From E. Stewart

[p036] E. Stewart Dalton follows up his account of this conversation with an enlightening record of the manoeuvres that preceded the election for the leadership. The comings and goings, the cosy dinner parties, the overt canvassing and the seedy little decerts —all are faithfully reported. But out of it emerges a second political qualification for our budding Labour leader: member- ship of the Freemasons. For, having recorded the defeat of his candidate by Clem Attlee in a three-cornered contest, Dalton goes on to report an ‘incident of some historical interest’. The third candidate for the job was Arthur Greenwood. In a total first ballot of 135 he had polled 33 votes. And Dalton hints broadly where they came from: ‘Four days before the party meeting there was held a meeting of a Masonic Lodge to which at that time a number of Labour MPs and some Trans- port House officials belonged. A list of members of this lodge was shown to me. No doubt voting at the party meeting was discussed, formally or informally, at their meeting. And Greenwood was the Masons’ candidate.’ Dalton was not a Mason. Neither was Herbert. And Her- bert lost. Would he have won if he had been a Mason? And who was the Masons’ candidate when Herbert lost again, this time to Hugh Gaitskell? But that is idle speculation. I return to our list of qualifica- tions. A few sentences further on, a third stares us in the face: quick and disarming recovery from defeat. Says Honest Hugh: ‘Immediately after the party meeting I went to see Attlee. I said that, as no doubt he knew, I had backed Morrison and had worked pretty hard on his behalf. But now that the decision had been taken I accepted it. Now I should play in the team under his leadership.’ Poor Attlee (whose election Dalton described in his diary later that day as ‘wretched and disheartening’) seems to have been so stunned by this bald demand for a job that he prompt- ly blurted out an invitation to be party spokesman on foreign affairs or finance—whichever bluff Hugh cared for most. The next two items on our list of qualifications take us forward eight years—to the 1943 Party Conference at Central Hall, Westminster. Dalton’s artless, knockabout account of the backstairs conduct of a fateful election for the party treasurer- ship illustrates the politician’s urgent need for (1) a quick mind for figures, and (2) a remorseless capacity for ignoring the force of your opponent’s case. In a passage which could be swiftly and indetectably translated into Crossbencherese, the good doctor tells how he and a group which included Sam Watson and Morgan Phillips narrowly failed to get the luckless Herbert Morrison into the job which was ultimately filled by Arthur Greenwood.

[p037] The group met the night before Conference opened. Swift- ly it totted up the block votes of the big trade unions, which were already committed among the three candidates (the third was Glenvil Hall). They rightly came to the conclusion that Morrison would win only if there was a second ballot, when the National Union of Mineworkers could be expected to switch their vote from Hall to Morrison. ‘How to get a second vote?’ asks Dalton. ‘There was no provision either way in Standing Orders. And the vote was to be taken next day. Some delegate must raise the question at the opening of the Conference.’ No sooner said than done. By means not detailed in the story, a Morrisonite persuaded a woman delegate to take the job on—even though she was herself voting for Greenwood and was therefore unwittingly assisting in the defeat of her own candidate. Sadly, Dalton records that her intervention was not per- formed very effectively. The chairman of the Conference Arrangements Committee said it was not a matter for him. So, with defeat staring him in the face, Dalton wrote urgent notes to the party chairman and secretary demanding a lunch-time meeting of the National Executive. He got his way. But ‘by now the Greenwoodites were in full force and full cry’. They ‘sat together in the front row and tried to shout down everybody else’. They argued that there was no precedent for a second vote, and that acceptance of one would mean that the whole method of electing the Executive would have to be changed too. Says the doctor: ‘There was some force in this argument.’ But this was war. Undeterred by forceful argument, a second vote was moved, seconded—and carried by 11 votes to 10. Victory? Oh no. ‘When the figures were announced some- one said to the chairman: But you have got a vote too.” Dobbs then gave his vote against the recommendation. It was “not carried”.’ Even then, ‘some of us considered whether, as a last re- sort, the Miners should not raise the question themselves at the opening of business next morning’. But the idea was dropped. It would cause a stony pro-Greenwood reaction—and in any case Lawther was no longer dead sure of the attitude of the miners’ delegation. So much for our list. One could go on endlessly picking illustrations from this book’s breathtakingly frank’ record of the life and works of a rising socialist statesman. Its 483 pages should, indeed, be compulsory reading for every newcomer to a Labour Party conference. Yet one qualification for success is missing from the pre- sent volume—though it may be included in the next. For Doctor Hugh Dalton, despite his sterling qualities, is now a political failure. And he failed for a tragically simple reason: his inability to control the tongue which has given us this splendid book. The moral for our aspiring party leader: Don’t blab. JOHN LAUCHLAN The Iconoclast