Reflections on images

Mr. Gaitskell has been saying it again. This time, it was at a meeting at Blackpool, organised by Socialist Commentary during the last Labour Party Conference. Perhaps the Labour leader was joking. Perhaps he was trying to cheer everybody up. Or perhaps he was serious. Anyway, he said it. He denied that the Tories have the predominant appeal to the electorate and added: “I think the Labour Party at the moment has a tremendous opportunity which I hope it will grasp.”

Now what must have struck the audience was that this is the sort of optimistic statement which political leaders are always putting out and which mean exactly nothing. The Labour Party reckoned that they were full of hopeful expectation just before Eden trounced them in 1955, and again when Macmillan came out on top two years ago. It is, in fact, curious that on one occasion when they did win, and with a thumping majority, there is evidence that they were not particularly optimistic. Mr. Shinwell once said that, although he expected the landslide victory in 1945, most of the other Labour leaders took a gloomier view of their chances. Naturally, nobody expects Mr. Gaitskell to say that he is looking forward to losing the next election and that there isn’t really much point in all this arguing about election programmes because the Conservatives already have it in the bag. When he muses upon the Labour Party’s great opportunities and the success which he says is in their grasp we know that, whether he is right or wrong, he is saying what he is compelled to by the necessities of his situation.

For Mr. Gaitskell must project an image of his party to the electorate Labour are out for power over the affairs of British capitalism and to get this they do not have to educate or enlighten people. They only have to persuade enough voters that they are the cleverest, most responsible, most humane bunch of would be ministers in the land. And, of course, the most successful. Most politicians must be attached to the slogan “Nothing, succeeds like success.” Like the salesman who tells you that his product must be good because it sells so well, the political leader must always strive to give the impression that their fortunes are set fair. It is all part of the business of projecting an image.

It does not end there, as we saw at the last Labour Party Conference. This year’s conference rejected once again the idea that they are a party of wholesale nationalisation. Let us say right away that nationalisation is not, and never was, anything more than an alternative method of organising capitalism. But the Labour pioneers used to cling to it as .the cure-all for capitalism’s ailments. We may depend on it that they would have castigated Mr. Gaitskell for his milk and water version of their favourite potion. Yet in doing so they would be ignoring the reasons for the Labour Party going back upon itself. Nationalisation, which might have had a brief fling as a vote-getter just after the war, is now an electoral liability. The theme of Mr. Gaitskell’s great battle over Clause Four was his realisation that the surest way to lose votes was to declare for outright nationalisation. True, Gaitskell lost his battle over the clause. But his party’s attitude to State control has changed and to that extent so has their public image.

We also saw at Blackpool—as we expected to see—the Labour Party break off its short flirtation with the unilateralists. Now that was a vote loser if you like. The nuclear disarmers are a small minority in the population—so small that there is no point, in them testing their policy in a parliamentary election. It seems certain that if the Labour Party were to tie themselves permanently to C.N.D., it would not be long before they were counting their members in thousands instead of the hundreds of, thousands of today. That may not worry a party of rigid principle, but for those who are bothered about getting power before anything else, it is a different matter.

Then there is the little business of strikes and this, sadly for Mr. Gaitskell, is something which cannot be shaken off by a conference resolution. There are a lot of political correspondents who think that the London bus strike in 1958 did more damage to the Labour Party in the 1959 election than anything else. We all know why they are associated in the popular mind with strikers. The Labour Party built itself on a foundation of working class sympathy. At one time their members were proud to be at the head of the Jarrow marchers, to wear cloth caps to the Commons, to be militant trade unionists. Inevitably, strikers looked to the Labour Party for support and strikes became part of the party’s image.

That was all very well in the old days, when Labour were climbing to power; it’s very different now. Firstly, if they get into power over British capitalism, strikes are going to be a nuisance which they will have to deal with, just like 1945/50 all over again. Secondly, large numbers of workers regard strikes as stupid, or anti-social, or the work of layabouts, and so suspect a political party which they connect with them. This notion seems to be stubbornly held. If it were not, surely it would have been squashed by the stern anti-strike measures of the 1945 Labour government? Whatever the evidence, however much Mr. Gaitskell may soothe and reassure, no matter what his party may write in their manifestos, the idea will stay in working class heads. Strikes equal Labour. Labour equals strikes. This is the sort of thing which is so bad for the image which Mr. Gaitskell is trying to project.

For the Labour Party now wants to appear a moderate, adaptable party, ready to manage British capitalism without any complications like political theories. There is only one theory of management that is worth anything to capitalism, and that is that the system is administered in the interests of the capitalist class. Unless the Labour Party can convince enough workers that they conform to that theory they are out, and will stay out.

The Tories have fewer worries on this score. True, they have their wild men— the people described by one Labour Party delegate as “hangers, floggers and let’s-ban-the-woggers.” But there is little political kudos for the Labour Party in this. For many workers, among all their other false ideas, support-capital and corporal punishment and, although they may not practice a colour bar, in fact regard Negroes as inferior beings and would agree to some control on immigration. Here is one of the Conservative’s trump cards. Whatever mistakes they may make, however black their record, they always seem to have enough of what it takes to ride their storms and to touch the responses of the working class. This is ironical, in a party which so openly stands for the privileges and inequalities of capitalism. Perhaps it is the Tories’ empirical attitude which does the trick. Perhaps it is political flair. It could be that they are very clever, or that the working class are excessively stupid and forgetful. Whatever the reason for it, the fact is that the Tory image is a successful one.

The two great parties are not alone in worrying about their public image. Every day, everywhere, we are meeting the same thing. We see it in the advertisements which, since the days of fuller employment came to this country, have adopted an especially irritating image type. Now the earnest, well groomed, rising young executive is the chap who buys the right car, uses the right sort of after-shave and knows which wine will not upset his boss. We meet the image on radio and television, with everybody striving to convince themselves that capitalism’s all right and that what really matters is that, as the girl once said to Wilfred Pickles: “. . . people—are nice—to—people.” This is the theme, too, of the newspapers with their unctuous human interest stories telling us about rock ‘n’ roll stars who still love their deaf grandmothers, or rich greengrocers who would swap it all for the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

Irritating and shameful as this may be, it should lead us to the bigger question of why it should happen at all. The answer is that the image men always project an impression of general satisfaction with capitalism. The people who are depicted as wholesome and confident are, after all, supporters of a social system which has produced the terror and insecurity of the modern world. And if we accept their standards the one thing we shall never do is to question the whys and wherefores of capitalism.

That leads us to an even bigger question. Are we satisfied with the terror and insecurity? Are we satisfied with being treated like mental infants who will be impressed by any vapid image that the politicians or the ad-men like to squirt at us?

The working class could rise above this. They could develop their social consciousness so that the political and commercial images lose their appeal. They could do this—in fact, they must do it, if there is to be hope of solving the world’s problems. But there is no reason for the capitalist class to help in this. No matter; let us leave them with their images. We should be tackling hard, material reality.
IVAN