I did find it interesting that, if the rumors are correct, there was an effort to prevent A Day in the Life of John Tennyson from being published. It seems that even though Bevan's government is trying to navigate away from Mosleyism, outright criticism of the man is still controversial. I can't help but compare this to the de-Stalinization that occurred after Stalin's death, though Mosley and Stalin are in many ways quite different figures.
This is absolutely a valid comparison. Mosley and Stalin are very different, you're right, and I don't really want to play up the possibility of a direct analogy too much because Stalin's OTL legacy and Mosley's TTL legacy diverge in very marked ways (which I'll go into). But certainly this legacy is contested within all levels of politics, and also somewhat within wider society.
The biggest thing to take into account different to Stalin's case is that Bevan is in a much stronger position than Khrushchev was c. 1953, and more's the point Mosley left power in a much weaker position than Stalin. That is, he left power at all; he was forced into retirement by sustained popular pressure, as well as a series of canny manoeuvres by the political opposition. (This will all be recapped before the Vol 1 finale, btw. This conversation is sort of where the whole story is leading.) The Bevanite coalition comes to power in September 1961 more or less completely victorious over the 'continuity Mosleyite' faction, and by the
1963 election Bevan and his allies are firmly in control of the political apparatus, backed up by the biggest electoral turnout since the revolution (a massive
58.6 per-cent!).
Nevertheless – the hardcore Mosleyites won 7.1 per-cent of the vote at the same election, and there are a number of people unhappy with the liberalising reforms Bevan has embarked upon. The main battleground is the Bureau of Domestic Affairs, which was the stronghold of Mosley's power in his last years when he took to welding state and police power in an attempt to keep himself in power. This didn't work, but opposition leader David Lewis coming in to head up the department most associated with the Mosleyite 'terror' is only a surface-level change. Bevan and Lewis spent much of the period between September 1961 and May 1963 battling the bureaucracy to try and weed out the most partisan Mosley loyalists, but this obviously doesn't happen overnight – and, what's more, the new government is trying to push through a lot of change very quickly. The result is a sort of 'two steps forward, one step backwards' approach to liberalisation.
As for how acceptable it is to criticise Mosley is public, this is a very contentious point. Putting 'clear red water' between him and Mosley is almost the modus operandi of the Bevan government; Bevan got into power as an opponent, not as a successor, therefore a considerable degree of criticism is not only possible but
necessary to the survival of the Bevanite project.
(Incidentally, I think I summed this up best through Peter Cook and Dud Moore in
Redadder's Christmas Carol ('broadcast' in 1973):
NEIL: You mean to say, ma'am, that in this enlightened, post-censorship age there even is such a thing as the wrong idea?
BARBARA: Oh, give me a break… It's very simple: if the last lot did it, fire away; if it was us… well… it wasn't. Got it?
LEGS: Yeah. The last lot did the bad stuff, and you lot did nothing.
There comes a point where Bevan's entire offer to the country is that he isn't Mosley, and I suppose if you like you could accuse him of trading in 'Mosleyism with a human face'. But this is all to come.)
Where this all hits opposition is twofold: 1) there are still those in the Domestic Bureau who, post-censorship, remain uneasy about public critique of Mosley
tout court, and hence don't want to allow the more damning stuff (like
John Tennyson); 2) securing one's own position by undermining one's predecessor is an
incredibly risky strategy unless one is radical about actually changing the system underneath. There are many people even in the reformist regime who worry that scuppering Mosley's legacy before the body's cold, if you like, will do irreparable damage to the entire Commonwealth system – and the faith of the public in the basic 'goodness' of the Commonwealth project.
As I say, all of this is to come – and in a way this answer gets at the heart of the conclusion to this Volume, so thanks for asking the question because it works very nicely as a prelude to what is on the horizon.
