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International Socialism, Spring 1964

Editorial 1

Labour’s Ironies


From International Socialism, No.16, Spring 1964, p.1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.


Could anything be more ludicrous than Labour’s translation into the Growth Party? It is not so long since the party saw education as a means of enriching people, planning of cities as a way of bettering their lives, nationalisation as a dimly-conceived transition to a new society, ‘more now’ as its overriding justification. And now. Education is for skills, planning for transport, nationalisation – in so far as it forms part of the pharmacopoeia – for efficiency, and more tomorrow the last remnant of the mighty reformism that was Labour. From being a petitioner of capital, mostly humble, occasionally importunate, it has became, at least at the leadership levels, its foreman.

Its standing orders have been set out often enough. British capital is uniquely exposed and increasingly uncompetitive internationally. What it needs above all is to increase investment, output and exports without the greater activity resulting in a disproportionately-rising wage bill. A year ago it thought the cure lay in Europe – the ‘whiff of competition,’ it was argued, would have made business stand firm against wage drift. Forced to look elsewhere, it now sees salvation in wage freeze, which, to be administered at all, must be administered by Labour. ‘The strongest economic argument for getting the election over concerns wages pressure,’ wrote The Times (20 February), ‘... an “incomes policy” is a sine qua non of success. Yet it is becoming less and less likely that the Government will get very much farther towards a co-operative incomes policy before a general election.’ Nor, if it remains a Tory government, after an election either. Enter Labour. The party’s dilemma is cruel. The old luxuries of loosely-knit capitalism – the chance to differentiate between political and industrial aims, between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary action – don’t exist any longer in our world of national economic policies. Now, if it is to sustain the capitalist framework within which it has always operated, the party must alienate its traditional working-class support; if it is to retain that support, it will need to go beyond the accepted framework.

When it comes to the crunch, this journal believes, the current Labour leadership will opt for the first alternative. But crunches do not come too readily; and in so far as they can be avoided it will avoid them. Pursuing power as well as growth, votes as well as efficiency, Labour will risk alienating its traditional support short of a break. In the event, it might well shy away from wage freeze and into Europe. But wage freeze it will first try.

 
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