Peter Mandelson and David Miliband have pronounced that New Labour is dead. The former announced somewhat theatrically that: “New Labour died on May 7”. The latter, somewhat glibly, has said it is now time for “Next Labour”. Before the best minds and energies of those who became most exercised by the vacuities of the Third Way become bogged down in this latest non sequitur, we should ask if Mandelson is right.
On one level, New Labour may be as dead as Monty Python’s parrot. As revisionist construct, it may finally have passed – leaving in its wake a casualty list of five million lost voters and a party reduced to its core areas (and what irony there). But New Labour in its command-and-control authoritarianism lives on. It will take more than a couple of soundbites to drive a stake through what passes for its heart.
For a start, none of the frontrunners in the Labour leadership election has yet offered a serious manifesto – one which takes account of how and why the party lost and suggests new policies around which we can begin to re-build. While offering platitudes and some regret for “errors” such as the Iraq war and the restricting of civil liberties, none have actually apologised for the error of their ways – although in fairness one of the candidates, Ed Miliband, was not in the House of Commons when the invasion of Iraq was launched.
When it comes to the abuse of the party rulebook over the past decade, New Labour has shown itself to be an expert. Labour cannot move on until the whole party faces up to what the architects and supporters of New Labour did. It cannot move on until democracy and accountability are restored, and party members are returned powers to determine policy and select candidates in a truly democratic fashion. The gerrymandering of the party conference, the obsession with spin over substance, the abuse of those who have been blacklisted and blocked from standing as candidates: all of this has to go before we can truly consider New Labour in the past tense.
There is a mechanism that could help in this process. For this, we must thank Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the African National Congress. I would like to propose the setting up of a Labour Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Its meetings would be held in public and its findings and recommendations publicised and presented to the National Executive Committee and the Labour Party conference, demanding action. The commission hearings would be open to any Labour member who believes he or she has been a victim of malpractice, or who has positive proposals for making Labour democratic again. We could ask a respected figure in the labour movement, such as Helena Kennedy, Keith Ewing or Bob Marshall-Andrews, to chair the commission.
All leadership hopefuls should be asked whether they agree in principle with the creation of a Labour truth and reconciliation commission and if – in addition to appearing in televison debates – they are prepared to come and give evidence to it. This process need not be a long drawn out affair, and would draw the poison from accumulated wounds. We know that many women and ethnic minorities have been badly treated by centralised candidate selection panels, so how would they propose to improve things? We know that Labour performed better in constituencies where there is still an active membership, so how can we overturn over a decade of closing down “difficult” CLPs and depriving members of a genuine say over policy? We know that many good party officials have been asked to do things they know are not right, so how do we ensure that they always act impartially?
New Labour’s drift to authoritarianism, its move towards extended detention without trial, jury-free trials, a blind eye towards illegal extraordinary rendition and torture, seemed to follow from the authoritarianism directed against the party itself. So it follows that examining what went wrong and admitting our mistakes are essential in achieving a change of culture in the party and those who aspire to lead it –?now and in the future. Such a process could also begin to open up the policy debate at a time when Labour desperately needs to find a way of reconnecting with its natural supporters and those it needs to support it at the next election.
If Tribune readers are interested in taking the idea of a Labour truth and justice commission forward, I would be interested to hear from them. Please contact me at: seddonm@verizon.net.
Mark Seddon is a former editor of Tribune
