Labour Party Is the Topic For Final Godkin Lecture

The mass party, "the battering ram on the left," forces brute change on the managers of parliamentary government-so concluded the Rt. Hon. Richard Crossman in the third and final Godkin Lecture delivered at the Law School last night.

Every Labour government enters Parliament committed to a mandate, he said. "Nothing we do there alters the program. Good, bad, or indifferent, the whole mandate is carried out line by line."

The dynamism of mass parties, argued Crossman, originates with the party militants. Curiously, the mass public will be resistant to change. "The middle-the good, common-sense voter-will pull the Cabinet back from drastic change. All the new ideas come from the militant rank and file, who are always out of tune with the majority of the voters and the party leadership."

Chance For Change

As a member of the Cabinet. Crossman delighted in "the considerable chance of changing things" with mass parties. "If we have failed in the last five years to carry out major changes, it is because we [the Cabinet] have failed. The system-especially the Parliament and civil service-gives us every chance to carry out our program."

Crossman doubted that a mass labor party could survive in this country. "Such a party has two requirements: a homogeneous population and a continuity of leadership in positions of party power. But there is no shadow government here, no place for the leadership if it is out of power."

Americans, he believed, would find the British parties too dictatorial and authoritarian. "But the parties, you know, are very attractive to politicians."

Cressman defended the ability of the parties to absorb young political activists. But he warned that "young people must expect a good long period of disappointment, frustration, and humiliation." It was a strength of the system that none came to power without "an arduous apprenticeship."

At the same time, he deplored the futile and Sterile life of the backbencher. "He belongs to a political army. His only job is to add one vote to the government's majority."

Crossman spoke from experience. "After 19 years as a backbencher, I was very discouraged. You go to Parliament only to become a member of the government-and if you're not, that's that."

Crossman congratulated the democratic electorate for its "bovine stupidity." The party, not the apathetic public, introduces militant ideas-"although it often is just the militancy of yesterday."