Mr Wilson’s Dilemma

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31632, 19 March 1968, Page 14

Mr Wilson’s Dilemma

The British Labour Party is facing its most serious crisis of confidence and discipline since it came to office late in 1964. If proof were needed, Mr Brown’s abandonment of the Foreign Office and deputy leadership of the party, and his reasons for doing so, have together provided it He told Mr Wilson that he did not like the way the Government was run or the way decisions were reached. Neither reason would have surprised the Prime Minister. The Left wing of his party has consistently and bitterly opposed decisions, mainly economic, which the Government felt compelled to take. Mr Wilson, in recent months, has tried desperately to restore party unity—fatally weakened, as it must seem now, by the wages freeze and other economic measures of mid-1966. The unions, and the party members who speak for them, are said to have become more militantly angry since Mr Wilson’s warning of a tough Budget. When he sought to rally the party about a fortnight ago, Mr Wilson said bluntly that there would have to be “further measures in the field of prices and “ incomes ”. There was no escape from reality, he said. The Left-wingers have shown by their revolts and defections that they do not accept their leaders’ economic orthodoxy as “ reality ”. The restoration of unity, which Mr Wilson may well regard as a first priority over the critical few months in which the Budget decisions will be put into effect, means keeping the Left within the fold. Mr Wilson cannot afford to buy unity at the cost of weakening or abandoning policy measures which he knows to be absolutely necessary if internal spending is to be held down and the risk of a further devaluation avoided. The Left will resist the stronger controls over wages which the Prime Minister has promised. Neither he nor the Chancellor, Mr Jenkins, can go back on that decision, despite the prospect of another Left-wing revolt. At worst, in the “ Economist’s ” view, Labour’s majority would be cut to about 40. But the country would be encouraged to believe in the possibility of economic recovery; and that, the “Economist” thinks, could “sustain him over the “ rough patch, and even win him the next election ”.

In any case, a first-class row over the Budget seems inevitable; and there is little comfort for the Government in the offer of support by the Conservatives provided Mr Wilson agrees to seek another mandate from the country. If Mr Brown, as a backbencher, rallies the malcontents around him, a serious challenge to Mr Wilson’s leadership might result. If he were deposed by action within the party, the new leader would almost certainly be required to reconstruct the Government and seek a fresh mandate. That, at the moment, is no more than a possibility. It has been argued that there is no apparent successor to Mr Wilson and that the full Cabinet, moreover, has committed itself—with, presumably, the exception of Mr Brown—to the policies which the Left opposes. The crisis should not take long to come to a head. Should the rebels take the extreme course of breaking adrift and forming an independent party, they will surely share the fate of all political splinter groups. There are not enough of them to deprive Mr Wilson.of a working majority for the remainder of this Parliament; but they could hardly fail to weaken confidence in Labour, perhaps to the extent of ensuring a Tory majority early in 1971.