Inquest at Blackpool

The general election that swept the British Conservatives back to power last October left more than the defeated Laborites worried by Labor's defeat. In a country that invented the political theory of the Loyal Opposition and governs itself by the swing of the party pendulum, what kind of alternative choice is there in a doctrinaire and out-of-date party that had won only two general elections in half a century, and had just gone down to defeat for the third time in a row?

Labor's leader, Hugh Gaitskell, had waged a buoyant campaign that left him unchallenged as party leader. In defeat he felt strong enough to pledge himself to "a vow of silence, self-imposed," while he "collected the voices" about what was wrong and what needed to be changed. But at his middle-class Hampstead home in north London, he chose to consult not with trade-union leaders, with whom he feels uncomfortable, but with fellow Oxford intellectuals such as Economist Douglas Jay, who publicly urged that the party should drop its "class image" and "nationalization myth" and even consider changing its name.

Last week, in the seaside resort of Blackpool, its beaches deserted by all but the sea gulls, its skies greyed over, some 2,000 Laborites assembled gloomily for Gaitskell's promised post-election "inquest." From the outset, Hugh Gaitskell took the offensive: Labor must drop its demands for nationalization or "be content to remain in permanent opposition."

"The changing character of labor, full employment, new housing, the new way of living based on the telly, the frig and the car, and the glossy magazines--all these have had an effect on our political strength," said Gaitskell. Labor's response, he said, raising a donnish finger and pursing his lips for emphasis, must not be to repeat past failures--"we have to show them that we are a modern 20th century party." Elderly party leaders on the platform looked stonily out over the unmoved audience.

In any showdown, Gaitskell could count on the support of the conservative trade unions, though he knows that union domination of the party is one of the things that repels many voters. The unions, no longer underdogs, no longer able to count on public sympathy for slowdowns, strikes and restrictive practices, are still the most powerful vested interest in the party. They provide 75% of its funds, control 17 of 28 seats in the National Executive Committee, elect 93 of Labor's 258 M.P.s, and cast blocks of a million or more votes at party conferences. And Gaitskell also appealed to the original aims for which Keir Hardie and his cloth-capped trade-union radicals--none of them socialists in the doctrinaire sense of the continental European Socialist parties--founded the British Labor Party at the turn of the century.

Bygone Banners. Fiery Party Chairman Barbara Castle had opened the meeting with an old-style appeal for public ownership as Labor's great cause. "It's no use waving the banners of a bygone age," replied Gaitskell. "Nationalization, on balance, lost us votes."

"Rubbish!" cried a voice from the audience. Gaitskell persisted: Nationalism is "only one means" to achieve a modern Labor Party's true end--building a classless society based on economic and social justice. "No, no," shouted some delegates. But Gaitskell urged that it was time to revise the party's 40-year-old constitutional pledge of "common ownership of the means of production," and work out "fundamental principles of British democratic socialism as we see them today--in 1959 and not 1918." Winding up a speech that won only an occasional scattered handclap, Gaitskell said: "I would rather forgo the cheers in the hope of more votes later on."

In the debate that followed it was the left's Michael Foot, defeated in the election, who won the day's cheers by preaching the oldtime religion: "Where are we being led? What's this philosophy of ends and means? Many Tories could agree with these arguments of Hugh Gaitskell's. To win an election we have to open the eyes of the people to the rotten society we have."

Straddling Views. Next day Deputy Leader Aneurin Bevan--with whom Gaitskell had wrangled long hours in his Opposition leader's room behind the Speaker's chair at the House of Commons --rose to deliver a speech of flash and fire that paid affable tribute to Gaitskell but straddled the views of Gaitskell and Barbara Castle. Nye Bevan had his own view of the proper socialist future: "In a modern society it is impossible to get rational order by leaving things to private economic adventure. Because I am a socialist, I believe in national ownership. I believe in what Hugh Gaitskell said yesterday, because I don't believe in a monolithic society with public ownership of everything. But we'll never have order until we have a planned economy, an economy in which the nation determines its own priorities." On this note, the party inquest ended: Nye Bevan had chosen to differ but not to rebel, and Hugh Gaitskell had received an unenthusiastic mandate to bring Labor's philosophy up to date with mid-century Britain.

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