The Labour Party or nothing

By Ryan Thomas

Compass chair Neal Lawson and Guardian journalist John Harris have recently volleyed an ideological football into the left-of-centre chatterati, with various iterations published at the New Statesman, The Guardian, and here. Their contribution engages with the searching, self-reflexive post-New Labour and post-election discourse that seeks to answer the question “Where to from here?” While we have the ability to wait to develop policy specifics, what we do need are some ideological moorings that establish the party’s overall direction of travel. Harris and Lawson’s contribution to this debate, therefore, should be welcomed.

Harris and Lawson attempt to find an ideological rudder that can ground Labour in something deeper than the triangulating electoral machine that New Labour, at its worst, became. To that end, they advocate a turn to “New Socialism”. There is much to praise about what they are arguing for, such as a focus on transnationalism, regulation, environmentalism, and an effort to craft a culture rooted in more than the desire to “earn and own“. However, some of its assumptions and arguments deserve interrogation, if only to move the conversation forward in a comradely fashion.

Key to their argument is a disenchantment with post-WWII Labour politics, in both its Old and New Labour flavours, both of which they argue are unfit for the challenges and complexities of contemporary society. On the one hand you have Old Labour, statist and locked into a monolithic understanding of the working class. On the other is New Labour, too obsessed with electoral success to resist the dangers of unfettered neoliberalism. Curiously, they argue that “it is as if New Labour and Old Labour have fought each other to a standstill,” a point that seems to suggest either that Harris and Lawson have covered their eyes and ears for the past sixteen years or that they are grasping for a philosophy to model their arguments against that does not cast them in too left-wing a mould, a suspicion only reinforced by the awkward prefix of “New”, which, rather than signaling boldness is instead indicative of their timidity.

Harris and Lawson rail against Labour’s “statism”, believing that the age of the state is over. Seemingly working from an a priori assumption that the state is, at best, a relic of a bygone era and, at worst, an intrusive evil, they argue that what matters is democratizing civil society to empower citizens to make choices that benefit them in education, healthcare, and so on. The problem, however, with “liberating” education and healthcare from the “bureaucratic” state, is that it does not stray from the mantra of “choice” that pervaded the second and third terms of Tony Blair and plays directly into the hands of the coalition, where neither party is likely to defend the role of the state in society.

It is very easy to rail against the state as “big brother”, intruding into our civil liberties by way of DNA databases, ID cards, and the like, but this is mutually exclusive to an active state intervening to create and maintain an equitable society. During the leadership election, both Diane Abbott and Ed Balls forcefully disavowed the claim that the state is “too big”, pointing to the many thousands of people across Britain who depend on the state for their very survival. When we join the chorus of voices rallying against “big government” we play into the hands of our enemies, those we want an atomized society of individuals rather than a society of thriving communities whose lives are benefited from an active, engaged state that enabled them to live their lives to the fullest, from the cradle to the grave. We should defend the state, not attack it.

Just as troubling is their attack on “Labourism” – “the view that ‘socialism’ can be delivered from the centre by one – and only one – all-seeing, all-powerful, monolithic party” – in the name of that old Compass chestnut, pluralism. In doing so, they reveal themselves as pessimists who can no longer see Labour as a vehicle of social change. In order to fit in with the epoch of coalition politics, we must forge alliances with Liberal Democrats, Greens, Plaid Cymru, and the SNP if we are ever to affect change in Britain again. This is a profoundly defeatist outlook, one that rejects the concept of the unitary political party as an engine for reform.

Pluralism is, of course, important, but the terms of the debate should be about how we make Labour more pluralistic by bringing lost members back into the fold, reinvigorating party democracy, engaging with students, pensioners groups, and others affected by the coalition government’s draconian cuts, and bringing union members closer to party decision-making instead of treating them like embarrassing relatives. What the debate need not be about is soggy compromises with other parties, particularly with the Liberal Democrats, who are aiding in the willful destruction of our communities. That the Labour Party is a “broad church” is a cliché, but one that bears repeating. Far from calling for a coalition of the left, the Labour Party is a coalition of the left. To use the church analogy, our efforts should be focused on bringing people of different faiths into our congregation to ensure that ours is a pluralistic church.

Where Harris and Lawson are correct is in their assertion that we need a new political paradigm to deal with the issues and anxieties of the age. It will no longer do for Labour to operate in the political contours carved out by Thatcherism, which New Labour adapted to with great electoral success but with little resistance to Thatcherism’s more harmful dogmas. The Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci once said:

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”.

With resistance mounting against this coalition government and its insidious cuts, it could be legitimately argued that the old order is indeed dying; the “morbid symptoms” in this interregnum are numerous, from cuts to higher education funding, to the trebling of tuition fees, to the privatization-by-stealth of the NHS. All represent a sustained attack on the victories achieved by the Labour movement.

There exists now an ideological vacuum waiting to be filled. To simply survey society as it is will no longer do. It is with good reason that the two most influential post-war British Prime Ministers are Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. Both of their governments shaped Britain into the kind of society they wanted, shaping a new consensus in the process. It is time to destroy the poisonous Thatcher legacy and create a new consensus. The conditions are there. The only vehicle for this change is the Labour Party, for as Aneurin Bevan famously said, “It is the Labour Party or nothing”.