I must say that I refrain from comment on decisions made today to offer nominations to one of the candidates. That’s because I continue to respect the idea of a serious Labour party that actually wants to win elections and therefore would only dream of considering for the leadership of its party, a noble and privileged role, someone who could actually gain votes, and otherwise not to offer any comment whatsoever because I am very committed, as Sunder says, to the unity of the Labour movement.

I also must say that amongst all the audiences in the Labour movement, this Fabian audience patently understands brilliant irony, and I congratulate Sunder on that as well.

Now there are some people outside who are patently enjoying themselves. I don’t want to stop them doing that, so could you shut the doors please, so I can enjoy myself as well. Heckling I can take, gossip I can’t stand, so if you can just fermez les fenetres, merci beaucoup, je suis Labour Nouveau.

Friends, I have to say, anyone seeing me popping up in a Fabian Summer Reception (the words are redolent) just 34 days after a Labour electoral defeat could be forgiven for thinking that I am a sort of resident permanent Labour political pathologist, who is here to specialise in analysing the remains that confront us in silent witness form.

The only thing that undermines that possibility is that, as a witness, I am never silent. Consequently there are a few ideas I would like to offer, not wanting to miss the opportunity of this accumulated gathering of some of the finest brains at the disposal of the Labour movement. Only some of them – the rest are running for office.

It is a privilege to be here. I have to emphasise however that I wasn’t called in post-election, I was invited long before May 6th. I guess it must have been because the Fabian Society was working on the assumption that if we had won the election I would definitely not be a minister preoccupied with my official duties. And if we had lost the election I would definitely, absolutely, certainly, beyond peradventure, not be a candidate in any leadership election. So they were right certainly on the second count.

But it would be a waste of my status as Old Codger if I didn’t offer a few thoughts on how the Labour party stands now, by comparison with other defeats that I’ve been part of, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, sometimes as partial cause, sometimes as professional mourner, over the last (get this) 61 years.

Aneurin Bevan
My first campaign was in 1959 (I’m starting to sound like Tony Benn now. At this point he would say: “And I was sitting on Mahatma Ghandi’s knee, having a chat with Winston Churchill, when Aneurin Bevan came in and asked if I wanted a bottle of milk.”).

In 1959 I had my first real encounter with Conservatives. I’d never seen one in my life. I was 17 years of age and brought up in Tredegar, which is in the Ebbw Vale constituency, and in Ebbw Vale Conservatives were akin to deceased dinosaurs: if they’d ever existed they were now fossilised completely. So I had to go to Monmouth to support the Labour candidate in order to discover some Conservatives, and there in the Monmouth constituency I was awarded the supreme accolade, together with a couple of other friends from Ironsides rugby football club in Tredegar, of being stewards (that’s in the days we had stewards not bouncers) at the public meeting to be addressed on eve of poll by Jo Richardson the candidate, of beloved memory, and Aneurin Bevan.

Naturally, Nye was late. I was standing at the doors (61 years ago, you must remember, real people could go into political meetings) when a local county councillor of Abergavenny got up – poor sod, he was the only Labour representative anywhere in the Monmouth constituency – and he stuttered his way through a speech which was prepared, and then had to continue while Nye was finding his way to Abergavenny.

And he was heckled mercilessly by a bunch of bussed in young Tories from Cardiff. And they absolutely destroyed the poor man, but he kept on manfully. Eventually, there was a tap on my shoulder, I turned round, and there was my supreme and continuing hero Aneurin Bevan.

So I said: “I’ll take you down Mr Bevan. And he said: “No no no. Let me… let me get the taste of what’s happening here.”

So we waited a minute or two and he said: “Alright then, go down now.” And we went down to the front… “Ladies and gentlemen! Comrades and friends! Aneurin Bevan!” Everyone was on their feet except for the young Tories.

So we’re in the market hall in Abergavenny, and Nye got up onto the stage and he leaned into the microphone and said: “Comrades and friends. I want to impart to you a basic innermost thought.

“I do not detest all Conservatives. Because I’m aware there are Conservatives who are very kind to their children, especially the ones they don’t send away to school. And they have many pets, only some of whom they kill for sport. So it can safely be said that I am not inhumane or unconditional in my disregard for Conservatives.

“I don’t love them, and I don’t despise all of them. What I hate… is SNOBS FROM CARDIFF!”

And I thought that’s it, that’s what I’ve got to do, I’ve got to destroy snobs from Cardiff. And it’s been my life’s work.

Positives from the election
But if I do reflect over those years (and 1959 is actually aeons ago in political terms as in social and technological and medical and so many other terms) the first thing I’ve got to say is, now, 34 days after the election defeat of 2010, as a movement we are not reeling from defeat as the party did then.

Second, there will be no lunge to doctrine, half-baked doctrine at that, or to sectarian adventure playgrounds as was the case after the defeat of 1979.

Third, unlike in the defeat of 1983, there is, in the wake of that awful experience of defeat, a strong readiness in the Labour movement – leadership candidates, rank and file, affiliated organisations and everybody alike – to learn from the defeat and to identify the contributing causes of defeat, no matter how painful that requirement turns out to be.

There is already in this movement in 2010 manifest determination to construct a fresh, convincing, appealing case for the progressive consensus, instead of seeking refuge in Labour movement introversion or instead of adopting one-more-heave myopia, because that too has inflicted us in defeat from time to time.

Those are the positives, and they are accompanied by the encouraging factors like the bitter dismay of large numbers of those who voted Liberal on May 6th because of strong basic beliefs, anti-Tory beliefs, that are as profound and sincere as the anti-Toryism of anybody in this audience.

We shouldn’t let that buttress our disappointment, we shouldn’t let it compensate for our depression and anger at defeat, but I think it’s something to take into account. Especially when we witness the leadership of the coalition with their frenetic rose garden self-importance, and their patent and pathetic fiction of all being in it together.

They know damn well that from the first cut to the last blow, those who have shall surely retain, those who haven’t enough shall surely not get more, and those who have not will continue to suffer. They must know that. It is an arithmetical requirement of the way in which and the time in which they are pursuing the cause of deficit reduction.

So from day one, a lie has been installed. And the exposure of that lie must be an essential, indeed a sacred task of the Labour movement intellectually and in popular terms over these coming years, and it will be years. The reason being that from the first week, the leaders of the coalition, I emphasise the leaders of the coalition, have understood that they hang together, or they will surely hang separately. And there is no cement more bonding than political convenience.

A mighty defeat
So we’re in for the long slog. And I’ve given you all the good news, that the Labour movement has responded more positively, more resolutely and more productively to this defeat than on many previous occasions. I say it’s the end of the good news because nothing can dilute and nothing can obscure the fact that the defeat on May 6th was mighty .It was in some respects worse than the defeat of 1983, because it came out of government and not out of self-indulgent opposition. That makes it worse.

And that is reinforced by the knowledge that recovery from that mighty defeat will require us to gain up to 4 million votes, and to gfain them in the right places if we are to regain government. Sobering thoughts.

Friends, I offer no magical formula. If I had one, and it convinced me, I might even have been tempted to uproot the Labour party constitution and give it another go myself. But it would have involved divorce, it would have involved my children disowning me (at least it would have got me on the front page though).

Without a magical formula, I resort to some essentials. A very few of them, very very briefly as there will be seminars and conferences on this issue for years to come.

Can I just recommend as an aside, one course of action: if you get the choice on a Saturday morning of going to a conference or going out canvassing, go out canvassing. Reserve conferences for the mornings on which the weather is so bloody bad people won’t even answer the door.

Get out, reach out, talk to people. Show them you comprehend, and show them that we are absorbing their hopes and their visions. You don’t have to agree with them, but the first thing is that they should understand that you understand.

Nye Bevan said: “The first duty of the progressive (he used the word) the progressive representative is that he should reflect the view of those that he (he said “he”, he meant “he or she”) represents authentically. That is more important than mastery of the local accent or the cadences of politics, because people then understand that you are seeking to represent them, because they are your inspiration.”

Now you don’t have to act to do that. You can learn it, but I think for most people who voluntarily have joined the Labour party and have joined the Fabian Society, and who want to find answers for humanity, it’s in their gut.

And then, if you can translate it to fluent tongue and thinking brain, we’ve got the combination that we really need.

A body of convictions
So the essentials: Labour must develop and confidently comprehend and communicate a relevant, appealing body of convictions. I’m not saying Back to Basics, that's Majorism, I never subscribed to it. I’m saying that we should rediscover what we’ve been about all the time.

Rediscover it by reference to the record. The huge error in the years and months leading up to the May 6th election is that we never connected the massive accomplishments, in for instance health, education and the security of the public, with our reason for being in politics in the first place.

We never said that we’ve got the lowest ever rate of unemployment or the highest ever rate of employment, we’ve doubled investment in health and education, we’ve vastly increased the number of youngsters going to university, not because we like neatness, but because we are against preventable pain, we are for opportunity, we are the party of aspiration, and the difference between us and them is that we mean it. And for the last 13 years, we’ve been putting your money where our mouth has always been.

We never said it. We never connected the accomplishments with the original purpose. Now we’ve got to do that. And part of it can be a reflection on the highly creditable parts of the record. But the rest of it must address what faces people today, and what will confront them tomorrow.

That’s the essence of democratic socialism, that if your only references are to yesterday, good or bad, then people will enjoy the tune the first or second time it’s played, but will get bored and look for a different melody. Our duty, not a matter of electoral convenience, our duty is to address the dilemmas and demands of today for the great majority of people, and show them that we have a creditable and practical set of policies that can make tomorrow more fulfilling and easier to live with.

So the demand for a body of convictions is not a request for doctrine, damn it it’s the opposite to any search for the rigidities of dogma, useless and misleading even when they’re brilliantly expressed, and utterly hopeless and destructive when they’re as clumsy as some that we’ve encountered in the last 100 years in the Labour movement.

We need a chart to steer by – that’s what the body of convictions is for. Clear, understandable values that provide a foundation for the direction and substance of policy, to show that we never come adrift. We’re not hidebound, we’re not anchored so firmly that we’re immobile or blinkered. But we’re distinctive, because there are objectives, values, convictions that we are motivated by. And people respect that.

Responding to the financial crisis
Secondly, the repercussions of the banking crisis will obviously dominate the coming years. That’s inescapable. It is essential, therefore, for us to articulate the reality that the bulk of the borrowing deficit is the price for preventing irrecoverable depression.

That the deficit must be reduced is self-evident, but we must also unapologetically and unswervingly assert and argue that reduction could and should be achieved over time by the equitable mixture of cuts, taxation and growth that enables recovery to be sustained instead of destroyed. We have to make those arguments essential to the way we approach the coming years.

Reaching out
Third, the Labour movement has to reach out to the public, and it has to show that we do not regard any votes to be a core that is to be taken for granted. I’ll tell you a quick story to underline that.

In 1983, when a Social Democratic candidate ran against me (a man called Stan Johnson, who was two years behind me in school but much further behind me in many other respects) my general committee said: “Ooh they picked Stan, we’ll be all right now.” I said: “Stan will get 8,500 votes.”

They said: “Bloody nonsense. Everybody knows Stan. Nobody will bloody vote for Stan. Everyone knows him. His mother and father are still in the Labour party.” And they were. And they worked for me, even though they still loved their son.

And Stan was a dedicated teacher, but not a great candidate. Anyway, Stan got 9,100 votes – I was 600 out – and I went into the Rifleman’s Arms, a fortnight after the election, and there were a bunch of fellas just off shift from the steelworks.

And I went in with my friend and ordered a couple of pints, and they said: “Whoa, all right for some. You can bloody buy us drinks.” And I said: “I don’t know if you deserve it boys, but the law being what it is I couldn’t have done this before the election, but I can do it now, without being accused of being the master of a rotten borough.” Of course they fully understood the allusions I was making.

Anyway I bought them four pints, and I said: “Now boys, you’ve got your pints. Did you vote for me in the election?” Two of them looked down, and I said: “You didn’t. You two did, you two didn’t. Who did you vote for?”

“We voted for the SDP. We voted for Stan Johnson.” I said: “Bloody hell, well you failed the intelligence test didn’t you.” And he said: “Well the point is, Neil, you lot need a kick up the arse.” And I said: “How do you mean? I never miss a surgery, this place is at the front of my mind all the time, you know that. I’ve been an MP for 13 years, and I do more in a day than you buggers do in a year. What are you talking about?”

And he said: “Not you, not you, it’s the Labour party. They’re talking about themselves all the time, they never think about us. So we thought we’d give you a kick up the arse.” I said: “Well it’s a good job there were only 9,100 of you stupid enough to do that. If there had been 20,000 of you, I’d be looking for a job down the steelworks.”

And they said: “Oh, well if there’d been any risk we’d have voted for you, man.” This is sophistication, I’m telling you. Because it was the kind of punishment that the Labour party in 1983 had learnt and earned from people like that.

Now to their credit, the other two lads not only took my drinks, they gave me their votes as well. But I never, never forgot that people who would never deviate in any other circumstances, them and their families, from voting Labour, had decided they wanted to cast a judgment. They didn’t want it to be painful, or really penalising, they just wanted to say: “You cannot as a party treat us with neglect.”

And I tell you what, every Labour MP elected in that contest of 1983 knew it. There were one or two who ignored it. There was one MP, who had been in the House for many years, whose electorate defeated him in Bristol in 1983, who took comfort from the fact that over 8 million people had voted for the most socialist manifesto in history. It didn’t matter that Margaret Thatcher had a majority in excess of 140 and 2,000% of the power.

Now we must understand at all times: yes there are core voters, who would rather sever their hands than vote anything but Labour. But, what they vote is one thing, what they think is something different. And they must never be exploited or taken for granted anywhere.

In addition, we have got to convey, in reaching out, that we consciously and unapologetically seek to broaden our appeal, by identifying with needs and hopes, by articulating aspirations, but never by embracing prejudice or contriving divisions in society, or pandering to injustice. Never. We’ve got our convictions, and we don’t need to accommodate evil in order to reach out, because that’s not where people are.

They’ve got concerns, deep worries, misconceptions, they are misled, they can be hypnotised by elements of the press and who knows by the coalition. But at base, an appeal to their reason will bring the progressive result, as long as they know that we are authentic, and that our appeal to them, and our identification with them is not cosmetic.

The importance of hard work
Finally, fourth and most basic, in addition to reaching out, in addition to fighting intelligently the form and consequences of the cuts we’re going to see, and in addition to articulating a real body of convictions, fourthly, work.

It’s the simplest, most basic and most difficult thing of all, especially in a voluntary movement, but we’ve got to work like hell. We’ve got to strive for contact and re-establish contact in communities of all kinds. We’ve got to prove that our purposes are progressive and practical, not abstract. That we live in the world we want to represent. And we construct for the world as it should be and as it can be.

And we have to make the intellectual and popular case for our abiding purposes. They are with the grain of human nature. They are within reach of democratic political power, and people know it. Those abiding purposes of care, of opportunity, of security, of justice – the four elementary components of our driving motivation, liberty, the liberty of the individual.

That’s why we’re here. That’s what we believe in. That’s what makes us give up Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights, and be the butt of jokes and words, and have to fight against family opinion. It’s because we believe in care, in opportunity, in security, in justice, in freedom.

Fundamentally, we haven’t articulated it enough. Not in the abstract, not simply to inspire audiences that already agree with us, but in order to identify with the people who need care for themselves and their children, and their old ones; who need opportunity in order to escape from their current condition, or because they believe it to be their right, unequivocal an unrestrained; who want security, the most fundamental of all human, indeed all animal requirements, to be safe.

And let’s engage in the argument about the enabling state, instead of this vast monstrosity that’s painted to us, and show that the state is a means of rescue from the appalling pit into which people can fall, if there is no one else to catch them, no one else to pick them up, no one else to say “I am my brother’s and sister’s keeper.

So don’t let the state be misrepresented, because it can be characterised, caricatured as an anonymous, oppressive machine. If it was that, if is that, wherever it is that, we will fight it. But we also know that people need the strength of community: some call it bureaucracy, some call it the state; actually, it’s the organ, the means, the instrument, by which we turn the natural instincts of compassion into realisation, into hospital beds, social workers, pensions, schooling.

Take away the state, take away that enablement, and people live on their knees, not stand on their feet.

That’s the reality. Let’s make the argument, let’s dress it up as much as we like in science and sociology, I don’t give a damn about that. But don’t forget the jewel at the core of it. The hidden jewel of the socialist belief in liberty.

Let’s be inspired by that, and let’s work on that basis. We’ve got nothing to apologise for. They’re going to try the other system for the next few years, and it is going to fail. And we must be prepared to demonstrate why it is failing, and crucially, what are the practical alternatives

Demonstrate by all means, argue by all means, leaflet by all means, do all those things, but at the base, sustain the integrity and respectability, the realism of the Labour movement, and make those arguments about care, opportunity, security, justice and liberty.

Lessons from Obama
They won an election in one of the most intrinsically reactionary countries in the world, a year last November. And I was delighted for a variety of reasons, not least that the man is an evangelical genius, a true believer, a product of his environment, who managed to convince everybody else that they too were from where he was from, and they too shared his dreams.

We were told in recent times, especially around the death of Michael Foot, in the kindest obituaries, that he was a man who unfortunately lived at a time when the age of rhetoric had passed. I’m bloody glad nobody told Barack Obama that the age of rhetoric had passed, because it could have spoiled the next decade of the human race.

That’s the reality we have to keep in mind: that principled arguments, intelligently put, win elections.

If we articulate the case for care, opportunity, justice, security, freedom, we will earn trust, we will earn victory, and it will come very soon.