Why we shall march again this Easter
OMEBODY said recently that CND should stop being a mass parade and become a mass studygroup. It is a popular idea. The Prime Minister, before taking office, said:: “We want a Britain in which everyone, not a small clique or class, feel themselves to be part of a process of new policy-making, of taking national decisions, where every home, every club, every pub is its own Parliament in miniature — thrashing out the issues of the day. We want a Britain where the ideas and efforts of its citizens are more important to the Government than day-to-day ups and downs in public opinion polls or on the stock exchange.” And he is of course right. We want this kind of society. We still want it, after the election as much as before. The problem is, how to get it. We can all draw our graph of participation in politics. For a month before the General Election I was out almost every day, like thousands of others: not exactly discussing political issues, except at the odd meeting, but organising the vote. Then from the close of the polling-stations, watching the results on television, still emotionally involved. And since then? Meetings, discussions, protests, but ‘fa process of new policy-making, of taking national decisions’? I remember a photograph of 1945, of Aneurin Bevan going to his first cabinet meeting: hurrying from his car, and without looking round reaching his hand back for a briefcase that was} being carried by a secretary In the last three months I’ve seen that same scene, over and over: the backs of cars sweeping through the gates of Chequers; the three-second public smiles at the front door in Downing Street; Mr. Mulley dressed as a jungle fighter. The conception of political activity, as it is shown to us again and again, is of this ruling-class kind. It took the Leyton result to get Ministers back on television and at public meetings, explaining their policies. The ups and downs in public opinion polls. Of course the Government is busy. That is entirely right. But to get
decision-making beyond a “small clique or class” needs more than a declaration of intent. The fact that anyone who can qualify as an expert and who is approximately on the Labour side can be asked up to London is no change. Some of us have rooted objections to becoming, or trying to become, grey eminences or sub-eminences. The point is not that a few new people should be included in the clique. It is, simply and unalterably, that the clique must go, and that the public must decide, not simply at elections, but as the issues actually come up. So what does it really mean to tell CND that it should become a mass study-group? _ Nothing _ positive, surely, for at its best that is what it has always been. I don’t know where else, in meeting after meeting, in the last seven years, the issues of nuclear politics have been repeatedly and publicly studied and discussed. It has been at CND meetings that the microphone has been passed round, for anybody who wants to speak. It has been CND pamphlets and leaflets, handed out in the streets, which have tried to get this mass study-group going. If we haven’t succeeded, we can still ask who else has so much tried? Other study-groups have existed, certainly; many of them more expert than our own. But who else has tried, in the sense of Wilson’s declaration, to involye everyone in decision-making about the issues of international nuclear politics? Those who say this can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done, because it leads to simplification and emotionalism, have a right to disagree with us. But those who see, or claim to see, politics in this public way: they, surely, must recognise what we have in fact been trying to do. Perhaps then the advice that we should stop being a mass parade and become a mass study-group is to be read in a negative way: not so much that we should start studying, but that we should stop parading. And certainly, if we had the choice, that is what most of us would prefer to do. Marching may look or sound glamorous, but those who have actually and repeatedly done it have few
by Raymond Williams
illusions about it. Of course it isn’t
the best way to deal with political
issues, and it is in any case hard and
tiring. Why then do we still do it?
Because it is the only course open
to us. For the choice suggested, by
this piece of advice, is in fact illusory.
We are a study-group already, and
we can hope to become larger and
to study more deeply. But this is
only a real process if the study con-
mects, in a significant public way,
with the actual process of decision-
making. It is a parody of democracy
— a parody that can easily be offered
as a substitute for substance — if
all over the country there is study
and discussion of national issues, but
no connection, and no prospect of
connection, between these and the
actual processes of decision.
The liberal rhetoric, of “every
home, every club, every pub its own
Parliament in miniature”, is in fact
far too easy, and even facile. To
make it a reality would mean a trans-
formation of the society, an explicit
and revolutionary reversal of all
current trends. It would mean end-
ing the massive centralisation and
capital-monopoly of our whole sys-
tem of communications, so that
people could have a chance of
directly expressing their views in a
more adequate form than the occa-
sional vote or reply to a poll ques-
tionnaire, It would mean taking
seriously the internal democracy of
the political parties, starting with the
Labour Party, so that the views of
constituency members and annual
and regional conferences would be
taken more seriously, by the Parlia-
mentary Party and the Government,
than anyone now even pretends they
are. It would mean the extension
into every institution and enterprise
of the full procedure of democratic
discussion and decision. Until there
are serious proposals, for changes of
this kind, we are bound to take the
most liberal rhetoric with a pinch off
salt. And we are bound, also, to go
on expressing our views through the
only public channels now clearly
open to us: the streets.
(To be continued next week)
h 24, 1965 — THE WEEK