What’s so moral about a crusade?

“This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.”

How often have we all heard this from Harold Wilson? I used to love this quote. It was comforting in the surety it displayed about our Party and it’s place in the world. I know I have deployed it to back up an argument I was making – probably against someone more centrist than me – that Labour – when faced with a choice – should always do the “right” thing rather than the politically expedient thing.

But recently, this quote has troubled me. Because I don’t think we are a moral crusade. And I really hope we aren’t nothing. And I think seeing things in these terms are part of our problem.

In Rafael Behr’s superb piece on the problems of Labour’s machine politics he opens with the wonderful line “If knocking on doors and shoving pamphlets through letterboxes were efficient ways to change minds, Britain would have a lot more Jehovah’s Witnesses and a Labour government.” This tying together of religious and political proselytising is of course not new. From the birth of the Party there has always been a touch of Methodism in our madness. It may be this that gives us this sense of moral mission. It almost certainly gave rise to all that pamphleteering. While the Church of England has often been described as the Tory Party at prayer, we prefer a more bombastic style.  But there’s a reason we don’t have the same problem with religion in politics and public life they have in the USA. Bombastic isn’t really the British – or at least English – way.

Of course the Labour Party needs to have a reason for people to vote for us and these must be rooted in ways to change our country for the better. But we don’t convince people we have the right solutions by employing the mannerism of preachers. But even more. if we think of ourselves in these terms we risk adopting the very worst of what religious fervour can do both to individuals and to groups.

Let us remind ourselves of what the actual Crusades led to. Massacres and long term military madness. Enemies so convinced they had moral right on their side, they would kill anyone who disagreed with them. Awful behaviour in the cause of the “greater good” was actively encouraged through Papal forgiveness of all sins of those who fight. Later on the Inquisition tortured in the name of their own moral crusade. These actions were all undertaken in the name of morality. So what is a moral crusade when it can lead to such appalling behaviours.

Not that Labour Party members have been killing for the cause. But our own moral mission comes all too often with an unhealthily large dose of piety and preachiness. Oh and a really, really unhealthy dose of seeking out our heretics. (something again I too have been all too guilty of in the past).  Here’s a little secret for you: Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall, Mary Creagh and Yvette Cooper and even Jeremy Corbyn probably agree with between 80% and 90% of what each other says. When this is all over, they will serve together to fight for the next Labour victory. But from the vitriol currently being spouted by their supporters against each other you’d think the Labour Party were in real danger of electing the Devil incarnate. We aren’t. We will end up with a leader on the Centre Left spectrum who will go on to enthuse and disappoint supporters and internal opponents alike.

Leadership matters. A sense of shared purpose matters. But so does the ability to question that leadership and purpose. By equating our politics with moral crusades we make it harder to speak the same language and develop a shared understanding with those who aren’t true believers. We also make it harder to question ourselves.

The Labour Party is not nothing. It is a vehicle for achieving the ambitions we have for a more equal and just society. But can we please make sure that vehicle is not allowed to be a high horse.