THE REAL LESSONS OF OCTOBER'S VERY MUFFLED REVOLUTION by James Wilcox
Despite the acres of comment on the election its real lessons for the Labour Party remain to be drawn. Two problems in particular must be confronted if Labour is to be sure of winning the next election, whenever it may come. Firstly, it must be admitted that during the election campaign the Party achieved a totally inadequate level of political mobilisation. In 1945 the numbers and enthusiasm of Labour's activists greatly exceeded that of their opponents; a scent of revolution was in the air. Over the last 3 elections the Labour Party has been able to deploy only half as many active workers as the Conservative Party (1). The party of big business actually attracts a larger following than the supposedly popular, mass party. The disappointing turn-out, the failure to catch up with the Conservatives in securing postal votes and, above all, the extremely volatile character of morale among party workers which is revealed by Phillip Abrams! study (2) are all evidence of this failure of mobilisation,
In some marginal London constituencies Labour had failed to carry out even one complete canvass. Somehow there was a feeling, shared perhaps by the leadership, that the whole issue was desiied anyhow on the television screens; as the last results trickled in the falsity of this was surely revealed, Not long ago Richard Crossman wrote: "Surely after 1945 the party machine should have been instructed to organise a nation-wide crusade of workers' education so as to give the rank and file the feeling that they were needed by the leadership not only to man the electoral machine but to create that pressure of left wing opinion required to combat Tory propaganda." (3) The lesson still has to be learnt. In addition to carrying through a genuinely radical programme the Labour Party must eliminate the bureaucratic practices within i own organisation which inhibit the mobilisation of CLP militants and its young people. It must also ensure that its proposals in the field of nationalisation do not revert to the bureaucratic expedients of the Atlee period but instead guarantee workers! self-management.
The second problem Labour must confront is that of its relations with the unions. A study in the Observer revealed that the Labour Party actually increased the proportion of the working class voting for it at this election despite the small change in its overall share of the votes: "..despite prosperity, the workers moved left; Thursday's working class vote was defintitely more Labour, while the middle class was more Conservative and certainly more Liberal." (4) Robert MacKenzie's study of the Tory working class suggests that in the climate of modern Britain the old deferential mystificatior of a large section of the working class are evaporating. If only 70% of the traditional working class voted Labour, the party would have a permanent majority. When Labour comes to negotiate with the trade unions it must remember this, British wage rates have, in the last four years, been rising at a much slower pace than those in any other industrialised country. Trade unionists feel that those who got the country into its present mess should be made to pay to - tget the country out,.- namely the leisured fraternity of share-holders, coupon clippers, rentiers, and capital gain merchants. Labour could help to secure a large increase in T.U. membership by making it compulsory for employers to recognise unions. With wider T.U. membership, union militancy would become an election asset. It is clear that Labour's leaders must improve communications with organised labour - on 2 separate occasions recently Gunter has made statements which combine crude bullying tone with complete ignorance of the issues at stake.
It will be the duty of the left to clarify these issues throughot? movement. Refs.: (1) J. Blondel "Voters, Parties and Leadership" pp 9%; (2) Sunday Times, Octe 183 (3)- New Statesman, April 19th, 1963; (4) Observer, Oct. 18.