Editorial: What difference is there?
Labour governments aren’t what they used to be. They no-longer send chills of horror down the spines of the rich, the near-rich, and workers with a few pounds in the savings bank. It was not always so.
Forty years ago when, for the first time a Labour government took over in Britain, there was quite a lot of fear and panic in the air, even though Ramsay MacDonald went to great pains to give his cabinet an image of respectability by appointing a number of peers. In particular by making one of them, Lord Chelmsford, who had no Labour Party associations, First Lord of the Admiralty so that those who feared the worst could at least feel that the Navy was not in dangerous hands. That Government lasted for about nine months.
The Norwegian Labour Government which came into office in 1928 was less circumspect about its power to inspire fear. Instead of putting the Navy into the hands of a conservative it announced its intention to disarm altogether and threatened other things horrifying to the propertied class. There was a sharp financial crisis and out they went after a fortnight. After a few years mellowing they were back again, with no panic, and continued in government with hardly a break for twenty eight years; only to resign now after narrowly escaping defeat on a Parliamentary vote of ‘no confidence’.
What is significant about the changeover from a Labour to a Conservative government in Norway is the general comment of political observers that it will make little or no difference. The Guardian’s comment was typical.
“Political observers,” it said, predict that the new government “will make few changes in domestic or foreign policy”. When the Norwegian Labour Party took over in 1928 it promised to put the interests of the workers first and to introduce what it called Socialism. Now the voters in Norway know that capitalism will carry on in much the same way whichever party is in power.
It is the same here. No one with any knowledge of the present political situation thinks that a Labour Party victory at the next election would be followed by drastic social changes. If such a thing were possible it would mean that the differences between the Labour Party and the Conservatives are deep and vital, whereas in fact the publicity men in both organisations have a hard time finding differences that look big enough to fight an election.
As fears of Labour government have receded, there is more scope for conservatives and others to air their views on problems of taxation and government, without being obsessed with their old apprehensions of ruin and revolution. So Mr. Harold Wincott, writing in the Financial Times last July, was urging his readers to consider what to them must have seemed a novel proposition. The great problem of the ‘nation’ (meaning of course, British capitalism) is, he argued that of halting and reversing the enormous increase of government expenditure that has taken place during this century. This, for him, is so much the greatest problem that he could write: —”I am …. sure that until a solution to it is found no government of whatever party, or under whatever leadership, will achieve more than temporary success.”
From that point Mr. Wincott’s reasoning goes thus:— A Labour government is likely to go on increasing the size of government expenditure; the Tories are better suited—in the long run—to tackle the twin jobs of getting economy and efficiency, but at present the Tory government is quite unable to think about it let alone do it; so the best solution would be a Labour government in office and the Tories in opposition where they could think about the great task of reducing the amount of the capitalist’s income sucked away to run the Administration. And he adds: —
“It seems that the real, long-term interests of Britain would best be served in part if the Tories lost the next election and. going into opposition, gave themselves the time to solve the outstanding problems of our age.”
That was Mr. Wincott in the Financial Times in July. Two months later the Editor of the Sunday Times (1st. September) started another hare. He would have agreed with Mr. Wincott that a Labour electorial victory was not particularly alarming, nor even a successful Labour government. What he fears is a Labour government which proves a failure:
“This would indeed be an alarming situation, since it would mean that both parties had failed in the same way at once. … If the Labour Party first wins and then fails, that would produce a crises of confidence not in the Government, but in ‘government itself.”
It could be summed up by saying that the Sunday Times is not afraid of a Labour Government because it would hardly be distinguishable from a Tory one. A year, or perhaps two years, after a Labour victory the electors may discover “that nothing really new has happened, that the Labour Party has no answers which the Conservatives did not have, that it has only some other and less energetic Ministers and a younger and perhaps more energetic leader”.
The Sunday Times and Mr. Wincott see the problem rather differently. While the latter appears to put the major emphasis on cutting down expenditure, the Sunday Times editor takes the line that administrative methods are hopelessly out-of-date and that top priority should be given to that problem. “Reform of the system of government is the essential preliminary to all other reforms”.
Of course the fears and hopes of those two gentlemen do not exhaust the possibilities, nor do the policies or lack of policies of the major political parties. If a realisation that there is little to choose between Labour and Tory Government turns workers’ thoughts to a realisation that there is a deeper problem, concerned with social structure and class relationship, they may be the readier to come our way and work for Socialism.