Rediscovering the ‘Good Old Cause’ is the way to win back trust

Very interesting that Jon Cruddas should evoke the spirit of William Cobbett, the great radical and journalist, in his recent lecture to the Mile End Institute. Cobbett was the kind of English patriot whose love of his country was never stronger than when he saw its citizens abused by powers beyond their control. He fought all his life for electoral reform, becoming an MP himself later in life. The manner in which our current electoral system disenfranchises voters in safe seats would have enraged him. A strong opponent of the 1834 Poor Law, which forced those in need of support into a system of workhouses that punished poverty, he would today be attacking Iain Duncan Smith in Parliament and online.

Cruddas specifically focussed on Cobbett’s greatest work, Rural Rides, which describes how working people in the English countryside had been left destitute by the Industrial Revolution’s need for manual labour. Cobbett loved the land and its people and was deeply aggrieved to see them dislocated by economic forces beyond their control. His respect for the traditions of community turned him into a radical and he spent the rest of his life trying to help the working people of England to achieve some measure of agency through the ballot box.

Universal suffrage is now taken for granted, but today many feel as if their voices are no longer heard. Parliament still goes through the motions but the ability of the nation state to control its own destiny has been ceded to the bond markets. Globalisation has brought many benefits, as did the Industrial Revolution, but, once again, the traditions of community that bind us together have been disrupted by economic forces beyond our control.

This dislocation extends into politics. At the last election, parties outside of the mainstream attracted unprecedented support. Unable to respond to this shift in opinion, the Labour Party floundered, offering the electorate a list of policies rather than a distinctive narrative about why we sought to govern. The election of a new leader gives us the opportunity to begin to construct a new narrative and Cruddas, by evoking William Cobbett, offers us a starting point that, while being universal, is also specifically English.

Whenever Jon mentioned socialism in his lecture, he always qualified it as English, recognising that we can claim to have our own native tradition within the socialist movement. In other western European democracies, the percentage of votes won by communist parties in the 20th century regularly ran in to double figures. In England, while Marxists played an important role in shaping the agenda, communist parties were never embraced by the electorate, averaging a mere 0.2% in elections.

Here, socialism mainly took the form of workers organising for better pay and conditions, going on form a political party to deliver those benefits to everyone who needed them. Rather than abolishing capitalism, their aim was to hold it to account, and that universal idea – that none should be so mighty as to be unaccountable to the people – runs through our history like a golden thread.

Thomas Rainsborough, John Lilburne, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, the Hampden Clubs, the Chartists, all were animated by what the soldiers of the New Model Army referred to as the ‘Good Old Cause’ – holding absolute power to account.

Today, absolute power is exercised by multinational corporations that recognise no sense of responsibility towards neither their employees nor the nation states that provide their workforce and enforce their markets. Globalisation has pushed back regulations, allowing companies to divert profits into shareholder dividends while cutting back on investment and wages. Many people have been left feeling insecure, powerless. In such a climate, our traditional belief in the idea of self-determination should be the framework upon which Labour constructs its new narrative.

Firstly, we have to show that we trust the people of England by offering them devolution – not the top down imposition by Westminster of ‘powerhouse’ politics, but elected regional assemblies with Holyrood-style powers. Secondly, we must show we can work with other parties to reform the electoral system in a manner that ensures everyone’s vote counts. And thirdly, we must build on the consensus around the minimum wage to produce further initiatives that require companies to make a greater contribution to building a smarter, healthier and fairer society for all.

Freedom itself derives from our ability to hold those in power to account and that idea has always inspired radical thought in England. The ‘Good Old Cause’ is surely the common good. If Labour hope to regain the trust of the people of England, we need to take this idea and use it to empower our citizens to take greater control over their lives. Cruddas recognises the potency of self determination in his lecture: “It is for me the source of Labour’s political renewal. Not doing politics for people or to them, but with them. A politics that grows out of the people it represents”.

I’d like to finish in the same spirit as Jon, by suggesting that the party looks again at the legacy of Tony B.

No, not him.

I’m talking about Tony Benn. In his later years, he came up with a prescription for empowerment that resonates deeply in these dislocating times.

“Whenever you come up against the powerful, ask them these five questions:

What power have you got?

Where did you get it?

In whose interests do you wield it?

To whom are you accountable?

How can we get rid of you?”

If Labour is looking for a universal idea with which to engage the doubters and the disaffected, one that has deep roots in England’s history, this may be the place from which to start.