The Crisis in British Socialism

Abstract

RITISH SOCIALISM iS today in the throes of a profound internal crisis. If we are to believe what we read in the American newspapers, Aneurin Bevan's strength is growing daily among the British trade unions, and no less an authority than the New York Times highlighted the recent Labor Party Conference at Morecambe as a Bevan victory. Some experts on British socialism even tell us that Aneurin Bevan will be the next Labor Prime Minister. In short, we are led to believe that the extremists are virtually in command of the Labor Party. It is the purpose of this analysis to demonstrate that these prophets of gloom are mistaken, that their analyses are based on inadequate knowledge of both the internal organization of the Labor Party and of the political process in general, and finally that the real nature of the Bevanite threat is quite different from that suggested above. In fact, it is here submitted that Aneurin Bevan can never capture the Labor Party as it is now constituted, but he can ruin it. To put the point precisely, the Bevanites may make it impossible for the British Labor Party to win another election, which in political terms is to condemn the party to death by slow strangulation. British socialism has not been an ideology in the Continental sense; it has been a concrete bid for political power. Thus, if the pragmatic and thoroughly nondialectical average British socialist decides that the Labor Party is destined to be a permanent minority, he may well take his political business elsewhere. The leaders of British socialism are on the horns of a horrible dilemma. On one extreme stand the powerful trade union bureaucrats who would destroy the party sooner than have it fall into Bevan's hands, while on the other, stand Bevan and his associates who cripple the party's power to win elections. The major bone of contention is