It would be charitable to write of Mr. Wilson that his left hand does not know what his right hand is doing: that he is simply the victim of the difficulties and confusions of a socialist. attempting to operate within a capitalist economy. But nothing in his policies sugcests that he has a left hand at all, except perhaps a limb so atrophied by disuse as to be incapable of even a feeble twitch as its socialist reflexes are touched. The plight of the motor industry workers should have provoked a response - hypocritical maybe, but a response nevertheless which would have displayed some socialist feelings. Now, even the hypocrisy is dropped and the displaced workers are shrugged off with a smile and a wave, not to mention a cheery thumbs-up from Georre Drown. With the motor industry going up in smoke while Wilson adopts his Nero-like stance, the Government's tuneless fiddling has managed to antagonise management and workers alike. In the past the fact that Wilson has been under fire from left and right has earned him a certain amount ofkudos from the rank and file of the Labour Party:- Harold is not moving fast enough for the impatient left, but the Tory reaction at least proves that he is moving. This blind trust that Wilson is actually working to a socialist plan, and knows where he is going, is buttressed by the less flattering and thus more credible New Statesman line that Wilson does NOT know where he is going, but that he is nevertheless stumbling unwitsingly into socialism. With unemployment and industrial unrest mounting daily, the stumbling is increasingly self-evident but, as one minister after another lets the cat out of the bag, it is becoming more end more apparent that none of Wilson's options include a socialist one, His present reliance on market forces to revitalise the economy is sufficient reason for the stumbling, but the consistent rightwards march can only be explained by conscious decisions. The next signpost on the road to the corporate state is clearly labelled "Direction of Labour", and despite the hasty denials
over /
The One-Way Stumble / continued that followed a recent ministerial speech, the present drift leads logically to direction in one form or another. The Lebour Party's conscience is slow - depressingly slow to arouse, but each fresh assault on the hard-won rights of organised labour is making its mark. Purges, expulsions and the disciplines of the Whip's office are in the air. At this time, the fight for socialism anc democracy within the Labour Perty is more relevant than ever. One does not fight ; for the soul of the party, which the working class still regards as its party, by denying, as some ultra leftists would have us do, that it has a soul. Yo stand outside, revelling in one's socialist purity and enjoying the luxury of criticism irom a distance, represents the most extreme form of opportunism.