Another factor operated against the Labor campaign. There was then and
still is a perceptible drift from the industrial working class into a
new middle class. Later this drift must be examined in detail. It is
part of the pattern of constant change in British history, a change
that provides much of British society's strength. It is a change in
which new blood constantly flows upward into other classes, a change
in which the proletarian becomes lower middle class and the lower
middle class becomes upper middle class in respect to income and social
standing.
Here we are concerned with the political change. In many cases
the industrial worker who becomes a foreman and then a production
chief moves politically as well. He may still vote Labor, but it is
increasingly difficult for him to identify himself with the proletariat
or with Marxist doctrines. He lives in a better home, away from his old
associates. His new friends may spring from the same class, but they
are no longer preoccupied with the political struggle; often they are
enjoying the fruits of its victories.
Nor is he worried, politically. For the Tories' return to power in
Britain in 1951 did not produce a reactionary government. Sir Winston
Churchill, once regarded by the workers as a powerful and unrelenting
enemy, appeared in his last administration as a kindly old gentleman
under whose sunny smile and oratorical showers the nation prospered.
Why, he was even trying to arrange a talk with the Russian leaders! The
absence of openly reactionary elements in the Conservative government,
despite the presence of such elements in the party, and the promotion
of moderation by Conservative speakers encouraged a gradual movement
of the industrial working class away from the standards of pre-war
socialism.
The changes in British society between 1945 and 1955, the people's
refusal to respond to the old slogans in their new prosperity,
the damaging split within the Parliamentary Labor Party all are
contributing to the evolution of a new Labor Party that seems to be a
better reflection of its electoral support than the one which went down
to defeat in 1955. This does not mean, of course, that it is better
fitted to rule Britain.
Almost all the leaders of the Labor governments of the post-war years
have gone. Ernest Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps are dead. Clement
Attlee has passed from the House of Commons into the Lords. Herbert
Morrison and Emanuel Shinwell are back benchers in the Commons,
exchanging grins with their political enemy and personal friend Sir
Winston Churchill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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