WILSON
BEGINS DABOURSS PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLE
By T. Je Peters
LONDON, Nov. 6 .-- In the weird quasi-medieval setting of the Speech from the Throne at the opening of parliament, the Wilson government announced to the world that it would carry out the program to which the Labour party was pledged in the recent elections. This includes nationalization of the steel industry, against which the ruling class has-keyed its whole agitation, renewing the clamour that in 1951 brought down the first postwar Labour government.
For all the regal trappings and. the anachronistic pomp in. which this announcement. was wrapped -~ so glaringly contrasting with the- universally applauded: aim of a new, modern Britain -- it would nevertheless be wrong to ignore the progressive significance of this move. it has to be seen in proper historical } perspective to be . judged correctly.
It is not customary for social democrats to match words with deeds, even when they are of the "left" variety. Their normal tendency is to yield to the heavy pressures exerted by the capitalist —. economy and its superstructure, against which they have foresworn revolutionary action as a matter of principle, so. .to: speak, Parti- | cularly is this so in a critical situation that ‘permits a hullabaloo to be raised for compromise "in the national interest." Such a situation exists, in fact, in Britain at present. And the wafer-thin . majority of the Labour ‘party in parliament could serve as a plausible pretext to follow social-democratic precedent. It was not followed, Wilson has proceeded with a relative boldness which is unaccustomed coming from that quarter.
In part this reflects the character of the individual. But the individual is shaped by the social forces of the times he lives in, by his political background. The measures Wilson has placed on the parliamentary agenda for the coming session -= aside from the . major one mentioned, there is also the abolition of all charges One medicines as the first step in re-establishing a free National . Health Service, repeal of the rent act which abolished controis, . the. setting:up of a Land Commission to nationalize urban-land-and a whole series of. drastic reforms in various spheres, from social security to trade-union rights -- proclaim more than an unreeling of the Tory film of thirteen years of placing the burden for the flowering of a profiteering "free enterprise" upon the shoulders of the working class and those social layers least able to bear it. They also cone: stitute a break with the policy pursued in the latter half of Attlee's tenure of office, when:Hugh Gaitskell came into prominence as his. Chancellor . of. the: Exchequer.
It-must be rémembered in this connection. that Wilson left. the. Labour cabinet at that time, along with Aneurin Bevan,~in prom. test against the first charges imposed by Gaitskell upon the previ-
~4n..
ously free Health service. Gaitskell was then yielding to the demands of the bankers for an ‘orthodox" financial solution of a crisis caused by the Korean war:and the ensuing armament expenditure. It is evident, therefore, that Wilson's present course is a direct continuation of the line Bevan and he took then. To give it an historic context, it is a "Bevanite” Line: ‘that is being put into: prac tice Now.
-There is no question that this line Ls: weary popular with the working class today; it. struck deep roots when’ it was first brought
into public view ‘in 1951, It can be said without doubt that it was the strength of this line in the Labour party, as that of a growing opposition, which sustained the big working-class support for the party throughout the years of Tory rule, and that finally toppled that rule in the last elections, when it took on more positive form -: with the emphasis on greater planning. To the workers this means. 4: more comprehensive nationalization, a more determined attack on the’: citadels of capitalist power and the economic anarchy. and social in- © security of which they are the fountainhead.
~ The Achilles heel of Bevanism, it might be. said, was the fact: that: its bias in domestic policy (which clearly reflected the feel .. ings and aspirations of the working class) was never matched by an >> equal distinction from the Labour right wing in foreign policy. It © never took.an outright stand. against. the: Korean war or against NATO, or any of ‘the capitalist alliances even in its most "leftist" phase. Only when: the home front was affected did the Bevanites react, In foreign policy too, the Wilson leadership carries the stamp of its Bevanite origin. But here, if anything; a far greater leaning to the right is discernible, which is: also mirrored in the composition of the government as a whole, and of course in the "Speech from the Throne,
It can be stated confidently that the alliance with the: capitalist West, particularly with capitalist America, no less than the self-imposed restrictions on anticapitalist action at home, will soon face the Wilson government with dilemmas, that will inevitably © pose in sharpest form the alternative: either the development of an all-encompassing anticapitalist policy, home and foreign, that will push: it further to the left; or increasing estrangement from its working-class base, from the: bulk of the activists in the party itself. Fs = es
In this honeymoon period of his. administration, Wilson enjoys: considerable popularity. within the working class. It is enhanced by such showmanship as the firm tone he has taken toward the white settlers in Rhodesia, although he is only continuing an agreed policy of yielding to "the winds of change”"*in Africa which the Tories pursued with hypocrisy and diplomatic soft soap before. It is furthered by such actions as the "unparliamentary" attack in the House of Commons on the Tory elected at Smethwick by countenancing racialist propaganda. It is bolstered by the refusal to! yield: on
steel and the contemptuous rejection of a deal with the Liberals in return for such yielding.
But: among the party activists the initial "tough" talk to the restive dock workers (since dropped) by the right winger Ray Gunter as Minister: of Labor has given cause to misgivings. So has: the failure of the’ “left winger" anthony Greenwood, as Colonial Secretary, to review and change the setup for the coming elections in British Guiana developed by his Tory predecessor under promptings from Washington, where the determination to get rid of the pro~Castro Jagan government is well known,
-Marxists will go through this new experience side by side with the British working class, promoting its participation in.mass action in favor of the Wilson government where it clashes with the. class enemy and against it where it yields to capitalist pressures,
DE