Belatedly, some in the modern Labour Party are coming to concede that the free-market system produces crises through its inherent inconsistencies. In this new environment, we are more prepared to accept collectivist responses to market failures.
Attlee’s starting point in developing policy was the belief that the wealthiest sections of society were inherently bound to support the less privileged. The comparison with the likes of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson is stark. Eleven years ago, the latter declared that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. The future Business Secretary and de facto Deputy Prime Minister did add “as long as they paid their taxes”, but the pertinent part of his comment is the revelation of his attitude to excessive and extravagant wealth.
It is important not to define the Methodist element in Labour’s origins too widely. Blair associated himself with a sort of Christian socialism, but a feature of this was his concentration on an individualistic relationship with the Almighty, which easily facilitated his transition into the Roman Catholic Church with its offer of the confessional to resolve failures in personal behaviour.
Contrast this with Attlee’s impatience with the sort of of Christian charity that has a narrow focus on specific acts do-gooding and is largely irrelevant to the general needs of the poor. Attlee’s ideology and the practical policies of the 1945 Labour Government were geared to addressing these in comprehensive and enduring ways.
Under Blair and Brown, Labour’s policies in areas such as education and health have conflicted with the party’s founding principles. Contrary to Brown’s one-time boast, the days of boom and bust are not over. However, during the boom period, Labour ministers and MPs mixed with people who had accumulated eye-watering amounts of cash. It seems to have occurred to some of them that the financial rules of the House of Commons could be used to their advantage and remunerate them in similar fashion – as they thought they should be rewarded. When they were caught out, a long and dishonourable list of Labour MPs expected us to think that because the rules were devised under a Tory administration, this was sufficient justification for behaviour totally odds with all Labour once stood for.
Ann and Alan Keen, for instance, have been dubbed “Mr and Mrs Expenses”. Although their constituencies are just a few miles from Westminster, they used parliamentary expenses to purchase a flat in Waterloo. In addition, they sought to use their expenses to claim life insurance for each other. The squatter occupation of their house also brought Labour into disrepute. Consequently, the Keens’ seats may not be the only Labour ones in London at risk as a result of their behaviour.
Even right-wing commentators are pointing out that Labour seems to have forgotten the reasons why it was created. As Harold Wilson once said: “The Labour Party is a crusade or it is nothing.” Two years after Gordon Brown decided not to hold a general election so he could show us his vision for the country, how many people are now clear about what he stands for?
As well as pledging not to fiddle their expenses, Labour’s candidates at the next general election should be required to read up on Clement Attlee – perhaps the party’s most successful and principled Prime Minister.
When one of his trade ministers, John Belcher, compromised his portfolio by accepting gifts, including cash and a holiday, Attlee sacked him on the spot. It may be too late now, but Labour’s current National Executive Committee should still demand similar from Brown in response to even the suspicion of sleaze.
Meanwhile, the puzzling thing is why Brown has chosen to taken such strong action against a few MPs by ensuring their deselection, but done nothing about others.
Unfortunately, the malaise is not confined to the House of Commons. First Blair and now Brown have chosen to use the House of Lords as a source for Cabinet ministers. Attlee did not have to appoint peers to his Cabinet. But we are expected to believe there is so little ability among the current of crop of Labour MPs that the Prime Minster has to stick the likes of Peter Mandelson and Alan Sugar in the Upper Chamber in order to get a sufficient number of competent people to help him run his administration.
Labour policy should be to abolish the House of Lords, not jump thorough an increasingly bizarre series of hoops to keep it in existence.
Over the past few years, Labour’s NEC and its annual conference have been stripped of power and influence, while the party’s principles have been eroded. In a few months, what remains of Labour’s rank and file will have to forget their reservations and campaign harder than they ever have before to keep the present Government in office and David Cameron’s Tories out. Those members will also have to fill in for the swathes of those who have left a party they no longer recognise as genuinely Labour.
Those who remain are going to have their work cut out. Of course, the recession is not wholly Labour’s fault, but the buck stops with the Government – especially one that has been in power for 12 years. And erstwhile Labour supporters struggling to make ends meet in a world of foreclosures and redundancies may find it hard to believe the party’s current leaders are the best people to represent their interests.
After Labour’s fourth successive general election defeat in 1992, some of us were prepared to accept almost any form of watering down of the party’s belief system if that meant ousting the Tories. What we did not anticipate was that the corrosion of core values would produce Labour politicians who are now dismissed as primarily interested in their own financial gain.
The predictable response to those who argue that Labour must go back to its values if it is to survive is that we can do nothing for those we purport to represent if we do not have power. But the political environment has changed dramatically.
Attlee’s Government was elected in a time of crises – there had just been a world war. Labour then recognised that desperate social and economic problems required radical and progressive solutions. As Tony Benn once said, the capitalist crisis is not a reason for delaying the introduction of democratic socialism, but grounds for speeding up its implementation.
Labour voters may not necessarily want sackcloth and ashes from the party’s MPs, but they are entitled to expect that they are not sending them to the House of Commons merely to merely provide a route to the sort of riches so easily accommodated by Blair, Brown and Mandelson.
