These men represented the old Labor Party. Bevin, Morrison, and
Shinwell were hard, shrewd politicians, products of the working class
they served. Cripps and Attlee were strays from the old upper middle
class who had been moved to adopt socialism by the spectacle of
appalling poverty among Britain's masses and what seemed to them the
startling incompetence of capitalist society to solve the nation's
economic and social problems.
This group and its chief lieutenants were bound, however, by a
common fight. They could remember the days when there was no massive
organization, when they had stood on windy street corners and shouted
for social justice. They remembered the days when "decent people"
looked down their noses at Labor politicians as unnecessary and
possibly treasonable troublemakers.
It was inevitable, I think, that this group would pass from the
leadership of the Labor party. When they did, however, the party lost
more than the force of their personalities. It lost an emotional drive,
a depth of feeling, that will be hard to replace.
Fittingly, the new leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, Hugh
Gaitskell, is an exemplary symbol of the new party. He is a man of
courage and compassion, intellectual power and that cold objectivity
which is so often found in successful politicians. He represents
the modern middle-class socialists just as Attlee two decades ago
represented the much smaller number of socialists from that class.
Attlee, however, led a party in which the working-class politician
was dominant. Gaitskell is chief of a party in which the middle-class
intellectual element and the managerial group from the unions and the
Party Organization have become powerful if not dominant.
Clement Attlee was leader of the party for more than twenty years.
Gaitskell has the opportunity to duplicate this feat. But he must first
heal the great schism that has opened in the movement in the last five
years, and to do so he must defeat or placate the left wing and its
leader, Aneurin Bevan.
Although the split within the Labor movement distresses all good
socialists, it has added notably to the vigor and, indeed, to the
gaiety of British politics. Aneurin Bevan was moved to flights of
oratorical frenzy and waspish wit. Nor is it every day that one sees
Clement Attlee temporarily discard his air of detachment and descend
into the arena to entangle his party foes in the streamers of their own
verbosity. It was a great fight, and, fortunately for those who like
their politics well seasoned, it is not over yet.
For the quarrel within the movement represents forces and emotions of
great depth and significance. In moments of excitement men and women
on both sides have described it as a battle for the soul of the party.
It may be more accurately described, I think, as a battle to determine
what type of political party is to represent the labor movement in
Britain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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