LONDON LETTER
129
So it was providential when, just before the Election, a rumpus
blew up in the City over a peculiarly crooked piece of financial
juggling. Labour used it, of course, to the full, and in the public
opinion polls the Tory lead grew slighter and slighter. Then at the
last possible moment Gaitskell announced that
if
Labour was elect–
ed
it would remove all sorts of unpopular purchase taxes. "Bribery!"
cried
the Tories, "You're trying to buy votes." They had a point.
The silly gesture had lost Labour the moral initiative that was
their strongest appeal.
In Labour's recent Blackpool conference Gaitskell outlined his
seven fundamental principles for modern British Socialism:
1. An
expression of what was once called a "bold, human movement on
behalf
of the bottom dog."
2. A belief in social justice and an equitable distribution of wealth.
3. A belief in a "classless society"-a society without snobbery, privilege
or restrictive social barriers.
4. A belief in the fundamental equality of all races and nations.
5. A belief
~hat
the pursuit of material satisfaction by itself is empty and
that the good society is one in which the human personality is developed
to
the full.
6. A belief that the public interest
be
placed above private interest ... an
insistence that the pursuit of private gain should not take precedence
over the public good.
;,
7. A belief that these principles must be achieved with and through free- .
dom and democratic self-government.
Having thrown out nationalization, Gaitskell has left the admittedly
protesting Labour Party with little except moral principles to go
on.
It is not an ideal position politically. But
if
Labour were able
to make the best, instead of the next best, of a bad job, they might
do immense good. I have mentioned before in these letters that
young
people in Britain are, to an extraordinary degree, non–
political. One of the reasons for this is that they feel that profession–
al
politicians are more committed to manoeuvre than issues, that
even a crisis like Suez provokes more a display of debating society
tricks
in
the House of Commons than any serious moral lead. They
are uninterested in politics because its procedures seem remote from
what
most concerns them. (It would be interesting to know how
