fn13 The most prominent of the former were Christopher Mayhew (who was actually only fifty-six, but on his way to joining the Liberals), Austen Albu and George Strauss, an old left-winger who had been a minister in the Attlee government. The most suicidal of the latter was the thirty-nine-year-old Michael (‘Mickey’) Barnes, whose Brentford and Chiswick constituency was due to disappear under redistribution. Barnes and his wife Anne were at this time good friends and Notting Hill neighbours of Roy and Jennifer, and Anne was one of Jenkins’ regular lunch dates.
fn14 The phrase, from Pope, comes from a passage describing a politician remarkably like Jenkins: ‘Blest with each talent, and each art to please, / And born to write, converse and live with ease.’99
fn15 Hattersley noted slightly bitterly that Shirley Williams attracted no such opprobrium for not resigning. ‘For the first time I realised that Shirley is surrounded by a beatific light that shields her from harm and criticism, which would be heaped on ordinary people.’ She has ‘an enviable . . . capacity to be loved and admired whether she deserves it or not’.117
fn16 David Owen wrote Crosland a convoluted letter explaining why he was not voting for him. He was desperate to get rid of Wilson, so did not want to tie Crosland to him; what he really wanted was a Callaghan/Crosland leadership. He had never believed that Jenkins was the only possible successor and thought that his resignation gave the party the chance of uniting in the short term around a compromise figure – Callaghan ‘or just possibly Ted Short’ – with ‘Roy coming back into the collective leadership before the next election and you Denis Jim Roy and hopefully Michael agreeing to work together’. Failing that, he feared that Benn would become a real possibility, in which case he shuddered for the future.120 His analysis was prescient, but his hope that all the big beasts would pull together was sadly optimistic.
15
What Matters Now
JENKINS’ PROBLEM WAS what to do next. Should he widen his area of disagreement from Europe to the whole future direction of the party, with a view to challenging Wilson in November? Or do his best to restore unity by lying low and mending his fences until the European storm had passed, then hope to resume his position in the leadership?
On the one hand, Wilson was still very vulnerable to a determined challenge. Even Barbara Castle admitted that ‘everyone – including Harold’s friends – now think Harold is so discredited that he cannot continue as leader’;1 and the New Statesman (now edited by Anthony Howard) wrote that ‘his very presence in Labour’s leadership pollutes the atmosphere of politics’.2 Moreover in this vacuum of leadership the left was continuing to gain ground, not just over Europe and opposing the Industrial Relations Bill, but by committing the party to a more sweeping programme of nationalisation than it had contemplated since the 1940s (including plans to take over banks, insurance companies, building societies and development land), while making life increasingly unpleasant for several of the Jenkinsites – though not Jenkins himself – in their constituencies. (It was partly because of trouble with his local party in Dundee that Thomson had decided to give up and go to Brussels.) By his stand on Europe Jenkins had – despite his wobble between October and April – built a strong identity as an alternative leader with a clear and different vision and a considerable following both within the party and beyond. His wide appeal was demonstrated by an ORC poll published in The Times in September, which found strong support for an alliance between ‘moderate Labour’ and the Liberals. In this hypothetical scenario, the Lab/Lib combination scored 35 per cent against the Conservatives’ 27 per cent and ‘Socialist Labour’s’ 23 per cent.
The accompanying editorial, entitled ‘Twelve Million Jenkinsites’, assumed that the Liberals would provide the necessary organisation and believed that money would be no problem. ‘The Liberal–Labour coalition, if it was to work at all, would create a public enthusiasm which would make it more than self-financing from popular subscription. It could produce an explosion of support from frustrated voters.’ If the next election were a presidential contest between Heath, Wilson and Jenkins, ‘Mr Jenkins would be the Brigadier Gerard of the race’ – in other words, he would win hands down. (Brigadier Gerard was the leading racehorse of the moment.) It would not happen, the paper concluded, because the pro-Europeans would not leave Labour. ‘Nevertheless the most disquieting fact in this poll is that two to one agreed that the present party system no longer works properly.’3 Jenkins was just beginning to reach the same conclusion; but he was not yet ready to act on it. In retrospect – since the moderates did lose control of the party over the next decade and it did eventually split – he came to believe that he should have come out boldly and fought in 1972 before it was too late, as some of his more hawkish supporters like Bill Rodgers and Bob Maclennan were urging.
‘I fear the thinning of the ranks,’ Maclennan warned:
If you don’t go now what do you do before the next election is lost? The slide will continue . . . And when we finally are rejected by the electorate as unfit to govern you will be blamed for not speaking up. No, for not standing up and putting HW to the test. For not giving the Party the opportunity to choose its way . . .
If you stand you will not win, but you will bring the succession nearer. If you do not stand I think you will seem more isolated than you are [and] the appearance will gravely damage your prospects.4
Rodgers recalled that Wilson had not done himself any harm by challenging Gaitskell in 1960 and questioned Jenkins’ stomach for a fight:
The question is what do you want: a relatively quiet and untroubled life with the prospect of the crown, although diminishing; or a bid for the leadership continuing over three to five years, unpleasant sometimes, unrewarding often, but with a distinctly better than fifty–fifty prospect of success. I can see the attractions of the first. But with no regrets?
So why not this year? What is there to lose? And will you not lose something if Mayhew stands and you don’t?5
But Jenkins was not temperamentally a rebel and he did not want to risk splitting the party. Those like Tony Benn and Barbara Castle who suspected that he was itching to break away and form a new party underestimated the pull of his Labour roots. He still believed that with clear leadership Labour could be brought back to sensible policies, as it had been after previous lurches to the left in 1931 and 1951. But was he the man to give such leadership? In a shrewd review of Afternoon on the Potomac? in June, the deputy editor of the Guardian, John Cole, suggested that Jenkins was ‘more of an architect than a builder’:
He can see the vision. But can he shift the bricks? . . . The question . . . is whether Mr Jenkins can harness his considerable powers of persuasion and his limited powers of patience to the task of convincing people of his view at a time when it matters. That is what political leadership is about.6
So he took the course of least resistance. After his resignation he carried on with the series of speeches that he had launched in March. They were good, thoughtful speeches, delivered to constituency and trade union audiences in Blackpool, Edinburgh, Leicester, London and Carmarthen between May and September 1972, addressing poverty and inequality, regional and industrial policy, the environment and the needs of the Third World, and still advocating strongly interventionist solutions including substantial (though selective) public ownership. But they were largely written for him by Judith Marquand and Matthew Oakeshott, with input from David Marquand and David Owen; for the most, Jenkins took little interest in their preparation (with the exception of the one on cities, always a particular interest), delivered them without conviction and singularly failed to follow them up. They were published in a Fontana paperback (priced 30p) in September, just in time for the party conference, under the seemingly urgent title What Matters Now, and sold well – evidently bought by a good many of The Times’ twelve million Jenkinsites. For publication he included his speech accepting the Charlemagne Prize – anticipating Britain’s role in an increasingly united Europe – and added a short post
script reaffirming his long standing conviction that Labour, in order first to win elections and then to implement lasting reform that would change society for the better, could not afford to be a narrow socialist party imposing unpopular left-wing nostrums on the basis of a minority vote, but must aim to ‘represent the hopes and aspirations of the whole leftward thinking half of the country . . . A broad-based, international, radical, generous-minded party,’ he concluded, ‘could quickly seize the imagination of a disillusioned and uninspired British public’ and win the sort of positive victory needed to sustain a successful Labour government.7 But he made no attempt to test this belief by using his speeches as a platform from which to challenge Wilson: he was only putting down his marker for a future contest – probably after Labour had lost another election. At Blackpool in October he spoke only at fringe meetings and said nothing controversial, beyond repeating his commitment to British membership of Europe. His decision not to speak in the Common Market debate – which might have been counterproductive – was vindicated when Wilson succeeded in keeping Labour’s options open by persuading conference to reject an outright commitment to withdraw in favour of a promise to ‘renegotiate’ the terms. From the point of view of keeping Britain in the Community, Jenkins commented, this was ‘not ideal, but it could have been a great deal worse’.8
Above all, he declined openly to support Dick Taverne, who after a particularly acrimonious struggle with his constituency party in Lincoln was deselected for voting against the whip the previous October. The NEC – on which Jenkins of course no longer sat – upheld the decision; and on the last day of conference Taverne announced his intention to resign and fight a by-election on the principle of an MP’s right to follow his own judgement, not the dictation of a party clique. Most of the other Jenkinsites (several under similar threat themselves) tried to dissuade him. Only Jenkins thought he might win. Taverne pressed Jenkins to come and speak for him, arguing that his victory would then be Jenkins’ victory, which could be the launching pad for a centre party. But Jenkins did not believe the time was ripe for a significant defection from Labour; apart from anything else they would need to attract a lot of councillors, who could not be expected to defect before the local elections in May.9 Given that none of his other supporters was yet ready to contemplate the unthinkable, he was unquestionably right. By speaking at Lincoln he would merely have invited instant expulsion, which a majority of the NEC would have been delighted to enforce. But his heart was with Taverne; and it was noted that John Harris did help in an advisory capacity. Jenkins came under considerable pressure to speak against Taverne – as both Healey and Crosland did. But though he spoke loyally at two other by-elections in February 1973 (at Chester-le-Street and Dundee) he told the national agent, Reg Underhill, that it would not be ‘appropriate’ – in view of ‘our past connection and his very loyal service to me in two departments’ – for him to speak at Lincoln.10 He was delighted when Taverne, standing as Democratic Labour, won a momentous victory, beating the official Labour candidate out of sight with a majority of more than 13,000.fn1 The result confirmed that there was huge public support for moderate Labour and that the militants could be beaten if they were faced head-on. As events developed over the next few years Jenkins felt that he had taken the coward’s path by not supporting Taverne, who remained a scar on his conscience ever after.
For the present, however, he was concerned to reaffirm his loyalty to Labour and stamp on any suggestion that he was considering forming a centre party. In a speech to the Oxford University Labour Club a week after Lincoln he insisted that he found the idea ‘profoundly unattractive’ for four reasons – all of which would be gleefully quoted against him eight years later when he did lead a breakaway. First, he did not believe that such a grouping would have ‘any coherent philosophical base’:
A party based on such a ragbag could stand for nothing positive. It would exploit grievances and fall apart when it sought to remedy them. I believe in exactly the reverse sort of politics. It is the duty of leaders to seek to synthesize and give reality to people’s aspirations, not to separate and exploit their conflicting grudges.
Second, he believed that a centre party would only benefit the Conservatives by destroying the prospect of an effective alternative government – which was why some Tory newspapers were so keen on it. ‘The most likely result would be chaos on the Left and several decades of Conservative hegemony almost as dismal and damaging as in the twenties and thirties.’ Third, he claimed to have no wish to drive the left out of the mainstream of British politics, which would only ‘increase and not diminish the divisions in our society’. Fourth, and more personally, ‘the Labour party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life’:
The most moving speech I ever heard was Hugh Gaitskell saying he would ‘fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love’. That was the right message in 1960, and I believe it is still the right message today . . . But I believe there is a lot of fighting to be done.
Labour was self-evidently in a bad way, performing very poorly in by-elections against an unpopular government.fn2 ‘There is something very wrong indeed with an opposition party which in mid-term and in the winter of the Government’s discontent cannot do better than this.’ But it was ‘standing sense on its head’ for those who had enjoyed ‘almost undisputed control’ for the past two years to blame those who had argued for ‘a more responsible, more consistent approach’. Labour would only regain public support by adopting sensible and honest policies, and he offered three tests for every new policy proposal: Was it necessary to creating a better society? Was it able to be carried out? And would it win, rather than alienate support? Every policy should pass at least two of these tests. But ‘all too often none of the three are given serious consideration’. Harking back to the distinction he had drawn in Pursuit of Progress twenty years before, he warned that Labour must decide what it was about. ‘Are we offering people the prospect of steady progress towards better living, a fairer distribution and a more idealistic society? Or are we seeking salvation through catastrophe?’ Those prepared to put the country through ‘the needless misery of complete national failure’ were a tiny minority, but they exerted an influence disproportionate to their numbers. The great majority of Labour members and – just as important – supporters wanted a radical party, but also responsibility and consistency. ‘It is time we started talking sense to the British people.’11
This was all very fine, but it was hopelessly vague. ‘It is a fault of Mr Jenkins,’ wrote David Wood in The Times, ‘that when he comes to the point he tends to hit hard with a feather duster.’12 The speech was an elegant analysis, but it neither offered a clear lead to his supporters nor made clear which left-wing policies he objected to, while offering the left an easy target. In two speeches in the West Country the next day Barbara Castle laid into him unmercifully. ‘Let there be no mistake about who is causing the splits . . . Roy Jenkins and Roy Jenkins alone is responsible for starting up all these old rows all over again’:
Does anyone really believe that the Labour Party lost the last election because it was too left? Some of us who loyally supported our colleagues in government even when we disagreed with them . . . are getting sick and tired of the attempt of some of them now to pre-empt for themselves all the claims of probity, courage and consistency.13
‘Wonderful, Barbara,’ Wilson congratulated her. ‘When I said I would not comment on Roy’s speech I also said there was one person I hoped would; you. He has boobed this time.’14
The weakness of Jenkins’ position was that by emphasising responsibility and sense he had ceased to sound remotely radical. There was some justice in the complaint of three Bradford councillors who wrote to Labour Weekly: ‘The truth is that Mr Jenkins is indistinguishable from the liberal wing of the Conservative party.’15 The previous year he had actually set out a lot of quite detailed policies on poverty, industrial policy and urban regeneration; and he still advocated increased public
ownership. Condemning the Heath government’s efforts to ‘hive off’ parts of the nationalised industries and return them to the private sector, he declared that ‘We should move firmly in the other direction. We should seek to hive on parts of the private sector to the nationalised sector, and encourage the nationalised sector to diversify wherever it sees a good opportunity.’ To this end he proposed a State Holding Company, backed by a Regional Development Bank, on the model of the Italian IRI. This was not very different from the left’s proposed National Enterprise Board, which became official policy in 1973 and formed the centrepiece of Labour’s 1974 manifesto. The difference was that Jenkins envisaged – as Crosland had advocated in the 1950s – a patchwork pattern of public ownership for the purpose of stimulating regional investment, not the wholesale nationalisation of entire industries and major companies:
I have always believed that public ownership should be judged more by the results it will produce than by abstractions and preconceived views. I have not been convinced that it contains the key to the elimination of injustice between individuals . . . But I am increasingly convinced that injustice between the regions cannot be dealt with except by a significant expansion of the public sector.16
But he failed to sound as if he really meant it. In a Radio 4 debate with Enoch Powell, Michael Foot and Reggie Maudling, chaired by Robin Day, he was asked if he still spoke of socialism. ‘Yes, I use that word,’ he replied cautiously. ‘I certainly use it.’ But he was ‘happy to be called a social democrat’. He dismissed as ‘foolish’ the NEC’s latest plan to nationalise twenty-five unnamed major companies (‘I think it’s a number drawn out of a hat, and I’ve no idea what is intended to be achieved’) and declared himself still ‘an unrepentant believer in a mixed economy’. He professed to think that ‘on the whole the balance of that mixture tilts, and tilts rightly, and should be helped to tilt as time goes on, in favour of the elected government of the country playing a greater part in determining what happens’.17 But he scarcely sounded in a hurry to speed up the process. This was never going to inspire anyone. He also continued to insist that the next Labour government, like the last, would have to maintain some form of incomes policy to control inflation – just as the Heath government had been driven, against its original intention, to introduce one. But this was another part of the record of 1964–70 which the Shadow Cabinet, under pressure from the unions, had repudiated. The result was that on the three most contentious issues of the moment – Europe, nationalisation and incomes policy – Jenkins appeared irredeemably right-wing: not only was he opposed to the official policy of the party, but on two of them he was in agreement with the Tory government.
Roy Jenkins Page 53