Maximum Embarrassment

David Marquand

• Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism by John Campbell
  Weidenfeld, 430 pp, £15.95, March 1987, ISBN 0 297 78998 8
• The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton: 1918-40, 1945-60 edited by Ben Pimlott
  Cape, 752 pp, £40.00, January 1987, ISBN 0 224 01912 0

As the Labour Party continues to unravel, it becomes more and more obvious that the follies and misadventures which have plagued it during the last few months can be understood only against the background of the betrayals, suspicions and hatreds of more than a generation of civil war. It is not, of course, the only mass party of the Left in trouble. The German Social Democrats – only a few years ago, one of the most competent and cohesive governing parties in the Western world – are also going through lean times. So are the American Democrats. But trouble is one thing: systematic self-mutilation is another. Despite their current difficulties, neither the American Democrats nor the German Social Democrats give off the smell of death. With the possible exception of the French Communists, Labour is the only mass party of the Left which has suffered a prolonged and apparently irreversible haemorrhage of support for more than fifteen years. The reason is that – again with the possible exception of the French Communist Party – no other mass party of the Left has found it so difficult to adjust to the technological and social changes which have robbed its traditional themes of their appeal.