Had there been a general election in the winter of 1956-7, the Labor
Party would have won, although its majority would probably not have
been so large as its enthusiastic tacticians predicted. The party
should be able to appeal to the electorate at the next general election
with greater success than in 1955, providing certain conditions are met.
The big "if" facing the Labor Party concerns not abstruse questions
of socialist dogma but the oldest question in politics: the conflict
between two men. The men are Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the
Parliamentary Labor Party, and Aneurin Bevan.
Nye Bevan remains a major force in British politics. He is the only
prominent politician who is a force in himself, a personality around
which lesser men assemble. Like the young Winston Churchill, he
inspires either love or hate. Untrammeled by the discipline of the
party, he can rally the left wing of the Labor movement. Simultaneously
he can alienate the moderates of the party, the undecided voters,
and the tepid conservatives who had thought it might be time to let
labor "have a go." If the next general-election campaign finds Bevan
clamoring for the extension of nationalization in British industry,
beckoning his countrymen down untrodden social paths, lambasting
Britain's allies, and scoffing at her progress, then the Labor Party
will be defeated.
I have known Aneurin Bevan for many years. For the weal or woe of
Britain, he is a man born to storm and danger. A sudden war, a swift
and violent economic reverse would brighten his star. In a crisis his
confidence, whether that of a born leader or a born charlatan, would
attract the many.
Barring such catastrophes, a reasonable stability in government is to
be expected. The Conservative majority in the House of Commons after
the 1955 election probably was a little larger than is customary in a
nation so evenly divided politically. Despite the rancor aroused by
the Suez crisis, there seem to be reasonable grounds for predicting the
gradual disappearance of Tories of the old type and of the belligerent
Labor leaders surviving from the twenties. The development of a
national outlook by both parties seems probable.
Americans need not be concerned over the fission of the British
political system into a multi-party one capable of providing a
government but incapable of government. Stability means, of course,
that British governments will know their own minds. In the complex,
hair-trigger world of today this is an important factor. It is equally
important in charting the future course of Britain. Nations that know
where they want to go and how they want to go there are not verging on
political senility.
This political stability is vital to Britain in the years of transition
that lie ahead. For it is in British industry that the greatest changes
will take place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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