Part 6

The party's appeal for votes seemed to reflect a surer grasp of popular attitudes than the Labor Party's. In retrospect the Conservative message was a consoling one. Everyone had work. Almost everyone had more money than he had had three or four years before, although the established middle class already was feeling the effect of rising prices and continued heavy taxation on real income. The roads were filling up with cars that should have been sold for export, running on gasoline that was imported with an adverse effect on the balance of trade.

During six years of Socialist control the Labor politicians had informed the British that a return to Conservative rule would mean a revival of the bad old days of unemployment, dole and hunger marches, strikes and lockouts. Yet here were Sir Anthony Eden patting the unions on the head and Harold Macmillan talking warmly of the chances of a successful conference with the Russians at Geneva. It was all a little confusing and, from the Conservative standpoint, very successful.

Traveling around Britain during the weeks prior to the 1955 election, I was struck by the number of people of both parties prepared to accept the Conservatives' contention that their party was, by some mysterious dispensation, uniquely suited to the business of conducting the nation's foreign policy. In some areas, notably in the North and the Midlands, this seemed to spring from Eden's long and, on the whole, successful record in international affairs. In others I encountered a feeling that the withdrawals from India and Egypt and such blunders as the loss of the Abadan oil refinery had lowered the prestige of the country. Certainly the Tories were not guiltless. Nonetheless, there was a persistent conviction that the Tories handled foreign affairs best. Occasionally--this was at the nadir of Socialist fortunes--I met Labor supporters who subscribed to this view.

The first public reaction to British intervention in Egypt in 1956 was a triumph for organized public opinion as directed by the Labor Party. From the resolutions that flooded into London from factory and local unions, one would have concluded that the whole of the British working class was violently opposed to governmental policy. Actually, a number of public-opinion polls showed that the country was pretty evenly divided. My own experience, traveling around Britain in January and February of 1957, convinced me that, on the whole, the working-class support for the Suez adventure was slightly stronger than that of the professional classes. Of course, as in most situations of this kind, the supporters did not bother to send telegrams of support.

The Labor Party in the House of Commons made a great offensive against the Conservative position on Egypt. This played a part, but not the dominant part, in the cabinet's decision to accept a cease-fire. The paramount factor was the indication from Washington that unless Britain agreed to a cease-fire, the administration would not help Britain with oil supplies and would not act to support the pound sterling, whose good health is the basis of Britain's position as an international banker.

The Socialists' attack did result in the emergence of Aneurin Bevan as the party's principal spokesman, and a most effective one, on foreign affairs. This is an area where the Labor Party has been weak in recent years. Death removed Ernest Bevin, a great Foreign Secretary, and Hector McNeil, the brightest of the party's younger experts on foreign affairs.

Moderation, a national rather than a class approach, the middle way--all these sufficed for the Tories in 1955. Two years later there are abundant signs that a sharper policy will be necessary to meet international and internal situations vastly more difficult. Drastic policies invite harsh argument in their formulation. Can the Conservatives continue to settle their differences in the Carlton Club or will these spill out onto the front pages of the newspapers?

The primary political problem the Conservative government faced before Suez was whether it could continue its policies, especially where they related to defense and taxation, and retain the support of a large and influential group of Conservative voters. This group is offended and rebellious because, although the Conservatives have now been in office for over five years, it still finds its real income shrinking, its social standards reduced, and its future uncertain. It regards the moderate Conservatives' economic policy and attitude toward social changes as akin to those of the Labor Party. By the middle of 1956 its resentment was being reflected by the reduction of the Conservative vote in the elections.

The group can be defined as the old middle class. During the last century it has been one of the most important and often the most dominant of classes in Britain. Its fight to maintain its position against the challenge of the new middle class and the inexorable march of social and economic changes is one of the most interesting and most pathetic parts of Britain's modern revolution.

The leaders of the old middle class represented a combination of influence and wealth in the professions, medicine, the church, the law, education, and the armed forces. The members of these professions and their immediate lieutenants administered the great institutions that had established Britain in the Victorian twilight as the world's greatest power. They were responsible for the great public schools, the Church of England, the Royal Navy, the banks, the largest industries, the shipping lines, the universities.

They were not the aristocracy. The decline of the aristocracy, with its ancient titles, its huge estates, and its huge debts, began over a century ago. The old middle class began life as the aristocracy's executors and ended as its heirs.

The pattern of life in the old middle class was shaken by World War I, but it existed relatively unchanged in 1939. The class was the butt of the bright young playwrights of the twenties and has received the acid attentions of Mr. Somerset Maugham. It supported Munich and Chamberlain, and it sent its sons away to die in 1939.

As a group, the class was well educated. The majority of the men had been to a public school and a university. Both men and women bought and read books and responsible newspapers. They traveled abroad, they knew something about the world. Some had inherited wealth. Others invested their savings.

Beneath this upper stratum of the old middle class was a lower middle class that sought to rise into it. This was made up of shopkeepers, small manufacturers, the more prosperous farmers, the black-coat workers in business, and the industrial technicians.

The future welfare of these two groups is the political problem that the Conservative Party must face. Since the decline of the Liberal Party, the Tories have counted upon the support of this class. There were many defections in the election of 1945, but it is probable that a more important reason for the Tory defeat that year was the party's failure to win the support of a new middle class that was then arising as a factor in British politics.

The chief reason why the old middle class is defecting from the Tory standard is that it believes that the Conservative governments since 1945 have not done enough to halt the drain on its incomes. Prices have risen sharply in the years since Chamberlain went to Munich. One estimate is that the 1938 income of £1,000 a year for a married man with two children would have to be raised to £4,000 to provide the same net income today. But in this class the number of men whose incomes have quadrupled or even doubled since 1938 is small.

What do the figures mean in terms of a family's life? They mean that to send the children to a public school, which the majority of this class regards as indispensable from a social and even occasionally from an educational standpoint, the father and mother must do without new clothes, books, the occasional visit to the theater. Instead of two regular servants, the family must "make do" with a daily cleaning woman. The family vacations in some quiet French or Italian seaside resort must be abandoned. The father and mother are unable to save and are increasingly worried about their future. They see a future decline in the family's social standards and economic health.

All this is aggravated in their minds by the appearance of a new middle class arising from a different background and doing new and different jobs. Its income, its expense accounts, its occasional lack of taste stir the envy and anger of the old middle class.

What the old middle class asks from the government--and, through the government, from the big trade unions and the big industrialists--is an end to the rise in the cost of living which it, subsisting chiefly on incomes that have not risen sharply, cannot meet. Directly it asks the government for an end to punishing taxation and to "coddling" of both the unions and the manufacturers.

The dilemma of the Conservative Party and its government is a serious one. To lose the support of the old middle class will be dangerous, even disastrous. For although the Tories have attracted thousands of former Socialist votes in the last two elections, these do not represent the solid electoral support that the old middle class has offered.

Perhaps in time the government may be able to reduce taxation. Before this can be done, it must halt inflation, expand constructive investment in industry, and increase the gold and dollar reserves. Each of these depends to a great degree on economic factors with world-wide ramifications. The old middle class understands this and is justifiably suspicious of "pie in the sky" promises.

Such suspicion is increased by the understanding of the other serious long-term problems that British society faces. We need mention only one in this context: how is Britain to maintain its present standards of life and the present levels of government expenditure when it is faced with the coming change in the age distribution of the population?

The steady fall in death rates and the low birth rates of the years between the two world wars are beginning to increase the proportion of elderly people, and thus to reduce the proportion of the working population to the total population. The size of the age groups reaching retirement age increases yearly. It is predicted, on the basis of present population trends, that over the next fifteen years the population of the working-age group will remain about the same but that the number of old people, persons over sixty-five, will rise over the next thirty years by about three million. At the same time the number of children of school age is expected to increase.

Britain thus is faced with a steady increase in the number of the aged who need pensions and medical care and the young who need medical care and education. This charge will be added to the burdens already borne by the working-age group.

The country needs more hospitals and more schools. It needs new highways. It has to continue slum-clearance and the building of homes. Yet Britain has been spending $7,000,000,000 a year on social services and $4,200,000,000 on defense. Under existing circumstances, and in view of present Conservative policies, can the old middle class look forward to an important reduction in taxation under any government?

Reduction of taxation was one of the goals sought by Conservative government when it planned a revision of Britain's defense program. This revision, first planned by the ministry of Sir Anthony Eden and given new impetus by the Macmillan government, has other objectives, including the diversion of young men, capital, and productive capacity from defense to industrial production for export. But an easing of the defense burden would create conditions for tax relief in the Conservative circles that need it most.

The reduction of defense expenditures places any Conservative government in a dilemma. The party expects the government to maintain Britain's position as a nuclear power--that is, as a major power. The political repercussions of the Suez crisis showed the depth of nationalism within the party, and, indeed, within the country. Yet it seems plainly impossible for the Tories to reduce taxation of the middle class drastically without cutting the defense expenditure that has maintained Britain, somewhat precariously, in the front rank of world powers.

Of course, tax relief will not fully answer the difficulties of the old middle class. Its incomes, ranging from the pensions of ex-officers to the profits of small businessmen, have lagged behind prices. Stabilization of prices is essential if this class is to maintain its standards.

The rebellion of the old middle class against Tory policy and leadership, if carried to the limit, might result in the creation of an extreme right-wing party. Such a party would be brought into being more easily if the sort of inflation which helped wreck the German democracy after World War I were to appear in Britain. Would the political good sense of the British enable them to reject the vendors of extreme political panaceas who would appear at such a juncture?

The old middle class contains today, as it has since 1945, persons and organizations fanatically opposed to the unions and to labor in general. Extremist organizations, some of them modeled on the Poujadist movement in France, have appeared. In many cases the opposition to labor policies and personalities has been expanded in these groups to include the "traitors" at the head of the present Tory government, who are considered betrayers of their party and their class.

There is a reasonable expectation that Britain will continue to encounter economic problems whose solution will involve economic sacrifices by all classes in the future. The old middle class feels that it has sacrificed more than any other group. There is thus a potential of serious trouble within the Conservative party. The most probable development, it seems to me, is an attempt by the right wing of the party to win and hold power. But a rapid deterioration of the economic situation under a moderate Tory government followed by the return to power of a Labor government might well encourage the transformation of the Tories into a radical right-wing party.

At the moment the right wing of the Conservative Party wants too much. It asks for an uncontrolled economy and is restless under the measures imposed to defeat inflation. But it also wants a stabilization of prices. It wants a "tough" foreign policy, but it opposes the taxation necessary to make the arms on which such a policy must rest. It has an almost reckless desire to curb the trade unions without reckoning the effect on industrial relations.

The moderates who fashioned the present Conservative Party and who now lead its government appear to understand their country and its position better than their critics on the right wing. In addition, their programs have attracted the attention and support of young people to a degree unknown on the right wing.

In the late thirties, when I first was indoctrinated in British politics, it was smart to be on the left. The young people before the war were very certain of the stupidity of the Conservative government policies, at home as well as abroad, and their political convictions ranged from communism to the socialism of the Labor Party. "All the young people are Bolshies," a manufacturer told me in 1939. "If we do have a war, this country will go communist."

A good proportion of young people still are on the left. But they do not seem to hold their convictions as strongly as those I knew in the pre-war years. On the other side of the fence there has been a movement toward an intellectual adoption of conservative principles. In some cases this verges on radicalism, in a few almost to nihilism: the "nothing's any good in either party, let's get rid of them both" idea.

There is always a danger to democracy in such attitudes. They are encouraged in Britain by a tendency in some circles to adopt an arrogant, patrician distaste for all democratic politics. This is understandable. The revolution that began with the war has weakened the economic and political power of a once dominant class. But that does not excuse those who seek to destroy faith in democratic processes.

The position of the Conservative Party is both stronger and weaker than it appears. There are reasons for believing that by the next general election, probably in 1959 or 1960, the policies of the government will have relieved the more immediate problems such as inflation and the need for increased exports. This success will not change Britain's position as a comparatively small power competing militarily, politically, and economically with the larger established powers, such as the Soviet Union and the United States, and the reviving powers, Germany and Japan.

The dominant group in the Conservative Party and government has, however, a considerable degree of competence and experience in government. It has an effective parliamentary majority during the present administration. Against these positive factors we must place the probability that some of its policies will continue to alienate an important group of its supporters; the result may be a rebellion within the party or worse.

The Tories are not politically dogmatic. Like the people, the whole people, they claim to represent, they are flexible in their approach to policies and programs. They change to suit economic conditions and political attitudes. In Britain's present position, the appeal of a party that contends it is working for the nation rather than a class or a section should not be minimized.

But it is precisely Britain's position in the modern world that forces upon the Conservatives today, and would force upon Labor if it came to power tomorrow, certain policies that are at odds with the principles of each faction. The Tories, for instance, must manipulate the economy. The idea of "getting government out of business" may be attractive to some industrialists, but in the nation's situation it is impractical and dangerous. Similarly, the Labor Party, despite its anti-colonialism, must follow policies that will enable Britain to keep her investments in Malaya's tin and rubber and in the oil of the Middle East.

We see the two great parties meeting on such common ground. Perhaps because they are less restricted by dogma and can boast greater talents at the moment, the Tories appear slightly more confident of their ability to meet the challenges of Britain's position.

V. _The Labor Party_

POLITICAL MACHINE OR MORAL CRUSADE?

_The idea of Socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I am convinced, possible of realization; but such a state of society cannot be manufactured--it must grow. Society is an organism, not a machine._

HENRY GEORGE

_We are all Socialists nowadays._

EDWARD VII WHEN PRINCE OF WALES

"The Tories won the election because they understood the changes that had taken place since 1945," said a Labor politician in 1955. "We misunderstood them and we lost. Yet we call ourselves 'the party of the people.'"

This assessment, made on the morning of defeat, explains to some degree the Labor Party's defeat in the general election of 1955. It raises the question of whether the party, as now constituted, is in fact a working-class party. The growth of the Labor Party, the emergence of its saints and sinners, the triumph of 1945, the disaster of 1955 make up one of the truly significant political stories of the century.

For Americans it is especially important. The British Labor Party is the strongest non-communist left-wing party in any of the great democracies of the West. Granted the normal shifts in political support, it will be back in power sometime within the next ten years. The government and people of the United States must regard it as a permanent part of British political life, and they will have to understand it better than they have in the past if the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom is to prosper.

The British Labor Party is the political arm of what the old-timers like to call "the movement." And it is as well to remember that not so very long ago--Winston Churchill was a young politician then and Anthony Eden was at Eton--it was a "movement" with all the emotional fervor the word implies. The men who made the Labor Party a power in the land were not cool, reasoning intellectuals (although, inevitably, these assisted) but hot-eyed radicals who combined a fierce intolerance with a willingness to suffer for their beliefs.

The movement includes the Labor Party itself; the Trades Union Congress, known universally in Britain as the TUC; the Co-Operative Societies; and some minor socialist groups.

The Trades Union Congress is one of the centers of power in modern Britain. We will encounter it often in this book. Here we are concerned with its old position as the starting-point for British working-class power. The first Labor Party representatives who went to the House of Commons in 1906 were supported almost entirely by members of unions. The Parliamentary Labor Party came into being as an association of the Labor members of the House of Commons. Today it includes members of the House of Lords. There was originally a much closer co-ordination between the unions and the Labor MP's than exists now.

Today the TUC, although it exerts great political power both directly and indirectly, is important principally as the national focus of the trade-union movement. All the unions of any size or importance except the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Local Government Officers, and some civil-service staff associations, are affiliated with it.

Its membership is impressive. The unions have a total membership of 9,461,000, of which 8,088,000 are affiliated with the TUC--this in a population of just over 50,000,000. The TUC's power is equally impressive. It is recognized by the government as the principal channel for consultation between the ministries and organized labor on matters affecting the interests of employees generally.

This power is not unchallenged. One of the disruptive situations in the Labor movement today is the restlessness of a number of constituency labor parties under the authority of the TUC. The constituency labor parties are the local organizations in the parliamentary constituencies or divisions. A number of them are and have been well to the left of the official leadership of the party. In them Aneurin Bevan finds his chief support for the rebellion he has waged intermittently against the leadership during the last five years.

Another source of anxiety to the TUC is the unwillingness of some unions--mostly those infiltrated by the Communists--to follow its instructions in industrial disputes. The TUC leaders with whom I have talked regard the strike weapon as the hydrogen bomb in labor's armory. They oppose its indiscriminate use. But in a large number of cases they have been unable to prevent its use.

The labor movement represents generally the industrial urban working class in Britain. But it is no longer an industrial urban working-class party. The modern movement relies on other sections of the population for both leaders and votes. Just as there are working-class districts that vote Tory in election after election, so are there middle-class groups who vote Labor.