Labour faces two crises which may destroy party

by TIM BEAUMONT This year the three main party conferences were at their most typical.
The chief function of any Liberal Party conference is to
bring together once a year the
activists and policy-makers who, because of their small representation at Westminster, do not — unlike the other parties — meet daily for most of the year. It is therefore primarily a get-together, a moralebooster.
The Liberal Party was the only party to get their conference in before the election, and this bonus publicity probably ensured that they did not do any worse at the polls.
Since the war the Liberal Party vote has invariably gone up against a Conservative Government and down against a Labour one (the reasons for this are complex and not within the scope of this article.) In the event, the Liberals did well to put up their vote in every age-group below 55.
The Conservative Conference never happened, and that is really the epitome of Conservative Party conferences. Arthur Balfour once said that he would rather take advice from his valet than from a Conservative Party conference and although things have improved since then, most MPs feel that attendance is a chore and know that the important decisions are taken elsewhere.
This is not to denigrate the party's policy-making machinery, which is more than competent if — in appearance at least — less than democratic.
But the Labour Party Conference is typically about power, the red meat of politics, and never more so than when the party is in Government. It is the time when the paymasters — the. trade unions — and the constituency workers, who got the Government there, flex their muscles.
So this year's conference met in an atmosphere of considerable unease. On the one hand, the party has won four out of the last five General Elections, a feat unparalleled this century.
On the other hand, there was a great universal awareness that the movement was corning up to two major crises, either of which could destroy the party and either of which .could change the whole course of Britain's history.
The first is the future of the social contract. On this the party is split into three. There is the group which thinks that the social contract is already shot full of holes, will be shot even fuller in the next few months, and will have to be replaced by a "freeze", and who wonder how the Government will cope when this happens.
A sub-division of this group thinks that the social contract was always doomed and that a true socialist objective is a wellplanned permanent statutory prices and incomes policy. Their argument is put admirably by Barbara Wootton in her latest book "Incomes Policy," where she tells the story of the parish priest who was to be given a barrel of wine by his parishioners on his retirement, each household to put a litre of wine in the barrel.
When the barrel came to the first householder he looked at it, saw it was big, and thought: "In a big barrel like this no one will notice one litre of water." Other householders thought the same. So the priest received a barrel of water.
The belief that people will do that which it were good for everyone to do is unfortunately ill-founded in a fallen world.
The second and largest section of the party thinks that the social contract will just about work in the long-run and that somehow we will all muddle through.
The third group thinks that the social contract will not work, and is glad. Because if it does not work, a great many businesses will go bust, the capitalist system will collapse, everything will be nationalised and the bloodless revolution will have arrived.
This group is keeping very quiet, and it is difficult to tell how large it is, but undoubtedly it is not confined to "Communist trouble-makers" and has growing support at all levels in the 'party.
Nothing very much happened at the conference this year to develop or resolve this crisis. There were a great many exhortations, but basically the course is set and we will see what we will see.
The other problem, however, moved more rapidly to crisispoint although in a totally forseeable direction. This is the Common Market issue and here again perhaps a bit of basic analysis is not out of place.
The Government is already renegotiating some of the Common Market terms. When it has done as much as it can it is pledged to consult the people of this country "through the ballot box". This leaves open the question of referendum or election, and Mr Short was careful to leave it open.
What the conference said firmly this week was that there should be a special party conference to consider the terms before the ballot.
It also, by a narrow majority, , accepted a series of minimum demands for renegotiated terms which could wreck the whole concept of a United Europe and which would be completely unacceptable to our European partners.
So what can happen? When the terms are renegotiated the Cabinet can either recommend them to the country, or recommend that they be rejected, or if, as is likely, the Cabinet is divided, Mr Wilson can piously declare that this is a matter for the hearts and the consciences of all Britons and it would be wrong for the Cabinet to prejudge the verdict of the people.
If the Cabinet decides to recommend the terms, it will almost certainly be opposed by the Labour Party Conference and the National Executive Committee and therefore can hardly hold an election. So there will be a referendum, with the Labour Party split wide open.
If the Cabinet rejects the terms (which is less likely since renegotiations are going well and the Cabinet is a body of mainly reasonable men) the party can either have an elec tion or a referendum.
But there is a hard core of pro-Europeans headed by Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams who could not fight an election on this issue, and who would have to be free to campaign against the party in a referendum. In either case the split in the party will be irrevocable.
Far the most palatable solution for Mr Wilson would be the third. By leaving it to the con sciences of all he would let loose an unholy wrangle, but it might not be fatal to the party and we might stay in Europe — which is probably what he wants.
The snag about this is that the message coming loud and clear from Brussels is that Mr Wilson will get better terms if he is prepared to commit himself to recommending them.
If this is true, it is a very short-sighted policy on the part
of these Europeans (and they are the majority) who want us in, since it will force Wilson into the corner which it is essential for him to avoid.
There do not appear to be any other alternatives to those which I have outlined above, and they hardly make cheerful reading to anyone except to the most Left-wing anti-European who would be happy both to see us out of Europe and to see Mr Jenkins and his friends out of the Labour Party.
Last week we saw little that was unexpected, little that was dramatic but nonetheless there has been the feeling of a drama moving towards its fore
ordained conclusion. Although there may be a surprise ending, it looks uncommonly as if what we have been watching is a tragedy, not a comedy.
Lord Beaumont is a former President of the Liberal Party.