LABOUR VICTORY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 7 August 1945, Page 2

LABOUR VICTORY

HOW IT CAME ABOUT “MASSIVE SOCIAL MOVEMENT” COMMENT IN BRITAIN London. August 6. In Britain last week another chapter of the nation's history was completed when Mr Churchill moved out from 10 Downing Street smiling behind his cigar, philosophical and unperturbed, and Mr Attlee, fresh from Potsdam, moved in beaming cheerfully and continued his Cabinet-mak-ing while vans were still .removing Mr Churchill’s belongings. In the House, after some ebullient singing, the Commoners were sworn in. among them the 345 members fresh to Westminster, who began to find their way about and listened attentively to advice on their conduct, "and the traditions of the Mother of Parliaments While the country is gradually accustoming itself to the fact that Mr Churchill is no longer at No. 10 but is Leader of the Opposition, there is interest in assessing how it came about that Labour swept into power and the Conservatives went out on a landslide. There are many opinions. Mr Arthur Mann, former editor of the "Yorkshire Post,” in a letter to "The Times” declared: "In recent years the Conservative Party has grown increasingly out of touch with the sentiments and aspirations of the people and has relied more and more for its appeal to the electorate not on any distinctive principle or positive idea but on an assumption that a socialist party could never win the support of a nation of individualists and small shop ''keepers.” NEED FOR PARTY REFORM He added that the Conservatives had considered it more Important to try to discredit Iheir rivals than to present an attractive programme of practical reconstruction and reform, and he declared: "If the Conservative Party is to survive as a vigorous rational force it must adapt itself to the spirit of the times and discard the negative outlook which has dominated its thinking for the past decade. Above all, we must succeed in convincing the country that it has a real contribution to make to Britain's welfare, htat it stands for something fresh and vital in the life of the nation —not for property or privilege or the interests of a particular cla:-s. but for liberty, good fellowship and the conquest of new fields of human endeavour.” The "New Statesman and Nation” describes the present as a moment when hidden forces, long gathering, have broken tho ugh the crust. Such moments occurred in 1832 and 1906. "For the first time the popular vote demands socialism,” ' it says. "For two generations the notion of deliberately organising social wellbeing instead of leaving it as an accidental upshot of the competitive struggle has been steadily making headway among the industrial workers and professional people. PARTY NOW “NATIONAL” "Its victory is complete in 1945 because, in addition to the solid vote in the industrial areas, many agricultural workers, now effectively organised for the first time, have voted Labour in company with the disillusioned servicemen and women and Ihe middleclass electors who have lost during the war their fear of being on the same side as the horny-handed sons of toil. Labour is no longer a class party; it ,s a national party. It is not revolutionary; it is in itself a popular front, and it is pledged to a practical, constructive. comprehensive policy.” The vote for Labour was very delibate. the paper continues. "The Churchill Government ha* not been particularly unpopular, and there is no lack of gratitude to Mr Churchill in any section of the community. True. Mr Churchill erred as nc man whose judgment matched his capacity could have erred: no other leader in history ever so swiftly and unnecessarily wrote himself down from greatness. True, Labour must thank Lord Beaverbrook for failing to .expose any of its real weaknesses and for boring the electorate incessantly with dreary nonsdnse and the disingenuous effort to turn a serious election into a one-man plebiscite. "But when all the Tory mistakes are added up and every allowance has been made for a swing of the pendulum it remains’quite clear that this is the most deliberate possible vote for Labour and a policy of democratic socialism.” CLASS SUSPICION Mr Kenneth Lindsay (National Labour M.P.), writing in the "Spectator.” states the opinion that the cause of the Conseivative defeat lies deeper than the shift of opinion among the blackcoated workers. He declares that a large slice of the British public had become deeply anti-Conservative by 1939, and nothing happened between 1939 and 1945 to lessen that antipathy. The 1931 election swept into Parliament numbers of Conservatives who never expected to have a political career and who failed to keep abreast of the social changes that were going on outside Parliament. Scores of younger men suffered because this large immobile block stood in the way of reform till it was too late, he continues. Some of them appeared to identify business interests with the national welfare. It is impossible not to be frank in such an analysis, because this impression was deeply embedded in the minds of the Electorate. With few exceptions the Conservative Party was made up of well-to-do yoifng men drawn from the better known public schools or from the self-made business men. To the electors they represented a class, and a privileged class. When, says Mr Lindsay, the caretaker Government was presented to the nev/ly enfranchised electorate as "National,” the revulsion was bitter Nor was the revulsion limited to the intelligentsia; one heard it among the factory girls, in the public houses, on the buses and in the trains. This question, at any rate, has been settled once and for all. No party will ever again arrogate to itself the title "National.” nor use national symbols and emblems

in the course cf an election. The people are heartily sick of thi- pretence. PEACE WITH PURPOSE The conduct of the Conservative campaign, he stales, was put in the hands of men who were curiously inept for the colossal and imaginative task. The peojilc were looking for a policy, for a star and for hope, and they were offered dark Xears, apprehension and a bogus appeal for unity. It had been long evident to any careful observer that the unity enforced by Hitler fell far short of political unity. The com mon dangers shared both in the services and civil defence produced a common outlook toward privilege. Men and women who had shaken off the greatest menace that ever confronted civilisation were unmoved by appeals to fear, even when uttered by the war leader himself. Britain was not in an angry mood; it was radical, and was beginning to be sullen. The evident joy and relief felt in the forces and everywhere among the younger generation, among the technicians and the middle classes, bears witness to this analysis. It was not, after all. an illusion to suppose that the people wanted a purpose in peace as cogent as that given them in the war. Mr Lindsay expresses the opinion that when every allowance is made for the swing of the pendulum( the forces' vo‘e, the irritation at universal taxation and other obvious contributory causes, the sweep of the majority is due to a massive social movement, which, in *urn. has fashioned a new political instrument. —P.A. Special Correspondent.