The Morecambe Labour Party Conference (1952)

From the November 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Morecambe was for the Labour Party less a ground for common political activity than a battleground of warring factions and rival political ambitions. There were a number of casualties.

Among the “casualties” were Mr. Morrison and Mr. Dalton. Both failed to get re-elected to the Labour Party executive. In the executive voting, that doughty working class warrior Mr. Bevan headed the “lists” to a fanfare of cheers and clapping. Others elected to executive posts were those horny handed sons of toil, Messrs. Driberg, Wilson, Mikardo and Crossman, who rode on the Bevan band-wagon.

The two great rival standard bearers were Bevan and Morrison. Bevan’s contribution was never more than a piece of conference tub thumping; Morrison's never less than the slick performance of the accomplished party hack.

Of Mr. Attlee it could hardly be said that the conference was his finest hour. He preferred the somewhat enigmatic role of a political Nero, content to doodle while Morecambe was alight In contrast to Bevan’s frothy utterances his contribution was as flat as last night’s beer.

A spectacle, now a commonplace at Labour Party conferences, was that of ex-ministers reverently touching their political rosaries and dedicating themselves to “socialist ideals.” Then followed the usual attempt to squeeze the quart of socialist ideals into the pint bottle of capitalism.

There was a demand from delegates for more nationalisation and “socialist” measures. Doubtless Mr. Morrison and other Labour leaders are ruefully realising that it is easier for people to learn political nostrums than to unlearn them. These leaders having misinformed workers in the past that nationalisation was the panacea for their problems, now blandly inform them that these problems cannot be automatically solved by the mere transference of industries from private to public ownership. What, according to Mr. Morrison is most important, is not so much that industries should be nationalised but that “they should be efficient.”

For generations Labourites have been reared on the mother’s milk of old time Fabian planning. Now the milk has turned sour. “Planning for planning’s sake” it seems is merely a pipe dream for political opium smokers.

Mr. Morrison and others have now discovered more “prior and urgent” problems than nationalisation. Problems such as trade balances, exports and the need for increased output in order to meet foreign competition successfully especially the German and Japanese variety. These “urgent and prior problems” were just as urgent and prior for Capitalism when Mr. Morrison and other Labour leaders were merely up and coming politicians.

Nevertheless the fact that Labour politicians have discovered some simple economic facts about Capitalism, has, according to sections of the press, elevated them to the status of statesmen.

From the tone of the speeches of ex-ministers in explaining to delegates these simple facts, one might imagine they were addressing children. Listening to the criticism levelled at them on occasions by delegates, they may have thought that there are times when children should be seen and not heard.

Although conference instructed the executive to compile a further list of industries to be nationalised, Mr. Robertson for the United Textile Factory Workers' Association opposed an amendment asking for the nationalisation of the cotton industry. He urged conference "not to embarrass a Labour Government in that way.”

Although Mr. Bevan himself was in favour of more nationalisation, etc., Bevanite Mr. Mikardo in submitting a resolution asking for the building trade to be nationalised, said, “They might find the industry better suited to competitive public enterprise than nationalisation outright." Mrs. Braddock, M.P., reminded conference that "the person who opposed most strongly the nationalisation of the building industry with his usual bad faith was Mr. Bevan, when he was Minister of Health.”

Mr. Morrison touched a new political low when he attempted to make working class political ignorance the whipping boy of the Labour Government’s failure to fulfil its promises. He said “We have got to change the minds and hearts and souls of men and women so that they think in terms of socialist ethics and the old capitalist outlook that millions have, has passed away.”

This is certainly the devil citing scripture for his own purposes with a vengeance. Mr. Morrison’s own contribution to working class understanding is gravely on the debit side of his political balance sheet. Mr. Morrison’s role in the ranks of the working class has been that of a fifth columnist. By plausibly presenting to workers a planned capitalist—as good as socialism —model, he and others like him have obscured and distorted basic working class issues. The work of teaching Socialism has thus been made infinitely harder.

The shadow-play of political rivalry thrown on the Morecambe screen is not a reflection of any basic differences within the Labour Party. Dr. Bevan with his finger on the pulse of working class discontent prescribes bigger doses of nationalisation, Mr. Morrison not to be outdone retorted that “the Labour Party would never rest until it had nationalised all the means of production, distribution and exchange.”

Mr. Bevan wants a smaller armament programme than that laid down by the last Labour Government, yet it was Mr. Bevan himself who piloted Labour's defence programme through the House of Commons. Then he begged people not to "jeer about the armament programme we are putting under way.” He added, “we shall carry it out; we shall fulfil our obligations to our friends and allies.”

Ironically enough, owing to the difficulties which have arisen over balance of payments since the Tories came in, they have been compelled to cut considerably the yearly expenditure on armaments. The “socialist” Bevan is not opposed to war preparation. He only wants to reduce the cost entailed. Incidentally his proposed peace-time expenditure on armaments involves greater sums of money than those spent in peace time by Tory or Liberal Governments.

Mr. Bevan’s militancy is not, as imagined by his supporters, a realistic step forward for the Labour Party but a retreat to its romantic pioneering past. Then, the Labour Party could indulge in pseudo socialist phraseology, with its promise of “changing things nearer to the heart's desire.” It is this vague working class sentiment that Mr. Bevan seeks to tap.

In the good old days of the Labour Party the “Labour Commonwealth” was a distant goal wrapped in mist and obscurity. Nevertheless Labour was on the march! There may have been differences, even dissidents, within the ranks, but the road was accommodatingly broad. Swings to the “left” or "right” made little difference. They were all bound for the same place.

Now they have arrived and the New Jerusalem is but old Babylon writ large. The Welfare State turns out to be the merest Utility Utopia.

“The New Social Era” has all the old working class problems—poverty, insecurity, low wages, high prices and the threat of war. The outward pressure of capitalism produces within the Labour Party its fissions and rifts.

In order to ease off working class political pressure the Labour Party would like to go further. But they have nowhere to go. Because one basic reason for their existence is their claim that they can go one better than the Tories, they have to simulate the semblance if not the reality of being in the vanguard of social progress. The Tories in turn pose as the great stabilising force of British political life. Their appeal to the working class is consequently pitched in a slightly lower key. Their political strategy merely consists of waiting for the inevitable disappointments that result from a term of Labour Government and then adroitly manipulating them for the purpose of winning the next election.

Bevan is merely a symptom of the failure of Labour Party reformism to make a world fit for ordinary men and women to live in. He is the price Labour leaders pay for their political sins. His role in the Labour Party is the old familiar one of today’s rebel being tomorrow’s leader.

The resentment and frustration felt by the Labour rank and file has placed high cards in his hand. Yet even if he succeeds in winning the game against the old leadership he in turn will become vulnerable.

Little wonder that many Labour Party members are acquiring a nostalgia for the past. Truly, for those who pin their hopes on reformism it is always the case —“That it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.”

Ted Wilmott

Bevan and the Labour Party Leadership (1955)

Editorial from the April 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Bevan has declared that what he said and did in the row that caused his censure was "not a challenge to the personal authority and position of Mr. Attlee as leader of the Party. Differences are on policy and only policy.” (Daily Herald, 12/3/55.) As the Attlee and Bevan standpoints in the H-bomb debate in Parliament on March 2nd differed by only a hairs-breath the statement is surprising; unless he was speaking of policy in general not just the H-bomb issue. And if that was intended to mean that Mr. Bevan does not aspire to the leadership it is hard to reconcile it with his views and behaviour. The Labour Party’s policy and form of organization require a leader, and though the leader does not formulate policy he can and does exercise much influence on the policy votes at annual conference and in the Parliamentary party. Mr. Bevan believes that he has a policy different from that of the Labour Party’s “Right-Wing” (as he now describes it), and his own description of the kind of leader the Labour Party ought to have bears a clear resemblance to himself. What then could be more natural than that he should seek to further his policy, side by side with becoming Party leader? Mr. Bevan, speaking while the Labour Government was still in office but after he had left it, depicted the kind of leaders required. They must, he said, be men of courage, guts and character; not experts or men from the “top drawer of society,” but men “who had spent their lives in the Labour and trade union movement and who not only understood Socialism with their heads but knew it with their hearts.” (From a speech at Cumnock reported in the Manchester Guardian, 18 June, 1951.) From this it seems more than likely that he measured himself for the Party leadership and found it an admirable fit.

The opinion of a leader-writer in the Manchester Guardian (17/3/55) is that the difficulties began when Bevan failed to get the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s job.

“It is just four years since Mr. Bevan began to show his displeasure that he had been passed over when the time came to choose a new Chancellor of the Exchequer. A little later he pranced out of the Labour Government. From that he passed on to organising his private group within the Party, and two and a half years ago was told (by 188 votes in the Parliamentary Party to 51) to disband it and to stop his attacks on his colleagues. Since then the story of the Parliamentary Labour Party has been of one long succession of disturbances connected with Bevanism.”

The Bevan Business (1955)

From the April 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bevan and the H-Bomb

Mr. Bevan’s quarrel with Mr. Attlee in the House of Commons on 2 March, when he and some 60 other Labour M.P.s abstained from voting for an amendment that had been agreed beforehand at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, was serious because of the number who followed Mr. Bevan’s lead. The violence of the dispute certainly cannot be attributed to any wide gulf between the Bevan and Attlee standpoints on the H-bomb. Only a month earlier one of Mr. Bevan’s principal supporters, Mr. R. Crossman, M.P., had not only supported the Attlee line in favour of making the H-bomb but had declared that this, along with the Attlee attack on American policy, had “reasserted his command of Labour in Parliament” and was “nicely balanced for the purpose of achieving Socialist unity.” (Sunday Pictorial 6-2-55). Mr. Bevan’s revolt was as much a repudiation of Mr. Crossman as it was of Mr. Attlee. Mr. Bevan's reason for his action was that Mr. Attlee would not give a satisfactory answer to a question about the precise circumstances in which the Hydrogen bomb should be used. Mr. Bevan’s question to Mr. Attlee was:—

"If the Russians invaded Europe with conventional weapons, would the Party officially support a government that counter-attacked with hydrogen bombs? ” (Daily Mail, 3/3/55.)

But it must not be thought from this that Mr. Bevan is a pacifist or that he refuses to support war. His quarrels with Mr. Attlee have not been in that field. A correspondent writing in the Manchester Guardian (8-3-55) recalls that during World War II., when Attlee was in the National Government under Churchill. Bevan did indeed campaign against the government but it was for the early opening of the second front.

He was in the 1945-1951 Labour Government that built the Atom Bomb and that imposed peacetime conscription, for the first time in a 100 years. He supported the Korean war and the re-armament drive. He was Minister of Labour in March 1951 when the Ministry published a booklet “Wage Incentive Schemes,” the Foreword of which urged the adoption of piece-work and other incentive schemes in order to reduce costs and increase output, the need for which “has become, even more urgent in face of the unavoidable diversion of a substantial portion of the labour force to the carrying out of the Government’s defence programme.”

He said himself in June, 1951, “He did not believe in having no armies . . . (Manchester Guardian, 18/6/51.) And in an article in the News Chronicle (9/3/55) he admitted that in view of his past record he had no logical case against the hydrogen bomb:—

“Those of us who concurred in the making of the atom bomb and tolerated the saturation bombing of the last war have no moral or logical case against the hydrogen bomb. All three are methods and weapons of imprecision, that is, it is known they will destroy the civilian population and all the civil installations of the enemy."

What he asked therefore was that “we should pause before carrying the logic of our past behaviour to its furthermost extremities” (News Chronicle, 9/3/55). He wanted negotiations immediately with the Russians.

He also wanted, or so we may gather from his question to Mr. Attlee on 2 March, acceptance of the view that the hydrogen bomb will never be used by the British Government against an attack which itself does not include use of the hydrogen bomb.

As this is in effect an attempt to ensure that the next war will not be much more unpleasant than the last we are not grateful to Mr. Bevan and we don’t think that his plea that he is being “practical" has been made out.

* * *

Top Level Talks

One of the issues on which the Government, the Opposition, and the Bevanites are in principle agreed though heatedly differing as to timing, is that of top-level talks between U.S.A., Russia and Britain, with the possible addition of China and France. They are all agreed that there should be such talks and that these should not be conducted by the professional diplomats, the Ambassadors, or even by Foreign Secretaries, but by heads of States, Eisenhower, Churchill and Bulganin. The idea behind the plan is that something for the good of humanity can be achieved at informal talks between heads of States that cannot be achieved at the United Nations, which was specially set up for “friendly talks,” and that cannot be achieved by diplomats taking their orders from heads of States. None of the leaders who favour top level talks have so far explained what is the supposed magic in them. And it isn't as if they have not been tried before. A century and a half ago Czar Alexander had “top level" talks with Napoleon and with the heads of the Prussian and Austrian States, and cooked up the notorious Concert of Europe, through which the ruling class in the different countries hoped to stifle revolutionary movements. It set the pattern for all subsequent international gatherings in that the protestations of mutual love and harmony were only the cover for projected double-crossing by the top-level participants. Do top-level talks stop war? In this generation we have had the example of the top-level talks between Chamberlain and Hider at Munich which were the prelude to the 1939 war.

And the Press in mid-March was convulsed by the disclosure of what went on at some other top-level talks, those at Yalta in 1945. At those talks the three great Powers (except when two of them met to double-cross the absent one) were concerned in disposing of the world in much the same way as the Concert of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon and with as little foresight, wisdom and humanity. The Daily Mail's comment is typical of many in the British Press:—

“What we have read of the American version of the Yalta Conference leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. But why there should be any shock or astonishment at the disclosures of President Roosevelt’s attitude we do not know. It is not news that he tried to 'gang up' with Stalin against Churchill . . .  His naive belief that Stalin was a democratic idealist and Churchill a ‘wicked imperialist' helped to bedevil the post-war world. We should have been safer today, and Communism less of a menace, but for that” (Daily Mail, 18/3/55.)

The attitude of Attlee, and even more that of Bevan, to the present proposal is particularly illogical. Their professed belief is that if Churchill meets the other two face to face the war threat may be dispersed, and that this is impossible or, at least much more difficult if they don't meet face to face. Do Attlee and Bevan believe that Churchill's charm may smooth away the friction between the Russian and American ruling groups and that Churchill, Eisenhower and Bulganin have qualities of wisdom denied to their deputies? If so this admiration for the three leaders has been conspicuously absent from Attlee’s and Bevan's speeches and writings. From these we had gathered that the continuance of Churchill as Prime Minister is a menace to the well-being of the population.

The belief in the likely fruitfulness of top-level talks plainly rests not on a substantial basis of logic or on happy results of past experience, but on the despairing feeling that we must clutch at this straw because there is no other hope left for humanity.

Bevan not a Socialist

Debating whether Bevan will succeed in winning over majority support in the Labour Party, the Daily Mail (16/3/55) concedes to him that he is “ a dynamic figure, a powerful speaker, and the exponent of the pure doctrine of Socialism." The last claim is nonsense and we suspect that the Daily Mail leader writer knows it as well as we do. Mr. Bevan’s alleged Socialism did not deter him, any more than it deterred the rest of the Labour leaders, from running British capitalism for six years after the war, with all that entailed from the use of troops in strikes to the preservation intact of the capitalist social structure. Only the muddle-headed think that the change over of certain industries from private to state capitalism has something to do with Socialism or affects in any way the structure or stability of capitalism or the wealth of the capitalist class. The Manchester Guardian (17/3/55) is nearer the mark is its assessment when it says that the attraction of the Bevanite movement 

“lies in its beautiful sentimental vagueness. The Communist, the pacifist, the believer in the innate virtue of the Soviet State, the hater of American ’capitalism,’ the general 'do-gooder,' all see something of themselves reflected in the glowing rhetoric of Mr. Bevan. Yet, as Mr. Attlee has pointed out, Mr. Bevan himself does not differ doctrinally from the official policy he condemns. But he appears to differ and that is enough."

He may be, as is claimed, a great orator in the Churchill class but if so it may still be true of him as he said of Churchill

“The mediocrity of his thinking is concealed by the majesty of his language." (Daily Herald, 3/3/55.)

Edgar Hardcastle

The Tribune Group: Organized Hypocrisy (1975)

From the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Circus provides many political analogies. There are the clowns, of course; balancing and tightrope acts; tamed lions and dogs walking on hind legs; fire-eaters, who all give it up because it harms their mastication.

One other which should not be overlooked is the anti-circus freaks. Wherever a show appears, comes an earnest lady or two with a placard saying Stop the circus — it's cruel. Like the old men carrying religious texts on Derby Day, they are part of the attractions; and their political counterpart is the Tribune group. While Healey swings on a trapeze and Wilson cracks his whip, the Tribunites parade the ground crying woe and disapproval. And then go home to tea.

Tribune began in 1937. It was founded by a group including Bevan, Jennie Lee, Cripps and George Strauss, to advocate support for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and to oppose rearmament. These original aims established the fatuousness which has been Tribune's hallmark. It demanded on one hand that the British government should stop making arms to fight dictators; on the other, it wanted Britain to give military help against dictatorship in Spain.

Its overt purpose has always been to sustain a “left wing” inside the Parliamentary Labour Party and protest against “betrayals” which, sadly for it, occur day by day in labour politics. In the postwar years the Tribune supporters were known generally as “Bevanites”. Bevan having died, after the Labour victory of 1964 the left-wing faction formed an organized group using Tribune as their platform. The principal figure of the group — until recently, at any rate -— has been Michael Foot; but his remaining a member of the crisis-bound Wilson government has reduced the left’s enthusiasm for him.

The conviction hanging round the Tribune group is that they are would-be revolutionaries, probably Marxists, bent on prosecuting the class struggle. The Observer, in an article on 13th July, remarked as evidence of Tribune's being “plebeian” that its appearance is inelegant and its offices are behind Smithfield meat market. That is mendacious nonsense which Tribune has fostered, like an intellectual wearing hobnail boots in the hope that they will lead to his being mistaken for a rat-catcher. In fact throughout its lifetime Tribune has been financed by well-to-do Labourites. Cripps and Strauss provided £20,000 to launch it in 1937; in the Bevan days it was supported by the millionaire Howard Samuel, and on one occasion was got out of trouble by Lord Beaverbrook.

Tribune has always attacked inequality, the profit motive and the horrors of capitalism. Its standpoint is not that of the class struggle, however, but of moral indignation. And like most moralists it is a hypocrite. Before the war it propagandized for the Soviet Union and — so as not to alienate Communist support for a “united front” — ignored the barbaric Russian purges. Today it excels at being frank when the appropriate time has passed, neglecting to mention at election-times what it will assert afterwards: that Labour is being led by untrustworthy and incompetent people — whom, nevertheless, it campaigned to get elected. Earlier this year Foot described a Labour minister, Reg Prentice, as an “economic illiterate”. His remark was capped by Sydney Bidwell, chairman of the Tribune group, who said Prentice was a “political illiterate” too. No doubt each thought of his phrase while looking in a mirror; but why did not Tribune make Prentice’s condition known at election-time last year?

The publicized aims of the Tribune group in 1975 (besides its anti-Common Market campaign) have been to oppose government policies of wage restraint, and to have Labour return to policies of nationalization and “soaking the rich”. During July newspaper headlines spoke of a threatened “big revolt” against the government’s Anti-Inflation Bill. On its introduction the revolt turned out to be no more than protest, with divisions among the Tribunites themselves. That could have been anticipated: the bright idea at the head of the government measures, the £6 limit on pay increases, was first proposed by the TGWU leader Jack Jones — who is one of the directors of Tribune.

Thus, the Tribune group’s impotence is now as widely commented on as, a short while back, was its clamorousness. The Guardian on 17th July had an article headed “Tribune’s opposition pales to a shadow”. The Observer article already quoted said: “Not so long ago, the group seemed to be capturing the whole party. Now, despite its successful campaigning in the trade unions, in the local constituencies, and on the National Executive, the group’s influence on Government policy appears to be nil.” What this amounts to is that the group was able to disport itself, “capture” and be “successful” as long as the contest was not too serious. When the mucking-about stopped the wretched little creature was found — as always — boo-hooing that its ball had been taken away.

The impossibility of the Tribunites’ position is in the fact that each is a Labour MP, and therefore committed to administering the capitalist system. The basic situations and problems created by capitalism are parts of its structure, and simply cannot be altered while it exists. The members of any governing party find themselves with no choice against the necessities of what they have taken on. The pre-war “disarmament” Tribune group supported the war which broke out two years later, and served in the wartime government under Churchill; just as Labour leaders in Britain and other countries urged the workers to war in 1914, after swearing in concert that they would not.

“Reluctance” is meaningless. A kick from a reluctant person hurts the same as a kick from a willing one. The Guardian article spoke of Tribunites’ giving Wilson “grudging and qualified support in the lobbies” — but whatever its frame of mind, a vote is a vote. But these are, in any case, marginal matters. The Tribune group has no idea of abolishing capitalism; it wants it managed in a different way from which, it hopes, results will be better. Its proposed alternatives to the government’s anti-inflation policy included a price freeze, import controls, cuts in arms spending, and “an extension of public ownership and accountability”.

In addition to this rag-bag of reforms the group called for a wealth tax to achieve a “fundamental and irreversible shift of wealth and power in favour of working people”. It is difficult to visualize a mind which can put such twaddle into lofty-sounding words. Does it mean the rich are to go on making riches so that they can be taken away? If so, how can they make riches without exploiting the workers who must therefore be kept poor? Or is it to be transferred from one address to another, so that we all have a turn at being rich and being taxed and then being poor again?

It is unlikely that any Tribunite would be able to explain or, if he could, that his explanation would resemble any other Tribunite’s. But Socialists can always shed light on these questions. First, the proposal to shift wealth towards working people accompanies a list of other measures which are all aimed to get capitalism in Britain out of its difficulties and keep Labour in power. It is, in other words, a carrot on a stick: help us over this hill, and then see what we’ll give you.

Second, whatever form the “shift” was intended to take, it would not envisage actually giving more wages. The whole of Labour history is against that. Every Labour government has made its special business to try to keep wages down. Let the working class have money? Not likely. The shifting would be a hypothetical arrangement known as a “social wage”, a notional benefit, etc. It would most likely take the form of subsidies and rebates, be accompanied by a heightening of the housing problem, and lead to the indignant discovery by a Tribune group ten years later that the workers were no better off.

As for a “fundamental shift of power in favour of working people’’, the Tribunites either do not comprehend or are happy to misrepresent the nature of political power. It means the control of the state, and while capitalism exists that can only be to conserve the class ownership of the means of production and distribution. The working class can and one day will take control of the powers of government — to replace capitalist ownership with common ownership; but it can do that only when the majority have become conscious of the need for Socialism.

To speak of redistributing power as a social reform under capitalism is absurd. If the Tribunites desired that the working class should acquire Socialist consciousness and aim for control of the state machine, there are two steps their group could take. One is, of course, to say so and stop preaching reforms which patch up capitalism. The other is to remove themselves from the posture of leaders and make known that the working class is able to emancipate itself; which would involve also giving up the secrecy to which Tribune and its group are addicted.

Failing that, the Tribune group goes on doing harm. If its influence on the Parliamentary Labour Party is negligible, it exercises a more dire one on the voters. In particular, many are persuaded that a Socialist purpose is to be found in the Labour Party — that if instead of “betrayers” the opportunity is given to men of good will, they can produce a change in society. There are large numbers of people who express themselves as disillusioned with Socialism. They mean they have believed these buffoons, or a previous generation of them. With their rejection of the means for their emancipation, the Tribune group stands charged.

Robert Barltrop

Aneurin Bevan (1960)

From the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Aneurin Bevan was a terrible blow to the Labour Party. Here, we were told, was a man of humble birth who night have been Prime Minister. A man who burnt with a sincere passion against the world's harshness and injustice. But did Bevan bear any responsibility for making the world what it is? Truly, Labour have need of him now, of his scornful wit which could hold the Tories in sullen silence—or have them laughing at themselves. More even than that, Labour need his ability to unite the party in acceptance of policies which as individuals they may find distasteful. Bevan was a master at this because many Labour Party members believed that, if Nye could say with his hand on his heart that a certain course was regrettable but necessary, then it must be so. So it was at Brighton in 1957, when he made his famous speech on the H-bomb which shocked his followers and shattered the movement which up to then had been known as the Bevanites.

Now why should the death of one man be so disastrous to a party which has hundreds of thousands of other members? It seems too obvious to say that the party which can offer the most attractive leaders usually gets the most votes. Since the heyday of the Attlee era, Labour have lacked appealing leaders. No more Ernie Bevin, with his rough manner and the straying aitches. No more Herb Morrison, smooth and, eloquent. Bevan seemed to be the only outstanding one left. And now that be has gone, Labour are asking themselves: What shall we do without him?

A man like Bevan is important to a party which offers itself as a potential administrator of capitalism. At election time, it must angle for the floating voter—and there is no more tempting bait than a colourful leader, to answer the tricky questions which stump the candidate, to shake hands all round and tell everyone how worthy he is, and to explain away the hard facts of capitalist life and persuade the voters to bear the insecurity and the squalor of the system which his party wish to organise. He must justify the promises forgotten or broken, and skate over the stirring enunciation of principles which were upheld at the last election and are being quietly contradicted in this. He must, in fact, be all that the politically ignorant expect a leader to be.

Bevan filled this role to perfection. First of all, he had what they call the common touch. Who better than a one time down-trodden miner to justify the anti-working class policies of his party? One of these was Bevan's pet, the National Health Service. This must have gained a lot of support for Labour in 1945, for many people thought that the scheme would entitle them to free access to the best possible medical treatment—and who wouldn't vote for something like that? In fact, National Health was a rearrangement of working-class poverty, which made no difference to the fact that the surest way of getting decent medical attention is to be able to pay for it. A royal birth still sends a whole clutch of doctors hurrying to the bedside. And Bevan himself died in the care of a titled personal physician. Is that an indication of what he thought of the National Health Service? The record does not end there, Bevan was a member of the Labour government when they were busy breaking strikes and getting involved in the slaughter of workers in Korea and other parts of the world. This was the government which promoted the great swindle of nationalisation, which made the shareholders more secure than before and left the workers no better off. Yet—and here is the swindle—this was said, by Bevan and others, to be Socialism.

True, Bevan sometimes produced a scathing condemnation of the Tories. He was good at this—he made a mess of Selwyn Lloyd over Suez. Yet he could be nationalistic when he wanted. Macmillan, in his House of Commons tribute, called him a patriot. This is what he had to say at Bradford on 17th October, 1953:
Let the British nation take the position it is entitled to, the moral leadership of the world. That leadership does not belong across the Atlantic because America is being dominated by the same kind of mentality as dominates the government of Great Britain.
He could be scathing on the Conservatives' colonial policy—yet, for example, it was his party which imprisoned Nkrumah. (Strangely, Bevan forgot this and in the debate on Cyprus on 19th March, 1959, he actually attacked the Tories for imprisoning the Ghana Prime Minister. The Tories had a good laugh and Bevan had to withdraw—which, of course, he did without turning a hair). He could make a touching plea for peace and security—yet he insisted that any future Labour government must have the right to make any weapons which the emergencies of capitalism may force onto them. This is what he said about the H-bomb at the Scarborough Conference in 1958:

We are not pledging ourselves to making it. We are not pledging ourselves not to making it. We don't know what kind of weapons we need. We must leave ourselves some room for manoeuvre.

There is no reason to pin this sort of inconsistency on to Bevan alone. For he was only one of the many leaders of capitalism. Such men must have at least two faces—one for their public, always responsible but kindly, suggesting that its owner is incapable of hurting a fly; and the other for: the Cabinet Room realities of capitalism, for the brutal and inhuman actions and decisions which they must always be taking. It is never pleasant to hear of a death. But this must be said: Bevan played the game with the rest. He played it better than most. That is why they will remember him for a long time.

Ivan

The New Tribune—but the same old story (1952)

From the November 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 26th September the new Tribune appeared, it is no longer a magazine but a weekly newspaper complete with photographs. Many of the articles are written with a lively style, but then so is the Daily Mirror. The new Tribune claims to be a socialist paper; well we are willing to believe anything that can be proved. Let's have a look at the claim.

On the front page we are told in red type that "Nye Bevan writes on page four," the maestro himself—more boosting of the leader. It's a bad start as socialists do not follow leaders, they don't have them.

The main article on the front page with big headlines "Declaration of Independence—We Don't Want Those Dollars" begins as follows: - "Our Country is in greater danger than at almost any time since 1940. But today the threat does not come from dive-bombers and blitzkrieg. The urgent peril is not one of military conquest. The danger is creeping social decay and a mortal surrender of British independence." Who are the patriots? It can't be the Tories or Attlee and Co, since they accepted the dollars, surely it must be Bevan and Co.—No socialism here so let's turn to page 2.

J. P. W. Mallalieu, who describes himself as a free-lance journalist occupies most of the page. He tells us the heart-rending story that he only receives £1,000 per year as an M.P. with no subs from the Co-op. and no subs from a Trade Union although he is a member of both. They do things better in America as the Nixon affair showed.

On page 3 we have Jennie Lee, she her article "what an extraordinary mixture our Labour movement is! On some issues it takes a robust Socialist line then on others it's as conservative as the Tory Party." We can certainly agree about the extraordinary mixture of the Labour movement although we have failed to see where it takes a robust Socialist line. Perhaps Jennie Lee will write another article and tell us.

On page 4, as we were advised on the front page, there is an article by Aneurin Bevan complete with a smiling photograph. He requests "Don't be misled by the smear campaigns.: The "great leader" hasn't been getting the support he expected. In his article he makes an attack on the Communist Party, he omits to mention that he was once expelled from the Labour Party because he formed a united front. His argument is for more nationalisation, no wonder he hasn't got the support he so badly wants. Nationalisation hasn't proved so popular with the workers.

On the same page there is an obituary on the late George Tomlinson. We are told: "On the platform he was a masterly performer. Audiences rocked with laughter and sometimes came near to tears. He held them in the hollow of his hand. He could do what he wished with them."—No he wasn't an actor, not on the legitimate stage at least, he was a Labour M.P. and Minister. 

On page 5, Ian Mikardo asks the question "Are you, too, a perpetual reformer?" On dealing with the Labour Party he states "What, then , is the real difference between the so-called Left and the so-called Right, between the Nationalisers and the so-called Consolidators? It is, put sharply, the difference between those who are thinking afresh in order to discover some new and better roads to our Socialist goal, and those who are thinking afresh in order to discover some new goal to replace the one they have abandoned."

Do you get it? The so-called Lefts are looking for new and better roads to Socialism—what happened to their old roads? The so-called Right are looking for a new goal. What a mess they are all in, what are the leaders going to do about it?

There are a number of adverts, even the brewers don't mind claiming "Beer is Best" in the Tribune. But still nothing about Socialism, in fact it's the same old Tribune but that's what we expected.

D.W.L.

Has Bevan Sold the Pass? (1957)

From the November 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lot of people who have for years worshipped Aneurin Bevan have now turned against their hero because of his support for the H-Bomb at the Labour Party Conference. Bevan says that he is as strongly against the bomb as ever he was and that his speech and vote at Brighton (decided on "after a lot of agonising thinking"), were only designed to find "the most effective way of getting the damned thing destroyed": but this a bit too subtle for those who have passionately believed that Bevan was hundred per cent against the bomb and now find that he isn't.

But actually the disgruntled Bevanites have little ground for complaint for, as it happens, Bevan has changed his politics hardly at all. If any deception has been carried out it is their own self-deception; an obstinate refusal to take note of that Bevan has for years been saying and doing.

If a few of them are genuine pacifists who resolutely refuse to support armaments or war, they are fully entitled to be opposed to Bevan who supported World War II and the Korean War, and conscription and re-armament, but they cannot pretend that Bevan has deceived them about his record of war-supporting.

With others the revulsion of feeling may appear to be more soundly based, but again it will not stand examination. They take the view (like Bevan) that armaments are necessary and that war is sometimes unavoidable and must be supported no matter what the cost in death and destruction. They reject the Socialist view that war arises from capitalism and can only be got rid of by establishing Socialism. They can stomach it all, the millions of dead and maimed, the trench warfare, machine guns and artillery, the bombing raids, the napalm and even the A-Bomb—but the H-Bomb. No! The H-Bomb, they say is horrible, unthinkable, and on account of it they will destroy their beloved reader, Bevan. But they have no serious ground for indignation with Bevan on this count, for he long ago made it clear that in his view he and others supported the second World War and the Labour Government of 1945-51 have no moral or logical case against the H-Bomb.

Writing in the News Chronicle (9/3/1955) he said :-

"Those of us who concurred in the making of the atom bomb and tolerated the saturation bombing of the last war have no moral or logical case against the hydrogen bomb. All three are methods and weapons of imprecision, that is, it is known they will destroy the civilian population and all the civil installations of the enemy."

He went on to admit that the addition of the H-Bomb to the weapons of war would only be "carrying the logic of our past behaviour to its furthermost extremities" but put his own view that on practical grounds every effort should be made to get international agreement against the bomb. It is hard to see how those of his followers who swallowed all the other horrors of war making can justifiably wax indignant now because of a minute shift in Bevan's policy. Yet an irate reader of Tribune can write that Bevan's action has left "a gaping hole" in all the principles of the Socialist rank and file: "The tender, compassionate heart of our Socialism has been torn out and replaced with a dessicated calculating machine." (Tribune, 11/10/57).

Socialists, of course, never had any confidence in Bevan, or believed for one moment that he adhered to or ever had any understanding of Socialist principles; and, nobody with Socialist principles would have supported him or the Labour Government or the wars of capitalism that that government had a hand in.

But then Socialists do not believe in leadership, the danger and uselessness of which are well shown by the Bevanite movement. If the Bevanites had been Socialists they would have had their own clean clear conviction that Socialists do not take on the administration of capitalism, and they would, therefore, never have supported the Labour Government. They would have known that the government that runs capitalism has all to do all the obnoxious things that capitalism requires of them, including the waging of war. They would have seen the absurdity of putting a Labour Government in charge of British capitalism and of its war-machine with a mandate to keep it going and of then demanding of them that they behave as Socialists.

But the Bevanites were not and are not Socialists, they were everything and nothing, a motley collection of individuals united only by the leader's spell-bending oratory:-

"The Communist, the pacifist, the believer in the innate virtue of the Soviet State, the hater of American 'capitalism,' the general do-gooder," all see something of themselves reflected in the glowing rhetoric of Mr. Bevan." - (Manchester Guardian, 17/3/55.)    

Well, they have got what they asked for; they laboured to feed his vanity and build his reputation, and now he doesn't much mind what they do. Will it cure them? That remains to be seen, but there is no evidence yet that they have learned the uselessness of  leadership for the establishment of Socialism.

It might help them on their way to getting a better understanding if they noted that Bevan, whom they think has played them false, had his own ideas on leadership. The leader of the Labour Party ought to be, he said, not someone from "the top drawer of society" (meaning, presumably, Attlee and Gaitskell), but should be drawn "from those who had spent their lives in the Labour and Trade Union movement, and who not only understood Socialism with their heads, but knew it with their hearts." (Manchester Guardian, 18/6/51). And it all ends with the heart of Bevan and the head of Gaitskell and Attlee, uniting as one on the Labour Party's H-bomb policy. So little difference does the kind of leader make, and so necessary is it that the workers should learn to think for themselves and not leave their thinking to leaders. 

Edgar Hardcastle