After Mr Attlee?

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27683, 13 June 1955, Page 10

After Mr Attlee?

The reported wish of Mr Attlee to resign from the leadership of the Labour Party in Britain in October was what might be expected of a man who has never sought high position. His agreement to continue in office in the interval, because of the difficulty of choosing a successor, is as typical. Mr Attlee will be 77 when the next election is held, if this Parliament runs its full course, and possibly 82 by the end of the next Parliament. Though he might retain his vigour and ability till then, he cannot be sure that he will. Mr Attlee probably feels that his successor, who may be the next Prime Minister, should have ample experience of the difficulty of leading the Labour Party before he takes it into an election, and possibly into office. Other factors must be considered. No party likes being led twice to ■defeat by the same man, however little Mr Attlee was responsible for the mounting electoral reverses and however unfair some of the postelection criticism. As an old politician, Mr Attlee knows that his colleagues like a man who wins. Nor has Mr Attlee escaped reason-j able criticism for his leadership in | the few weeks before the election,! when he tried desperately to patch) up party unity. Many of his| supporters believe he was wrong in! ■ going so far, both in party disjcussions and in the election!

manifesto, to placate the Bevanites, because a stronger line would have helped restore confidence in Labour policies. If the Bevanites now wish him to keep the leadership it is only because their influence in the succession is small at present.

Mr Hugh Gaitskell is possibly the most promising of the candidates for Labour leadership; but he may be handicapped by the feeling among members that at 49 he is young enough to wait for a while. In any case, he has yet to show many of the qualities that distinguished Mr Attlee. Mr Bevan at this stage had little chance of selection, because the singularly bad timing of his latest breach with Mr Attlee must still irritate Labour politicians. Precedent is also against Mr Bevan, because the British Labour Party has never entrusted its leadership to the “ wild men ”. Though the eagerness of 60-year-old politicians to withdraw from the Labour front bench may be a little! embarrassing for Mr Herbert! Morrison, his resilience is surely equal to overcoming this minor difficulty. As the Parliamentary tactician of the party, a skilled administrator, and a loyal lieutenant of Mr Attlee, he must have an excellent chance of succeeding to the leadership. His ability is undoubted; and experiences in the last 10 years should have increased his political wisdom. But he, too, lacks something of those great moral qualities that raised Mr Attlee from seeming insignificance to an honoured place among British Prime Ministers, and secured his position at the head of the British Labour Party for 20 years. Though Mr Attlee’s successor, whenever he is chosen, will not, immediately at least, have the heavy responsibilities that Mr Attlee had to shoulder he will have the important new task of guiding the party in its reconstruction and in developing a policy fitted to new world conditions and to an electorate that seems to have tired of the old doctrines. The whole future of the party, and perhaps the course of British politics, depends on whether ! Labour can find a new leader to do I his job as well as Mr Attlee has 'done his.