Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
Labour MPs have a momentous choice before them this week. It is not a choice between unity under Wilson and disunity under Gaitskell. Neither can give unity. It is a choice between alienating the Left or the Right wing of the party.
In our view, there is no doubt which choice is more likely to sink the Labour Party’s electoral chances. If its centre of gravity moves Leftwards, it will get further out of touch with the Britain of today and it will lose voters to the Liberals by the shoal. If it risks alienating the Left, it will electorally speaking gain a probable advantage at almost no risk at all – where could the disappointed left-wing voters effectively go?
It is not a question whether Mr Gaitskell gets a majority vote of the Parliamentary Labour Party: that he is certain to do. It is a question whether Mr Wilson can draw away more than the sixty-odd that the Bevanites used to command. If he can, then the present leadership may be doomed.
Because of these considerations, the chances of Britain having an effective Parliamentary Opposition in the next decade may depend on how some twenty or thirty Labour Members from the party’s centre decide to vote.
Talking point
How then should the law be reformed? First, suicide and attempted suicide should cease to be criminally punishable. The law clearly can have no deterrent effect on a person seriously intent on taking his own life, since by his very act he is removed from any chance of punishment. As to attempted suicide, the only effect of a penal law must be to encourage the would-be suicide to do the job properly.
Norman St John-Stevas on suicide law reform
Key quote
“France must settle the fate of Algeria fraternally with the Algerians.”
General de Gaulle
