Will British Socialism Survive?
EPSTEIN, LEON
Will British Socialism Survive? by LEON EPSTEIN Socialism in Britain, said the Conservative party chairman as he closed the last of the mass conferences held in the fall by each major party, could...
...It may be that socialism in slogan as well as in fact will have to be abandoned before the Labor Party will seem contemporary enough for the new British society, and particularly for the younger generation whose material aspirations, already partly realized, are becoming increasingly Americanized...
...Moderation, in short, seems to be a nearly permanent policy as long as Labor is a serious political contender...
...Thus, even if comprehensive publicly-supported high schools became the rule, British secondary education would remain less egalitarian than the American system, since in the latter fee-paying schools are less significant in the total picture...
...Labor is definitely committed, by way of full public ownership, to little more than the ^nationalization of road transport and steel, both denationalized by the Conservative government...
...It is this generation particularly that has enjoyed the relaxation of economic controls, and this relaxation is readily identified with the seven years of Conservative government which have coincided with the emergence, finally, of Britain from its war-induced austerity...
...Despite this social (but not necessarily academic) backwardness by American standards, Labor's educational proposals do strike the newest and most interesting notes in this year's party discussions...
...Yet on this issue the party stands for no more radical change than the substitution of "comprehensive" secondary schools for the present largely separate systems of publicly supported schools, one for the academically superior and the other for the bulk of high school age children...
...At any rate, Labor could not attract them even when the Conservative government was unpopular...
...The danger of moving decisively left in the present political climate is that Labor would find itself increasingly cut off from the vital forces in the community, and so on the path to becoming a diminishing residual minority...
...Thus if Labor loses its third straight election, the argument will be made that what the party needs is a less moderate leadership and program...
...The emphasis has switched back to what is called distributional socialism— using the power of government directly to effect a more nearly equal division of economic and social advantages...
...However, the full-blooded socialist spirit is especially powerless now that Aneurin Bevan, instead of leading a left-wing revolt, has rejoined a united leadership group...
...The more extreme suggestion that Britain's famous and important fee-paying secondary schools be abolished is one that Labor has rejected...
...Although much the same relaxation might well have occurred if Labor had been in power during the same seven years, the political advantages have gone to the Conservatives...
...Besides, the re-invigoration of the Labor left, at least in prosperous times, would run contrary to the whole trend of Labor politics, and indeed of British politics generally in the last decade...
...Beyond this promised return to the pre-1951 status quo, Labor promises only inquiries in certain industries with a view toward their possible nationalization, a scheme for municipal ownership of more rental housing, and the hardly socialist proposal for government ownership of stock in certain private capitalist enterprises...
...By the fall of 1958, the Conservative Party ranked as the winner in the British Gallup Poll's estimate of prospective general election chances...
...stained or voted for the quixotically revived Liberal Party...
...Furthermore, the Conservatives have a still relatively new leader and prime minister, Harold Macmillan, who only recently has begun to receive the British version of a public relations build-up...
...Nor has the Conservative government's experience been placid or blameless...
...It was characteristic that there should have been a prolonged debate on so ancient an issue as land nationalization—almost as archaic as it would be for an American party to debate free silver once again...
...The social egalitarianism proposed by Labor, which may or may not be achieved at the price of lowered educational standards, cannot in any case seem a distinctively socialist proposal when capitalist America has almost always taken for granted just such comprehensive high schools...
...It is not really nationalization that the party leadership, and especially its intellectual spokesmen, are now trying to equate with socialism...
...And the problem of Cyprus remains costly, bloody, and unsolved...
...Whatever political value Macmillan's personality may have in the future, so far it has not given Labor anything like the Eisenhower father-image to contend against...
...If Labor lost in 1959 or 1960, as it had in 1951 and 1955, the party itself could survive, but not, he proclaimed, the socialism for which it stood...
...But so far this is still the moderation of a proclaimed socialist position...
...Labor's attempts to counter this charge by presenting socialism as a means of positive governmental planning for economic plenty hardly appears successful in the way it was in 1945...
...Allowing that the Conservative chairman's primary purpose was simply to exhort 4,000 party delegates to renewed campaign efforts, there is still in his suggestion a credibility that would have been lacking ten years ago...
...Domestically, despite boom times in many ways, unemployment has reached a modest postwar high, as of late 1958...
...What had then happened, as illustrated in by-elections, was that some Conservative voters of 1955 either abLEON D. EPSTEIN, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, is currently in England studying British foreign policy under a Rockefeller Foundation grant...
...But even when the Conservative stock was far down, as it was in early 1958, the Labor Party had failed to gain many new votes...
...The Conservatives have been in power seven years, and to win a third consecutive election is virtually unprecedented...
...But this is a commentary on the essentially outdated rhetoric of the rest of the discussions evident at the Labor Party conference...
...Now, if the Gallup Poll is correct, these wayward voters are returning to the Conservative fold...
...This was an unexpected reversal of most such polls in the preceding two years...
...In such a society, as in the United States itself, Nineteenth Century socialism is not so much dangerous, or even controversial, as it is irrelevant...
...Most striking is the impression, at least, that Labor's doctrines do not appeal to the increasingly significant generation of young Englishmen for whom the postwar period has provided the means for upward social, economic, and educational mobility...
...Labor, on the other hand, suffers politically because its general preference for government management of the economy is easily associated with the early postwar experience of a Labor government, when such management necessarily went with a highly controlled austerity...
...He attended the fall conferences of both the Labor and Conservative Parties as a representative of The Progressive...
...Only the most zealous rank-and-file socialists— militant, doctrinaire, and old-fashioned—retain the pure faith in nationalization of industry...
...Then it would not have been thought reasonable to suggest that socialism was incapable of successfully providing an inspiration and a program for a major British party...
...by LEON EPSTEIN Socialism in Britain, said the Conservative party chairman as he closed the last of the mass conferences held in the fall by each major party, could not survive a third consecutive defeat in a general election...
...Not only did these advantages derive from the accident of being in power at the right time, but also from the fact that the Conservatives could genuinely embrace the relaxation of controls as compatible with their doctrinal opposition to governmental intervention in the economy...
...Delegates appeared to be predominantly of a generation whose socialist conversion had come at least as far back as the 1930's, and whose ideas, therefore, were older still...
...Indeed, there is little specific in the present Labor Party program to convince the British public that socialism represents a new and better way of life...
...However, in the social services, most conspicuous usually in distributional socialist plans, there appear few opportunities for Labor substantially to outbid the Conservatives by offering further benefits...
...The traditional policy of public ownership, which the Labor leadership itself now fails to embrace wholeheartedly, has no attraction for the bulk of the electorate...
...On the contrary, these circumstances would ordinarily be taken to favor an opposition party...
...No Conservative charge against Labor is more frequently made than the claim that Labor is the party of controls...
...The current, and perhaps temporary, electoral standing of the two major parties has something to do with the outlook...
...The explanation must be sought in broader considerations...
...It is possible that the causes of Labor's electoral failure are transient, but there appears to be nothing special about current political circumstances to support this possibility...
...And these leaders are primarily responsible for the moderate program now presented to the electorate...
...To be sure, most of Labor's top leaders do not share these old-fashioned ideas even if their speeches occasionally bend in that direction...
...in a country as sensitive as Britain to unemployment this would once have been expected to produce a sharp reaction against the party in office...
...Partly for this reason, much of Labor's attention has now been focused on educational reform...
...the Suez expedition of 1956, though still defended in principle, was obviously a major fiasco in practice...
Vol. 22 • December 1958 • No. 12
