VERY serious situation faces the British Labour movement. The defeat
at Leyton placed a question mark over the Labour Government. But it did more than that: it signified a state of affairs which could jeopardise the possibility for socialist advance in Britain for a long period. Under the twin pressures of economic crisis and election defeat Mr. Wilson’s Government will have to move sharply to the left or right. A right turn would merely pave the way for further disasters; whilst a left turn offers the only possibility of getting out of the mess.
We think most of our readers will accept this bald statement of our opinion; the problem is how to get this across to the mass of Labour Party activists.
It is comparatively easy to demonstrate that, despite some special factors in Leyton, the by-election results were a direct consequence of right wing policies. It was the capitulation to the ‘gnomes of Zurich’ on the payment of the Old Age Pension increase which led to a decisive swing against Labour in the older generation. Labour’s participation in the Congo aggression, carried out to the tune of a hysterical press campa’gn about ‘black men raping, eating and mutilating white people’, helped racialism in Britain far more than anything Colin Jordan or Peter Griffiths has done. Labour’s insistence on ‘carrying out its obligations to Malaysia’ (that is, to British big business investments in tin and rubber) and _ its emphasis on ‘Britain’s peace-keeping role’ (despite the balance of payments crisis) has meant for the British public increased prices and taxation.
Paradoxically enough, it is those sections to whom a ‘moderate’ policy is supposed to appeal, the new middle class and the technologists, who have been hardest hit. Witness, the 6d. on petrol, the 6d. on income tax (which hits the intermediate salaried sections most—business men can afford to employ accountants to work on their tax reurns) and, the final blow, increased mortgage rates.
But it wasn’t the loss of middle class votes which lost Leyton. Labour lost because of massive working class abstention. Put simply, Mr. Wilson’s problem, if he is to avoid losing his majority completely via inevitable byelections, is to find a way of rallying and enthusing the working class for active support for Labour. If there is any way other than that of a series of class-orientated measures we invite anyone to name it. In contemporary Britain reforms can only be given at the expense of someone, and the working class will only make sacrifices (which it will do more readily than any other section) if inroads are being made into private profit and property.
We urge our readers to put these arguments forcibly and at every level in the great discussion now raging in the Labour movement. More than the future of the Labour Government is at stake. A defeat for Labour now would mean the return of the Tories under circumstances which would almost certainly lead to a period of reaction.
A Tory Government just now, despite its crisis of policy, would feel confident enough to make a big attack on the working class and its organisations. With the fear of electoral defeat out of the way, with pressing problems both economic and political, a Tory Government would seek to give British capitalism a new lease of life by ‘putting the workers in their place.’
RT re me
Jan, 27, 1965 — THE WEEK
Sponsors Frank Allaun, M.P. Perry Anderson Chris Arthur Julian Atkinson Michael Barratt Brown Norman Buchan, M.P. Neil Carmichael, M.P. Raymond Challinor Henry Collins John Daniels Richard Fletcher Ray Gosling Trevor Griffiths Eric Heffer, M.P. Eliis Hillman, L.C.C., G.L.C. Ralph Miliband Stan Mills Jim Mortimer Tom Nairn Dick Nettleton Stan Newens, M.P. John Rex - Ernie Roberts Alan Rooney David Steele E, P. Thompson Tony Topham Raymond Williams Bert Wynn Konni Zilliacus, M.P.