Liberty. Let’s reclaim it

Liberty, equality and solidarity are the political philosophies upon which the Labour Party was formed. The intellectual history of the party from its nineteenth century origins in the labour movement, through the twentieth century, and into the 21st century is underpinned by these three central tenets. However, there grew a perception that hardened into a realisation that New Labour harboured little real commitment to one of these founding principles. The 13 years of New Labour saw an erosion of liberties without precedent in modern British political history. The machine was out of control. In any democracy the requirement of freedom wrestles with the necessity of security. But New Labour needs to accept that it got it drastically wrong on the issue of liberty.

In 1997, the new Labour Prime Minister sent a note to Isaiah Berlin, who lay on his deathbed in Oxford. Berlin had been the dominant political theorist behind much of the post war thought on liberty. He had developed a celebrated distinction between two kinds of liberty – between the simple “negative” liberty of the individual to be free from external interference or coercion, and the “positive” liberty to take control of one’s life and the freedom to do x or y. Blair was clearly intrigued and, displaying all the curiosity and intellectual arrogance of an undergraduate, sought to challenge Berlin on his own theory. Blair sent the note just a month before Berlin was to die, and was clearly too ill to respond – so we will never know the outcome had Blair been challenged on his assumptions.

Gordon Brown too displayed a deep intellectual commitment to the concept of liberty. In October 2007, still basking in his honeymoon, he delivered a speech at the University of Westminster. For those keen students of history and politics it was a masterful description of the British tradition of liberty. “I want to explore how together we can write a new chapter in our country’s story of liberty,” Brown said, continuing: “It is central to our tradition of civil liberties that no one should be held arbitrarily, and it is right that the longer someone is detained, the more concerns there are about arbitrary treatment.” Amen, comrade.

What went wrong? Advocates of liberty on the left need not be categorised as laissez-faire libertarians. Nor are we, as Jack Straw put it, “Hampstead liberals” or believe in “airy-fairy” liberties, as the draconian David Blunkett stupidly said. Moreover, New Labour created the paradoxical situation where people were oppressed or surveyed in the name of freedom. This paradox, that defending values requires infringing them, is unjustified.

As part of Labour’s renewal to win back public trust it will need to demonstrate a different approach. Reasserting liberty’s place alongside solidarity and equality in the progressive pantheon would be a good place to start. This will not work if politicians dismiss the plea of liberty as irrelevant. It also will not work when the public is fatalistic or lulled into thinking liberty is consigned to the history pages. For too long Labour politicians and large parts of the media treated liberties with contempt. Labour’s proud tradition – and the soul of its core support – was destroyed.

Blair in 1997 and Brown in 2007 ultimately moved a long way from their original thoughts. The authoritarian zeal that ran through much of New Labour’s thought would have been an anathema to those in the early moments of the party that prescribed liberty, equality and solidarity as the traditional social democratic principles. Indeed, our original party logo had ‘liberty’ festooned across it. Let’s reclaim it.