Leading Article: Labour faces a new divide

THE intellectually adventurous and the politically ambitious among the 16 members of the Labour Party's commission on social justice could be forgiven for wondering whether they will be wasting their time over the next 18 months.

When John Smith, the Labour leader, last week announced the unprecedented establishment of an independent body to offer advice to the party, he commended 'a radical and comprehensive approach' to what he called the social condition of our nation. Mr Smith went on to register his personal view that there was 'a strong case' for retaining universal state pensions and child benefit. This is, in traditional Labour terms, a distinctly unradical position to uphold.

Mr Smith gave no indication that he saw any conflict between his two propositions. Yet, 50 years after Beveridge, an assessment of the advantages of abandoning universal benefits in favour of targeting those most in need will be essential to a genuinely radical examination of the welfare state. Only then would it be possible for Labour to re-define poverty in contemporary terms - focusing on the bottom 10 per cent who have fallen behind. That would open up discussion of why society should feel uncomfortable about the new poor, how best their problems should be addressed, and how the necessary revenues could be raised.

Some of Mr Smith's friends dismiss his remark about universal benefits as spontaneous and not intended to circumscribe the work of the commission. But the most revealing truths are those that just slip out, and the Labour leader seems to have signalled, once again, that he is by nature a conservative rather than a radical. If so, the Labour Party has cause for alarm, for the fault line within the Opposition no longer runs between left and right. It now divides those of a conservative disposition and those who recognise that Labour needs to embrace radical change if it is to render itself electable.

The problem for Mr Smith is part historic, part psychological. His predecessor, Neil Kinnock, sprang from the radical left which was never in control of the party. When it became apparent to Mr Kinnock that his was a bankrupt tradition, he was able to move to a new agenda.

Mr Smith, in contrast, is heir to the old style, conservative, Gaitskellite revisionists who once dominated the party. Such people are defensive. They are happier behind closed doors, fixing things with union leaders who control block votes. (It was Mr Kinnock and not Mr Smith who declared that, however expedient, it was wrong for Labour to oppose the Maastricht paving Bill.) The days when such behaviour was tolerable to activists or acceptable to the electorate are past. Labour needs a dose of radicalism and the commission should not fear to inject it.