bating whether to merge with Churchill's Tories. By contrast the two parties' share in 1992 was 76 percent. tween them were far slimmer than might be expected.
So right wing and timid had Clement Attico's Labour government been that there was little it had done which Churchill's 1951 government wished to reverse.
Labour had held office for six years after sweeping to power with a land• slide majority of 146 in July 1945, and then clinging on by theskin of their teeth to win a 5-scat majority in 1950.
Shattered hopes
The hopes of wholesale social change kindled among the workers and middle class nao tarted to mater alise in the harsh realities of managing bankrupt British capitalism; despite their huge majority Labour never in tended more than to reform the capitalWinston Churchill They barely altered the class structure and achieved no significant redistribution of wealth The four leading lights of the Labour government. Attlee, Herbert Morrison, imest Bevin and Hugh Dalton had al under Churchill in the wartime coalition, and came from the right of the party, while the two left wing abinet ministers, Aneurin Bevan ano Emmanuel Shinwell, were easily marginalised.
Attlee's government fired an early warning shot of its intentions when it invoked the hated Emergency Powers Act of 1920 to attack a dock strike which broke out within weeks of the election.
there was little it had done which It was trus same Labour govern•ment which committed bankrupt to reverse. Britain to higher per capita spena Bevan (left) and Hugh Gaitskel! ing on defence than the USA; which tied itish foreign policy firmly to the coo is of the USA, which secretly decide in 1947 to build a British atomic bomb; Korean War and embarked on a long-running anti-communist war in Malaya. Churchill found it hard to disagree. Nationalisation Labour's nationalisation programme was not socialist in conception but de signed to improve capitalist efficiency. So right wing and timid had Clement centred Attlee's Labour government been that bankrupt infrastructure dustries - coal, Churchill's 1951 government wished electricity, rail ways, along with transport, steel On the unions, Churchill took if anything a more conciliatory line than Labour, deciding not to appoint the most hawkish advocate of antí-union legislaton. His Minister of Labour Walter Monckton carned the praise of the Transport Workers' (IGWU) right wing leader Arthur Deakin for giving the union a square deal ... we have been able to do things that were difficult to do under our own people.
On defence and foreign policy, Churchill again followed on and praised what had been done by Labour in office. Meanwhile in opposition, Labour sright wing leaders offered little resistance to the Tory government, leaving left winThe early 1950s of course saw the heyday of the Bevanite left wing revolt in the Labour Party, which led in 1952 to left victories in the Constituency scetion of Labour's National Executive and in 1953 to Conference adopting a policy document including further nationalisation, comprehensive education and the abolition of NHS charges.
Ineffective
However the right wing kept control of the Party and in 1955 Gaitskell de eated the feft challenge from Bevan to ake the leadership - helping to ensure nother period of ineffective oppositior intil Wilson took the helm when Gail skell died in 1963.
Major's government, by contrast, takes over from Thatcher the mantle of radical, class-war Toryism, a commitment to extending privatisation, marke tisation of the NHS, new anti-union laws and a further redistribution of wealth from poor to rich.
But like Churchill, it will be up against a demoralised Labour leadership shor hope and purged of any involveme ith socialist policies, which will rema Intermineo to suppress and contal what remains of its left wing The discipline of the Tories - whic revented all but an insignificant hand ful of renegade rebellions by backbench MPs even when Thatcher enjoyed a maority of 101 - can be expected to prevail even more effectively under Major.
For Labour, the task remains to learn the bitter lessons of the past. The fight must be redoubled for a Labour leader ship as committed to the working class as the Tories are to the bourgeoisie.
Nơ. 20 • April 4, 1992
SIX YEARS ago, British and broad-based campaign includ- International News