From the point of view of the Wilson leadership, this year's Labour Conference is already being built up as one of the most successful ever, From the viewpoint of the left it was one of the most unrewarding.
The general decline of political activity inside the party was reflected in the fact that affiliated and individual membership was lower than at any time since 1951. Only just over 300 out of 630 Constituency Parties were represented at Conference. The low political level is demonstrated by the failure of Vietnam or [illegible]lism — two key questions — even to appear on the agenda.
The big story of the week was the conflict between the Government and the AEF and the TGWU which ended with the delegations of these unions casting their votes against the NEC Policy Statement: 'Agenda for a Generation'. (The statement was nonetheless passed.) But Scanlon and Jones said they would accept this document if just a few words about the necessity for a Prices and Incomes policy were dropped. The rest of the document however is simply a recipe for the continuation of the Government's current policies for the modernisation of British capitalism. The leaders of Britain's two major unions do not appear to understand that if you accept one you have no choice but to accept the other. A fight conducted on such a level is assured of failure in advance,
Nor was there any sign of a real fight from any other direction at Conference, The Tribunite left made the usual gestures and indulged in the usual rhetoric, yet their impact was absolutely nil, This is graphically illustrated by the results of the NEC elections. After a year in which the Government had launched an unparalleled attack on the basis of its own traditional support, Barbara Castle, the architect of 'In Place of Strife', kept her seat at the head of the Constituency Section, The only change on the whole executive resulted from the retirement of Bessie Braddock!
Revolutionary socialists get no satisfaction from seeing this atrophy in Britain's traditional mass working class political organisation. The Conference was clearly seen by the leadership as a pre-election run-in. They certainly used the opportunity as one long publicity show, The latest opinion polls and the pitiful showing of the Tories makes a Labour victory appear increasingly possible. In other words it is not going to be enough to turn the other way and hope the Labour Party will die. As long as the organic links which exist between the Party and the organised class in the trade union movement endure, wholly unexpected revivals of this kind will continue. Those links will be broken when significant masses of British workers are convinced through concrete political struggles of the possibility of a revolutionary alternative.
On any score it appears unlikely that there will be a fight of any significance within the Labour Party for several years. Hugh Scanlon himself proposed the motion of support at Conference to the Labour Government in words which Wilson later seized on to illustrate his own theme of the unity of the movement behind his leadership. Only a really traumatic disaster appears likely to shake the apathy. In the meantime, and in preparation for the conflicts which must eventually arise, the duty of the British revolutionary left is to build its own forces to the extent that they are able to make an independent and decisive intervention which can wrest the leadership of the left away from the Tribunite reformists and left union bureaucrats and place in the hands of those who will conduct a real struggle for the revolutionary transformation of British working class politics.