Why the date is important
The Prime Minister has spoken. In the hope that the interests of the Conservative Party will be best served by an election in the Autumn, he has settled for that and the news which has been so anxiously awaited by the M.P.s who hang on to slim majorities, and not so anxiously by those who sit on a fat lead, is out.
Ever since the Profumo crisis, there has been any amount of speculation about the timing of the election. Only a short time ago, some political experts were assuring us, on information from “reliable sources,” that polling day would definitely be in March. Others were equally confident that it would be in late May or June.
But there has also been a persistent story that the Prime Minister himself favoured a later date, in the hope that by then his party’s tarnished image would be looking a little brighter. At the same time, it was whispered, Harold Wilson was hoping for a June election and was working on the assumption that that would happen.
Both Labour and Conservative parties attach great importance to the date of the election; for some time they have based their electoral strategy on their forecast of the date.
In passing, we may comment that the time which Douglas-Home has chosen has a certain interest. Previous Conservative Premiers have often been masters at the political game and have excelled in calling elections at a time of maximum inconvenience to their opponents, and then fighting on a craftily conceived vote-catching gimmick. Baldwin was like that and so was Macmillan. But Douglas-Home has so far done nothing to suggest that his choice of polling day has been handled any more adroitly than the other political matters which he has bungled since he took office.
This is a point of no more than academic interest. While the working class are blind enough to acquiesce in a social system in which they are governed by leaders in the interests of the capitalist class, it is of little consequence whether the leaders are politically skilful or not. Home, up to now, is one of the nots.
It is important to realise why the parties have been in such a dither over polling day. The English political constitution allows the date of an election to be flexible. This would not matter very much if the people who determine the outcome of an election were of different material. In other words, if the working class were politically more mature, the election date would be of much less significance—their votes would go the same way in March as in October, or any other month.
But the working class are not politically mature. They vote in ignorance and in docile acceptance of whatever capitalism likes to dish out to them. Some of them support the Labour Party, although they oppose Labour Party policy. (Aims of Industry claim that 32 per cent. of Labour Party supporters are opposed to more nationalisation). And the same sort of thing can be said for some of the supporters of the Tory government.
If the evidence of the Gallup Poll can be relied upon, the voting intentions of the working class change almost week by week, apparently influenced by all manner of incidents in the daily round of capitalist crisis and confusion. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the politicians attach such importance to the date of an election. If, for example, Macmillan’s government had collapsed last summer, they would probably have lost the election—for the same basically illogical reason that may win the election for Douglas-Home later this year.
In the United States, the pre determined date of an election means that the timing in itself does not have the same importance as over here. But this does not mean that there is any less posturing, any less dishonesty from the politicians, any less ignorance on the part of the working class. For some months before a Presidential election, some American government business almost comes to a standstill, as the two great parties concentrate their energies on the coming campaign — upon the careful statements, the devious attacks on their opponents, the loaded hand outs and promises to voters.
This sort of campaign is widely accepted by most of the people who have a vote to cast. In the same way, they expect a British Prime Minister to choose an election date to suit himself—the date on which, he thinks, the people who are foolish enough to vote for his party will outnumber those who are foolish enough to vote for the opposition.
This sort of cynicism does not damage the politician’s image of a beneficent, honest man who would rather die than stoop to a low trick. It does not damage Home’s image of a chivalrous aristocrat who longs to serve all of us slum dwellers and millstone mortgagees. It will not damage Wilson’s image of the blunt, sensible lad from Yorkshire who learnt all about life in the days when he could not afford to wear shoes. Yet these images should be damaged—indeed, should be destroyed by the evidence of the politician’s cynicism. That they are not destroyed is just another symptom of the political backwardness of the voters.
One of the most depressing facts about an election is that very few of the millions who cast their votes seem to ask what the politicians want power for. They are generally content to accept the cynicism and the vote hunting and the politician’s own assessment of themselves as humane and clever men.
Both Labour and Conservative parties claim that they are opposed to each other. The Labour Party warn us that the Tories are hard headed, ruthless men of business who care not for the problems of the under-privileged nor now that Harold Wilson is in command —for the underpaid men of science. The Tories reply that the Labour Party is full of reckless dogmatists who will ruin the British economy for the sake of a theory and who will allow British capitalism to be bossed by flat capped trade unionists.
What truth is there in these claims? One of the issues on which Labour hopes to win votes is the rise in rents which followed the Rent Act. The figure of the rapacious landlord has always been a politically emotive one. Yet even at the time when the Act was first passed, it was apparent that a Labour government would have been compelled, to some extent, to free rents. Now from the other side, the Conservatives have stated that they are in favour of some measure of rent control. In the House of Commons on March 18th last Sir Keith Joseph, Minister of Housing, made this quite clear:
“. . . the Government do not intend, if returned to power, to propose, during the next Parliament, any further measure of block (rent) decontrol.”
This shows how close the two parties are on this issue. There is nothing surprising about this. Housing is an essential part of working class expenditure and as such has a powerful effect upon wages. This means that rents are important enough to capitalism to ensure that the two big parties substantially agree on what should be done about them.
Then there is the favourite Tory bogey of a Labour party which will nationalise everything and drive all the employees out of business. This bogey has always been something of a laugh, especially when we recall what the last Labour government was prepared to do to keep British capitalism prosperous.
Now Sir John Hunter, chairman of the Central Training Council, has had his say on this, to the British Employers’ Confederation;—
“I do not subscribe to the view that a Labour Government will introduce legislation with little regard for the employers’ views. On the contrary, I believe a Labour Government would listen attentively to the views expressed by employers’ organisations on one condition that those views are positive and expressed clearly, forcibly and without reservation.” (Guardian, 19/3/64.)
Both the big parties, in fact, stand for capitalism—and so do other organisations like the “Liberals,” “Communists” and “Independents,” who claim to be different. They stand for the social system in which war is established and persistent enough to be almost a way of life. They support the economic arrangement in which the mass of the people, who make and distribute the world’s wealth, live in a horror-land of plastic, prefabricated, powdered, poverty, while a few privileged people have an income which allows them the chance to live like human beings. (In the tax year 1961/62 there were just 92 people in this country with annual incomes over £100,000).
In face of their basic agreement over the continuance of this social system, the differences between the Labour Party and its Tory opponents arc quite insignificant. They are no more than differences over the details of administering a world so organised that it enables a few people to do very well indeed while the vast majority get hurt—sometimes literally so.
This is what puts the timing of the election into its perspective. What can we say about the voter who is subject to all the suppressions and frustrations of capitalism yet who will vote Labour in March, Tory in October, perhaps Labour again in January, and so on? Is there anything more foolish? More futile?
Whatever precise date the Prime Minister eventually settles for, he can rest assured that when the election is over and the next government is comfortably in the seat of power, when the newspapers are smugly congratulating everyone on what they call the exercise of democracy, he will still be Sir Alec Douglas-Home with all his property and investments. So will the rest of his class, up the top of the social tree. And somewhere down the bottom will be the people who, at any time and in all weathers, are content to keep them there.
IVAN