The Fabian Society’s new project ‘Labour’s Next Majority’ – introduced in the recent Fabian Review - is to be applauded. The importance of a Labour Government being returned soon is beyond dispute as the current government looks and is divided, incompetent and in error in its economic and social policy programme. Therefore, to debate the future of the Labour Party is a necessity.
This is why Roy Hattersley and Kevin Hickson, one of the current authors, chose to write an article ‘In Praise of Social Democracy’ last year, an article which has certainly generated much controversy. There have been two broad responses to the article from its critics.
The first – the Blue Labour response – is to argue that the case for social democracy (or democratic socialism) is neither ‘social’ nor ‘democratic’. The point was first made by Lord (Maurice) Glasman and was repeated by Marc Stears in direct response to the article in The Political Quarterly. They argue that such an approach neglects the importance of community and, of relevance to this piece, that it neglects the role of democracy. They argue that democracy is best understood as individuals engaged in their local communities in which they have a direct say in how those communities are run.
Although civic engagement at the local level is to be encouraged, Blue Labour was strangely silent on macro politics – on the role of the democratic state. It failed to comprehend that it is at the national and international level where power is concentrated. In order to fulfil the traditional socialist objective of taking on vested interests and concentrated power in the private sector and redistributing it to the majority it is necessary to harness the power of the democratic state. It is because democratic socialists recognise the importance of democratising macro politics that our view is still of relevance and why Blue Labour appears as a novel but temporary phenomena in the political thought of the Labour Party.
What is therefore a more significant obstacle to the achievement of democratic socialism is the remaining influence of New Labour, through Progress and its publication The Purple Book. Those who subscribe to this view hold that New Labour triumphed in 1997 because it had scientifically worked out where the median voter is located (what has variously been described as Middle England, Mondeo Man and Worcester woman) through focus groups and extensive opinion polling and formulating policies in response to their findings. Any deviation from New Labour’s successful strategy of 1997 is electoral suicide. This was the thrust of David Miliband’s response to Hattersley and Hickson in the New Statesman and was also the motivation for Tessa Jowell’s contribution to the recent Fabian Review when she says:
“the first lesson we can learn from that work pre-1997 is that the policies we peg on the washing line must be the result of detailed and dedicated research and analysis; using focus groups, consulting with external organisations, and a process of constant testing and refining of the offer.”
Such a stance is deeply fatalistic. It assumes that there is a trade-off between power and principles. We should not be overtly ideological because we cannot win on our principles. The centre-ground is static and conservative, unlikely to be won over by such ideological argument.
Not only is it fatalistic, it is also wrong. The best, if not the only way for Labour to win the next election is by being ideological. This struck us again when we read the ‘In the black Labour’ Policy Network discussion paper by Graeme Cooke, Adam Lent, Anthony Painter and Hopi Sen in which they argue that the current Labour leadership needs to embrace the cuts agenda if it is to make itself credible with the electorate. Nobody is in favour of irresponsible public spending but what is quite clear is that the savage cuts being carried out by the coalition government are not only socially unjust but also economically catastrophic. The double dip recession means lower tax revenue and wasteful spending on unemployment benefits. Growth is a prerequisite for deficit reduction. The failure to offer an alternative to the cuts agenda is not only wrong policy but wrong electorally.
This exposes a deeper flaw in the New Labour electoral strategy. The centre ground is not a fixed ideological position. It can be, and indeed has, moved. Four in every five voters think that the coalition fails to understand what it is like for ordinary families. Voters are angry, rightly, at the excesses at the top, the feeling that those who caused the recession are not the same as those who are suffering because of it. There is a clear need for an alternative. New Labour lost five million votes between 1997 and 2010, four million under Blair and most of those between 1997 and 2001, hence pre-Iraq.
If voters do not feel that Labour will be significantly different from the coalition why would they vote for it at the next election? Labour needs to set out with confidence a radical alternative, not only to the coalition but also to New Labour in the belief that the voters will be attracted to the newfound radicalism in the Labour Party.
This is the historic objective of democratic socialists. Lacking in the historical certainties of Marxist laws of history, which confidently predicted the inevitable triumph of communism; democratic socialists must seek to persuade people that their ideology offers a brighter future than capitalism. Modern day social democrats must seek to persuade the electorate that it offers something better than neo-liberalism. In order to do so it must have the confidence in its own ideology.
Yes. I like the idea of being ideological. The Tory-led Govt with its cabinet worth £70bn (according to the Guardian today) clearly is, so it is time for Labour to move away from the grey centre ground as well.
No: ‘democratic socialists must seek to persuade people that their ideology offers a brighter future than capitalism’. Why fool ourselves that democratic socialism is or has ever been anti-capitalism? It seeks to mitigate the extreme effects upon the masses, in their own degrees of ‘class’, from the ruling classes. That’s not a criticism, by the way, I am really pointing out the blindingly obvious.
I watched Sandford’s recent BBCTV show about the 70s and discovered a somewhat different world to what I remember. I quite liked being put to bed with candles all around like some Vulcan ritual was being performed. I never perceived the unions to be the massive threat to civilisation as he would paint it. Politics was Mike Yarwood impersonating Heath & Wilson. Then I slowly became aware of Thatcher and when I saw that she had become our leader I was a frightened 11 year old who became addicted to Politics more and more. It appeared the country would be shot of the scary one by 1981 but the the Belgrano was sunk in that frying pan shaped exclusion zone the following year and GOTCHA! My mum was duped by a woman PM in 1979 as many were. Thatcher claimed that the fight for women’s rights had been largely won in 1982 – for her maybe but not the rest of womankind! GOTCHA! Blatant jingoistic, flag waving nonsense meant Labour lost again in 1983. Even if I was old enough to vote for Foot it wouldn’t've made a difference, so I hung up me donkey jacket in dismay.
Kinnock started it, especially after he made Rod Stewart’s Three Time Loser the Party’s anthem in 1987. The Tories were giving working people the gadgets and holidays and houses and stuff they had started to enjoy in some quarters back in the 70s (as Sandford pointed out so well) but more widespread this time. This must be why they elected Thatcher again – I can’t think of anything else other than self aggrandisement on however a meagre scale so the powerful could sell off state assets and make an absolute mint. The trickle-down economic con-trick in Acton – sorry action.
Anyway, Kinnock, then Smith and most definitely Blair wanted to win at any cost. Creating Labour’s own equivalent of the 1959 Bad Godesburg Conference of the German Social Democrats in 1995 for Labour by dumping Clause 4 was totally unnecessary and only served to alienate many already in the Party fold – the electorate don’t care about this load of wonk! Well, maybe a couple of us are interested in constitutions and the like but this definitely isn’t the stuff to win elections over. I knew Labour would win (and well) in 1997 because statistically it was due I felt – especially after 1992 – regardless of policy. Yes – getting Murdoch on side made a great difference too, of course!
The Labour Party was born as the political wing of the trades union movement (and I have heard speakers at SERTUC still refer to the Party in this way). Eventually it replaced the Liberal Party as non-Tory mass representation is vital in Parliament but paternalistic, socially progressive and permissive Whigs just wouldn’t cut it with the modern working classin the early 20th century. Now we are at the stage, or have been for a number of years, where all politicians are sleazy, self-serving parasites, on the whole, in the general view of the electorate. When two million people demonstrated against a war which was at best dubious legally and the PM effectively says Salute, in the style of Lurcio in Up Pompeii, we realise our voices and our opinions and our lives are worthless to the arrogant git we elected. That single act sped up the growth of the stay-away voters. When Labour can privatise twice as much of the state in half the time than the Tories did – and invent so many new words that basically mean the same thing! – what is the point in bothering? The majority is apathetic but with very good reason. Those that equate apathy with laziness need to look closer to home.
The way to engage and re-engage with the lost five million (and more) is to keep it real – and don’t alienate the unions, work with us not against us then we aren’t in the position of embarrasing the Labour Leader when we threaten to strike as we have unreasonable demands put on us by our employers. Especially us in the civil service who cannot affiliate to Labour (even if we wanted to!) as many of us look forward to working with you again in the near future. And lose the word ‘new’ from your email addresses please!
A very good article in favour of ideology and its use in elections. The national mood may have changed away from the public spending cuts in favour of the need for a continued welfare state. My job as a Personal Adviser at Jobcentre Plus was one of the contracts not renewed by the Coalition, so I speak from direct experience and it has caused me difficulty being out of work last year. I have worked in the private sector also where Trade Unions are a dirty word and not represented. The directors of private firms are Gods and there is no culture of socialism in Britain’s private sector. How will Labour advocate the ideology of social democracy and win the votes of private sector workers who fear for their jobs and follow the party line of British Conservative corporate management? Mention social democracy in the City of London or in private firms and there would be silence. The forces of conservatism control most of the media and private sector workers read The Daily Mail. Neo-liberalism is the new norm. The manager is God. Capitalism rules. This is the media message. Our equivalent of Stalin’s Russia operates in the private sector. However, the economic depression will do the work and open the eyes of the people to the alternatives of social democracy, and France now has changed its leadership for the better. Do British people want active democracy or do they want easy credit again to spend in the shops? Is the ideology of consumer capitalism too great? This debate needs to continue.