Last week?#s editorial discussed the contribution of the new Socialist Register to the practice of the labour movement. Readers who have referred to that important book will have been most interested in Ralph Miliband's essay on "Socialism and the Myth of the Golden Past." Rightly, Miliband argues that the times are perhaps more propitious now than ever before for the socialist transformation of society.
But it is not only the lone witnesses of the left who have seen this writing on the wall. On 26th of May, 1964, The Times first leader was _ given over to a commentary on a paper by two sociologists, John Goldthorpe and David Lockwood. This most stimulating and valuable paper was scarcely hot news, It had been published in the Sociological Review 6 months previously. But having laid hands on it, the men of power were given seriously to think, The fundamental uneasiness of the British capitalist class is very well summed up in the resultant article. We quote some chunks of it as a tastes
".eeIn the course of the heart-searching and wound-licking that went on in the Labour Party after its third successive ‘tefeat in the general election of 1959, an hypothesis emerged that material affluence experienced over a prolonged period had altered the political allegiance of an influential, and perhaps critical, number of working class electors; that the “traditional working cless attitudes" had been = perhaps permanently modified by physical wellbeing; and that the social and political distinctions between less well paid white collar workers and the prosperous manual worker were disappearing, If it is proved true, the political, social, and - ultimately constitutional significance of that hypothesis could be immense. ‘The result of the next general election will throw more light on the hypothesis, though it will say little about the complexity of social currents which will affect that result.
",.eethe implications of the hypothesis...extend far beyond any particular quinquennium or the meaning that it may have for a political party in relntion to the framing of its future policiés. What is beinz discussed here is nothing less that the kind of society that may be emerging for the Britain of the next 20 or 30 years, and as such it is worthy..of systematic study...It is widely assumed that the individual's prosperity has a great bearing upon the ease with which he may increase the felicity and usefulness of his life, that more money will make him socially mobile. Is that always, or even generally, true? Even though the class barriers may have become more pliable, they still exist.
", seelt is not, of course, possible to divide British society into neat ackages. The social fabric of the count has demonstrated in the past its the secret of the country's inmunity from revolution. The familiar mechanism has worked well, in its leisurely way. But it will be tried as it has never been tried before in the next decade. The demand may be be for recognition now not_in the next generation, The increase in the prosperity of a sroup in society
ani equivalent incresse in social status may produce in that
radicalism..."
The truth is, our betters can feel the ground moving beneath their fect. Who has ever questioned the "country's immunity from revolution"? Very few of us, it may be thought. But The Times knows better. If only the left could see as clearheadedly as the established heirarchy, the business could be accomplished with such liveliness and speed as might meke Britain the Bannister of revolution.
iit eee