Why I no longer recognise the Labour Party

[wingco]

There's naturally been a lot of talk over the past week or so from disaffected members that they no longer recognise the Labour Party; that it has shamefully departed from all that it once stood for. I have to agree.

So would Keir Hardie, first parliamentary leader of the party. When he founded the party, he had a vision. He foresaw a party in which bright young men and women, having picked up their PPE degrees, could work their way up, as wonks and interns, learning the passionate watchwords that would make up the vocabulary of this new party. "Choice". "Opportunity." "Pro-business." "Choice." "Third Way." Enterprise." "Choice." As he stared into the embers of the fireplace in his study, he foresaw such candidates "parachuted" into constituencies in the regions, better armed with the knowledge of what was good for them - "Enterprise", "Choice" - than the constituents themselves.

He envisaged a party so much better than the Tories that they would be better at Tory things themselves - tougher, in fact. On crime. Immigration. He envisaged mugs, available at reasonable prices to constituents, that would contain messages to this effect.

Finally, when their tenure as MPs was over, these men and women would be justly rewarded for their toils with £500-per-hour jobs as consultants, or even take up directorships in the city, the real world, well placed to spread the party message - "Opportunity." "Choice."

He even had a name for the party, because he was among the first to understand that branding is everything. He would call the party "Labour", so that it might enjoy mass appeal among workers, who, having no one else to vote for, could be relied upon to come vote for them every five years and certainly not melt away in disaffection, with some of them taking their revenge in a referendum of some sort. That was our party. What is it today?

[HeavyDracula]

For me, it's the nearest thing we have to turn things around. It's not perfect but I genuinely think it's moving in the right direction. There's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of previous work to be undone, but it can be done. The Labour Party is as hamstrung by the modern world - Mark Fisher's "capitalist realism" - as it is by any internal navel-gazing, and any job of reconstruction is a work in progress. That's how I see it, anyway. TL,DR - hope tempered by realism.

[Nefertiti2]

Good on you wingco. hope that's readable on all the various facebook walls

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

What would Herbert Morrison have to say about his Grandson?

Though I wouldn't over-romanticize the old labour party. Old School Labour leaned a lot more Economically left/Socially authoritarian than a lot of people nowadays would like. Also there is an optimal level of Union involvement in a party, which currently we are far too far below, but may have been a little too high in the past. Also it's easier to have fond memories about politicians that we don't really know very much about, while we know far too much about our current bunch.

There were valuable things that were lost though. The old labour party was very uptight about fiscal responsibility, to an insane degree compared to the Tories, because they knew that fucking up the macro-economics primarily screwed their voters, and they remembered the 1930's and the nightmarish circumstances they found themselves in when the Americans cut off all loans on VJ day. They actively sought to limit the downsides of Economic downturns, not only by borrowing to maintain spending levels in downturns, but by seeking to limit the size of the downturn by careful regulations to limit the scale of bubbles. (By the way, this is the logic and motivation of the Eurozone financial rules) They also believed in broadening the tax base to include property and wealth and taxing businesses. This was completely absent in New Labour, and they fought their corner to protect the City of London from european regulation, and actively blocked all efforts to construct a Europe wide framework for minimizing business tax loopholes, which mean that Large companies pay essentially no tax. TBH Being prepared to go along with Brexit means that current labour doesn't really think about these things either. Instead of raising taxes to provide a sustainable basis to an appropriate level of public expenditure, they took the windfall from the property and asset bubble in the South East and spread around bits of it. which all acted to maximize the mess made by the global economic downturn. Old Labour used to be very concerned with income inequality and were not averse to using the taxation and redistribution system to deal with that. That has been lost like the hovercars of atlantis.

The thing is that if you lose all of these things, you lose the ability to create a coherent message or plan. In the Pre-brexit Era, Britain was an enormously wealthy country which was having horrendous trouble because it was very bad at allocating these resources in a fair or efficient way, and had a ridiculously small state share of the economy and tax take for a supposedly wealthy northern european country.

[Satchmo Distel]

Old Labour also passed immigration restrictions in 1968 but this was after several years of resisting racist pressure from the Tories ("if you want a n***** neighbour vote Labour.")

Roy Jenkins was a famously socially liberal Home Secretary, to be fair. His predecessors, OTOH, probably came from spare the rod, spoil the child backgrounds, bearing in mind also that socialism overlapped with Christianity, asceticism and stoicism and that the Labour leadership of 1945-63 were veterans of the Depression and war cabinet and overseeing the last embers of the Empire. George Orwell was a bastard to his Indian and Burmese servants IIRC (and somewhat antisemitic up to mid-30s).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Not just christianity but non-conformism in particular. Welsh methodism was a big influence on the early labour party, more in a cultural sense than directly religious.Also the Presbyterians had their say in scotland.

[Lang Spoon]

Though Scottish Labour also had a huge influence from the Catholic Church from the 20s on.

[Nefertiti2]

John McDonnell has just given and interview to The Tablet about his childhood Catholicism and its affect on his politics. he began studying for the priesthood.

[ad hoc]

In my recent stay in England I watched a documentary about Cromford in Derbyshire, arguably ground zero in the industrial revolution. The presenter talked about a religion/weekly meeting that was formed by the workers (I'm desperately trying to remember what the religion was called, but can't for the life of me recall it), which, to some degree was the beginnings of the trade union movement.

[E10 Rifle]

I like the fact that a satirical post has prompted such an earnest and serious discussion

[Benjm]

John McDonnell has just given and interview to The Tablet about his childhood Catholicism and its affect on his politics. he began studying for the priesthood.

In Terry Eagleton's autobiography he muses on having moved from a very Catholic upbringing to spending most of his adult life involved in left politics. He drew a link between the need to attend meetings and demos, leaflet in Oxford city centre, etc, to the obligations of being a Catholic; whether or not the cause was likely to succeed wasn't really the point, what mattered was that he had tried to fulfil the expectations that he had set for himself, replacing the Church's requirements that had framed his youth. It was interesting to see the connection expressed in terms of the individual's psychological need, rather than the policy side of things.

[NHH]

Many of those Manchester Lassalleans had the same vibe,

[Diable Rouge]

Not just christianity but non-conformism in particular. Welsh methodism was a big influence on the early labour party, more in a cultural sense than directly religious.Also the Presbyterians had their say in scotland.

Nonconformism originally had strong links with the Liberal party, with Lloyd George drawn towards the political life through the temperance movement - the subsequent Lib-Lab joint tickets of the 1900s proving an early gateway towards the eventual supplanting. The political-religious trend also became evident in Catholicism, with descendants of Irish immigrants making the same political journey, with TP O'Connor ultimately joining Labour once the IPP and Liberals both collapsed.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Nonconformism originally had strong links with the Liberal party, with Lloyd George drawn towards the political life through the temperance movement - the subsequent Lib-Lab joint tickets of the 1900s proving an early gateway towards the eventual supplanting. The political-religious trend also became evident in Catholicism, with descendants of Irish immigrants making the same political journey, with TP O'Connor ultimately joining Labour once the IPP and Liberals both collapsed.

Yeah, hence all the fuss over the parnell divorce case. That split was about as much to do with the Liberals having to pretend to be moralists to their non-conformist base, as anything that happened in Ireland. Most Irish people had very little expectations about the private morality of a protestant member of the gentry. The moral outrage such as it was was mostly about not being shown up by Methodists. All people really cared about was that Mr Parnell was wringing land act after land act out of the UK govt.

The Influence of the Catholics in the trade union movement kind of requires you to bear in mind that at that point Catholic is shorthand for Irish Immigrant, and this wasn't always a smooth road.

[Lang Spoon]

Keir Hardie had some contemptible opinions about Lithuanians working in the Lanarkshire coalfields. Virulent racist and sectarian even for the time.

Prior to the 1920s concordat between Slab and the Scottish Catholic hierarchy, you had the very Scottish peculiar of Manny Shinwell rabble rousing crowds against "foreign" (read Irish in the main and also black sailors) workers during the not entirely Progressive Red Clydeside.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

In my recent stay in England I watched a documentary about Cromford in Derbyshire, arguably ground zero in the industrial revolution. The presenter talked about a religion/weekly meeting that was formed by the workers (I'm desperately trying to remember what the religion was called, but can't for the life of me recall it), which, to some degree was the beginnings of the trade union movement.

I went on holiday to Cromford once - stayed in a Landmark Trust cottage.


Carry on