142
PARTISAN
~EVIEW
sphere, the mental climate of the country.
If
a new Rip Van Winkle
had gone to sleep under the Churchill government two years ago and
woke up now, he could go on living for weeks and traveling all over
England without discovering that anything has changed in people's
lives. I happen to live on a sheep farm in North Wales, next to a slate–
mining village called Blaenau Ffestiniog. As neither slate mining nor
sheep farming are on the nationalization program, the "landslide,"
the "new era" has changed literally and absolutely nothing in the life
of the village, in the thoughts and habits and emotions of the people.
The advent of the age of socialism has affected their daily routine
about as much as a change of government in Mexico. And the same
goes for millions of the politically indifferent all over the country.
"But what else did you expect?" the staunch Labor politician will
answer; "you know that we are a reformist, gradualist movement;
you can't expect Clem Attlee to dance the Carmagnole in Trafalgar
Square, nor Lord Rothschild, Labor peer, to swing aristocrats on lamp–
posts. You are a romantic, my dear fellow, and your idea of socialism
is half a century behind the times. Business as usual was our motto
during the Blitz, and business as usual is the motto of our Socialist
Revolution. For a revolution it is, though a slow and bloodless one;
and even our ultraradical Harold Laski brought a libel suit against a
newspaper for alleging that in preaching revolution, he meant anything
rash or violent."
This is the typical kind of answer of the typical Labor politician,
based on the typical mistake of equating gradualism with dullness. With
one half of the argument I fully agree: to wit, that the reformist way
is the only possible one for this country; that a revolution on orthodox
Leninist lines, apart from being unthinkable under present conditions,
would lead to a catastrophe; and that, if all goes well, and Labor re–
mains in power, we shall see within a generation or so a quiet but pro–
found transformation of the whole social and economic structure of the
country. But this has nothing to do with the second half of the argu–
ment; and Labor will only remain in power if it succeeds in capturing
the people's imagination. They voted Labor because they were fed up
with the Tories; after five years of Virtue and Gloom, they may turn
Stalinite or back to the Tories, for the same negative reasons. Gradual–
ism and long-term planning are no justification for the fact that the
Daily Herald
is the drabbest and dullest paper in this country.
If
it
can't change its traditions, why can't the victorious Labor Party find the
means to start a new, truly popular paper and get the politically indif–
ferent masses away from the influence of the Rothermeres and Beaver–
brooks and Kemsleys? The best journalists in this country are Left; but
they have to work for the
Mail
and
Express
because there is no scope
for them on a socialist paper in socialist Britain. Why can't socialist
