Worse than 1983? Why Labour’s renewal might have to wait

By Adam Gladstone

Does Labour have a future? If the recent coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats holds and indeed even proves successful, then will this provide the Labour Party with more room to manoeuvre on the centre-left, as some optimistic Labour members hope, or will it put into question its very raison d’être, as those of us with a more pessimistic bent fear?

There is obviously a leadership election to be endured before any proper attempt can be made to ask the really serious and far-reaching questions with which I believe party members need to engage. I do not subscribe to the view that a leadership election is the perfect vehicle for some soul-searching. My lowly experience as a local councillor has provided me with more than enough evidence that when individuals are jockeying for power, careful and considered questioning of what future direction the Labour Party should follow will not be figuring highly in their calculations. I make no criticism, it is just human nature. But I don’t think we should be naive or ridiculously idealistic about it either. It is only once the leader emerges that the party can start the process of renewal and even reinvention that it requires. For it is only once we have put aside all the ‘personality’ discussion that seems to bedevil modern politics as it does modern life that we can then focus on the issues and what accommodations will need to be made between the leadership and ordinary party members.

The vocabulary we use will play a crucial role. Is it possible for us to reclaim the word ‘socialism’ or does that word have too many negative connotations for too many people, particularly in large areas of England? Can we re-establish ‘equality’ as a goal of a future government, and not the mealy-mouthed phrase ‘equality of opportunity’? Do we have the self-confidence to argue the virtues of centralism over the limits and flaws of localism, at least as defined by Liberal Conservatives?

The answer to these questions, and many others will need to be found over the coming months and years. Harold Wilson famously declared in 1961 that the Labour Party “is a moral crusade or it is nothing”, at that year’s Party Conference. While he may have been playing to the gallery to improve his own standing within the Party, he also happened to be absolutely right and the last 13 years of office have left many of us in the party feeling that sense of nihilistic despair.

The Labour Party has, in truth, been teetering on the edge of being ‘nothing’ for quite a few years now. That is why the situation is far worse than in 1983. It is not just that we barely scraped past our 1983 vote share of 28.3%, even though we faced a far less credible Conservative Party not basking in post-Falklands approval ratings. As Tony Blair rightly said in his last party conference speech, “If we can’t take this lot apart in the next few years we shouldn’t be in the business of politics at all.”

But to obsess about vote share would be to miss the more fundamental point. No one could doubt in 1983 that those who were members of the Labour Party were involved in a moral crusade. There were different interpretations of what that crusade should consist of in terms of policy, but that Labour members from across the political spectrum, whatever their sometimes vitriolic personal divisions, were collectively part of a moral crusade was universally recognised.

I do not believe the same can be said today. Too many associated with our thirteen years in power were careerists, completely unconnected to our party, solely interested in Labour as a vehicle for their own personal ambitions and advancement.

However, Gordon Brown’s speeches in the final week of the campaign did provide me with a glimmer of hope. He seemed to remember, right at the point when his political career was ending, what the Labour Party was meant to be about. And there has been an encouraging response to Labour’s defeat from many in the party who seem positively energised by the great task that faces us as we attempt to create a Labour Party that is capable of launching the great moral crusade in the 21st Century.

Tony Crosland wrote ‘The Future of Socialism‘ over 50 years ago. Much of it has dated, but more remarkable is how much hasn’t. All party members should read a copy (it was reissued in 2006 in a special commemorative edition) and then some should set about the task of writing their own treatises in a similarly intellectual and all-encompassing way. For it is only with such a thorough and intellectualised response that we will avoid merely rebranding ourselves, as opposed to participating in a genuine act of renewal.