In defence of Maurice Glasman

By Patrick Macfarlane

I’m gay. I also run a blog, voluntarily and for no financial reward, dedicated to discussing the recently formed ‘blue Labour’ pressure group headed by Labour peer Maurice Glasman.

The idea that I would bother to do this if he was, as is now being suggested by various people in the wake of Labour shadow minister Helen Goodman’s critique, a misogynistic homophobe who believes in “white people’s ‘entitlements'”, is frankly laughable.

Glasman has spent the last decade working with London Citizens to secure a living wage for low-paid female and male manual workers in the capital, frequently from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The ebook (The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox) to which Goodman refers has contributions from Hazel Blears, Andrea Westall and Sally Davison. There are indeed more male than female contributors, but that is an indictment of modern British politics and academia, not Blue Labour.

And the quotations which both Goodman and now, in the height of irony, the Daily Mail, have picked up on (all from a single essay by Jonathan Rutherford) have been taken completely out of context.

Rutherford charts the social changes that took place over the course of the last 150 years, from gay liberation to middle class female employment.

At no point does he say that we would be better off winding back time. He merely chooses to highlight that incredibly positive changes to the structure of society have brought about unexpected challenges, and raised new questions which we must now consider (about which, he says “there is no consensus of opinion”).

“What will provide the ethical basis of civic virtue and decency, and who, apart from the state, will hold in check the anti-social behaviour of young men?” he asks. “When does one become an adult and what does it mean to be an adult man or woman? What sexual and personal politics for Labour?”

Meanwhile Helen Goodman writes:

“Reading Blue Labour on women and black people what is striking is that they seem to have no concept of a person. Rather than seeing all people as ends not means, they seem to take the view that some people are more ‘people’ than others.”

This is nothing short of libel. The implication is that Blue Labour is a racially discriminatory, misogynistic group, and has absolutely no foundation in the Blue Labour ebook – nor does Goodman attempt to provide one.

Is she seriously telling us that David Lammy and Hazel Blears – both contributors – see women and ethnic minorities as ‘lesser’ people? I suggest readers take a look at the book before accepting Goodman’s version of its contents.

But the most curious thing about Goodman’s critique, Tradition and Change, is how much of it could have been written by a Blue Labour thinker. Her passage on farming communities, for example, could have been lifted from The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox:

“Here is a very long-standing community operating on co-operative principles, mutually responsible and it is this very mode of production which has protected the environment. The Labour government did not do especially well by these people and we need to think again. The party is too urban and fails to respect rural communities, or understand their skills.”

And at the heart of Blue Labour, too, lies a single observation: consumerism and commodification is destroying communal life.

It has nothing to do with trying to roll back feminism, halt attempts to secure gay marriage or exclude ethnic minorities from political discourse. Quite the contrary. Blue Labour seeks to bring historically oppressed groups into the mainstream, providing them with the same tools and opportunities that straight white men have had to achieve self-fulfilment: the bonds of solidarity, family and community.

It bemoans the way the market can do the opposite, seeking to segregate individuals into target advertising groups who are constantly required to assert their own ‘authentic’ tastes, and thereby detach them from those they love.

If members of the Parliamentary Labour Party feel uncomfortable with this; with recognising the deep social malaise in many British communities after the administration of 15 years of neo-liberal economics, perhaps they should examine the words of the first of their number, Keir Hardy, when addressing the Commons:

“The present day is a Mammon worshipping age. Socialism proposes to dethrone the brute god Mammon, and to lift humanity into its place.”

If only Labour were brave enough to say the same today, rather than dismissing constructive criticism as the work of bigots.