Double Exposure
There are two possible explanations for the large amount of space and time which the news media gave to the latest split in the Labour Party. One is that they were short of material. The other is that they simply do not understand the first thing about the politics of capitalism and are naive enough to believe that the resignations of Roy Jenkins and his henchmen were caused by differences on principles or are of any lasting significance.
As Wilson himself knows, a resignation is practically indispensable to any politician hoping to reach the top. Most of the post-war Prime Ministers were at some time known as rebels in their party. This sort of reputation is often needed if a politician is to put himself over as a man of courage and principle — if he can do it no other way. It is, of course, always important that the man who resigns does not take his principles to the point of burning all his boats behind him; he must at some time in the future be able to accept the call back to the party leadership. This can happen at any time, when his courage and integrity tell him that the moment has come for him to try for the big job he has angled for for so long.
The period of the last Labour government, under Wilson, was marked by many resignations but all the ministers who went did so after they had been manoeuvred into a hopeless situation, so that their resignation did nothing to harm Wilson’s standing. When George Brown finally went, after the years of huffing and puffing, he was largely discredited and without a springboard for a come back; now he is reduced to writing rather sulky memoirs and newspaper articles. The same can be said of Ray Gunter, who once made so much noise but who has now been beaten even out of Parliament.
There may not be a repeat of this with Jenkins, who remains a powerful figure within the Labour Party and who has a following large enough to continue to be a threat to Wilson’s future. Jenkins is not exposed — yet. In fact, so skilful has been the public relations work about him that most workers hardly connect him now with the miserable record of the Wilson government in which he was such an important man. Jenkins is seen as rather different from the Labour rebels of the past, who were always regarded as leaders of the wild, irresponsible wing of the party. Aneurin Bevan carried on his fight for the leadership as if he was addressing a series of pit-head strike meetings; Jenkins runs his campaign as if it were a timeless, well mannered sherry party — where the drinks are poisoned. The effectiveness of this style is a measure of a change in the Labour Party, of the success of Wilson and others like him, who have tried to make it openly into an alternative administration for British capitalism, a second Conservative Party.
The present split is not so much over Wilson’s leadership as over the Labour Party’s agony at his exposure. Over the Comomn Market, Wilson’s turnabout has been too much for even Labour’s publicity men to be able to cover up. And this came as only the latest example of his trickery, after a government which shamelessly justified broken pledges with lies and further promises.
Labour is still recovering from that shock defeat in 1970. They are plainly scared of the damage which Wilson’s reputation as a tawdry con-man can do to their chances at the next election. This is the appeal which Jenkins is now making, the fear he is exploiting:
“When the next election comes, we shall not be judged … by the dexterity with which we follow the transient twists and turns of public opinion. We shall be judged by the quality of the programme we put before our fellow citizens and by the consistency and courage with which we advocate it. “(Speech at Worsley, Lanes., 11 March 1972.)
Brave words. But we should remember that the Labour Party were once pleased to support Wilson as their leader. Jenkins was quick to accept a job in his government. Labour candidates, left wing and right, anti-Market and pro, accepted the leader’s endorsement. Many of them fought the elections of 1964 and 1966 as presidential campaigns, with Wilson the vote-winner on whose coat-tails they could be dragged to victory. They smothered the hoardings with his picture so that it was almost impossible to get through any normal working day in London without several times coming across his face, his pipe, the heavy-eyed stare.
Now in those days, when he was the Labour Party’s hero, Wilson was just as obviously a trickster as he is today. In 1964 he was at his peak as far as empty promises went — saying that his government would abolish the established problems of capitalism by organising a technological development which would increase productivity to such an extent that we would practically drown in prosperity. Wilson said it could all be done in the scientific revolution; and according to Richard Grossman (The Guardian 4/10/63) this particular vote winner was devised by Wilson in an attempt to get back the votes the Labour Party had lost after 1945.
In 1966, the Labour Party campaigned solidly on the slogan “You Know Labour Government Works“, by which they meant you know Wilson as Prime Minister works. By that time Wilson was famous for his gritty, bracing speeches; during the election he stumped the country talking about firmness, frankness, guts, purpose, determination. He did not mention the word Socialism (he was once, remember, a left-wing Bevanite). Helped by this dishonesty, Labour candidates swept the polls. They were in rapture and Wilson was the greatest thing since Horatio Bottomley.
So what has happened since then? Why has Labour started worrying and stopped loving its leader? In a word, they have failed. Of course there is nothing new in this; every Labour government has failed and such has been their failure that they have always gone down, one after another, in sweeping defeat. On each occasion there has been an inquest, when the party has searched for reasons (or rather scapegoats) for their failure to keep the promises they made and to hang on to the votes they deceived into putting them into power.
In fact there were similar rumblings well before Labour lost in June 1970, such was their despair at their inability to make capitalism work as they wanted it to. In Encounter in October 1969, Labour M.P. Raymond Fletcher (another one-time left winger!) wrote :
“If Harold Wilson has abandoned most of the ideas he took with him into Downing Street in 1964 it is more logical than charitable to assume that some of them just wouldn’t work.”
Now the denunciations of the Wilson government as a pathetic flop are in full flood. George Brown has had big coverage in the Observer, telling us what went wrong; Lord Wigg, who was once Wilson’s right hand hatchet man, has been given similar space in the Sunday Times to reveal all about the decline of Wilson, the disarray of his government and the insidious influence of his private secretary Marcia Williams. On a calmer note the Fabians have published a series of essays (Labour and Inequality) which expose Labour’s failure to lessen the intensity of the lower levels of poverty. And in that same speech Jenkins, with a cynicism cool enough to match Wilson at his best, has described the situation left behind by the Labour government:
“The poor are still poor. Property speculators — and some others — are as relatively rich as were those with an accepted position at the top of the social structure.”
And of what the Wilson government did about the evils they said they would end:
“. . . not enough was done to change society. I take my fair share of responsibility.”
Such inquests are agonising affairs, in which a party, if they are to be honest, must face the fact that the are ideologically bankrupt. Rather than face that, it is more comfortable to blame their failure onto the leadership, to say that things would have been better with another man, another style of leadership. That is why, as each successive Labour leader rises, he is greeted with such rapture; Attlee to banish the sour memory of Macdonald, Wilson to bring fresh hope after the defeats under Gaitskell, now Jenkins to try to rub up the tarnished image of cynical deception which is Wilson.
It is sad that the Labour Party and the workers who vote for them — and those who vote against them — should be caught up again in this futile, discredited business. Yet they are now treating Jenkins’ resignation as seriously as they once regarded Wilson’s manoeuvrings for the Labour leadership. They forget that every Labour government has failed, under all sorts of leadership. They seem unaware that the reason for those failures was basically that the Labour Party claimed to be able to do the impossible.
Labour Party policy is to govern the British sector of world capitalism, which means that they must ask for votes from workers who support capitalism but who naturally would like the system’s problems alleviated if not eliminated. But capitalism is a society with certain characteristics. It has owners and non-owners of the means of production; it has riches and poverty, it has privilege and restriction. As a social system it cannot exist without these, because they all spring directly from its private property basis.
So when the Labour Party, or any other capitalist party, get power with the professed intention of running capitalism as if it is not capitalism — by abolishing poverty with higher pensions, lower prices, or some other equally specious remedy — they are promising the impossible. It is a fair bet, that leaders like Wilson and Jenkins know it; they know they are bound to fail and to need to cover their failure with more promises which are likely only to intensify the failure. This was the story of Wilson’s government, which came in on such high hopes and which went out with over 600,000 unemployed, with poverty and housing as desperate as ever, with new racist laws in operation, with the world as war-torn as ever and with the debris of the battle to cut the bargaining power of the unions beneath their feet.
Their defeat was as wretched as any in history and it is that very wretchedness which is persuading them to put so much hope in Jenkins. Wilson has been exposed and they are trying to cover up with something like a double exposure with Jenkins. But as every holiday snapshooter knows, that can only lead to a worse mess.
IVAN.