Editorial: The spectre at the Labour Party Conference

When the Labour Party is not the Government, Labour Party conferences can happily agree to denounce whatever government is in power. When the Labour Party is itself in power the tune changes; delegates are then brought face to face with the fact—surprising to them, though not to Socialists —that capitalism is just as much the enemy of the workers, even though the Prime Minister is a MacDonald or an Attlee instead of a Baldwin or a Churchill. Out of office the Labour leaders shout “forward.” In office they exhort their followers to rest on their oars or at least to refrain from rocking the boat. In this respect history repeats itself. Just as, in 1924, Labour’s official organ hoped that the miners ‘‘will not embarrass the first Labour Government by pressing untimely demands” (“Labour Magazine,” January, 1924), so at the Labour Party Conference at Bournemouth in June, 1946, Mr. Shinwell and other Government spokesmen found themselves at variance with miners’ delegates who were pressing for the five-day forty-hour week and other demands that have long been in the Labour programme. This time the Labour leaders had a new plea with which to fob off the workers, the plea that as nationalisation has been achieved, the miners are now working for themselves, not for the capitalists, and must subordinate their demands to the paramount need of making nationalisation a success. Mr. Shinwell laid down the principle, “Nationalisation must pay. Nationalisation schemes taken by and large must not be subsidised by the Exchequer” (Daily Express, 12/6/46). Mr. Morrison, speaking on the Government’s general policy for wages, amplified with the trite remark, “We have to remember as a nation that we cannot spend what we do not earn” (Daily Telegraph, 14/6/46.). The thing is a transparent fraud. Making nationalisation pay means making it pay the millions that the Government is handing out to the former owners. The exploiters are still living on the backs of the workers, with the difference that the Labour Party, as the Government, undertakes official responsibility for maintaining the exploitation.

Mr. Morrison spoke to the Conference about the Government’s policy for unemployment. Listening to his statement that “full employment has never yet been attempted as a policy in peacetime Britain. It has never been attempted by any country in the world with our form of democratic government . . . ” (Telegraph, 14/6/46), delegates must have wondered what the two previous Labour Governments were attempting to do when they said they had a policy to cure unemployment. This Government will fail like other Labour Governments. Mr. Morrison, unlike some of his less cautious colleagues, does not pretend that world depression will not happen again and would only commit himself to the promise that, if it does, ‘‘the Government was preparing to do what was possible to avoid repercussions on the economic life of this country.” Delegates who cheered this were no doubt reading into “what was possible” much more than Mr. Morrison believes. In the meantime unemployment grows, and dole queues are back in Jarrow, the town that Labourites so often quote in their denunciation of the Tories. On the day of Mr. Morrison’s speech an event occurred that showed the gulf separating Labour Government planners from the workers who suffer from their plans. The Government are transferring Short Brothers’ seaplane works from Rochester to Belfast. Even if the thousands of workers wanted to be uprooted, only a few hundred of them are to be allowed to transfer. Instead they are offered the project that other industries will eventually be set up in Rochester. Dissatisfied with this, the men walked out and held a protest demonstration, at which local Labour M.P.s came in for denunciation. “During a stormy meeting complaints were made that local Socialist M.P.s had acted as buffers between the Government and the workers’ representatives instead of putting the workers’ case forward : (Telegraph, 14/6/ 46). The men at Rochester have discovered what Labour Government administration of capitalism really is and what, of course, it must be. Some capitalist spokesmen are aware of the function of Labour Government to act as buffers and are duly grateful. On May 27th the Manchester Guardian, in an editorial, contrasted the bitter and widespread strikes in U.S.A., with Truman threatening to call up strikers for the Army, with the comparatively easy and smooth transition from war to peace in this country. Mr. Morrison, at the Labour Party Conference, made a similar point by comparing the few strikes in the past 12 months under Labour Government with what happened under Lloyd George in 1920. Because the workers do not realise that Labour Government cannot serve their interests, the Labour Ministers are able to persuade them to accept quietly hardships that would stir up violent protest and resistance if a Tory Government were in power.

Conference not only overwhelmingly rejected the Communist plea for affiliation, but altered the constitution to rule out the affiliation of any political party not already affiliated. This is a formal recognition of the change that has taken place in the make-up of the Labour Party since 1918. In the early days, affiliated bodies, notably the I.L.P. and Fabians, provided many of the Executive Committee members and officials of the Party. Now the place of the affiliated outside political bodies has been taken by the local labour parties. In 1910 affiliated trade unions constituted 1,394,000 out of the total membership of 1,431,000. Now, with a Party membership of over 3,000,000, trade unions account for 2½ million and individual membership through local labour parties amounts to nearly 500,000. Although the trade unions still provide all but a relatively small part of the funds, they have lost their former predominating position on the Executive. In 1910 there were 11 elected trade union representatives on an executive committee of 15. Now the constitution provides for 12 trade union E.C. members out of a total of 27, the remaining 15 being nominees of local labour parties, except one who represents the outside affiliated parties. In none of the three Labour Governments have trade union officials held more than a minority of Cabinet posts, and it will be observed that when the trade unionist, Sir Ben Smith, resigned from the Ministry of Food his place was taken by Mr. Strachey, one of the Labour Party’s so-called intellectuals.

What has happened since 1918 is that the Labour Party has fully established itself as the heir of the Liberal Party, but in so doing has moved away from the old conception that it was first and foremost the party of the trade unions. It is safe to predict that the gulf between the Labour Government and the workers will widen. To the extent that the discontent of their members makes itself felt the trade unions will become more and more critical of the Labour Ministers and will voice their criticisms at Labour Party conferences. The Ministers will be lucky if they receive in succeeding years anything like the amount of approval shown at the Bournemouth Conference. The Communists will exploit the discontent and try to gain control of the trade unions here as they have already done with greater success on the Continent. In France, the reformist party, corresponding to the Labour Party, has, like the British Party, inherited the place once occupied by the Radicals, but it has not thereby become the governing party, because, in the meantime, it has lost control of the trade unions to the Communists. Léon Blum made a revealing statement on the French situation to the Bournemouth Conference.

“He said that on the Continent the Socialist principles for which they had always stood were now opposed by scarcely anyone. The action of the true Socialist parties had become most difficult because of two other parties claiming to be both Socialist and democratic, the Communists and the Christian Democrats.” (Times, 14/6/46).

Oscar Wilde once remarked “nothing succeeds like excess.” It might he said of Blum that nothing succeeds like moderation—but just at the moment of success, when ‘‘scarcely anyone” opposes what Blum all his life has preached, the success turns out to be a tragic and pathetic failure. If the French Party really preached Socialism they would he glorying in the fact that almost everyone had been won over to it. Instead they preached reformism and State capitalism, and now find that it turns bitter in their mouths. They taught the workers to believe in a fraudulent “Socialism” and now find that Catholics and Communists can do the same with even greater success in the way of vote-catching at elections. If events had not taken quite the same course in this country, at least not yet, no-one need doubt that the workers who have put their trust in Labourism will some day rue their error.

Blum, a visitor, appears from the published reports to have been the only speaker at the Conference who correctly described the position occupied by Labour Governments and the dangerous path they are treading. Like a spectre at the feast, he warned the revellers who had come to toast their victory that they have not destroyed capitalism.

“For 25 years I have studied how you can exercise governmental power within the framework of a capitalist society. I know how much its action must be limited by the continuance of the capitalist framework. I know that is true even when a party holds power, as you do, with an absolute majority. It may lead to confusion of thought on the exercise of power as a prelude to and a condition of social transformation. That confusion leads by iron logic to disappointment, and, indeed so long as the capitalist structure remains any Socialist government is condemned to disappoint some hopes.” (Manchester Guardian, 14/6/46).

It is to he hoped that the delegates will remember Blum’s words when, a few years ahead, they are meeting to discover why the Labour Government failed.