LONDON LETTER
141
words, a catastrophe. Hence it is in the nature of things that socialist
movements will always inherit a more or less bankrupt estate, that they
will always ascend to power in the "wrong" country or at the "wrong"
moment. As this factor is implicit in socialist theory it cannot at the
same time be treated as an extraneous accident and serve as an excuse.
Socialism is meant to be a cure for diseased society, and no doctor can
get away with the excuse that people only call him when they are ill.
This brings us to the second factor: every leadership has a certain
elbow-room of subjective freedom within the hard limits set by objective
conditions. Nobody can blame the Government for being unable to
provide more houses, food, coal, dollars for imports, and so on. You
can't expect socialism to do miracles-but you can and must expect it
to give the people a message and an inspiration, to bring home to them
the consciousness of the opening of a new era. This is where the Labor
Government has failed. Take as an example the momentous event of
Britain's coal mines passing from private to national ownership · after
half a century of socialist agitation, on January 1, 1947. Coal is the
hard core of Britain's industrial life, and the coal miner the pioneer
and symbol of the struggles of the Working-Class Movement. What a
pageant Hitler or Mussolini would have staged to impress upon the
people's memory this historic event! What a glorious ballyhoo if it had
happened in America! Well, I have seen the great event on the news–
reels. It took place in the Ministry of Fuel's austere conference room
and was about as inspiring as the annual visit of the welfare committee
in a state orphanage. Shinwell's speech and Lord Hyndley's reply were
in the grayest virtue-and-gloom key; and the only moment when pro–
ceedings rose to the pathos of the historic occasion was when Attlee
referred to the future of the National Coal Board by the inspired meta–
phor: "It is going to bat on a sticky wicket, but I think it will score
a great many sixes." You can imagine how inspired the miners must
have felt by this flash of Dantonesque oratory.
It is nonsense to pretend that people in this country don't like
noisy celebrations and public displays; each Derby-Day and Cup Final
is proof to the contrary. It is equally stupid to keep repeating that "this
is no time for celebrations." No people can live on bread-rationing alone.
And I am not arguing here in favor of circus games; I only want to
say that socialism minus emotional appeal, structural changes in econ–
omy without functional changes in mass-consciousness, must always lead
to a dead end of one sort or another. The present Labor leaders don't
seem to have even an inkling of this home truth. While the Govern–
ment passes its nationalization bills, raises the school-leaving age, insti–
tutes its Public Health Service, votes old-age pensions and family al–
lowances, pursues its legislative program slowly, steadily, and on the
whole with considerable success, it is doing nothing to change the atmo-
