The white heat of a successful party conference

The textbook example of how to conduct a Labour Party conference in present circumstances was provided in 1963 by Harold Wilson at Scarborough. By then Labour had been out of power for 12 years, but was ahead in the opinion polls with an election looming. The Conservative Government, as now, was in bad shape. At the beginning of the year, De Gaulle had vetoed British entry into the Common Market. Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister, in his diary said that "all our policies at home and abroad are in ruins."

Subsequently the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, had been brought down in a scandal comprising sex, call- girls and Russian spies. Macmillan unwisely told MPs "I do not live among young people much myself." Inevitably, as Mr Major is finding, candidates to succeed the Prime Minister had begun to scheme and position themselves. Nonetheless Labour, with an ill-judged party conference, could still throw away all its advantages.

When the Tories came back into office in 1951, defeat had not seemed too bad. Labour's failure in 1955 was harder to take. But the Conservatives' 100-seat victory in 1959 was a great disaster. There followed internecine warfare over the ideology and image of the Labour Party, which was quite as bitter as the Tories' convulsions over Europe. Hugh Gaitskell, who had been elected partly leader in 1955, lost his battle to remove from the Party's constitution the notorious Clause 4, which committed Labour to securing the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. And he almost failed to subdue the neutralist, pacifist wing of the party and hold Labour to the Atlantic Alliance.

It was in 1960 that Gaitskell finished his speech to the party conference with his famous peroration: "There are some of us, Mr Chairman, who will fight and fight and fight again to bring back unity and honesty and dignity, so that our party with its great past may retain its glory and its greatness," he said, and sat down, sweating profusely, to cheers and boos. While a year later Gaitskell finally won the argument (16 months before his untimely death in January 1963), party managers feared that discord and disunity still remained close to the surface.

I don't say that the 1963 conference was a lesson in how a political party should handle itself close to a general election just because the platform took the sensible precaution of failing to arrange debates on controversial subjects such as defence, foreign policy and public ownership. Nor because the sting was taken out of motions in favour of nationalising the building industry, of vesting ownership of land in the state and of municipalising all rented property. Nor even because the wording of the main resolution on economic policy was fudged to allow the unions the appearance of agreeing to some form of wage restraint. These were workaday manoeuvres. Wilson's supreme skill showed itself in his choice of subject and his own speech.

Wilson made science his theme, an issue rarely at the centre of debate, and used it to re-state socialism in modern form. He had found that most valuable political commodity, an acceptable big idea. Wilson's theme was that "if there had never been a case for socialism before, automation (how old- fashioned the word now sounds) would have created it." In unrestrained capitalism, enhanced productivity would inevitably lead to unemployment on a large scale. Britain needed more scientists, and universities would have to be expanded accordingly. The state would fund the work of these scientists in establishing new industries. He proposed a four-part programme: to produce more scientists, to keep them here, to make more intelligent use of them, and to organise industry so that it applied the results of scientific research more purposively to national production.

In a widely quoted conclusion he said that in all our plans for the future, we are redefining and we are re-stating our socialism in terms of the scientific revolution. "The Britain which is going to be forged in the white heat of the revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry."

With this single speech Wilson suggested to people in their mid 20s, that Labour was white coats rather than cloth caps. Socialism could be modern and an authentic part of the lively 1960s rather than an inhibiting Victorian creed. There need be no embarrassment in calling yourself a socialist. The party programme was relevant and it was exciting. By the end of the month the contrast with the Tories was even greater. Macmillan was taken ill during the Conservative party conference which immediately followed Labour's and resigned. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by the Fourteenth Earl of Home. His daughter Caroline, referring to her father's suitability, remarked that "he is used to dealing with estate workers. I cannot see how anyone can say he is out of touch." Nonetheless, when the election came a year later, Labour almost lost; its overall majority was just five seats.

The truth is that however dead-beat the Conservatives look, they are always hard to defeat. Tony Blair has yet to ignite the enthusiasm of the nation with a big idea as Wilson did in Scarborough 33 years ago. This week in Blackpool, he has such an opportunity.