Parliamentary Socialism: The Labour Party

THIRSK AND MALTON LABOUR PARTY

EASINGWOLD PARISH HALL 15/6/19

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Means to the Ends; Policies towards Values

• We have looked at the ends that Socialism embodies
• We have a large consensus on these
• They contain values (equality, positive freedom), principles (equity and justice) and goals (security, well being) etc
• But today we are talking about the means to these ends
• What theories, what ideas, what policies, procedures and organizations do we need to achieve these ethical goals?
• This is where we well differ in this room and where the Party in Britain and the world differ – dramatically
• We are focusing only upon ‘parliamentary routes to socialism’
• We are excluding Revolution, General Strikes and disorder
• But means are limited by resources – and Labour suffers as much from ‘what exists’ as from how we seek change

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Catch Up

• In my first lecture we refused to entertain a narrow, essentialist definition of socialism
• Socialism has a variety of meanings from the devils work to the only ethical view of the how to live in history
• ‘Socialism, social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members’ Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Key Characteristics

• A Political Theory and a related set of Practices
• A set of Beliefs and Claims about society, economy and politics which prioritize society and the public sphere
• A Critique of existing non socialist societies (Capitalist, Fascist, Dictatorial, Feudal, Theistic, Patriarchal)
• A set of Values, Ideals and Ends to achieve - Goals
• A Doctrine or Ideology accounting for where we are
• A set of Programs, Plans, Policies for Change
• A term of abuse, a semiotic weapon, to label and destroy socialism
• ‘[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous ‘ Hayek, F. The Road to Socialism,

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A Family

• A family is composed of many members past, present and future
• No one member owns or defines the family – nor must we try to impose domination over the family by one
• All families share things – names, DNA, histories, likenesses, locations, identities, shared triumphs, hero’s
• But all families contain differences, difficulties, warring members, histories of exclusion and inclusion, villains and ‘black sheep’
• We are each like links in a chain sharing some things with some and differences from others
• Our strength is our unity within diversity, what we share and what divides us

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The Labour Party

• In its history and its present, the LP is best understood in this light
• We are a Political Party seeking to promote the causes and values of socialism via the Parliamentary Route
• Sharing common elements of the mission and goals of Socialism unites us, but we are a warring family with numerous fault lines that divide us and create tensions
• We share a party in parliament with MP’s, Local Councillors working at County, District and Parish levels; we share a Constitution, various manifesto’s, a history and aims
• But we are divided on lines: Would we be better pursuing non parliamentary routes (revolution, General Strikes, Syndicalism); should we be a centralist or democratic party; hard left or soft right? etc

The Family of Socialism

• Platonists and Aristotelians
• Epicureans
• Christians and Scholastics
• Feudal Beneficium
• Humanists and Utopians - Moore
• Republicans – Harrington, Milton
• Rousseau and Babeuf
• Christian Socialists – Ruskin
• Arts & Crafts, Morris and PRB
• Anarcho Socialists - Kropotkin
• Coops, Syndicalists and Guild Socialists
• Fabians and Blue Books
• Trade Unions - Annie Besant, B Shaw
• Parliamentary Routes – Hyman and Bevan
• Communists – Marx and Engels
• Maoists, Stalinists
• Revisionists Orwell, Gaitskell, Crosland
• Social Democrats – Rosa Luxemburg
• Old and New Lefts

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• Old and New Labour
• Existential Socialists and Humanists– Sartre
• Frankfurt School – Marcuse and Habermas
• Socialist Feminists – Roz Coward, Beatrice Cambell
• Eco-socialists – George Mombiot
• Post-colonialists - Edward Said
• Frankfurt Group – Marcuse, Adorno
• New Left – Jacques, Mulgan, Hall
• Old Left – Benn, Skinner
• Old Right – Dalton, Jay, Hattersey, Chucka Uma
• Blairites and New Labour – Brown, Campbell
• Corbynistas and Momentum
• Europeanists – Yvette Cooper
• New Times – Stuart Hall
• Postmodernists and Poststructuralists – Leclau, Mouffe, Gibbins

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7

Aims and Outcomes

• By the end you will be able to:
• Understand the many elements that have and do make up the Labour Party
• Explain to others how diverse groups dedicated to improving the lot of the working masses formed a coalition of power to unite them, and propel their representatives into position within the British Political System to realise this aim
• To analyse the continuing fault lines reflect those of its origins, its history and practices
• In part two to understand the contemporary challenges we face in the forms of Ne0-Liberalism, Right populism and Climate Denial
• To identify the dynamic relationships between the key positions (factions, movements) in the present party
• To understand what we must do to go beyond Protest into Power

A Short History of the Labour Party

• Pelling, H., A Short History of the Labour Party, Pelican, 1975
• Coates, D., The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism, C U P, 1975
• Plant R., et al, The Struggle for Labours Soul, Routledge, 2004, 2^nd ed., 2018
• Wright, A., ed., British Socialism, 1880-1960, Longmans, 1983
• Kogan, D., Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party, Bloomsbury, 2019
• Seldon, A., Blair’s Britain, 1997-2007, CUP, 2007
• Polly Townbee et al, The Verdict,

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‘Redistribution by Stealth’ Ruth Lister

The Dominant Ideology - Thatcherism

• Neo liberalism a la Hayek is now the received orthodoxy of the New World order – socialism is ‘The Road to Serfdom,’
• Planning, collectivism even cooperation kill entrepreneurship – private trumps public every time
• We are all individuals, there is no such thing a Society, only freedom from interference is justifiable as a goal of policy
• The only roles for the State are protection of the private sphere
• This neo-liberal cultural hegemony is rooted in our whole life narrative from birth to death where deference to superiors, defeat in competitions, acceptance of inferiority, acceptance of existing inequalities, fatalistic acceptance that nothing can be done except upholding the existing order, a stiff upper lip (Frank Parkin, E P Thompson, E S Halsey, Raymond Williams)
• Meanwhile, the rulers own the means of communication and deploy them to frame and direct common sense and de-legitimate rivals (Murdoch, Fox News, Facebook, Google, Apple etc)

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A History of the Labour Party

• There neither the time, nor any value, in a chronological or linear history (Contextual not Contextual)
• A long chronology of Hero’s/Villains; Leaders/Led; Victories/Defeats won’t help
• Rather I will provide a short history and then a picture or paradigm which seeks to identify the diverse memberships, ideologies, policies that make up the Party
• We will base this upon our fault lines via a study of what Plant et al call Positions within Labour that compete in
• The Struggle for Labours Soul: Understanding Labour’s Political Thought Since 1945, Routledge 2004, 2^nd 2018 eds., Raymond Plant, Matt Beech and Kevin Hickson
• Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party, David Kogan, Bloomsbury, 2019

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Set Texts

A Short History

• There is no agreement on the details but there is on the key dynamics
• The Labour Party as a defined structured political entity is founded around 1900. It is a twentieth century institution
• It had predecessors:
• In 1893 Our great founder, Kier Hardie, formed the Independent Labour Party (ILP)
• In 1897 a Trade Union Congress (TUC) calls for a political party to be established a Party in Parliament created to protect newly won workers rights from erosion
• In 1899 the Labour Representative Committee (LRC)
• 1900 the Party is formed of ‘Affiliated Organizations’
• 1906 names itself the Labour Party

Kier Hardie

The Affiliated Organizations

• ILP – Hardies supporters (affiliated 1906-1923)
• Fabians – professional intellectual and organizers
• Social Democratic Front – the activist workers party seeking power via extra-parliamentary means (Strikes)
• Trade Unions – now legalized, popular, organized
• CWA and Cooperative Group – Overarching the Cooperative Societies of the UK which included the Cooperative Women’s Guild of 1883
• Charity Organization Society COS support
• Liberal Party – many left New Liberal movement activists encouraged the above to win power in urban areas
• Scottish Labour Party from 1880-1895 influences

Kier Hardie National Gallery

Details of ILP

• ILP and Kier Hardie – this body was the brain child of Hardie
• He had worked in the Scottish coal fields, organized the short lived Scottish Labour Party
• Like many early founders he had worked with left minded Liberal Party MP’s to promote labour causes
• Distress in the Cotton industry spread activism south and in the 1892 General Election, held in July, three working men were elected without support from the Liberals, Keir Hardie in South West Ham, John Burns in Battersea, and Havelock Wilson in Middlesbrough, the last of whom actually faced Liberal opposition. But Hardie owed nothing to the Liberal Party for his election, and his critical and confrontational style in Parliament caused him to emerge as a national voice of the labour movement.

Henry Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party

• Hardie was influenced by Marx and the ILP was essentially Marxist – except for the espousal of parliamentary rather then revolutionary means "to secure the collective and communal ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange“
• 1893 Bradford, 130 delegates inc Ben Tillett, Bernard Shaw and Marx son in law Edward Aveling
• 91 Branches plus 11 Fabian affiliated Branches 'collaboration with trade unionists with the ultimate object of tapping trade union funds for the attainment of Parliamentary power.' The socialism of the ILP was ideal for achieving this end; lacking as it did any real theoretical basis it could accommodate practically anything a trade unionist was likely to demand. Fervent and emotional, the socialism of the ILP could accommodate, with only a little strain, temperance reform, Scottish nationalism, Methodism, Marxism, Fabian gradualism, and even a variety of Burkean conservatism Henry Pelling ibid.

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Bernard Shaw

Fault Lines

• Flirted with Marxist parties but no affiliation or mergers
• Routes – Revolution v Parliament
• National v International (Comintern from 1920)
• Pacifism v War Support 1914-18
• Marxism (theoretical and Unions) v Socialism (ethical and political)
• Working with agitating groups v evangelical mobilization
• It elected few MPs 3 in 1931; 4 in 1935, 3 in 1945
• Hero’s Phillip Snowden, Ramsey MacDonald, Victor Grayson, Fenner Brockway
• Melted away but left a lasting memory and example of how to mobilize

Fabians

• British socialist grouping of mainly intellectual who sort a route to socialism via gradualism, reformism achieved by research, evidence, evidenced based policy making, publication and education from 1884
• They adopted the practices of the Blue Book researchers like the Rowntree’s and Mayhew’s who researched the causes of poverty, illness, crime and unemployment
• They founded the London School of Economics in 1893 to institutionalize and widen their influence
• Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter – ‘For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless’

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The Webbs

Leading Lights

• Edith Nesbit, Rosamund Owens, Emmeline Pankhurst, Beatrice Webb
• Bertrand Russell, Sidney Webb
• The Webb’s edited massive tomes proving the case for the benefits public ownership or control
• The Society produced cheaper pamphlets that reached to Pits and Ports over the country
• It started to attack liberalism and individualism
• But it had some fault lines with the TU’s, Marxists and the ILP
• It also promoted the idea of the British Empire as an agent for spreading socialism
• The next three leaders are all wonderful, Herbert Laski, R H Tawney and G D H Cole, Graham Wallas – all brilliant guild socialists/syndicalists

Latter Influences

• ‘Through the course of the 20th century, the group has always been influential in Labour Party circles, with members including Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Anthony Crosland, Roy Jenkins, Hugh Dalton, Richard Crossman, Ian Mikardo, Tony Benn, Harold Wilson and more recently Shirley Williams, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Gordon Marsden and Ed Balls’. Wikipedia
• They still operate, research and produce useful knowledge
• They sponsor MP’s who promote their ideas
• Want radical tax reforms
• Want the Labour Party to affiliate again – with SNP, Liberal Democrats and Greens
• ‘Affiliate or die’

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Voluntarism, Charities and Coops

• Before its was agreed in 1912 that the State should use legislation and taxes to deal with social problems the heavy lifting work was done by voluntary groups of dedicated activists
• Workers Education Societies from 1820
• Cooperative Societies from 1850’s
• Charities affiliating in regional groups then the COS in the 1880’s to create a proto- welfare state – Helen Bosanquet
• Some churches also created Missions in cities to provide welfare led by Christian Socialists like Ruskin, Maurice, Kingsley
• Parishes and some Local Authorities innovated
• Many of their leaders morphed into the Labour Party

New Liberalism

• Marxist always argue for socialist essentialism and claim Marx the creator of Working Class politics
• But a survey of people who influenced socialists, made in the 1990’s came up with the above and a group of other novelists and artists who Marx called the Social Realists
• Charles Dickens; Elizabeth Gaskell, Pre Raphaelites, Herkomer, Burne Jones, William Morris
• But at Oxford philosophers argued that liberty was denied to most people due to hindrances to freedom like poor education, housing, sanitation, food etc
• TH Green, B Bosanquet, the Caird brothers and John Grote argued that the state was duty bound to aid the flourishing and realization of the well being of all citizens (COS)

Helen Bosanquet and Octavia Hill of COS

Back to the History

• 1895 28 candidates no successes but 44k votes
• 1906 Ramsey MacDonald formed a secret deal with Gladstone to not compete against each other – Labour won 29 seats
• So a new narrative fault line – affiliate or go it alone? Coalition or isolation? Deal or no deal?
• 1910 42 MP’s with the same arrangements
• 1914 420 labour councillors in LG
• War and Peace – the new fault line
• Most affiliated groups opposed war, sided with pacifism
• What to do in 1914? Ramsey MacDonald refused to engage but Arthur Henderson, a left militarist, joined Gladstone’s Coalition followed by that of Asquith and Lloyd George
• Labour was in government, Henderson ruled ok?

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Ramsey MacDonald and Arthur Henderson

Pyric Victory 1922-1931

• 1942 122 MP’s; 1923 142 and in 1923
• 1924 First Labour Government, in a coalition with the Liberals, now under the restored Ramsey MacDonald who moved from Chairman to Leader with little wealth or salary
• It turned out to be a ‘poisoned challis’ – governing is alot harder than shouting form the sidelines as Farage would soon learn - we gain power only when the country is in ruins
• With no overall majority socialism was impossible, gradualism and social reform the only option bar the backbenches – it lasted less than a year
• As with the Liberals in 2010, they were used, they sacrificed
• Successes - Forged trade links with Russia, supported the League of Nations, built up peace agreements

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Regression

• The Trade Unions were justifiably angry at the pace of post war recovery and spike of General Strikes
• 9 day strike in 1926 leads to a dilemma for the Party
• The ILP supported the Unions, MacDonald hesitated
• 1929 Election a majority at last with 288 seats but many were TU sponsored or ILP
• Successes with foreign policy but not at home
• Wall St Crash - meanwhile the world economy is moving into deep recession
• Production and consumption are declining and employers are seeking to reduce wages to survive
• MacDonald had no money for socialism he was managing Capitalism’s crisis instead

Crisis: Patriot or Traitor?

• We now have a new fault line that resembles that of Brown’s government in 2008 – do you abandon socialism to save the nation?
• In power, but not with power, he did his best to alleviate the crisis, increase confidence in markets and protect labour
• Leftists opposed helping failing banks and businesses while the unions wanted their employers supported to sae jobs
• Here is another fault line (morphing socialism into fascism)
• MP Oswald Mosley wanted radical action – controlling imports, controlling the banks, increasing pensions
• In 1931, wanting radical action, he resigned the LP and set up the British Union of Fascists – similar to Mussolini
• The LP proposed large budget and wage cuts to Balance the Budget (a new fault line)

Crisis

• Denounced by most of the party and abandoned by cabinet colleagues, MacDonald asked the King to form a National Government a coalition of all parties – he agreed
• MacDonald resigned from the LP and set up a National Labour party which won the next election in 1931 while the Labour Party declined to 52 loosing 225 seats in one go
• Old Labour split further with the ILP leaving the affiliation and a new Socialist League attracting intellectuals
• Hugh Dalton and George Lansbury led the party which lacked thinking, planning and organization
• Meanwhile New Liberals like Keynes and Beveridge at LSE planned to build upon the COS to create a Welfare State
• The coalition failed and Labour were in the wilderness again

Convalescence 1931-40

• Like Tony Blair, the Party then turned on the Leader who put patriotic duty before narrow party interests
• Henderson declined and Ernest Bevin’s star rose
• Neville Chamberlain courted MacDonald to stay
• A second election worsened Labours representation – they were out of tune with national needs and sentiments
• MacDonald is expelled by the National Executive (growing)
• Out of Office until 1940 War Time Coalition
• ‘The Labour-controlled local authorities, and also those in which Labour was the strongest single party, had in practice to concentrate mainly on making the most of the opportunities offered to them by national legislation – especially in the fields of housing, education, public health services, and, after 1929, the services transferred to them from the Boards of Guardians. In all these fields, Labour had a notably good local government record.’
• G D H Cole

Summary

• Agreeing ends is easier than the means
• LP is a coalition of affiliates not a singular machine
• Keeping everyone happy is almost impossible and takes up too much time and energy sapping action and planning
• There are several cross cutting cleavages: left/right; pacifist/national; unions/party; managing capitalism/replacing capitalism; liberal socialism/fascism; radicalism/gradualism; power/protest; coalition/sovereignty
• Facts of life – the economy, often limit scope for action
• Personality and ego’s get in the way of change
• We don’t do enough thinking we do more protesting (Kogan)
• We wasted our expanding electoral base – our chance!

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Membership Graph 1930-2018

War Coalition – a Triumph of Socialism

• Now in Coalition, and with emergency spending and loans, Labour could put its policies into practice
• Clement Attlee Deputy Prime Minister; Ernest Bevin Labour; Herbert Morrison Home Secretary; Hugh Dalton Economic Warfare etc
• Wartime meant a planned, centralized economy; rationing based on need and taxation based upon ability to pay. Equality of sacrifice and entitlements was central value
• Social welfare was for all – public trumped private
• Labour had a good War, many Officers and Civil Servants were converted to socialism and to Labour
• Membership grew and in the 1945 Election there was a landslide victory 146 majority and 393 MP’s

Post War Attlee Government

• TU MP’s dropped and these new young middle class professional men, lawyers, dons, teachers, doctors, journalists etc
• While the members were more working class, the leadership was moving bourgeoisie
• Maynard Keynes was sent to negotiate loans from the USA
• The 1943 Beveridge Report had to be implemented against a backcloth of debt, loans and hence austerity
• But hardship was not new, the electorate accepted rationing in exchange for the ending of the 5 great evils of want
• Labour delivered welfare and equality, but with austerity and central controls
• It was only a time before demands for consumption via the markets’ would challenge ‘welfare via planning’

Entryism, Dissension and Decline

• From 1947 Labour experienced cycles of Communist entryist movements – leading to panics in the party and press
• Later we have Militant and now we have Momentum
• Inability to nationalize, tax and redistribute more led to internal tensions
• IN the 1950 elections Labour won a small majority of 315 v 298 for the Tories and 9 liberals and they got 13.25 million votes
• Dissension now weakened the leadership, party and electorate on old and new cleavage lines
• Anuran Bevan led a left assault on Attlee who saw national rebuilding a patriotic priority over socialist ideals
• 1952 Election called and lost badly 321 Tories/ 295 Labour

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1952-1960 Cleavages and Decline

• Left/Right
• Radicalism/Gradualism
• Pacifism CND/ Rearmament – the Conference defeated Gaitskell’s Leader Motion to support unilateral nuclear disarmament in 1960
• Unions/Members
• Leaders/Members
• Broad Coalitions to win/narrow commitments
• Entryism/Membership
• Conference/Leadership
• Clause 4; Common Market and Disarmament Cleavages

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Road Back to Power 1960-66

• A once leftwing Hugh Gaitskell, proved a brilliant Leader who could defuse these cleavages and warring positions
• It was to regain power in 1964 with a small majority under the new Leader Harold Wilson 317/304
• 1966 called an election and improved it – pay pause issue
• It won on foreign policy issues eg Suez, de-colonization, Common wealth Preference
• But was divided on joining the European Common Market
• Immigration also surfaced
• Wilson saw off Brown and Callaghan in 1963 Leadership vote with the White hot heat of new technologies line
• But growth slumped – so balance the budget/more socialism leading to Brown’s fatal ‘Incomes Policy’

Harold Wilson and James Callaghan

Wilson and the Vicissitudes of Economic Insolvency 1966-70

• Economic indicators showed slow down then slump
• Trade balance negativity led to a run on the pound
• Wilson did little to react and Ted Heaths Tories started to recover in the polls
• So Devaluation and Expenditure Controls by Labour
• Roy Jenkins in the Home Office introduced a myriad of libertarian human rights reforms eg abortion, homosexuality, a race relations bill passed
• Callaghan as Chancellor improved social policy option improving education, housing, local government, health. The OU was created and Comprehensive Education agreed
• But economic distress weakened support
• 1969 In Place of Strife regulated striking and caused rifts

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Common Market and the Social Contract 1970’s

• 1970 Election saw defeat to Ted Heath Conservatives to return in 1974 after the great electricity power cuts crisis
• The new fault line was Europe – to remain until today
• The left were against the right were for, in 1971 the National Executive voted narrowly to stay out though Heath had joined us in 1973 after a Referendum
• Jenkins and John Smith were opposed but the fracture led to the desertion of 10 Labour MP’s in the 1980’s to the SDP
• In power from 1974-9 Labour struggled to respond to a slowing global market while instituting social reforms
• Jim Callaghan announced the end to tax/spend and to boom/bust with austerity measures – but in the end had to take Bail out Loans
• The welfare reforms were massive and impressive – 120k houses built annually in 1970’s
• But the siren call of consumption challenged citizenship gains

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Thatcherism and the Wilderness Years

• You know the rest or should do. In 1979 Thatcher offered a new diagnosis and cure
• We were the poor man of Europe, socialism has ruined us, we had to privatise, marketize, reduce taxes and spend less on public and social services – Hayek Laws
• Inflation had risen to 23% in 1975
• 1978-9 Callaghan had staid with austerity, wage restrain at a 5% limit – the Unions rebelled and strikes erupted
• The Winter of Discontent – rubbish in the streets etc
• The Tories won over middle England with the offer of restricting the unions and cutting public sector
• The entrepreneurial class were to gain at the cost of labour supporting professionals

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Must Labour Loose 1960 Abrams and Rose

• Thatcher’s victory has been predicted by sociologists
• As old industries collapsed so did solidarity and unionization
• Sections of the WC were socially mobile – via education mainly
• Most of the WC wanted to enjoy the new world offered by conspicuous consumption TV, holiday, car
• Education was giving aspirations to be middle class
• Owning your own house etc made you feel more like a Tory
• The Tory Image was more in tune with these – signifiers
• Private sector wages were higher (but less pensions/security)
• Growing fear of a Road to Serfdom – Big Brother, Overload
• Affluence more attractive than austerity
• Labour must move to align with the new inspirational middle class – Blairism and away from old labour

Blairism and New Labour

• New Labour was the delayed response to what these authors had identified earlier
• The failure of the Miners Strike cemented the decline of the Unions, antipathy to bureaucracy (YES Minister and Peter Sellers) and a desire to get rich quick (Loads of Money)
• Blairism was a triangulation between the needs of business, citizens as consumers and the state
• Pro business and pro-citizen – hence Brown’s carful budgets
• Image management via Campbell was fore-grounded
• The rewards of growth were to be redistributed in key social policies like education, sure start, health and housing
• The left railed at low taxation and redistribution; not re-nationalizing, not freeing the unions. Staying in Europe

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Must we keep Loosing?

• We have lost 3 elections since 2010 badly
• We have lost Scotland to the SNP and much of Wales
• The media machines are successful in denigrating Labour, coving up Tory failures and promoting Tory Support
• Our votes are skewed – overloaded in safe seats
• The working class are in decline in numbers and becoming aspirational themselves – consumerist and expressive
• With a worsening world economic climate its hard to make a case for tax and spend
• The party allowed itself to take the blame for 2008. Why
• Ed Miliband wanted distance from New Labour, so having Brown and Blair under the cost suited him

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The State We Are In - Analysis

• So where are we and what can we do?
• David Coates and others on the left judge that the Parliamentary route has failed and only a radical left shift can bring about socialism – Blairism wass Thatcherite
• Momentum consider a mass mobilization of the young can bring success
• Chuka Umanna has given up hope for Labour now
• Chantel Moffe and others argue for a Left Populism to identify the real others and unite we the people against them
• Jeremy Corbyn has retreated to the Old Left Bennite programme
• No alternatives are considered, change refused, holding fast

Observations

• Cleavages - The Labour Party, its policies, programmes, organization members and supporters are divided
• BREXIT debates cross cut on another direction – Labour Remain/Leave
• The Tories are responding fast we are stuck in the rut
• We are not addressing the crisis effectively
• Members and electors are loosing faith in us
• We are not offering the narrative and the direction and leadership we need
• We are drifting towards the rocks with the leadership staring in the wrong direction
• We must get popular soon or loose again

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Clip Board Demonstration of Cross Cutting Cleavages leaving us all in small segments

• Classes – working/ middle/upper
• Genders men/women/others
• Age – young/old
• Education
• Occupation – Blue/White
• Geographical Location – Centre/Periphery: Rural/Urban; Safe Seats/Marginal Seats
• Managing/Just about and not managing
• Members/Supporters; Leaders/Members
• Unions/Members

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Observations

• Few/many
• Insiders/Outsiders
• Machine/Voters
• Narrow/Broad appeal

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Positions

• In the first edition of The Struggle, 2004 the authors identify the following positions that reflect the cleavages I’ve identified – they aggregate them into groupings
• Old Left
• New Left
• Progressives
• Centre
• Revisionists
• New Labour

Old Left

• Henderson, ILP, Richard Crossman, Bevin, Bevan, Castle (young Attlee and Wilson)
• The ideal of socialism requires a single minded determination whatever the circumstances – no gradualism or compromises
• Requires a Strong State willing to compel, nationalise etc
• Must either own or control the means of production CL4
• Nationalization of all public goods
• Central Planning and Delivery the core model
• Must work with the Unions closely
• Strong Welfare State
• Tax and spending, National Investment Banks
• Ideal Best - equality

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New Left

• Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn – around the New Left Review, Michael Meecher, Chris Mullins, John McDonald, Len McCluskey, Seamus Milne
• They see Parliament and the LP as transitional means to full socialism – so using them is strategic
• They want the best possible - ending Student Loans
• Public ownership via nationalization essential
• Must control capital and capital flows – reflation, import controls – this requires Leaving the EU
• Industrial Strategy i.e. Workers on Boards
• Massive Public Investment and Planning in the economy including house building 100k
• Protectionism outside the EU which they wish to leave
• No triangulation – justice top issue

Centre

• MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison, Harold Wilson, Callaghan, Dennis Healy, Roy Hattersly, Neil Kinnock
• Being in power to stop Tories and reform is central
• Must appeal to a broadly to the electorate – appeal/image
• Pragmatism therefore is vital – tried and tested, empirical based policy, compromise
• Moderation and gradualism
• Members stressed over the machine and unions
• The party is an affiliation a Big Tent or Broad Church
• Balanced budgets, trade offs,
• Competence and Good Governance to make and keep ourselves electable. Corbyn is a gift to the rightwing media

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Old Right

• Hugh Dalton, Douglas Jay, SDP leavers, Tony Crosland, Hugh Gaitskell, Peter Hain, Patrick Diamond
• One Nation Socialism – unite into a broad coalition
• Gradualism, moderation, reform not revolution
• Work with capitalism but redistribute its profits
• Keep out radicals, tame the Unions, avoid confrontations
• Work up coalitions with Liberals and independents
• Balanced budgets
• Mixed economy of production and welfare
• Internationalism but Britain first

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Revisionists

• Anthony Crosland, Hugh Gaitskell, John Smith
• They identify the changes in class and support eroding the Party
• We must revise or die – so opposed the old left and centre
• They wanted to appeal to the aspirational, the educated, the new classes with better imagery, style, positions
• Education is their main priority and getting the new professionals to devise new ways of running things
• Liked Think Tanks and Consultations
• Control trumps nationalization; redistributing growth not existing wealth is key
• Weary of the Unions, strikes, protests, win over the media

New Labour

• Blair, Brown, Mandelson, David Milliband
• More reformist than the Revisionists taking their approach into the mainstream
• Triangulation and the Third Way (Giddens)
• Liquid Society therefore no fixed positions – flexibility
• Social Democratic in aims and methods
• The Enabling State – education, sure start
• The knowledge Economy – citizenship entitlements
• Post materialism – new wants and needs to supply
• Use of all new media to circumvent the mass media if you cant win it over (Murdoch won)
• Opportunity not equality stressed – ‘redistributed by stealth’

Progressives

• Ed Miliband, A Darling, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Emily Thornbury, Chuka Umanna, Liz Kendall, Alision McGovern
• They work with post-materialism, postmodernism, post-Fordism, disorganized capitalism, climate catastrophy, value changes
• They see the break down of structures – class, age, sexuality, gender etc - so a new appeal like Jacinta Ardern in NZ
• These require new thinking, new policies and organizations
• Eely upon John Rawls, Nausbaum, Gramsci, Hall etc
• We must change culture to allow the electorate to see us
• We must build on the sub-cultures to oppose neo-Liberal Dominant Ideology first with optimism, progress, well being
• The Green Agenda’s, Enabling; empowerment, Transnationalism, global cooperation, Remain in the EU

The Purple Book, Why the Progressives

• Capitalism has changed - so have the electorate, citizen identities
• Sovereignty is dead so federalism, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, even populism
• Corporations control needs international cooperation
• Control of capital is cheaper and as effective as ownership
• Regulation, codes, quality and governance are key measures
• The Green Deal is our New Deal – its the road to Socialism
• Neo-Liberalism has taken us to Serfdom, we will free us
• We will win the cultural, image, media and style wars
• We will promote Consumer power against corporations
• New forms of management with workers buy out, John Lewis styles; workers on Boards, localism etc
• Welfare will lead to greater efficiencies as well as justice

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Erosion of the Public and the State

• 40 years of Neo-Liberalism has eroded the resources we need to win and to create socialism
• Sold off most public assets; marketized the rest; denuded local government and forced it to sell off its reserves; reduced public sector employment, eroded hope, eroded solidarity and fraternity, eroded British working classes and their cultures; eroded the BBC; destroyed communities, undermined welfare, security, created anger, frustration and aggression
• We won’t have the money to renationalize everything so we will need to take control, govern, manage etc
• We will have to cooperate across boundaries
• We must rebuild the 1945 Post War Consensus around the Green Revolution, Green Deal, and Patriotic Socialism (Bragg)

The Big Decisions

• Leave (Left) v Remain (progressives)
• National v International and Global means
• Nationalization v Neo Keynsianism (Krugger)
• Old Left v Left Populism (them v us)
• One Nation Socialism – keep the UK strong
• Stakeholder Society and Governance
• Regionalism, power Houses, Regeneration, Localism
• Growth v the Green Agenda
• Narrow socialism or Broad
• Central or Social Movement Affiliations

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Power before Protest

• We must appear and be a party for power
• We must reach beyond our old class base and appeal to the young, women, new citizens
• All workers not just Unions to count
• We need a narrative story to counter populists
• We must build on our great Manifesto
• We need new and younger leaders to signify these changes
• They must focus on charisma, image, messages, framing
• We must ne more open and agonistic – explain trade offs
• We must be more antagonistic to the authoritarian populists
• More reflexive, responsive, aware, on song, clued in, right on

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Ralph Miliband The State in Capitalist Society

• Radical - We need to be more Radical in plans and delivery
• False consciousness allows the WC to vote Tory – we need to change class consciousness
• State - We need a very strong state to deliver while the Tories want a weak state (Max ve Min States)
• Hegemony - We need our own framed view of the world to counter that of the Right
• Managerialism – we might not use owner control but prefer good governance and professional managerialism
• Nepotism and Etonianism – we must eject the same people from the same schools controlling power – erode the Charitable status of Public Schools, democratise them
• “the best the left can hope for in the relevant future…is the strengthening of left reformism as a current of thought and policy in social democratic parties”.¹¹

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My 10 Principles for PPM pp155-8

• Equity Principle
• Revocability
• Toleration Hope not Hate
• Impartiality – no undue preferences or unfairness
• Stakeholder principle
• Shared Space – less private more shared public
• Public Goods in public hands
• Governance more than Government
• Self Management more than Centralization
• Citizenship and civil life to prosper over Consumerism and private life

Policy

• Internationalism – shared Sovereignty
• Patriotic Socialism – for all
• Keynsianism; Green New Deal
• New Social Contract of State and Citizens
• Regionalism, Hubs, Networks – Burnham, Kahn
• Cultural Capital accumulation – via the arts, education, sports, events, spectacles, films, TV etc
• Rebuild a new British Cultural identity around Pluralism and Difference
• Be Distinctive but cohesive (Hope not Hate, IN Place of Strife; for all not the few etc
• Whole person care, joined up policy etc
• Taxation is essential for civilization to flourish

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The Crisis – Neo Liberalism and Feudalism

• Hayek argued that socialism leads to feudalism
• We must prove the reverse that socialism leads to freedom and neo-liberalism leads to serfdom for many
• Many are now not or only just managing, vulnerable in insecure jobs – we have been made into ‘primitive survivalists’ again
• Withdrawal by the State from citizens security has left many, even most, fearful, unsafe, afraid, insecure, vulnerable
• This has led to anger, aggression, incivism and violence
• This has allowed Populist fantasists to spin narratives of imperial splendour, past power, great days which can be regained by extremely dangerous policies like Leave(fact free policies)
• They have whitewashed the culprits and framed scapegoats
• The Tories have led most into serfdom to multi-national corporation from which we can free them

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Tory Re-framing and Renewal

• While we dither the Tories are recreating themselves as a post Neo-Liberal Party – a new hymn from their Hymn Book
• Not wanting to own its 40 years of failure, not wanting to suffer defeat for them, they are cutting it adrift and repackaging
• Nationalism without nationalization, One Nation without social security or a strong state)
• Populist BREXIT to lead to Britain restored as Trade Ruler of the Waves driven by Imperial Nostalgia
• They have ditched neo-liberalism for WTO Free Trade but without Protectionism or Britain first
• A populist leader, a new policy platform (more One Nation and anti-Austerity), mass spending before Labour get the chance
• They may then win two more elections?

David Kogan - Protest and Power

• Can Jeremy get us into power, to realise socialism?
• After months of interviews, his conclusion is no!
• We have lost 7 of the last 10 elections
• Our base has gone, our vote is weak, we are distrusted
• Ed was deluded, overoptimistic and ridiculed New labour
• Corbyn’s win was an accident – no confidence
• Burnham turned down TU sponsorship
• £3 membership allowed the Unions and Momentum to win
• Corbyn is in hock to McCluskey and prey to Seamus Milne
• He is now triangulating over BREXIT disastrously
• He is incapable of moving beyond constructive ambiguity
• Corbyn is not anxious to be in power, he is at home protesting

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Loss of hope

• Kogan not only sees election loss but the collapse of the Labour Party
• Remainers’ to Greens, SDP and Liberals and Leavers to BREXIT Party
• Results will be marginal due to the first by the post system
• But we will loose as many by the few as we win
• We cannot keep safe seats and win new ones with this policy
• Without a change on Brexit policy we will never get the chance to implement a great Socialist Agenda
• In a multi-party General Election Labour would loose badly leaving us protesting only for another 5 years being in office for 13 of 45 years loosing 8 of the last 11 elections
• Must Policy Change? Must Jeremy Go?
• Are we only a party of protest ‘Protest no/and Power’?

Citizenship and Stake holding

• To address the feelings of anger and hate we need:
• Defusion – hope not hate
• Offer hope as citizenship entitlements (Rights) matched by ensuring the few perform their duties to us (paying taxes, being honest, employing on proper contracts etc)
• Offer to give a role in all decision making to all the stakeholders in the decision be they workers, sales, raw material suppliers, unions, customers
• Promise to ensure all citizens are empowered to act, think, speak, give and receive as full members of society
• Create a Society of Belonging and Inclusion not Alien and Excluded
• Promise to make sure that International Bodies cover the cost of the pollution and other damages they cause us

Advice

• No amount of Manifesto writing, planning for the first 100days in office will deliver us socialism
• In an electoral Representative Democracy we need to elect over 330 MP’s – gain over 37% of the vote (not our 23%)
• With first past the post its harder still as our votes are stacked in a few places
• We need to win hearts and minds or loose
• We need to start framing events not be framed (a Cambell)
• We need clear and winning narratives – stories
• We need fluent, astute presentation – populist
• We need to build on wider than Momentum cultural bases
• We need believed, coherent, competent, hence trusted Leaders

Questions

• But are we led by Donkeys? Signs of revolt in ranks
• Are we too narrow? Hegemony
• Are divided not united? Falling attendance
• Are we building a growing cultural base?
• Are we challenging the Tories while they recreate a new winning narrative, leadership and policy pack?
• Are we ‘Fiddling while Rome Burns’?

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• What do you think?
• What do you want us to do?