London Letter | BRITAIN AFTER KENNEDY
Pre-Election Crisis Intensified
| _ By T. J. Peters
_ To a people in whose history the last assassination of a chief executive goes back four hundred years or more, the murder of President Kennedy was undoubtedly a more severe shock than perhaps to any other, including the American,
Britannia ruled the waves and was leader of the capitalist world from -the threshold of the industrial revolution practically uv to the beginning of its greatest crisis -- the first world war which culminated in the worldwide depression of 1929, Reluctantly but ineluctably the British lion has since steadily yielded its place to the American eagle. In consolation,. the rulers in Whitehall propagated among the people the notion of some "special relationship" with Washington, more a myth than a reality.
Now this whole notion is beset with doubts. What solace is there in being very. close to a power, overwhelming as it is in this frightful nuclear AES -which cannot assure for itself (even if, as always, lawless. violence is practiced upon the "undeveloped" countries abroad) the . "civilized" rule Britain has enjoyed for centuries? For the assassination, calling attention to the racist atmosphere of its locale, and the televised | application of lynch justice to the alleged assassin, revealed. in a flash ~ what before was only faintly apprehended: that behind the finger on the button supposed to guarantee the ultimate deterrent to world annihilation lies a seething social cauldron that puts a question mark on everything.
Expressions of disillusion and even of hopelessness at ‘this state of affairs are fairly widespread in press and public, even when uttered with typical reserve. For tne ruling class the whole problem of assuring stability in the general conduct of the capitalist system of the West is causing particularly great anxiety. The Tory government of Sir Alec Home- Douglas does not lay much stress on the "special relationship" these days.: The whole pre-election strategy of Sir Alec who had hoped to wring some partisan advantage out of the test-ban treaty (which he signed as Foreign Minister Lord Home) and to follow it up with a suitable stance as “man of peace, “is somewhat battered in the process,
Projected Talks with Gromyko
For these reasons the Prime Minister's recent rival, the new Foreign Minister, Mr. R.A.B.Butler, is encouraged to try a British initiative all on his own in Moscow, to seek negotiations alone for a "further reduction of tension" in a meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister. Difficulties in agriculture and in the chemical industry related to it within the USSR, congressional impediments to trade credits for the Soviet Union in the ‘USA, and Britain's own continuing balance of payments crisis make up an economic background that lends some feasibility to the projected ButLer-Gromyko Salks as a new tack in foreign policy.
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While the Labour opposition sees through and denounces the stunt aspect of this move, and its leader Harold Wilson is apprehensive of a. snap election (the Prime Minister under the British system can call for an election at any time of his choosing) -- Wilson expects one in March =~ the upset in international relations caused by events in America has not, naturally, been without its effect on the leadership of this party, too.
Labour Deputy (Assistant) Leader George Brown!s indiscreet and some-~ what inebriated appearance on television at the time of the Kennedy assassination revealed the close’ tie-up of this wing with the Washington power structure, Combined with the assurances of the right-wing Brown to businessmen at private gatherings and in interviews about the moderation that can be expected from a Labour government, it has caused the barely. “patched-up unity of the party to tremble, A minor illness gave Brown the opportunity to withdraw from public view for the time being. Left Left Wing Steps Up Pressure
The left wing of the party has, in the meantime, stepped up its pressure for a more independent British policy: to begin with, withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]. Instead of e fortress, the weekly Tribune argues in a prominent article, NATO has become a prison for Britain, The logic of the developments noted is bound to push the Labour leadership in a direction in line with this thought.
The very shake-up in international affairs, while momentarily to the fore, has tended to focus attention more and more on the internal mess evident after twelve years of Tory government, which encouraged a free~ for-all in the economy, rebuilt after the war by sweat and toil under a Labour government, _. Concentration on the car and aircraft industry as the key to affluence, after the American model, has indeed brought enormous profits to the wealthy. But it has left the country as a whole in a state of disarray, beginning with stagnation in industry itself, Industrial expansion in Great Britain remains the lowest of any of the major Western countries. At the same time, all the nationalized industries taken over by the Attlee govern~ ment have’ been geared to practically subsidize private industry, and government control.of the wage structure within them has been used as a lever to hold down wages everywhere, With all the load of exorbitant compensation payments upon them in addition, nationalized enterprises have been run on the same basis of profitability as private concerns and, not . being able to: show a similar profit, have been used by the Tories and their backers as whipping boys in their frantic campaigns against nationalization. Late Converts to "Planning" CO
The result of the free-foreall has been decay in the transport system, a housing crisis grown acute, choked roads and e tremendous lag in public services, especially in health and in education, behind the pressing needs of the times, Belatedly, the Tories have resorted to setting up all kinds of planning and investigation commissions, Under pressure of housing profit scandals they have even threatened to carry through measures of land
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nationalization. As late converts to planning, they have set out ina _ White Paper a program of public expenditures over the next five years that exceeds the sums for which they denounced the late Hugh Gaitskell's proposals in the 1959 elections as extravagant and bound to hit the taxpayer's . purse, Now they themselves warn that there will be no tax reductions and = ‘that taxes may have to go up. ..
At first their "planning" proposals were still based on the profit. — principle. Thus the Beeching Plan for transport simply proposed .to shut down wholesale all railway lines that didn'!t pay. Now they have published emong others, the Buchanan Report on roads which, while advising the:overhaul and reconstruction of whole cities and their traffic lanes in the long run, proposes as an inevitable immediate measure to prevent chaos, the complete rehabilitation of the present transport system as a public. service . regardless of whether railroads, buses, etc., pay for themselves or not. Every crisis which their conmis sions examine in the life of the country inescapably leads to the logic of nationalization and the indictment of the profit motive of capitalism,
Who Gets the Cake?
“Nor do matters stand any better with the sharing of the tational cake" of income, The economist Nicholas Davenport estimates (Spectator, — November 22) that in the last twelve years real wages have risen some ab%s while the coupon clippers have increased their takings by 200% to 300% 0 : average, This despite enormous militancy on the part of the workers, with A wild-cat strikes counted by the thousands each year. The criterion of. oy productivity, apparently, has to be applied to wages only; profits are Jos unlimited, we i
Obviously, volatile class relations are built into such a process, . _The threat of automation jeopardizes. even the meager gains of the workers, made under conditions of intolerable overtime work. The return of the © more well-off worker to the Labour fold, and the continued disaffection of “the lower middle class from the Tories -- in the last of the by-elections, | at Dumfries, the Tory majority melted from about 9,000 to some 700 -- .. presage a Labour election victory. Barring coincidences -- such as that in © Australia and New Zealand at the time of the Kennedy assassination, in - . ‘which confusion worked against changing the government -- a Labour govern= ment will soon take the helm in Britain,
The trend to planning and nationalization, evident now, will then become an irresistible flow, The militancy of the British worker, unabated |. during the last period, will take on new forms after a brief spell to give: are the new government a chance to settle down. Almost inevitably it will par make itself felt in demanding an ever greater share in the management and ~ control of planned industry. It will become a factor on the political » arena with which a Wilson government will have to reckon, and upon whose course it will exert an unyielding pressure.
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