"Even If You Win, You'll Lose"

In his seven years as leader of the Opposition, Hugh Gaitskell has fought hard to make the squabbling, divided socialists fit to govern. Last week, for the first time, he finally won the support of a virtually united, confident Labor Party. But he did so by taking a shortsighted, narrow-minded stand on the vital issue of British entry into the Common Market—a stand that ranges Gaitskell alongside the most abject left-wingers in his own party and the most bullheaded jingoists on the Tory side. As he prepared to lead his party into a general election that may be less than a year away, it looked as if Labor had already forfeited its chance—if not its right—to return to power.

Road to Isolation. Long before last week's annual Labor Party conference, there had been signs that Gaitskell, after a year of increasingly uncomfortable fence-sitting, had decided to come out against the Common Market. But as he rose in the vast seaside sports stadium at Brighton, he astonished his socialist "brothers" by the passion of his 84-minute speech. The middle-road intellectuals and union leaders who have shared his views and fought his battles sat back in ashen-faced disgust as Gaitskell, longtime champion of NATO and other internationalist policies, piped the party down the road to timorous isolation from Europe. Hugh Gaitskell's fiercest foes, the leftists who still repeat the late Aneurin Bevan's taunt that he is "a desiccated calculating machine," led tumultuous rounds of applause for every backward step he took.

"Are we forced to go into Europe?" cried Gaitskell. "No. Would we necessarily be stronger economically if we go in, and weaker if we stay out? No." On strictly economic grounds, argued onetime economics don Gaitskell, "the argument is no more than evenly balanced."

Remember Vimy Ridge. Sounding even more antiMarket than the Commonwealth Prime Ministers last month, Gaitskell argued that British entry "means the end of Britain as an independent national state. It means the end of 1,000 years of history. It means the end of the Commonwealth. For how could we serve as the center of the Commonwealth when we had become a province of Europe?" More and more resembling a Tory empire-firster, Gaitskell drew massive applause by reminding the party of the Commonwealth's support in two World Wars. "We at least," he intoned, "do not intend to forget Vimy Ridge* and Gallipoli."

Gaitskell wound up by demanding a general election if the Labor Party, as "the alternative government of the country," decides that the final safeguards for Commonwealth trade are inadequate. Though his speech neither endorsed nor rejected the threat, left-wing firebrands have warned that if Labor comes to power after the Tory government has already brought Britain into Europe on unsatisfactory terms, it might even take the unprecedented constitutional step of repudiating the agreement. Nonetheless, Gaitskell insisted piously: "We do not close the door. Our conditions can still be met. I still hope for a change in heart in Europe that will make that possible."

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