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PARTY GAME
Page 58
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JrUDGMENT on Mr. Hugh Gaitskell's policy will have to be suspended until he has explained it more clearly than he has done so far. His first serious attempt since he returned from America contains so much muddled thinking that it cannot be regarded as a definitive version. Nevertheless, because in one of his few lucid moments he repeats what was said in the Labour party election manifesto about extending public ownership in road transport, it is desirable for operators to examine the rest of his speech carefully.
The reason for his confusion of thought may easily be understood. He is trying to do several things at once and finds it impossible to reconcile all of them. He goes to the extent of disowning what he calls the small professional anti-leadership group in his party, but there are plenty of other groups that he would like to keep with him. Their opinions are by no means identical; so that he has either to find a form of woe& so vague that it can be taken to mean almost anything or to say one thing at one stage and something quite different . at another, hoping that nobody will detect the contradiction.
Another task, not made any easier when one hand is fully engaged in taking the somewhat feverish pulse of the party, is to advocate progressive and forward-looking policies. Mr. Gaitskell is on trial. Many Socialists blame him for the rout at the General Election and believe they would have better luck next time with another leader. They have no lack of ideas of their own on policy and Mr. Gaitskell cannot afford to be too far behind them. He would prefer to show himself the leader in the clearest possible way, that is to say by clearly taking the lead.
He has a long way to go to win the support of the public. They did not like the image that the Labour party presented to them last October and there is no evidence that they have changed their minds. The Conservatives have won three elections in a row, each one by a more convincing margin than the last. There are still millions of people who do not like the Conservatives, but who will continue to vote for the Labour party only while they regard it as an effective Opposition with a chance of becoming a Government. These uncommitted voters expect a clear statement from Mr. .Gaitskell of where he intends to lead his party. There remains subsequently the even more formidable problem of detaching enough support from the Conservatives to win an election.
Natural Transition
To make his speech topical, Mr. Gaitskell chose to refer to the narrowly averted railway strike and then by a natural transition to the transport industry as a whole. Here the Government were facing a situation that would not improve without help, and no solution has so far been put forward. There was a chance for Mr. Gaitskell to make proposals that would at least seem superior to anything the Conservatives had so far suggested.
Mr. Gaitskell is a skilful and intelligent politician, but not even he could weave so many diverse strands into a single theme. He was like the victim in a party game, compelled to carry out a succession of unconnected orders. Almost every point he makes is likely to be criticized somewhere within the party, so that he takes care to balance it later on by giving the opposite point of view.
He condemns the attitude of those people in the party who are "sublimely indifferent " to the wishes of the elec torate and little concerned with winning power for their party in the near future. This might be taken to mean that• Mr. Gaitskell had realized the unpopularity of the programme drawn up for the last election and was thinking of making revisions to meet the unspoken criticism of the electorate. He makes clear, however, that he has nothing of the kind in view. It would be "cynical surrender for the sake of 'electoral considerations."
If Mr. Gaitskell wished to present himself as the apostle of progress, it is unfortunate that he comes in the guise of champion of the railways against road transport. Nobody would quarrel with him because he has a word of sympathy for the railwaymen who have fallen behind in a community where wages and the standard of living have in general increased steadily for a number of years.
Brink of Strike
Spurred by what they considered an unconscionable delay in settling their claims, the railwaymen had come to the brink of a national strike. Public feeling is dangerous once it is aroused. Instead of demanding that the railwaymen get their deserts at all costs, people have come to see much more clearly than before that it is possible to get along at a pinch without the railways, and that railwaymen are living in a 19th-century world because they are tied to a 19thcentury industry. Public opinion is hardening that the railways must cut their losses and operate on a more modest scale than hitherto.
What light does Mr. Gaitskell have to throw on the problem ? "It really is not much use," he says, "having a completely unco-ordinated transport system with more and .more cars and lorries produced every year and enormous motorways, and then find the railways getting into trouble when the best traffic is creamed off." The co-ordination he wishes to impose is renationalization. Because the railways cannot make a profit they are to be given road haulage as a kind of inverted reward.
It is odd that Mr. Gaitskell cannot see how well this sort of statement is calculated to shake whatever confidence the public may have in his wisdom. He dislikes what he calls the huge capital gains now being made by private industry, and calls for more equality between different sections of the community. To achieve this, he believes, there must be more control over the economy. But apparently, or so it seems from what Mr. Gaitskell says, one of the first purposes to which this control would be put would be to suppress the most efficient sector of the transport industry, cut back the vital vehicle-manufacturing industry and put a stop to the building of further motorways.
Except that the tone of the speech is wholly serious, one might believe Mr. Gaitskell was joking when he suggests that it was the "vague threat to all private property" that alienated the public at the election, and not "concrete, specific and carefully designed proposals for particular acts of nationalization." He may or may not be' deliberately deceiving himself in an effort to secure general acceptance for a new statement of aims to replace the old rigid party constitution. Most of the public, one may be sure, have little idea of what is written in the constitution. They judged the Labour party fairly and squarely last October in accordance with what the party specifically promised or threatened to do; and there was no mistaking what conclusion the public reached.