There have been very few modern Labour Party leaders who have challenged the manner in which the party thinks and operates – only Tony Blair and Hugh Gaitskell come into this category.
Even before his time as leader, Gaitskell was fundamental in introducing Labour to new ideas. Alongside Douglas Jay and Evan Durbin, he brought the thinking of Keynes to the party. Then, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gaitskell courted controversy by attempting to introduce National Health Service charges for dentures and spectacles. The charges were seen to be so set against the principles enshrined in the NHS – free, universal and national provision – that its founder Aneurin Bevan, along with Harold Wilson and a junior minister, John Freeman, resigned from the Cabinet. Bevan, renowned for his biting wit, termed Gaitskell ‘a desiccated calculating machine’.
Yet it was after he became leader in 1955 that Gaitskell asked the party more serious questions. He believed Labour had to respond to Britain’s changing economic and social structure with new policies. Like Gaitskell’s ‘revisionist’ position, Blair’s does not see the market as necessarily standing in the way of social justice and seeks to disentangle means and ends.
The ‘revisionist’ cause was exemplified by Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism. Whereas the old socialist emphasis had been upon public ownership, the ‘revisionists’ argued that this confused means with ends. It was better to concentrate upon equality and social justice as the ends with Keynesian economics, a strong welfare state, full employment and progressive taxation providing the means.
This controversial position came onto the agenda more strongly after Labour’s defeat in the 1959 election. But Gaitskell prematurely forced the issue with his ill-planned attempt to change Clause IV. He had not consulted with trade unions and had failed to predict the reaction of activists.
Gaitskell held his views with a passion and, whilst defeated over Clause IV, he refused to lie down when the party conference adopted a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament, claiming that he would ‘fight and fight again to save the party we love’. Learning form his earlier mistakes, Gaitskell managed to get the Conference decision reversed the following year. The invaluable lesson was that a Labour leader has to take the party with them and build support in advance of big decisions.
Yet whilst being a ‘revisionist’ on many issues, Gaitskell upset many of his close colleagues many of his close colleagues with his position on British membership of the then European Economic Community. In his final Conference speech he claimed that joining the EEC would mean ‘the end of a thousand years of history’. The Labour leader’s death from a rare disease in January 1963 shocked everyone and left many of these challenges unmet.
A high level of genuine debate, sadly lacking today, took place in Gaitskell’s time. All of the leading political figures, such as Crosland, Bevan and Jay, wrote weighty books around the issues of economics and society. Whilst the party was internally factious, Bevan had made his peace with the leadership by 1957 and used his position to appeal for peace on several occasions. Gaitskell, meanwhile, forced those on all sides to express their ideas coherently.
Gaitskell’s legacy lives on in many forms, primarily through his supporters who are still involved in British politics and, in some cases, the Labour Party – David Marquand, Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and David Lipsey amongst others.
There is no doubting Gaitskell’s contribution to the Labour Party, even if, in the nearly forty years since his death, Britain’s economic situation is much changed and new public policy issues have arisen. Moreover, there are also clear differences with the Blairite agenda, specifically on the role of progressive taxation and the welfare state. Yet, it is the lingering issue of Europe that the party has still failed to come to terms with – either internally, or with the country as a whole.
Progress: Labour’s Progressive Network, Autumn 2000