LABOUR PARTY CONFIDENT OF VICTORY
By A. Adair
SCARBOROUGH, England, Oct. 6 -~ More than 1,200 delegates flocked into this small seaside resort to attend "the Sixty-second Annual Conference of the British Labour party. It turned out to be more of a pre-election rally full of pep talks than an occasion to thresh out ‘party policy.
Nevertheless it was an impressive display of working-class power.
ye
Some 6° trade unions with a membership of more than 5,500,000 we workers were represented by 626 delegates. Of these, 585 delegates came from as many Labour party constituency clubs. Fraternal delegates, observers and visitors were present from 34 countries. Two refugees from South Africa, an organizer of the current miners strike in Spain and a delegate from the underground socialists of Portugal won long applause.
It is almost a foregone conclusion that the next general election (due within the next months) will see the present Tory government kicked out of office and the Labour party established by a large majority. A Gallup poll taken earlier this summer gives the Labour party a lead of more than eighteen per cent -the biggest any party has held in twenty-five years of public opinion polls in this country.
The atmosphere around Scarborough this week was charged: with confidence, enthusiasm and the expectancy that drastic changes will be made when the Labour party assumes power. Delegates did not speak in terms of "if we are elected" but "‘yhen. . "
Most participants did not question how the party was to achieve what-chairman D.H.Davies called the "good society in a dawning age of plenty." They accepted, and expected that the Labour party will automatically win it.
The 1960 party conference held in this same town saw the left wing decisively defeat the leadership (headed by the late Hugh Gaitskell) on their attempts to pull the long standing nationalization clause out of the party constitution. At the same time the left won the party to unilateral disarmament.
The conference this year was quite different. There was no struggle over policy. In fact the traditional leaders of the broad left fell in line behind the appeal of Wilson and Brown that this is an election conference, and the public image of the party must be unity behind the policy agreed to in the past. That is the formless unity of compromise between left and right which Wilson as the new leader personifies.
Lena Jeger speaking at the Tribune meeting (Tribune is the weekly paper of the left centrists) stated how odd it was to be at such a conference end find herself for once in agreement with the policies of the official leadership. So successful was the _ unity appeal that the leaders could keep most of the controversial issues off the agenda altogether. Only fifty hands were raised opposing the motion presented on the first day of the conference. This weak show of opposition foreshadowed the behavior of the left for the rest of the conference. TUveryone was hesitant to "rock the boat" or be accused of "playing into the hands of the Tories," especially as television took the debates into millions of homes, cay after day.
-1l1-
Nevertheless, a few notes of militancy were sounced. One came during the discussion on the new economic policy and planned economy. This resolution included the clause that the Labour party, when elected, will fight for "An incomes policy to include . salaries, wases, dividends and profits and social security benefits." There was some confusion as to whether this clause meant a wage freeze or not.
Delegate Peter Gibson of Croydon claimed the resolution could mean all things to all men. Some of it he said was "just flannel." He went on to- question, if it did not mean a wage freeze, what did it mean? "We have got to acknowledge, and come clean about it, that there is no such thing as control of profits. Under these circumstances, let there be no control of wages."
“Ted Hill, chief spokesman for the Boilermakers union said, "We all know that in a capitalist society you cannot freeze dividends and if you cannot freeze dividends do not ask us to freeze wages. . . but I say this resolution does not mean a wage freeze," and indicated his support for the motion with this understanding. .
James Callahan, Labour party finance spokesman in Parliament was forced to admit that he found a great gap between economists like himself and the trade-union negotiators. He also pointed out that the employers were not talking in terms of limiting profits but on the contrary had issued a declaration opposing all restraints.
Only after several prominent trade-union leaders, including Frank Cousins of the powerful Transport and General Workers union, had assured the gathering that this resolution did not mean a wage freeze but a "planned growth of wages" did the motion carry by an overwhelming majority.
In his major speech on "Labour and the Scientific Revolution" Wilson said, "The problem is this. Since technological progress left to the mechanism of private industry and private property can lead only to high profits for a few, a high rate of employment for a few and to mass redundancies unemployment | for the many, if there had never been a case for Socialism before, automation would have created it."
In the_same speech he stated, "Allowing for the fact that {automation] here will be later end Slower, we have to be ready to create ten million new jobs in Britain by, say, the mid-1970's."
On the arms race, Wilson correctly pointed out that the "advanced capitalist countries are maintaining full employment today only by virtue of vast arms orders and panic would be the order of the day in Wall Street and other stock markets the day peace breaks out."
Wilson posed many of the problems facing the British working class but failed to put forward any real anticapitalist solutions. The essence of his "new thinking" was that the Labour party has © to plan the econony.. But just how this planning is to be brought about without disturbing the profit system he did not specify..
In the brief period nationalization did come up for discussion, the motion calling for the nationalization of the building and construction industry submitted by the Amalgamated Union of Building Trades Workers went down to defeat. A similar fate was given to a motion urging public ownership of the land. The leadership knocked them down on the plea that they didn't want to be tied down to specific commitments.
It is interesting to note, however, that in a TV interview with Wilson and former Labour party Prime Minister Attlee, Attlee replied to a question as to what advice he would give Wilson when he came into power, "Take action on the big and controversial . issues first." That's what experience had taught him he said. He was clearly referring to the nationalization of steel which was delayed until the last year of his government. Wilson nodded in agreement. What this means concretely remains to be seen.
The question of the three members of the Young Socialist National Committee, expelled for alleged tie-ups with Trotskyist organizations, came up during a closed session. An appeal handed out at the conference door urging their reinstatement found little support from the floor. It was reported that four members had been suspended and since then had been given a chance to explain their actions before an "inquiry." Only one did, and the others were expelled.
Miss June Lester argued that it was scandalous that young people should be treated in this way. In trying to explain away the fact that the three had been expelled without having received formal charges, Bessie Braddock, a Member of Parliament, claimed that this had not been. done because the "inquiry" simply wanted to find out if the members concerned had views compatible with membership in the Labour party.
What was the outcome of the conference? According to the Guardian reporter, the Labour party is supporting policies "which have striking similarities with those of the Liberals," and "a socialism to satisfy both Right and Left, especially in an elec-. tion year." oo
The Tribune drew the opposite conclusion. Under the headline "Planning: Labour Moves to the Left," the author ends his | article with "Expanded public ownership, industrial democracy, purposeful planning -- all the ideas that some people tried to throw out of the back door only a few years ago, have now stormed
in again at the front. Labour is regrouping itself to the left of centre." :
. The fact of the matter is that each comment has a grain of truth in it. Actually the 1963 conference saw the Labour party merely "mark time." It neither moved to the left nor to the right in the pre-election setting As one rank-and-file observer put it, this was a pre-election conference where everyone agreed not to disagree.
When Labour takes office the problems of unemployment, the fight against speed ups in the factories, the threat of an atomic war and the drive by the employers to reduce the living standards of the workers will have to. be met with a sharp anticapitalist progran.
The big contradiction is that the Labour party is not equipped with such a program although many of its supporters are expecting the results such a policy would bring. The 1963 Scarborough conference only stalled the time when the fight to equip the party with such a program will take place.
For the fight to be successful a left wing with a Marxist progran will be necessary. The job of building such a left wing still remains to be done.
The svevege Amer American is hit by 1,518 advertising messages a
dey, according to executives of General Foods, one of the giant corporations of the world's richest country.
In an article in the September 22 London Observer, Paul Ferris states that it costs $12,500,000,000 a year or $66 a person to achieve this remarkable firepower.
Among the successes of novel packaging and million-dollar advertising in the United States, Ferris cites the case of aerosol — whipped cream which comes in a can loaded with high-pressure gas. It costs 175 per cent more than heavy sweet cream. An."individual and disposable" package of common table salt costs 467 per cent more than the product in the old-fashioned carton that has not yet benefitted from the ingenuity of the advertising experts.
"The American advertising scene is thick with success stories," Ferris reports, "yet riddled with doubts. Why did. the new-product man end by saying: ‘One of the things that gives you faith in the necessity for living this way is that even in Russia they're trying out advertising'?"