Blunkett: Now Wait For Labour’s Thugs To March Again
From a moderniser who spent the 1980s battling hard Left bruisers...
Intimidation and bullying in the interests of just a few
MANY readers must be wondering what all the fuss is about following the Labour leadership election. Will it really mean substantial changes to British democracy and will it inevitably lead to the Labour Party fracturing?
Well, in my lifetime – and that means more than 50 years as a member of the Labour Party – prophets of doom and gloom have abounded. At moments when my party seemed down and out, it has, like the Conservatives after 1997, confounded the pundits.
So the question is not whether the Labour Party can place itself in a position of being an alternative government as opposed to being a vigorous and, for some people, an entertaining Opposition – but how long it will take
The new leadership and those around them have tapped into an anti-establishment, antiausterity, anti-war mood.
Ironically, it will be their determination not to compromise, including with the electorate, which will bring them down. Because disillusionment will follow as night follows day when it becomes clear that they are disengaged from, and in a parallel universe to, the bulk of the electorate.
Those of us who have seen this all before can forgive young people eager for something new and those under 40 who have no meaningful recollection of the politics of the 1980s. The same cannot be said for the zealots who have re-emerged to capture the Labour Party and take it back to a bygone era.
FOR this is not an ‘experiment’ which is being tried for the first time. All the ingredients are the same as 30 years ago. Everyone is familiar with voters deserting parties. This time, as in the early 1980s, this could be about a party deserting the voters!
Just as in the days of the landslide victory for Margaret Thatcher in 1983, her victory in 1987 and the fourth consecutive Tory term in 1992, large swathes of the membership of the Labour Party are not on the same page as those who turned out to vote in a General Election.
Before his untimely death in May 1994, the former leader of Labour, John Smith remarked to me that if he was faced with political excitement on the one hand, and the possibility of being in power on the other, it was a no-brainer to go for the latter. But for a whole variety of reasons which have been heavily trailed over the last four months, Labour activists and newly signed-up voters for the internal election, are in large numbers looking to be reassured that there is a profound alternative to Labour’s recent attempt to cope with global financial and political forces, and that new forms of opposition will somehow lead to electoral success.
But the lessons from the early 1980s are not just about deepseated and heartfelt opposition to draconian public expenditure cuts – now known as austerity – or as then, the reconfiguring of the welfare state. No, there is something more profound in the similarity with what is happening now.
Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson have been elected as leader and deputy on an emotional spasm. For those who were never convinced by our repeated defeats – nor for that matter by the three-times election to government – that Labour needed to accommodate a rapidly changing world in which facing modernity did not entail capitulation but a very different approach to achieving the aims and values which still unite large swathes of potential supporters, nothing has changed.
As in the 1980s, the desire to resist change, to fight every single move that shifted from existing certainties, is powerful. It is as, if you willed the world not to change, if you resisted it strongly enough, and if you were vocal enough, you could hold on to what you knew. It was, in fact, the most conservative of political stances and sadly it led to the biggest betrayal of all – the failure to win office and to be able to bring about positive change for those without wealth and privilege.
It was not, therefore, failing to achieve everything that Labour wanted to do, that its supporters hoped to achieve, that led to disillusionment and mistrust. It was a failure to adapt and adopt new forms of politics which would recognise the sources of power internationally; to use the resources of government to empower individuals in their own lives, and in playing a part in their community; to reconfigure the way services are delivered, giving the consumer the opportunity to challenge market forces and vested interests; and above all, to not revert back to a bygone era. But there is one other lesson of the early 1980s that we must not have to learn all over again. This was a form of internal politics which can only be described as thuggery: the attempt to intimidate, to bully and to manipulate the internal processes of the Labour Party in the interests of a few while proclaiming that this was for the benefit of the many.
SO JEREMY Corbyn and the newly emerged cohort of self-styled radicals who surround him need to give some urgent reassurances and then demonstrate that they mean them. Jeremy is not a thug but those hanging on his coat-tails have been less than reassuring in their pronouncements. What we need to be aware of is the danger of an iron fist in a velvet glove. The reassurances needed include: no dramatic shifts in commitments already embedded through the process of policy-making within the party without a proper process of discussion and change.
No self-styled presidential announcements at conferences without consultation and engagement with the membership.
No threats to Labour MPs to deselect them, or organised intimidation at branch and constituency level, which was such a hallmark of the unpleasant past.
And no wholesale sackings or pressure to remove loyal staff who have given so much over so long in endeavouring to get Labour elected.
Historically, we have always given new leaders the benefit of the doubt, showing unbelievable loyalty even in the face of obvious defeat. With the referendum on our place in Europe and the Mayoral, local and Scottish Parliament elections just over the horizon, the new leadership will know that loyalty will not be set aside easily.
But they must also be clear. Those who deliver the leaflets, knock on the doors, man the telephones and engage in campaigning on social media, are not the ‘here today gone tomorrow’ fair-weather friends attracted by old certainties, paternalistic promises and topdown solutions. Instead, it is those who have given their lives through thick and thin, who will once again be expected to pick up the pieces.
I pray there will be enough of them left when the time comes to ensure that a united and coherent voice for the centre and centre-Left of British politics will be there to ensure that our democracy works in the interests of us all.