The Nemesis of Labour Government (1949)

From the July 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Those Behind cried 'Forward! and those before cried 'Back' "

The Labour Government and the Party leaders are puzzled and anxious both about the immediate troubles with the trade unions and about the General Election that must take place before the summer of 1950. At the moment at any rate, they are not thinking of more distant problems though in truth their real difficulties will come later on if they succeed in winning the election.

The internal Party discussions, as evidenced at the Labour Party Annual Conference, take the familiar form of the rank and file of the trade unions pressing the government to make life easier for the workers either by reducing prices or by raising wages; while the leaders counsel patience, urge greater production, and hold out vague hopes that things will be better some day if only Labour is returned to power for another five years There is a certain amount of personal recrimination from both sides. The critics of the government are inclined to hold Sir Stafford Cripps responsible, implying that a different Chancellor could take a different line, while some of the government spokesmen and defenders find fault with the workers for their “unreasonable” attitude. A case in point was a speech by Mr. H. McMoulden, President of the Hosiery Workers' Union at the annual conference in June. He maintained that “a measure of unreasonableness is seeping into the minds of some of our people as to their value in relation to their job.” He went on to say that the employers are not wholly to blame for difficulties experienced in solving outstanding problems—“Some of the blame must be taken to ourselves in that we have cultivated a mental outlook on the part of large sections of our membership which is now rebounding upon us to our great embarrassment.” (Manchester Guardian, 7/6/49.) Put into the briefest terms what this means is that Labour government has failed to live up to the expectations of the workers. The latter were led to believe during the years of Labour Party propaganda that when Labour became the government with a clear majority there would be a vast change and improvement in wages, conditions of work and so on. Now the government and the trade union leaders find themselves in the embarrassing position of explaining why the looked-for changes have not yet arrived and must be deferred still further, and why the profit system must be maintained.

Undoubtedly the “unofficial" strikes are one expression of the dissatisfaction of Labour voters, as also was the loss of many seats in the local elections. Evidence of a similar kind is provided by Mr. Ellis Smith, Labour member for Stoke, who laments the disappearance of the old enthusiasm among Labour Party supporters and is forming a Socialist Fellowship with the aim of trying to recreate it.

One thing the leaders and the rank and file critics appear to have in common is that they all believe that the problem facing the Labour government can be solved ; though some think it could be done at once by a change of policy and others think it will be done eventually if the present policy is continued.

It remains for the Socialist Party of Great Britain to insist that both groups are mistaken. The dilemma facing this Labour government is one that must face every Labour government. It is one to which there is no solution and it must result eventually in the collapse of the experiment; for there is nothing a Labour government can do to end the workers' discontent with capitalism. There are, of course, some Labour Party supporters who give what they think is the answer. They will admit that the workers can never secure lasting satisfaction within the capitalist system but will reply that the solution is the abolition of capitalism. Socialists agree with the latter but the dilemma still remains for the Labour government, because it is not in their power to introduce Socialism. Socialism is at present not a possibility because the mass of the electorate do not understand or want it. Anyone who considers the matter knows that this is so. The electors who vote Labour want all kinds of things but they expect them to be obtained within the framework of capitalism, through the efforts of the Labour government. Reference has been made to the campaign of Mr. Ellis Smith, M.P., to recreate the lost enthusiasm among the Labour Party membership. He quotes a letter from a local Labour Party official in the East End of London in which it is stated that “ not more than one-tenth of the delegates to a meeting knew what Socialism was.” (Manchester Guardian, 30/5/49.) This, of course, is in fact a highly optimistic view as every member of the S.P.G.B. knows by practical experience gained in discussion with members of the Labour Party. The Socialist aims of abolishing the wages system, production for profit, buying and selling, property incomes, etc., in short the abolition of capitalism, is something quite outside the conceptions of the Labour Party.

What then can the Labour government do? They cannot satisfy the demands of the workers inside capitalism and they cannot get outside capitalism because the workers so far have not come to a recognition of the need for and practicability of Socialism. There is only one possible outcome. Like every Labour government of the past, the present one must come into increasing conflict with the working class—the workers struggling against the effects of capitalism and the government struggling, whether it wishes to or no, to resist those demands because to grant them would make the functioning of capitalism impossible.