Could a little revolution start in Barnsley?

The Paul Richards column

I really want to belong to a Labour Party that can select a former officer in the parachute regiment as a parliamentary candidate. Dan Jarvis spent 15 years in the parachute regiment, and served in the Balkans, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. Now he wants to be the Labour candidate in the Barnsley Central by-election, triggered by the resignation of expenses fraudster Eric Illsley. Some caveats – I’ve not spoken to Mr Jarvis before writing this column, and I fully support the right of local party members to make their choice. If they want to select someone who’s served time on some committee on Barnsley council rather than served their country in a red beret, then I will fully back their decision. But the opportunity to select someone with such a record of service and wealth of experience should be taken seriously when the comrades in Barnsley make their choice.

Alan Johnson’s resignation from the front-bench makes the parliamentary party even more mono-cultural. Gordon Brown’s ex-special advisers now occupy key positions in the leadership of our party. On Wednesday David Cameron could point to the two Eds in PMQs and call them ‘Brown’s henchmen’. (Rich coming from Lamont’s bag-carrier). The de-industrialisation of the PLP has been well-documented. This week Andrew Neil had a programme called Posh and Posher on BBC2, decrying the rise of the SPAD. Where once former dockers and miners mingled with lawyers, journalists and soldiers, now the closest most have come to manual labour is changing a toner cartridge. The name ‘Labour’ is probably challengeable under the trades descriptions act.

But the dearth of anyone with a military background in the PLP is a major weakness. I think Eric Joyce is the only current Labour MP who has served in the army, unless anyone knows different. It is certainly true that the Labour Cabinet ministers who sent British troops (like Dan Jarvis) to conflicts in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan had no military experience. I’m not advocating a military junta. But it is unhealthy to have a PLP devoid of any experience beyond politics. Many people’s all-time favourite Labour politician Clement Attlee had served in the First World War. He joined in 1914, and remained as a front-line infantry officer until 1918. He fought at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia, and on the Western Front. He was known as ‘Major’ Attlee until his death in 1967.

Several of the post-war Labour greats – Benn, Healey, Callaghan, Jenkins – had served in the Second World War. The high-priest of revisionism Tony Crosland had served (like Dan Jarvis) in the Parachute Regiment. Such experience allowed the Wilson and Callaghan Cabinets to make the big decisions on everything from Vietnam to the withdrawal from East of Suez from a position of some first-hand experience of warfare.

It’s great that we have so many ex-special advisers, councillors and trade union staff in the parliamentary Labour Party. They bring important political skills and insights to the job of holding this rotten government to account. They form the cadre from which Ed Miliband will be able to select the ministers in the next Labour government. Yet I don’t want the next Labour government to be made up only of such people. After 1997, the Labour governments were made better by the presence of John Prescott, Alan Johnson, Hazel Blears, Ian McCartney and others with a broader experience than Oxbridge, the IPPR, or working for Gordon or Tony. Labour needs a parliamentary party with as much variegation and granularity as the society we seek to transform.

Wouldn’t it be great if party members in Barnsley started a little revolution?