What’s the point of Young Labour?

By Michael Harris

I took a little stroll down to the G20 protests in the City the other week, with a fellow Labour activist friend, wearing my enjoyably conformist suit and tie (de rigeur blackberry in hand, comrades). What struck me wasn’t the political substance of the demonstrations, or the violence (there wasn’t much), but how many young, fashionable waifs there were. The G20 protests were London fashion week for the uninvited, the proliferation of wet-look clothing more an issue than that of nuclear weapons. Strangely, it reminded me why I am a member of Young Labour, and the point of our affiliation together.

Young Labour exists because we believe in praxis, not proselytising. Whereas the anti-establishment fashionista Left marched under ugly images of George W. Bush, Young Labour supporters actually went to the US to knock on doors for Obama and positive change; whereas they chant slogans, we help out in our local communities.

We have a problem though. Labour and its youth proxies are the establishment, and establishment politics isn’t sexy. Young Labour in reality is chained to government policy – we can distance ourselves from unpopular decisions, but fundamentally we’re Labour, we’re in government, and government isn’t easy, comrades.

So, it becomes even more important to show clearly what the point of politics is. Sloganeering is easy. Change is difficult. We need to prove to our friends and our social circles that politics matters. Young Labour members know this by knocking on doors and speaking to people whose lives are helped, saved, or wrecked by the cruel hand of politics. Yet, the end of the Cold War has left postmodern society bereft of the “big idea”. The G20 protesters have a “big idea”, it’s that the US is to blame for everything, that global warming is perpetuated by corporations who control puppet governments, and that Labour is a servant to big business. They know what they’re against: but they don’t have any answers. So what’s our “big idea”? Our “big idea” should be that of a generational culture-shift.

Young people today volunteer more than any other generation in history. Young people are the most tolerant, liberal generation probably in world history; we are less racist, homophobic, better travelled, more open to new ideas, more sexually liberated, better educated, and less chauvinistic than any generation before us (see MORI data).

Other supposedly “liberal ages” were liberal for a small elite; the 1920s were liberal for a coterie around Bloomsbury, the cultural experience of the 1960s for most Britons was a Bernie inn, not a love-in. We however, have unburdened ourselves from the cultural shackles of the past. Our “big idea” is that we are part of a global family. Which party is best suited to the spirit of this age? The G20 “not Westminster” protesters, the “little England” Tory party – or an avowedly internationalist Labour party that can win elections?

We have to make the case to young people, our friends, our peers, that collective action makes a difference. Much of what they believe, we do too. Labour is the political embodiment of the values of Oxfam, of Amnesty International, of socialised medicine, of the Trade Unions – it’s an uneasy coalition but one that can periodically seize control of the British state and make it work for ordinary people.

Unlike the anti-G20 rabble, we need to say clearly that we want our generation to engage in party politics and take power, then use it to cure the ills they’ve diagnosed.

But first we need to take control of the Labour party and then decentralise power. Those within the party who disagree with “the line” are still comrades. We get pluralist politics – our lives are pluralist, our culture multicultural and anti-monolithic – let’s make the Labour party pluralist. Pluralist politics allows us to disagree, but discuss. It stops us from descending into the gutter of personality in place of politics.

Britain periodically turns in on itself. It looks abroad and feels frightened. Our generation will be the generation that wrestles with globalisation and makes it work, we’ll probably also be left to sort out climate change, a pensions crisis, escalating national debt, an aged population. Young Labour must think the unthinkable (perhaps some public sector workers are paid too much, cutting inheritance tax for the upper-middle classes is unaffordable, Trident a nonsense), and speak openly about it. We need to encourage other members of our generation to join us in our debates.

The anti-everything G20 protesters offer a negative culture. Young Labour must offer another. Let’s keep talking.