Confusion on the left (1965)

From the November 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his time, Mr. Harold Wilson has been cast in many roles. One of the latest, as this year’s Labour Party Conference made clear, is that of the master surgeon who, by skilful use of anaesthetic and scalpel, has amputated the Party’s Left Wing.

The operation has left a stump, which will probably grow and once again become a seat of infection. But for the moment all is as Mr. Wilson intended; what there is of the stump is a feeble thing—indeed, some of the observers at the operation were not even sure of where to look for it— and the patient is just becoming to come round.

It is as well if, before we go any further, we try to be clear about what we mean by Left Wing. First, let us say that the term has no real validity, in the sense that it does not describe a particular, permanent political viewpoint. Some politicians are said to be “left wing” on some issues and “right wing” on others. Even the Conservative Party is supposed to have members who are “left wing”—for example. Sir Edward Boyle. It is apparent that, although it is an expression which is in constant use, nobody is very anxious to pin down the meaning of “Left Wing” in a definition.

At the same time, we all know that there is a section of the Labour Party which is always nagging about banning the Bomb, or raising pensions, or getting out of Vietnam, or getting into the Congo. At any and every time, this section is in a ferment of protest—demonstrating, marching, resolving, even resigning. Sometimes, under the lash of Labour’s Right Wingers, they are called rebels, or other less complimentary things. Usually, and conveniently, they are called the Left Wing, and for the purposes of this discussion we may as well accept the term, although we recognise its drawbacks.

The Left Wing claim that the Labour Party’s rank and file are behind them and, if we take the annual vote of the constituency parties for members of the National Executive as our only guide, this claim is true. In their eagerness to return Left Wingers to the Executive, the constituency parties have sometimes braised the ego of Labour’s famous leaders. The late Lord Morrison was one who was spurned in this way, and he neither forgot nor forgave.

It is not, however, true that the constituency vote always goes left. This year, for example, a majority of it apparently supported the Government's prices and incomes policy, when it was under fire from the Left. The constituency vote for the Left Wingers is a different matter; they vote for them because they regard them as men of honour and principle, who will keep what they think of as the ideals of the Labour Party unsullied.

Perhaps they never reflect upon what happened to the famous Left Wingers in the past. There was Stafford Cripps, once the hottest of firebrands, who switched so smartly from Left to Right when the call came. There have been others who have committed themselves behind the scenes to supporting the policies they once attacked, and who have announced this to their astounded followers, as Aneurin Bevan did over the Bomb at Brighton in 1957. And there have been others who have simply joined up and shut up—taken jobs in the Government and sat mute while their followers of yesterday have thundered their protests. This year, for example, the constituency parties elected Barbara Castle, Anthony Greenwood and Richard Crossman to the Executive—all of them Left Wing rebels of the past, all of them now members of a Government which infuriates the Left. 

It is clear that the Labour Party are still under the ether which was administered to them in October last year. Everything about the 1965 conference — the “composition” of hostile resolutions, the prominence given to Ministers, the hero-worship of the Government, the rough handling which the delegates got from chairman Mr. Gunter—showed how stupid the Labour Party has now become. What remains of the Left is leaderless. Even Michael Foot, once the busiest of rebels, was silent; “. . . no Left-winger,” wrote Anthony Howard of him in the Sunday Times, “Has defended the Government more loyally.” To this point we shall return.

The lack of leadership is a serious matter for the Left Wing, because if there is one thing they love it is a leader. The sort of man who can rouse the annual Tribune rally, with a speech of mixed hypocrisy and nostalgia is an absolute essential to them. They must have fiery speeches full of demands which the speakers (and perhaps a large part of the audience) know have not the faintest chance of becoming reality. Take away their leaders and the Left is lost. That is what Harold Wilson has done. Indeed, he has taken away the greatest hope the Left has had for a long time; himself. For he once encouraged the rebels in the Labour Party to regard him as their leader (at the same time, of course, as he did as little as possible to discourage the Right Wing from regarding him as their leader). Perhaps this is why the Left are in such a fury over Vietnam, the Bomb and the other issues on which the Labour Government have disappointed them.

It would be an interesting exercise were the Left to ask themselves why they are always being betrayed in this way. Much of what they demand sounds sensible enough. Who doesn’t want the war in Vietnam to end? Who doesn’t want to scrap nuclear weapons? Who doesn’t want better pay and working conditions? It is easy enough for a politician or a rebel to give voice to these demands. The big snag is that they are difficult, not to say impossible, to obtain under capitalism. That is why, if a Left Winger gets a job in the Government he always seems to be able to forget the heady days of rebellion and get down to the job of running the system. Conscientious objectors become Ministers of War (like Mr. Shinwell), trade unionists go to the Ministry of Labour (like Ernie Bevin). The Left Wing, betrayed again, has to look around for new leaders.

What do the realities of capitalism make of the Left Wing’s policies? What about Vietnam? The Americans are fighting there not in the interests of the Vietnamese people, but to protect the substantial military and economic interests which they have in the area. Ever since the defeat of Japan, Washington has been determined that only one power should control the Far East. Any challenge to American domination there must provoke the same result, as we saw in Korea and as we are seeing now in Vietnam. The results are unpleasant, but inevitable.

By the same token, nuclear weapons are essential to capitalism in the Sixties. The disputes which capitalism throws up require every competing nation to be in readiness for war, and the wider a country’s interests and its domination, the more frightening its preparation will be. It is thus no coincidence that the United States and the Soviet Union have the world's most advanced and destructive weapons. The results, again, are unpleasant—but nobody has yet been able to put a stop to capitalism’s arms race.

Nobody, either, has been able to put a stop to the persistent battle between workers and employers over wages and working conditions. The fact that the majority of capitalism’s people have to work for wages in order to live means that they will always have to struggle to get the highest wages possible, and to protect their other conditions. Governments may do their utmost to control the situation, with legislation and appeals, but the conflict will go on and the results of it, although not as spectacular as those of a war, are unpleasant enough.

The frictions and the malaises of capitalism are an unavoidable product of the system. The Left Wing does not recognise this—they live under the delusion that a Labour Government, suitably purged and reformed, could run capitalism without war, without strikes, without poverty. None of them has ever shown how this could be done, and the evidence says that it cannot be done. The evidence is there, in the records of the Labour Governments and it is there in the persons of people like Michael Foot and Barbara Castle, who loyally support a Government which on most issues is indistinguishable from the Tories they have castigated for so long.

We said we would return .to the matter of loyalty. Where, we may wonder, will the loyalty of the Foots and the Castles lead them? Labour is their Government, right or wrong, but how much wrong are they prepared to accept? Will trade unionists in the Government stomach all and every attempt at imposing the Early Warning system on wages? Will Ministers who in the past spoke out against racial intolerance stay silent while the colour bar on immigration gets stronger, and while Labour panders more and more to the racist vote? Will those, like Anthony Greenwood, who once marched from Aldermaston, be at Mr. Wilson’s side if he ever has to press the button? Loyalty to a government can cover a multitude of sins, and there is no reason to suppose that loyal Labour men will abandon their Party, no matter what it does. As Woodrow Wyatt (no Left Winger, of course) put it: “It is when we are wrong that we need the backing.” Perhaps this means that the louder the appeals for backing, the more the Labour Party realise they are wrong.

If the Left Wing are confused, and often hypocritical, they are only one group among many. Their faults are typical of all the other organisations which support the social system which breeds confusion and thrives on hypocrisy. In the so-called Age of Enlightenment the need for the facts to be stated clearly is as great as ever. Capitalism is a social system which by its very nature produces a host of antisocial problems such as war, poverty and clashes of interests. Any government trying to run capitalism will come up against these problems and in the end will have to run the system in the interests of its ruling class. No government can let wages run riot, or willingly surrender a position of power and influence in the world. These are the realities, distinct from the dreams of the Left. When the Labour Party come to power, they do so on a promise to reform capitalism, to be different, to be more humane and efficient. But they, too, have to run the system as it demands. As Labour forgets many of its promises, as it does many things which it once swore never to do, it disappoints and outrages its own supporters. For comfort, and as a way of assuring themselves that there is nothing basically wrong with the Labour Party and that somehow, somewhere, it can be changed, they cluster around the Left Wing.

But they will find no peace. In some ways they are useful to the Labour Party. Apart from the fact that Left Wingers are often among the most zealous of party workers, they also keep the Labour Party in touch with its past and the romance of its pioneers. It gives the active members the chance of having a good, old-fashioned demonstration once in a while, when they can almost hear again the cries of the victims of Peterloo. The Left Wing gives the Labour Party a certain standing among workers who sincerely want a better world to live in.

And perhaps—and this is its greatest condemnation—the Left helps to convince people that the Labour Party is not the cynical, vote-grabbing machine of capitalism that it actually is.

Ivan