Has the Labour Party become too broad a church?

A great Scot and Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie, formed the Independent Labour party because he felt that the Liberal Party would not represent the working class although it relied on their votes.

Gordon Brown, also a Labour Party leader, calls for 'a government of all the talents' and invites strange people like Shirley Williams into it. Now we have more sleaze with Peter Hain's deputy leader campaign money. Now Peter calls himself a 'libertarian socialist', whatever that means. I'm sure he thinks he is, but all I remember is, he was the leader of the Young Liberals, not the Young Socialists. Must be something to do with him becoming Welsh.

There must be a base to the Labour Party's socialism. Sure we don't need another clause four, but we do need more than the wishy-washy liberalism the leadership gives us today. They are talking about nationalizing Northern Rock, but only because they know the public is watching and won't accept an old friends deal with likes of Richard Branson. There's just too much tax-payers money already in the kitty.

I do fail to understand how campaigning for the deputy leader's post can cost so much. It's an internal party election so a candidate just needs to get his views out to the party faithful in the branches, parliament and the unions. So you build a website, travel to branch meetings, produce a few thousand pamphlets, and spend £10,000. The money Peter Hain forgot to declare was £103,000 and that was just part of what he spent. What did he spend the money on? Were the candidates buying TV spots? I just don't see it.

The Labour Party Part 3

In the 1980s sitting Labour MPs found themselves in danger from the reforms the Constituency Labour Parties, CLP, were pushing through. The ability of the local parties to de-select their MP meant they could be pushed off the gravy train. (I heard Shirley Williams, no friend of left, describing how when looking for a constituency Tony Blair called the local party members 'comrade' to show what a good socialist he was. Re-selection does seem a good idea when faced with such blatant ambition and opportunism;-)

The Parliamentary Labour Party fought back against this attack on their job security and won. To win they had two big weapons. First a left-wing leader, Neil Kinnock, to take on the far left, and second, a good target for media in the Militant Tendency. He attacked them relentlessly and had them expelled from the party. From here on in the power of the CLP was drastically reduced and the PLP wrote the rules.

The birth of New Labour comes out of this destruction of the traditional balance of power within the party. It was not that much later that the power of the unions was also reduced. (The outcome of this we see today with all sleaze related to the major financing of the party by wealthy individuals instead of the unions.) With no opposition within the party the PLP was able to turn its back on Labour's history and any socialist ideology.

There are a few myths around that don't really stand up to scrutiny. First that Kinnock, Smith, Blair and Brown were making the party more democratic. In fact they made it more centralized and self-serving for the leadership. That the unions were somehow to blame when in truth they were never that far to the left. And lastly that it needed this move to the right to be able to take on Tories and win. The truth was that the Tories beat themselves in the end with internal fighting and sleaze.

Were the Militant Tendency to blame? Partly, as they gave Kinnock and company the target to destroy the CLP's power. As revolutionary socialists they saw nothing wrong with the strategy they used, but in hindsight all they did was open door to the right. Probably the most important lesson to be learnt was that most Labour MPs were, and are now, there for things other than socialist principles. Britain's main socialist party was and is represented in parliament by people who were not socialist in the slightest.

The Labour Party Part 2

Up until the 1980s Labour was controlled from the centre or the right of the party. The balance was usually in favour of the combination of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and the trade union leadership. The Constituency Labour Parties (CLP) leant more to left as they were run by local activists.

This balancing act did run into trouble under Wilson when two of the major unions, the transport workers and the engineering union, did swing to the left. Even here though the unions were more interested in pay and conditions than forcing the whole party to left. Hugh Scanlon of engineers was not especially political although along with Jack Jones of transport workers he was an ex-Communist Party member.

The campaign for more democracy inside the party was not started by the right and New Labour. It had been going for a long time initiated by the left to make the party more responsive to the activists in the CLP. Nye Bevin had relied on the constituency parties as his power base. It reached its peak in the 80s as the local parties tried to bring in rules allowing them to re-select their local MPs. Although often blamed, it wasn't the unions who would have been responsible for a left swing by the party if it had been successful, it would have been a new left leaning PLP teaming up with the CLP.

This was a slow moving process. At the beginning we saw the 'Gang of Four' leave the party to form a new social democrat party. It could well have succeeded as there was a move to left by many inside and outside the party against Thatcherism. The problem was that there was such a good target for the right and centre of the party to aim at in the Militant Tendency.

The Militant Tendency was practicing a strategy used by other Leninist groups of 'entryism'. This where the revolutionary group takes control of an existing, usually reformist, party. Before the war the communist party tried it at one time and after the war various Troskyist parties also used it. Gerry Healy had taken control of the party's youth wing, the Young Socialists, until they were expelled. For the non-revolutionary left the Militant Tendency supplied the bodies needed to gain control of the local parties. I guess Tony Benn and others must have thought they could control them after they had power.

In part 3 we can look at why the reaction of the MPs of PLP to the CLP campaign for democracy gave us what we have today.

The Labour Party Part 1

The Labour Party has always been a broad church. Its members beliefs range the spectrum from neo-liberal, social democrats, Christian socialist, Fabians, to revolutionary socialists. Usually the balance of power in the party favours the centre or the right. In the eighties when the left tried to take control the party swung in the opposite direction. This move to the right was the furthest it had ever gone and probably peaked with the unopposed election of Gordon Brown as leader of parliamentary party. Now we have a Liberal opposition party to left of Labour.

For a long time power in the party resided in three sections, the parliamentary party, the constituency party and the trade unions. Trade unions tend not to be revolutionary as they serve a more defensive role in protecting workers rights. Two of these sections together could outvote the other. The unions and the parliamentary party usually held the party to the right or centre while the constituency party tended to be more to left.

A Pro-Business Government

Many governments, including the UK's, claim to be pro-business. Pre-Blair I doubt a Labour government would have claimed this but the Tories have always been there. What many people never realize is that pro-business can mean different things to different people.

Usually when a politician talks about business he is referring to the big boys, not to the lady who owns the corner shop come post office. Small to medium sized business does not have the same needs as the giant global companies but government policy is seldom framed for their benefit. The big boys are the ones writing the cheques.

As a boy I worked for a GEC company. GEC back then made almost all its money from government contracts which were guaranteed not to lose money. In fact Harold Wilson supplied the funds for GEC to gobble up many other electrical and electronic companies. By the 70s it was sitting on a mountain of cash which it certainly wasn't re-investing into UK industry. Lord Weinstock had very little in common with the small businessman.

If you are supporting a political party for being pro-business it might be best to find out what sort of business it is pro;-)