A marriage of convenience
Ever since they slipped into power last October the Labour Government have been pursued by speculations on whether they would come to an arrangement with the Liberals which would have the effect of keeping them in power. This speculation has, of course, become more intense as the Government’s majority has been slowly whittled down.
The idea of a Lib/Lab alliance, as the newspapers are fond of calling it, is not new. The Guardian, which is running a campaign in favour of it, recently published a series of extracts from editorials of 1912, 1924, 1926 and 1929 which advocated such an alliance (although it is difficult to appreciate what this was supposed to prove).
The whole thing is, in fact, one of the most grisly of all the spectres which haunt the Labour Party from their uncomfortable past. Their first attempt at Government, in 1924, was brought about only because the Liberals supported them, but the same Party turned Labour out of office as quickly as they had put them in. When they came back in 1929, Labour’s leader, Ramsay Macdonald, left us in no doubt about where he thought the blame for his previous defeat lay. “I am,” he told the press, “Going to stand no monkeying.”
This sounded very grand, Yet if anyone was doing any monkeying it was Macdonald himself, because despite his experience in 1924 he was once more relying on Liberal votes in the House to keep a minority Labour Government in power. This showed that Mr. Macdonald possessed the one essential quality of an “intellectual,” which is the ability to ignore inconvenient facts.
As it turned out, Macdonald went further than a mere voting pact with the Liberals. When the crunch came a couple of years later, when the unemployment figures were around the three million mark, when the finances of British capitalism were in turmoil, and when the Government were imposing panic cuts in expenditure, Macdonald did not wait for the Liberals or anyone else to defeat him in the Commons. He led the way into a coalition with the Liberals and the Tories. He joined hands with the men regarded by generations of Labour workers as representatives of the hated mine owners and steel masters, of the hard-faced men who had ground the working class down into unforgettable destitution.
There is no need to recall here the shattering effect which this had on the Labour Party. It is enough to say that the debacles of 1924 and 1931 made coalition a forbidden word in respectable Labour circles.
Of course, these same circles saw nothing wrong in their Party joining the wartime coalition, even if this was under the man who was a lifelong enemy of the working class, who had been openly contemptuous of starving miners and who had so zestfully edited the official British Gazette during the General Strike, when the workers were desperately defending what remained of their livelihoods. The war coalition was, apparently, different. Churchill was no longer cur enemy. He was our friend and protector. This coalition, said the Labour Party, was in what they called (but which they were not rash enough to attempt to define) the National Interest.
We should all be aware by now that when the bugles are blowing to rally us all to defend the National Interest a certain amusement can be had by observing countless politicians, men who swear by their own honesty and consistency, going back on a lot of what they ever said. Thus it was with the Labour Party, when they embraced their bitterest foe and joined the Churchill coalition in 1940. This gave them the experience of running capitalism which stood them in good stead when they took over in 1945 and had to tell the working class that the promises made during the war could not (naturally) be kept.
But no bugles are blowing now. The Labour Party cannot pretend that a pact with the Liberals would have anything to do with their precious National Interest. It would have only one object and that would be to keep the Labour Party in power. Ten regular Liberal votes in the House would enable Mr. Wilson to luxuriate in unaccustomed security of tenure at Number Ten. There is no secret about the price of these votes—a tailoring of the Government’s programme, to drop steel nationalisation and to push ahead with schemes like the Ombudsman.
Or the Labour Party could go into whole-hog coalition with the Liberals, and Mr. Wilson preside over a Government containing one or two Liberal ministers. Or again—another favourite dream of political wanderers—a new party could be formed, a so-called radical party with a programme consisting of bits and pieces from both Parties, mashed up and blended into something which, it is hoped, would attract massive electoral support.
Any of these is possible. It is evident that the Liberals, as distant from power as ever, are awaiting their chance. Mr. Grimond’s famous interview with the Guardian some months ago could not have been entirely a coincidence. It is more likely that the ground had been prepared in advance. This interview might have been Mr. Wilson’s chance to inspire his disconsolate supporters with a valorous, defiant refusal, to goad them forward on their devious, never-ending journey to the Promised Land. Instead, the Liberal offer was met with a heavy silence which, when we consider the business of coalition government, and of government itself, assumes a certain significance.
Governments are there to run capitalism, which means in the general National Interest of the capitalist class. Governments look after the economic affairs of that class, they keep up the machinery by which the capitalists assert their dominance in society. Governments concern themselves with customs laws, trading pacts, the police, prisons and armed forces. They look after capitalism’s finances and they do their best to weaken what bargaining power the working class may have in matters of wages, hours and so on.
Whether they are dictatorships or so-called democracies, governments always face a certain amount of opposition. This means that to stay in power politicians must exercise a deal of cunning and ruthlessness. The manner and the field in which these qualities—if that is the word for them—are applied varies with the type of government. In this country, where governments are elected by popular (if not very enlightened) vote, political skill often expresses itself in a politician’s ability to do one thing and persuade the mass of people that he is doing the exact opposite. This skill sometimes reaches a very high level, as, for example, when it was being practised by Baldwin and later Macmillan. It seems that Harold Wilson has also won his way into this distinguished company.
This is the perspective in which we should view Wilson’s silence at Grimond’s offer of an alliance. The Labour Party are supposed to be opposed to the Liberals, but in fact they have done little, in major policy, to displease them. True, they have pushed through a declaration that they intend to nationalise steel, but so far this remains no more than a declaration. On most other issues, as the Guardian never tires of bleating (“It will be a tragedy if the Government is brought down needlessly. Much of what it wants to do is common to the Liberal and Labour Parties.” 6/9/65), the two Parties are in harmony.
This means, in effect, that Mr. Wilson has the votes of the Liberal members. In other words, he has all the advantages of a Lib/Lab coalition without any of the disadvantages. He is doing one thing while convincing everyone that he is doing the opposite. In addition, he does not have the tiresome necessity of allocating jobs to the Liberals, he is not exciting the emotions of Labour Party workers who remember 1924 and he is left with the tactical asset of being able to fix the date of the next election.
This is by no means a surprising situation. The only thing to prevent an alliance between political parties is a difference of principle and the capitalist parties showed in 1931, and again during the war, that they are all united on the basic principle of protecting the National Interest of the British ruling class. Compared to this, whatever differences they may have are trivial. The Labour Party have always claimed they were basically different from the others, but experience shows us that in fact they are merely another administration for British capitalism.. Even more, they have claimed that their close connections with the unions would enable them to hold wages in check—in other words, to do capitalism’s dirty work—much more efficiently than the Tories could do it. Recent events at the T.U.C., and in Mr. Brown’s Department of Economic Affairs, shows that this is one claim Labour have made good.
The Wilson Government’s policies have upset many of their supporters; in the Guardian of 6th September last, for example, Mr. Reginald Paget, Labour M.P. for Northampton, was asking: “Ought a Labour Government, committed to Tory expediency, be permitted to continue in office? . . . should they be allowed another session?” The obvious answer to these questions is that it all depends upon Mr. Paget—only one vote, after all, is needed to turn the Government out. But who is really to blame for all these broken hopes? Mr. Paget is disillusioned simply because he had illusions to lose. He actually believed, in the face of all evidence, that a Labour Government would be different from a Conservative. Now that Labour have once again shown how similar they are, they have not only confused their friends; they have also confounded their enemies. Even Mr. Heath, strain as he might, can pick no specific quarrel with them—only vaguely accuse them of not doing the “right sort of deeds.”
The whole point is that, whether they formally admit it or not, all the capitalist parties are constantly in coalition to support the private property system of society. In many ways they actually need each other. But even more they need the votes of the millions of workers who are misled into thinking that capitalism is in their interests and who, if Mr. Grimond ever succeeds in getting Mr. Wilson to the church on time, will be lining the aisles to give the uneasy couple their blessing.
IVAN