There is always a certain pattern to Labour Party conferences. Those held when the Party is in power exhibit the unanimity of the grave. Those immediately before elections are mere rallies. However, for conferences in the wake of an election defeat there is a pronounced change of mood. The leadership tends to generate a certain volume of 'socialist" rhetoric and the Labour Left carries out a ritual of menacing gestures towards the Right. But a further tendency overlays this cyclical process, and that is for the effectiveness of the Labour Left to decline, This can be illustrated partially in terms of personalities: the centrist Bevan of before the Second World War, and left Social-Democrat Bevan after the war; and the present day Michael Foot who has become the last of the Radical Liberals and chose this conference to proclaim his faith in the mixed economy.
NATIONALISM One other component of the forces at work on the Labour Party needs to be examined. The 1964 - •30 Labour Government repres ented a clear attempt to convert Labour into an orthodox bourgeois party "the Party of power not protest", to use Crossman's formula. But in winning the plaudits of the Economist and Lords Kearton and Stokes, the Party nearly severed its crucial links with the trade unions. The decline in individual membership, a general tendency since the early fifties, became acute in the 1964 - 70 period, It was essential to repair the relationships with important sectors of the trade union bureaucracy and to breathe some sort of life into the decaying constituency parties.
A similar problem had confronted Gaitskell in 1962 after the debilitating battles over Clause Four and unilateral nuclear disarmament. His response was very interesting. He played as his trump card the lowest common demoninator of Labourism -nationalism. The attack on the Common Market, the defence of British sovereignty and a thousand years of history, completely changed the line-up in the party. His own caucus, the Campaign for Democratic Socialism, split into two irreconcilable factions, pro-and anti- the EEC, while the left and centre became his devoted followers. The current "populist" ideology of many of the Labour leaders is in direct descent from the Gaitskell of 1962. Foot, Jay and Shore indulge in a patriotic ranting that, at times, has brought them into a close alliance with that 'great Englishman' Enoch Powell. Tony Benn (as he now likes to be called) contributes a democratic cover, and vigorously supports workers' control although when the content of this is examined it is discovered that it is merely a left sounding version of progressive personnel management. "PROGRAMME FOR BRITAIN" The National Executive's draft programme for the conference, Labour's Programme for Britain, attempts to solve some of the problems mentioned above. It is generous with left verbiage, but in no way deals with the actual performance of the Labour Government or how a subsequent Labour government could deal with the biggest capitalist crisis since the Whe document comes out firmly in favour of prosperity, full employment and good housing, and is positively scathing about poverty, unemployment and slums. But the whole issue of the class struggle is dealt with by systematic and total silence. In fact the basic proposition of the document is one of class peace:" if inflation is to be overcome, then all sectors of society must co-operate in a necessary adBarbara Castle and Harold Wison at the Labour Party Conference justment." The realities of the squeeze on Tory-bashing. The NEC naturally backed a