advances can only be secured by huge capital investment, and the only source of investment on this scale is the State...

...Secondly, the Labor Party should not go to the electorate holding out false hopes of an early improvement...

...If public money is being poured into the economy, there is bound to be a demand for an extension of public ownership and control...

...Labor's task, they all agree, must be to formulate a Plan for Survival, and all policy proposals must be judged by the degree to which they seem likely to contribute to this end...

...But it is noteworthy that both Harold Wilson and Hugh Gaitskell, representing the two groups that have clashed so sharply in the last three years, have drawn up nationalization proposals that are almost identical...

...In fact," a cynic said recently, "it is settled in principle by three men and drafted in detail by the party secretariat...

...The three men are Arthur Deakin, this year's president of the Trade Union Congress, and the most powerful figure in the union world since the death of his former chief, Ernest Bevin...

...The common starting point is the overwhelming need to prepare a clear plan for Britain's survival in an increasingly difficult environment...

...There is, too, the vexed problem of Britain's archaic local government structure which has long needed a drastic overhaul...

...He wants a "sensible" program, not so radical that it will scare voters away from the party, but not so modest that the party will seem bankrupt of ideas...

...It is this quadrumvirate which has led the campaign against the left-wing Bevanites, and is anxious to...

...A progressive party cannot survive unless it is always a step ahead of public opinion...

...and Aneurin Bevan, spokesman for the militant forces among the rank-and-file...

...But it is already noticeable that, at public meetings, it is not the speaker who promises easy solutions and easy times that now gets the attention and applause, but the man who calls for sacrifices to rebuild Britain's strength and independence...

...II Defeat saved the Labor Party from disintegration and has given it an opportunity to think out its own and Britain's position in a situation far different from any that British Socialists had previously conceived...

...On none of these occasions, oddly enough, has the future program been the overt cause of disagreement...

...If any one of them is angered or disappointed beyond endurance, party unity is endangered and electoral defeat almost certain...

...It is true that the power conflict inherent in each of these disputes has had some bearing on policy discussions —the conference decision last year to press on with further nationalization schemes was part of the Bevan-ite sweep—but there is a widespread desire in all sections of the movement here to let the old controversies die and to get down to the urgent task of drafting a policy that not only makes an appeal to the electorate and the party membership, but NORMAN MACKENZIE, an editor of New Statesman & Nation of England, is the author of "Socialism* A Short History...

...The fundamental change in outlook that has been occurring in recent months is one that seems likely to bridge the gap between the Left—-which has tended to think of further socialization in a priori terms—and the Right—which has lately been obsessed by Britain js economic problems and anxious to stimulate rather than dispossess British capitalists...

...By the time it was defeated in 1951, the Labor Party had almost totally exhausted its stock of ideas, which had been building up steadily through the first, half of the century, and it was being forced to try to maintain what it had already achieved in the face of growing economic crisis at home,' large-scale rearmament, and increasing tension in foreign affairs...

...it is much more than a change in emphasis—it would be nearer the truth to say that British Socialism is working out an entirely new approach...

...There is, for instance, the question of the social services, which have taken a severe battering, first from inflation, and secondly from the Tory economies, and may very well require some revision and extension...

...it also means that far more planning will be required than the postwar Labor Government ever applied...

...For the productive effort of the nation can only be focussed on the right objectives by waging the same kind of ruthless and single-minded industrial campaign for economic survival as was waged for survival in wartime...

...The first objective now is national economic survival...

...There is the need for further changes in the educational system, which is far from satisfactory, and for a change in property ownership...

...There are, of course, other matters that the Labor National Executive has to consider in this context...

...This is a most remarkable reversal...

...During the months since the annual party Conference at More-cambe, the outlines of such a policy have begun to emerge...

...During the last year, the Labor Party has several times come close to such a dangerous split, and the risk still remains...

...Herbert Morrison, the party's best tactician, who keeps a cautious eye on the drift of the decisive independent voters...

...Thus the need for greater planning and for wider forms of public ownership will figure largely in the new program...

...It is hard for a political party to stop short, to take new bearings, and then change its line of march, and there are bound to be stragglers and dissidents when this happens...

...Any Labor program is bound to be a compromise among the groups these three men represent...

...of expanding domestic food production by 20 per cent...

...this may involve a return to rationing —certainly to "Fair Shares for All" —and a further extension of social equality, notably by increased social services for the neediest and by educational reform...

...It would be Utopian to expect it to emerge quickly, x>r without confusions and contradictions, for the new program has to be something more than a mere ad hoc collection of measures: it will be Labor's attempt to adjust its thinking and its policy to radically changed conditions...

...Herbert Morrison, with Jim Griffiths and Clement Attlee, is more concerned with what wins elections...

...In this article, however, I have not been concerned so much with detail as with trying to throw some light on this vitally important change in the Labor Party's outlook...

...Their leaders are, for the most part, solid and rather conservative men, and this is especially true of the Big Four — Deakin of the Transport 'Workers, Lawther of the Miners, Williamson of the Municipal Employees, and Evans of the Steel Workers...

...So far, then, from drafting a program which promises to make further advances in living standards and social conditions, and to restore the cuts made by the Tories in the last 18 months—and this would be Labor's natural and traditional reaction—the drift of Labor thinking has gone quite the other way...

...in 1945, saddled with the great responsibility of postwar recovery, it tried at the same time to hurry through the establishment of the Welfare State and thus make up the heavy arrears of socially necessary legislation...

...On the contrary, the British people must realize that they have been and still are living far beyond their limited means, and that drastic measures are needed to arrest the steady drift into bankruptcy...

...Aneurin Bevan, however, speaks for the overwhelming majority of the party's active members in demanding a program which will have a strongly Socialist flavor...

...and though, in a showdown, the Left (or the Bevanites) cannot dictate the contents of the program, its views cannot be ignored...

...My own view is that, in addition to renationalizing steel and road transport, priority is likely to be given to aircraft construction, chemicals, land ownership, and banking and investment houses...

...limit if not eliminate the influence of "intellectuals" on party policy...

...It is not yet certain —for various industries are now being studied in detail—which will be chosen, for the parliamentary timetable sets certain limits on the number of measures that a government can pass each year, and Labor has yet to decide upon a scale of priorities...

...The trade unions are the main source of Labor's finances, and they control 18 of the 25 seats ori Labor's National Executive...

...Morrison, therefore, thinks less in terms of what is desirable than of what is possible...

...Signs of change are striking to anyone who has been active in the Labor Movement over a period of years, and who is in constant touch with party opinion...

...This undoubtedly means calling for further austerity, for cuts in all luxury and wasteful expenditure, and for concentration upon those industries which can make the maximum contribution to economic recovery...

...In watching the Labor Party's attempt to work out its new program, one must always keep in mind the balance among these three competing groups...

...Some of Britain's key industries will have to be greatly expanded...

...the best program in the world has still to be sold to the electorate...

...The Left, in the last three years, had become increasingly resentful of the claim that further social reform or socialization was financially impracticable and economically undesirable, while the Right had tended to dismiss the Left-wingers as doctrinaire traditionalists...

...If nothing is done, the argument runs, Britain's economic position will continue to deteriorate, sometimes slowly, as it has in the last year, sometimes drastically, as in the crises of 1947, 1949, and 1951...