Of all the MPs who did not return after the election to the House of Commons none expose more clearly the present purpose of parliament, the motivation of their party and the unpleasant realities of capitalist politics than the recently ennobled Lord Callaghan.
After their defeat the Labour Party are, once more, in the throes of something called "Bringing The Party Up To Date", which actually means purging themselves of any policies or so-called principles which are suspected of losing them votes. A letter from "Lifelong Tribune Supporter", Walter Cairns, of the University of Dundee, in the Guardian of 22 July put it like this:
Kinnock and Gould . . . enjoy my unqualified support in their endeavours to refashion the party's image into that of a modern and efficient movement for socialism.
Among the contradictions and misconceptions which crowd this letter from an eminent academic lawyer, one thing stands out. Even while they are advocating policies like refashioning the party image, based on the cynical presumptions of a capitalist society, Labour supporters are capable of claiming that they are doing so with the object of establishing socialism.
If the Labour Party — somehow, somewhere. sometime — does stand for socialism it must follow that its membership consists of socialists — of people who understand socialism and are agreed about the urgency of setting it up in place of capitalism. It must also follow that these people think, speak and act like socialists; for example they oppose any discrimination based on sex or race, they deny that production for profit is a constructive social motivation, they understand that a class society must give rise to class conflict, they reject the principle of political leadership. Applying these standards to the record of James Callaghan reveals conclusive evidence about the authentic character of the Labour Party — that it is not a socialist party but one which stands, quite clearly, for capitalism.
Callaghans early life was an impoverished struggle from which, not untypically, he drew the wrong conclusions. For one thing, the extremities of his family's poverty had something to do with his father's death in 1921, while he was still young, as a result of what he went through in the Navy during the First World War but this did not deter Callaghan from joining the Navy himself during the Second World War. He had left school to become a junior clerk in the Inland Revenue and had risen through his union, the Association of Officers of Taxes. In 1945 he was returned to the Commons for one of the Cardiff constituencies — some prudently left-wing stances during the 1930s had attracted the attention and patronage of Hugh Dalton and Harold Laski. He passed the war quietly in Naval Intelligence. Perhaps after all he did learn something from his father’s death.
Callaghan's rise was something of a mystery to political observers. He had not gone to university, he was not charismatic like Bevan, or sophisticated like Crossman or earthy like Bevin. He had no gift for sweeping rhetoric or quicksilver repartee. What he did have, instead, was a dogged resolve to climb the greasy pole of political power and. to help in this, a cunning feel for many ingrained working class prejudices. Peter Walker, who in these matters knows what he is talking about, described Callaghan the Prime Minister:
We have a Prime Minister, who is good on television; who looks like Stanley Baldwin; who lives like Stanley Baldwin; and Stanley Baldwin with the vote of the Labour Party and North Sea Oil is a very formidable opponent. (Financial Times, 16 December. 1967.)
When the first Wilson government was elected in 1964, Callaghan’s eminence in the Labour Party was enough to see him installed as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was an unusually tricky appointment. Labour's promise of prosperity through a massive surge in productivity in an age restless with the new technology had led to the setting up of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA). a new ministry with a brief to blast away the Treasury’s cobwebs of financial orthodoxy. Callaghan, when he was Shadow Chancellor, had made no secret of the orthodoxy of the policies he intended to follow. Speaking at a Yorkshire miners’ summer school in 1962. he warned that ". . . substantial changes are necessary in the reorganisation of Britain’s economy and in the methods of wage-fixing", by which he meant formal "planning" of wage rises. In the same speech Callaghan denounced the Macmillan government for their handling of industrial relations and for governing the country by gimmicks. (Guardian, 28 August. 1962). Probably, the miners loved it. They could not have known that Callaghan was an admirer of, and a close collaborator with, Reginald Maudling, who as Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer was an important practitioner of government by gimmick:
There was a mutual liking and confidence between Maudling and myself. During his tenure of office he did not hesitate to talk privately and frankly to me about his concerns. I reciprocated during my period at the Treasury . . . (James Callaghan, Time and Chance, 1987.)
The Wilson government was dogged by the "central problem" of the balance of payments. They hoped to control the economy through the DEA's National Plan and through the joint Declaration of Intent by the government. the employers and the unions that the way to improve the world standing of British capitalism was for everyone to volunteer to be moderate and restrained about their income. It did not take long for the realities of capitalism to wreck that fantasy and for the Labour government to make moderation and restraint compulsory. At the Labour conference in 1966 Callaghan revealed that what they actually meant by "voluntary" was "under threat of compulsion”:
Those who wanted to force the government to use compulsion have had their way. Perhaps they are proud of their victory but they have done no service to the ordinary men and women of this country, nor to the trade union movement.
This speech also spelled it out that when the government talked about moderation in incomes they really meant in working class incomes — in wages. The income of the capitalist class (who are not "ordinary men and women") did not come into the reckoning.
According to Richard Crossman, Callaghan's apparent nonchalance concealed a panic at the continuing economic crises which at times left him virtually paralysed. For one thing he was under severe pressure to devalue the pound an issue on which he had not only nailed his colours to the mast but burned his boats into the bargain. In the Commons in July 1967 he again stated his opposition to devaluation as". . . not the way out of Britain’s difficulties". So when, in November that year, the government which had promised to raise real standards decided to cut them by devaluing the pound Callaghan had no way out. In what was described as a resignation he swapped offices with Roy Jenkins, to become Home Secretary. It was not a bad reward for a minister whose impotence in face of capitalism's crises had been so harshly exposed.
Callaghan's time as Home Secretary was notable for his pushing through in seven days the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1968 — a panicky reaction to the prejudices maliciously excited by the likes of Duncan Sandys and Enoch Powell over the Asian immigration from Kenya and Uganda. His justification for this measure — that unless the public were confident that immigration was effectively controlled there would be continuing riots and tension (Time and Chance) may have secured a few racist votes for the Labour Party but it contradicted their claim to stand for the free, humane co-operative world of socialism and it was in any case a wretchedly specious argument for trying to appease the appetite of a dangerous prejudice.
Labour’s return to power in 1974 allowed Callaghan to become Foreign Secretary and when Wilson resigned in 1976 he moved predictably into Number Ten, a politician unusually experienced in the three great offices of state below that of Prime Minister. In theory, then, he should have been an historic success. In practice it was very different. His government soon decided that the agreement for voluntary pay restraint negotiated with the unions by Wilson and Michael Foot should be extended. They set a limit of five per cent and threatened sanctions against any company which settled pay claims above that figure. Healey, the Chancellor, was wielding a savage axe on public expenditure. aiming for cuts totalling £3,000 million over the next two years. Callaghan informed the 1976 Labour conference that Keynesian policies, which had once given theoretical sustenance to Labour manifesto writers, were now dead:
We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists . . .
This was greeted as a typical piece of Callaghan common sense; it took no account of the effect which the cuts were to have in, for one, the National Health Service:
Standards of care in the health service have drastically worsened through the lack of money, more work and shortage of nurses, the Royal College of Nurses said yesterday.(Guardian, 31 October 1987.)
For a while Callaghan seemed to be getting away with those policies but resentment against the government deepened and the Labour Party lost a series of by-elections, most notably in mining and industrial seats like Ashfield and Workington. As their majority dwindled away Callaghan, rather than surrender power, came to an arrangement with the Liberals in which whatever was left of Labour policies were compromised for the sake of Liberal support in parliament.
In the summer of 1978 the unions began to indicate that they had had enough of pay restraint. Many trade unionists were employed in socially vital work for wages below what they could get on Social Security. After a week in the sewage works or the sewers, in ambulances or hospital kitchens they were compelled to scrabble for Family Income Supplement. In the previous winter Callaghan's government had used troops to break the firemen's strike but no detachment of Green Goddesses could have withstood the flood of disruption of the winter of discontent. Callaghan, the Prime Minister who had come up through the trade union movement. was in favour of trying to dragoon the strikers in a State of Emergency but settled for merely urging workers to betray their class interests by crossing picket lines: ''Everyone," he said in the Commons, "has the right to work and everyone has the right to cross a picket line. It is not a sacred object and I hope they will do so". (Guardian 24 January, 1979).
Labour optimism of 1964 was no more than a sour memory when, in March 1979, Callaghan's government were defeated on a motion of confidence and so were forced into an election. The DEA, the National Plan, the technological revolution, the planned growth of productivity and of incomes, were all consigned to the already crowded history of broken promises. In her diaries Barbara Castle described the end of Labour's dream as "stagnant output, high unemployment and falling living standards." This last was, of course, a reference to the condition of the working class for the capitalists were doing rather well. Healey had warned the rich that he would squeeze them until the pips squeaked but as Labour left office the income of the richest one per cent exceeded that of the poorest 20 per cent. In several senses the way had been paved for the age of Thatcher, which the Labour Party now regard as so calamitous. If there were any of what might be called justice in these matters. Callaghan should have shrunk, shame-faced, into obscurity. Instead he subsided into an honoured place on the back benches, with more time to spend on his adored Sussex farm. And when he announced his resignation from parliament he was quickly given a title as reward for all he tried to do, and did, for the interests of the British capitalist class.
His memoirs (Time and Chance) is a curiously passionless book, except when Callaghan launches into extravagant praise for some fellow political trickster. Criticism is, at worst, muted. Perhaps, after all, he does experience some twinges of doubt; perhaps what happened during those dismal years is too much to recall with any strength. He failed to keep a promise to do the impossible, to control an uncontrollable social system which operates on laws based on the interests of a small minority of parasites. In these fruitless endeavours he was indeed a formidable opponent — of the working class where he originated, the class who are the real producers in society. There is a useful lesson in his story. The significance of politicians is not their strength but their impotence and what this tells us about our class power to change society.
Ivan
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