The Neal Lawson interview

Neal Lawson is the Chair of Compass, the centre-left campaign group. He met Alex Smith on Tuesday, 16th June, 2009.

One of the criticisms I’ve heard of Compass’ No Turning Back conference is that – although it was a great expression of the collegiate progressive ideal – there was no plan of action set out or even discussed for how to achieve it.
Compass is on a journey. We started as a constructive critique of Blairism and still have one foot planted in the party, but the other foot is firmly planted outside of it. But we’re beginning to have conversations with people, and to have our own ideas and our own policies. But the most important thing – at least at first – is to talk and to listen. The problem with the Labour Party is that it’s too full of itself and it thinks it has all the answers. Clearly it does have some of the answers, but other people have good responses too. So after 12 years of getting some things right but some things very wrong, we should have the humility to go to others and ask what they think. When you’ve done the Iraq War, when you’ve pushed privatisation, when the BNP has risen to national significance on your watch, when inequality is worse overall than when we came into government – then you need humility and you need discussion. So the conference on Saturday was a breakthrough because barriers have been broken down, relationships have been formed and for the first time a space was created for a pluralistic centre-left to gather.

So do you have a long-term strategy for how you will quantify Compass’ success?
I always saw my own involvement in Compass as a ten year strategy of trying to decisively influence the Labour Party, but also of building external civil society movements which can sure up and support and transform the Labour Party in office. After Robin Cook died there was no soft-left organisational voice within the Labour Party, so we try to fill that space. Perhaps more importantly we’ve built alliances with people outside the Labour Party, which is what you saw on Saturday in the breadth of people who were there. 4,000 members and 25,000 people on an email list is a start. I wish it was 40,000 members and 100,000 people on the email list but we’ll keep pushing and building.

The progressive political alliance with the Greens and Liberal Democrats and other groups, and how that can only realistically be achieved electorally through proportional representation, was the abiding theme of Saturday’s conference. Isn’t there a danger that PR is seen as a panacea for our democratic tiredness?
I agree that PR isn’t a panacea, but I do think it’s the most important part of a constitutional change agenda. It changes the culture of politics from an adversarial model and opens up a culture that is more pluralistic. Of course, we also need to reform the Lords, we need to do something about state funding, we need some kind of Bill of Rights and a written constitution – there are many elements that need to be put in place. But PR is the part that takes you from painting in black and white to painting in colour; it brings everything to life and makes new things possible in a politics that is about debate and consensus building. That’s what we want to see. But it’s going to be a tough challenge to get there and we shouldn’t think that PR will suddenly change everything – there will still be equality and sustainability to put back on to the agenda. The problem is that those things are off the agenda now because our electoral system means we only focus on voters in a few swing seats.

You mentioned in your speech on Saturday that faith groups can play a role in this new consensus. In a different session, John Harris said: “If faith groups want to deliver public services, the end game is: ‘OK, you can have your dole, but only if you accept Jesus.”
We need to find a balance between democratising the old state, breaking it down, putting communities in control of it, localising it so there’s accountability and also realising that the state can crowd out people’s own initiative and collective endeavours. But if you go back to the roots of the Labour Party it was built not in the bureaucratic state but through self-organisation in the mutuals, cooperatives, friendly societies and the trade unions. So you need a balance between a state that has democratic legitimacy and one that can deliver the resources necessary to build a more equal society. With regard to faith groups in particular, of course there need to be boundaries. I personally don’t believe in any God but I do see faith-orientated organisations doing excellent work in our communities – London Citizens, for example, have delivered the living wage for people across whole sections of London. Of course they shouldn’t impose their religious beliefs on people, but that doesn’t mean we should write off religion as a force for good in our society.

What’s your vision of the role of the private sector in the provision of services?
The private sector has always been involved in public services – as a supplier, as a builder, as a contractor – and that needs to continue. The problem is when you see only private sector delivery and organisation as the most efficient. This is the big dividing line between us and New Labour: we think public services can be better delivered through democratic practise than through market practise. The dividing line between us and the Blairites is that of an individualistic view versus a socialistic view. We believe that conversation – and the learning and consensus-building that come with that – build better solutions than the market approach, which is strips away that voice to provide a direct relationship between the producer and the consumer. That’s at the heart of the future debate of the party.

But you wouldn’t disagree with Obama when he said: “The market’s power to expand freedom is unmatched”?
We know markets are dynamic: they create growth, they provide choice, they innovate and they provide wealth. But they also tend towards crises and inequality. If we give the markets too much freedom or space, they become destructive because they have no morality. They will not stop in their quest for greater profit, no matter what the effect on society. The left has always had to come to the rescue of capitalism – and we always will – because it doesn’t know when to stop. So all the things that social democracy was set up to temper or redirect are still there. Business and the market can only grow in the rich soil of society. If we allow markets and companies to eat away at that and destroy it, eventually they eat away at and destroy themselves. That doesn’t make us anti-capitalist; it makes us pro-society.

You mentioned the future direction of the Labour Party. Many people at your conference said that New Labour is bankrupt or dead. What in your view should replace it and do you see Compass’ role as steering the party Leftward?
We don’t know what’s going to happen but we do know that political projects tend to run their course: they grow, they flourish and then they wither away. I think New Labour has had an incredibly impressive run – though it was better at the start and it lost it’s way and as a consequence of that the Party has also lost its way. 15% of the polls, the diminishing of party membership, the low level of activism, the loss of the councillor base and of party finance mean Labour cannot go on as it is currently constructed. The party needs a fundamental and fraternal debate about its future and what it stands for. That doesn’t necessarily mean that any one faction should necessarily take command or take control – there has to be a conversation about what happens next in which we learn from each other and build a new consensus, much as a new consensus was built around 1994. Whether that will be done in government or in opposition remains to be seen – but whether the next election is won, drawn or lost, intellectually and organisationally the Labour Party needs to be reshaped and Compass wants to play a big part in doing that.

Politics is all about compromise and the Labour Party is a diffuse and broad church, but often, factional compromise can lead to a lack of direction or purity of purpose…
It’s about synthesis. I learned my politics from a range of people – Tony Benn, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson – and that’s made me what I am: a left believing, modernising thinker-activist. The great breakthrough of New Labour was that it knew how to campaign, it knew how to organise and it knew we had to take business seriously and those are all things I now believe in. I want to apply those lessons of the past to a stronger set of left values. We’ve always said that New Labour is not new enough and it’s not Labour enough. What comes next can be called New Labour, too, as long as it’s genuinely new – not rooted in the politics of 25 years ago – and as long as it’s genuinely Labour. If we want to be in power but know that being in power demands a set of principles, then that sort of movement is still there to be built: a sensible, moderate, mainstream power winning organisation, but with a sense of purpose.

You’ve said before that that new purpose has to come from new policy, and not from a change in leader. But which individual do you think is best placed to enact that type of principle?
I do always think that people come from organisations and bodies of ideas and that’s what Compass is fixated on: building a way of campaigning and being active around a set of policy ideas and values and the interaction of those. Out of that you can throw up potential new leaders. Clearly we’re closely associated with Jon Cruddas, who embodies our political approach, but there are also other people in the cabinet who speak at our meetings regularly such as Harriet Harman, Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander and David Lammy. I invested too much hope and belief in Tony Blair – that was stupid of me. I probably invested slightly too much in belief in Gordon, too…

Does that view rely on hindsight?
Perhaps, but the definition of an idiot is someone who does the same thing again and again and expects a different outcome. The problem is that we got trapped in the old left politics of betrayal, of thinking ‘they let us down and they didn’t do what we wanted them to do’. That just leaves us completely disempowered as members of the Labour Party. Our job is to take responsibility for victories and for failures and to know that political leaders reflect the party and society that they operate in. Our job is to build the ideas and organisation to funnel them in the direction that we want them to go in. The reason they’ve let us down and done the wrong thing is because Rupert Murdoch is a damn sight more influential than the Labour party and the trade unions and other organisations. We have to undermine his power while building up our own – only when we empower ourselves to do that will we get the kind of leaders we deserve.

So do you sympathise with working class communities who feel threatened by migration?
The problem is that as a party we’ve opened Britain up to the capital and power of globalisation on the one hand, and on the other hand we’ve not invested in those who are on the front line of it. We’ve said that you’re part of a global market, and actually you just have to survive and thrive as an individual in that global market. To our credit, unlike Thatcher, we’ve said you haven’t got to do that on your own. We’ve trained people and educated people and done things a small state Thatcherism would never do; under Thatcher you either sank or you swam. But New Labour was just a humanisation of Thatcherism because people at the sharp end of globalisation in constituencies where housing is very cheap on the edge of big cities – where new migrant workers go – feel incredibly threatened by people who are filling up schools and using up GP services. Also, what this government has done on social housing in 12 years is pathetic, an absolute scandal. The government wanted a highly competitive market in housing to push prices up so that the middle classes felt secure. In doing that we’ve artificially created a pressure for rising house prices, while not building any new housing because that wouldn’t have allowed those other house prices to rise. So many people are fed up with the globalisation and they’re fed up of being ignored. If you’ve got the BNP knocking on your door and offering to help you with your problems, I don’t think you have to sign up to their racist agenda in order to think that they speak for you. So it’s our fault because we’ve failed to put in place the infrastructure to allow the levels of immigration that we wanted. That’s allied to the obvious political strategy under the first past the post system of saying we can take working class areas for granted while we continue to target middle class voters in so-called Middle England.

With your own financial security, you’re in a privileged position. What do you do in return?
Once upon a time I used to earn a lot more money, but I decided I didn’t want to do that any more. Instead, I wanted to live within lesser means with what Compass could afford to pay me, which wasn’t much. But I wanted to do what I believed in and in life you can’t have it all. So I’ve changed from my past and got on with what is important to me. I’ve subsidised Compass over the years by working for it for free and I give money to charity every month. I sleep at night in terms of my moral conscience about what I do and what I contribute because it seems that someone like me can try and create the political framework within which we can take the right steps and make the right changes. Could I live in more humble abode, could I give more money away and live a more frugal life? Of course I could. But we all make our decisions and live with them how we can.

Have you ever thought of running for elected office yourself?
I think about it every now and again, but building Compass is more important to me. Creating a space for people – whether it’s Jon Cruddas or Chuka in Streatham or Lillian in Nottingham …

Kingmaker…?
No, just a space creator. You need a body of ideas and a vehicle to change things. If everybody ploughed into parliament, there’d be no one outside to do anything. There are people in parliament who are very good at what they do, and people who can make a better contribution outside. I’m enjoying what I do, I can see people inside parliament who can make a difference and I want to work with them to try and make that happen.