When the new Programme appeared, its 70,000 words received relatively little editorial comment in the bourgeois press. A short editorial in the Daily Telegraph concentrated on conjuring up the traditional cold war fantasies for Tory shareholders. The document was "Totalitarian in character and purpose', and would mean the end of economic freedom in Britain'. The Daily Express appealing to the fears of its shopkeeper audiencs, ridiculed the idea that statutory control of prices could go hand in hand with free collective bargaining (although Labour is in fact committed to an incomes policy). In the idiom of their readership, these catastrophic economic policies were described as an attempt by Wilson to "bribe the voters'. Neither paper felt the need of a detailed analysis.
The Times took the affair more seriously. Its main concern was with the future of the two-party system and the quality of political states manship. The Times foels that Labour is using too much bad language these days. Talk about 'crude market forces' and 'glimpses under the stone of Lourho' does not create the climate for Labour Governments to establish good rela tions with industry. Of course, 'the Conservative Party in oppostition tends to become more hostile towards the unions (yet) learns when in powor that the country cannot be governed without the trade unions. The Labour Party in opposition naturally tends to become more critical of the management of private industry. But this time Labour has committed an excess. As to its actual policies, The Times feels that there is nothing much worth commenting upon, except to say that nationalisation of a number of sectors will not provide any solution to the problem of the British capitalist economy as a whole.
Papors concerned with formulating strategy for the bourgecisie can seldom afford rhetoric. So the Financial Times was extremely factual: "the National Enterprise Board puts in an appearance of course, and some 25 of our largest manufacturers (Dames unspecified) are threatened with acquisition by it, but the only bard commitment is the old one, to nationalise the docks. Aircraft, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals are mentioned too, but only as the object of future study,' The Industry Act might be a useful tool, but it differs little from Tory plans, "There seems to be little to choose between the current Labour and Conservative approach to industry.' The Economist, significantly, has so far ignored the document altogether.
Crisis of Labour Labour's proposals simply do not face up to this fact. Duly an improved climate of profit-making will encourage private busing sa to