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18^th August 2016

 Labour’s ‘Broad Church’

Cllr Adrian Jones – a personal view

Our Labour Party was founded on Parliamentary Democracy.  The allegation that the party is being ‘entered’ by alien forces is unoriginal.  Our inclusive party was born as, still is, and hopefully will continue to be, a ‘broad church’ of trade unionists, socialist societies, Christians, Marxists, co-ops, and even a sprinkling of radical dilettantes for whom our party has always found room.  But mainly we have attracted a great cross section of people who wish only for the fairness and decency that Labour offers.

The PLP majority faction’s wish, that our party should follow their neo-liberal departure from our fundamental ideology, fails profoundly to grasp the seismic reaffirmation of mainstream Labour values demonstrated by Corbyn’s overwhelming leadership victory.

Alleged plots to infiltrate and 'shift' Labour to the Left. 

Labour was born a party of the 'Left'.  So what is all this scare-mongering about ‘entryists’ plotting? Clause IV, embedded into Labour’s constitution in 1918, was embraced by mainstream Labour, in government, and was always supported by the party’s naturally radical grass-roots.  Every shade from Temperance Christians through to Marxist intellectuals, grass roots trade unionists and a great tradition of 'auto didacts' - self educated working men and women - have been equally happy with arguably the most wholly socialist declaration of intent of any political party in the world. 

Mainstream Labour believed then, and believes now, that our party exists primarily to represent the interests of the largely dispossessed overwhelming majority of humanity who must sell their labour-power ‘by hand or by brain’, whilst themselves remaining 'propertyless'.  (By this economists refer not to private items such as a house or car, but that property such as land, mining rights, and industrial plants from which surpluses for investment and 'profits' for shareholders are created from the application of human labour.)

The slogan ‘New Labour’ was introduced to demonstrate that in the ‘new global economy of today’ it was no longer fashionable to speak of social classes - arguing that ever-continuing industrial expansion was already enriching everybody.  Mrs Thatcher earlier postulated much the same theory in her concept of economic ‘trickle-down’ whereby, as the rich are encouraged to become ever richer, their spending power would be to the advantage of all classes below.

(The theory brings to mind a haulier’s well-fed wagon-horses - followed by sparrows, benefiting from ‘trickle-down’.)

Both Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair believed (very genuinely) that ‘recession and slump’ were of the past.  ‘Neo-liberalism’ (economies based on globally unfettered free-markets) became the new socio-economic orthodoxy of both Tory and 'New Labour' governments.  Not, in Labour’s case, as a result of any deep examination of political economy, or spelt out as a principled break from long established, well-reasoned, ideology – but gently eased into the Party’s (sub) consciousness in light of an apparently ever wealthier, ever expanding’ world economy. 

 Confident in his loftier view of the world Blair lectured that

‘The old arguments between left and right are really no longer relevant in the new global economy of today’.

Then came the world financial crash of 2008. 

Even as Blair announced its permanence, the wheels were already falling off the ‘new global economy of today’.  ‘Blatcherism’, totally discredited, was left in tatters.  And, in tatters, do his loyal followers hang on to it, even now, because it is so difficult for them to declare heresy to a false faith they created?

How credible is the claim that the crash of 2008 was impossible to foresee?

Neither Mrs Thatcher, nor Tony Blair, had any inkling of the imminent crash.  In that ignorance they were by no means alone - The Bank of England, the IMF, the UK Treasury mandarins, and the economic advisers of New Labour and the Tory Party alike agreed that it came softly, imperceptibly, ‘like a thief in the night’ - unseen and entirely unpredictable. 

It was entirely predictable.

A long string of economists anticipated the crash but were ignored as ‘Hard Left’ - who therefore must be wrong.  The Belgian ‘Left’ economist Dr Ernest Mandel warned: ‘The Western economies have sailed to prosperity on a sea of debt and, as in 1929, the bubble would burst.  (But as he was a ‘Trotskyist’ it was axiomatic that he must be wrong.)  America’s highly respected Professor R. Batra charted the rise and fall of trade and investment and also foresaw the crash.  In fact, a host of Mainstream Labour political economy academics (including at least two ‘Left’ lecturers residing in our own Wallasey Constituency) had for years taught a generation of students that boom and crash were core elements of unfettered market economies; that recession and slump do not demonstrate that ‘the economy is not working’ – but that it is just how an unbridled market economy does work. 

Economic ‘orthodoxies’ have drifted almost whimsically to the political Left or Right with the shifting tides of the ‘global economy’ for more than a century.  Economics is not an exact science, far less an impartial political discipline.  Economists emerge as ideological champions of social classes and their methods of dealing with economic crises reflect the interests of those they represent. 

Neo-liberalism is essentially an orthodoxy not only of the political right but of the 'Hard Right.  

Economists of the political ‘right’ have not always seen eye-to-eye.  J.M. Keynes, the most favoured by many, understood the driving forces of ‘boom and slump’ very well.  But he was not in the business of changing the system’s property relationships that caused such dramatic volatility; he was far more concerned with finding measures, such as deficit-finance (or ‘quantitative easing') [i] to alleviate the worst of the consequences so that ‘global economies’ can creak back into life - minimising adverse political consequences for the owners of property.

Keynesianism is in no sense a socialist approach.  It is, however, favoured by many in the Labour Party for a more benign approach than is advocated by more stridently right-wing economists such as those to whom Mrs Thatcher leaned. 

The Attlee-style ‘mixed economy’

Mainstream Labour has tended to occupy middle-ground whereby, as under Attlee, the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ are brought into public ownership.  At the same time, the state invests on more or less Keynesian principles into an expanded public sector that is not subject in the same way as private businesses, such as banks and hedge-funds, to the vagaries of ‘the market’.   Examples of the new initiatives included massive expansion of council housing and of education - with, of course, the National Health Service being at the very heart of socialist ideology. 

The Attlee government left a considerable element of industry and businesses in private ownership. That approach, adopted also by Wilson and Callaghan, became known as ‘the mixed economy’.  Enabled by Labour’s Clause IV, it was far more radical than Keynesianism alone and was not seriously challenged by the Tories until after MacMillan’s time - when from Heath onwards the old Tory aristocracy and their hangers on ‘the County set’ were increasingly overtaken by the more vulgar ‘nouveau riche’.

‘Butskellism’ [ii]  (a term used in the late 1950s and early ‘60s) was an accommodation between the slightly Left-Tory ideas of R.A. Butler, then a leading Tory thinker, and the increasingly middle-ground thinking of Hugh Gaitskell, then the Labour Party leader. It implied a more or less tacit acceptance of the economic and structural changes that Labour had implemented under Attlee.

In the 1959 general election campaign MacMillan produced the slogan ‘You’ve never had it so good!’ – and that was true, to a significant extent, in the wake of the huge achievements of the 1945-51 Labour Government. 

When Hugh Gaitskell died unexpectedly he was replaced by the ‘Hard Left’ Harold Wilson - widely tipped to be ‘unelectable’ for that very reason – but who nevertheless went on to win.  With only slender majorities his governments, and Callaghan's introduced yet more mainstream measures that would not have been possible without Labour’s clear commitment to a mixed economy embracing a high measure of public ownership, credit-controls, and restrictions on the gambling risks of banking and finance-businesses.   

Why, then, was mainstream Labour so utterly abhorred by ‘New’ Labour’s increasingly right-wing PLP?

After Kinnock’s defeats Blair entered the stage - believing that world economic expansion would continue exponentially (see his Singapore speech) and therefore Labour’s ideas of 1918, that produced Clause IV, were no longer appropriate in what he ludicrously described as ‘The New global economy of today’. 

After Thatcher, Labour seemed likely to react with a leftward shift, but under Blair it was not to be.  ‘New Labour’ rejected the idea that Boom & Bust is built into unbridled market forces, and rejected socialist economics in favour of a continuation of (a slightly more benign version) of neo-liberalism.[iii] 

Soon “Butskellism” gave way to ‘Blatcherism’ [iv] (albeit that under Labour neo-liberalism was more humane than it had been under Thatcher and Major).

So Labour’s mainstream politico-economic orthodoxy of Hardie, Cripps, Soskice, Bevan, Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan (which was never wholly socialist, but at best an accommodation with Keynesianism) gave way to the new economic orthodoxy of (revived) neo-liberalism. 

Where, within the Labour Party, were the ‘Hard Left’ during these shifting tides of global economy?  Where in particular were the hordes of Trotskyists that Tom Watson says so readily twist young arms?  Several distinct chapels, or ‘tendencies’ of Trotskyism appeared in the Centre-Left of the European and American Labour movements.  Their remote genesis was in the Soviet Union’s struggle, after Lenin died, between Stalin’s bureaucracy and Trotsky - providing many long and turgid books of analysis (and doubtless many a PhD thesis). 

For some ‘Trotskyists’ the Labour Party was recognised as ‘the natural party of the working class’.  Within it they could (from their armchairs, saloon bars, and [increasingly] their university campuses) ‘lead’ because Labour’s present leaders in Parliament were, in their view, careerists enjoying good jobs (well paid, indoors, no heavy lifting) but had little politico-economic understanding or loyalty to the Labour Party’s traditions. 

Gradually that changed when they were increasingly ignored within the Labour Party.  Some were ‘proscribed’ and faded away.  Others established political parties outside the Labour Party and made absolutely no headway.

Who are the ‘entryists’?

Kinnock/Blair and ‘New Labour’ saw Trotskyists as ‘entryists’ – aliens with a ‘hard left’ ideology whose purpose was to capture the machinery of the Labour party.

Mainstream Labour Party activists see ‘New’ Labour as ‘entryists’ - aliens with a ‘quasi-Tory’ ideology whose purpose was to capture the machinery of the Labour party.

 And so the debate goes on. 

During my own early years in the Party, from 1959 onwards in South Wales, I met small numbers of Trotskyists.  As a young student in Swansea in the ‘60s I met a few more; they were admirably well-read, articulate and convincing, but they numbered only perhaps a dozen or so.  I am in my seventies – so far from emerging to "twist young arms" most of them are retired or dead!  

Later, in Pontypridd constituency (where Brynmor John was then the MP – now Owen Smith), I never met a Trotskyist – although in neighbouring Rhondda we did have - not a Trotskyist, but a Communist, Mayor at that time – Annie Powell a highly respected local school teacher - who had the admiration of Labour Councillors!   Later, in Monmouthshire constituency, I never met a Trotskyist.  Nor did I meet one in Aberdeenshire between 1985 and 1990. During a spell in Northern Ireland in the early ‘90s I never met one.  I am told they were very much in evidence in Liverpool and Wallasey in the eighties.  I’ve been a mainstream Labour councillor for twenty-one years in Wallasey constituency and no Trotskyite “entryist” has crpossed my path Seacombe Ward. 

I rather think UK Trotskyists were less at logger-heads with the Labour Party than with the Communist Party of Great Britain  They had lived and re-lived the debates about economics and politics in the Soviet Union - until implosion of the Soviet State bureaucracy rather deflated their conflict’s [largely hypothetical] raison d'étre. 

So where are we now in this needless leadership election? 

Most of us at grass roots have always been ‘mainstream’ as distinct from ‘New’ Labour.  The huge surge of new members and old members returning, surely makes nonsense of the accusation that large numbers from the hundreds of thousands of new members are being in some way ‘captured’ in a sort of misty, Arthurian, emergence of a long-concealed army of Bronstein’s ‘sleepers’.

Corbyn’s political aspirations plainly do not differ significantly from most grass-root members’ – or from Hardie’s, Attlee’s, Wilson’s or Callaghan’s.  He is of course significantly different from ‘New’ Labour inasmuch as his election was the membership’s reaffirmation of the Labour Party’s commitment to mainstream Labour’s economic understanding. 

If the majority ‘neo-liberal tendency’ of the PLP are so unfamiliar with the history and culture of our party, and so out of touch with grass-roots commitment to mainstream Labour, they can hardly be upset when Labour Party members and supporters make plain what we want – and it is clearly not the neo-liberalism so many of today’s PLP pursued under New Labour and not the austerity that Corbyn rejects.    We did not elect ‘Corbyn the man’, fine as he is; we elected him as the highly principled embodiment of mainstream Labour values.

19th August - Post script

The UK's nearest neighbour, The Republic of Ireland, is already teetering on the edge of a repeat of 2008.  Stefan Gerlich, former Deputy Governor of Ireland's Central Bank, will warn of this in "The Irish World" when it is published on 20th August in a report by Bernard Purcell.

"Ireland is at risk of another housing market crash" because "band wagon jumping" politicians want to loosen the new lending rules."  Last time this happened, in 2008, it cost Ireland "sixty billion" and wiped 40% off its GDP.

Ireland is not alone in facing huge problems.  To imagine that the crash of 2008 is yet over would be a great mistake.