Mike Kenny on the Big Society

from Open Democracy

Big Society Dilemmas: a challenge for Tories as well as Labour
Michael Kenny, 11 November 2010

Why is it that the idea of the Big Society worked so well for the Conservatives in opposition (at least until the heat of the General Election campaign), but has proved so difficult to operationalise in government?

Perhaps this is due to the change in economic weather between its conception before the crash and today as Anthony Barnett suggested or because of the varying ways in which the term has been approached across Whitehall and interpreted by different Ministers as observed by Matthew Taylor of the RSA.

But there may also be an explanation which relates to the tradition from which David Cameron emanates. The advantage of the Big Society idea was that it enabled the Conservatives to speak across the partisan political divide to the many progressives who were put off by the dirigisme and tactical obsessions of the Brown regime. And, simultaneously, it nodded towards a long-established conservative commitment to the virtues of civil society. However, the Big Society may well be much more effective in the first of these roles - as a vehicle for conveying progressively minded intentions - than it is for the second.

The terminology of the Big Society does not easily capture the sense of affiliation and belonging that links many people to the places and communities they inhabit, nor the kinds of small-scale civic activism, the disposition to help out families, friends and neighbours, and the fabric of social relationships (what David Halpern calls the ‘hidden wealth of nations’) that undergird communal life. These different facets were evocatively and authentically captured for earlier generations of conservatives by Edmund Burke’s idea of the ‘little platoons’.

Nor is this just a matter of linguistic presentation. Something more fundamental may be at stake. The philosopher Michael Oakeshott, who came closer than any other single thinker to distilling the DNA of British liberal-conservative thought in the twentieth century, proposed a distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘enterprise’ associations. Civil associations were forms of collective endeavour that revolved around their intrinsic purpose – the co-operative society or allotment association, for instance.

Enterprise ones were established in order to pursue externally directed instrumental goals – the NGO, business association, or political campaign would all be examples. While both kinds of association were bound to co-exist in a free society, Oakeshott argued for the particular importance in Britain of the many spontaneous and localised forms of civil association, regarding these as an important bulwark against the inclination of the social-engineering state to meddle in people’s lives in its pursuit of ‘rational’ goals like social justice or progress. His important critique of the expanding post-war state stemmed from his belief that it was increasingly acting in the spirit of an enterprise association, rather than behaving as an umpire upholding the rules and supplying the social goods that enabled people to sustain their own forms of civic life.
Imperfect as it may be, the distinction he drew between different forms of association still resonates in British culture. It helps explain why people across the voluntary sector have often been ambivalent about Labour’s well-intentioned efforts to involve faith groups or charities in delivering services. Winning a contract to deliver a community service for many groups means giving up the ethos of civil association for the burdens and reduced autonomy that go with being an enterprise-based one. Indeed the very idea of the state harnessing the good works and civic impulses of individuals and communities is in some respects alien territory for conservatives (of both small-c and big-C varieties).

This does not mean that the Big Society is doomed to irrelevance on the political right. But it does suggest that its key propositions need to be fleshed out with greater sensitivity to established patterns of thinking. In policy terms, this implies a clearer connection with the localism that the Coalition also champions. And it requires more signs that government is aware of the challenges associated with the greater involvement of voluntary sector and community organisations in service delivery. These include the issues of how to protect the rights of individuals supplied with services by such organisations, and how to ensure that it is not only the largest, most professional organisations in this sector, that scoop up the bulk of available contracts.

Overall, the real danger for Cameron is not that the Big Society comes to be seen as a front for hacking away at public provision. His worry should be that it turns into one more government-sponsored mantra that meets a wall of indifference because it does not chime with the everyday forms of reasoning through which people make sense of their own, and others’, civic impulses and actions.

And what of the left and the Big Society? Labour may well be tempted to respond to all this by reminding voters of its own record at promoting capacity in the third sector and ensuring the greater involvement of voluntary organisations in service provision. This is the approach many take in OurKingdom's thread on 'The Big Society Challenge'. But, important as this history is, falling back upon it will not be enough.

Labour needs to grasp that it has acquired some highly damaging connotations in the public mind, and these have to be actively and publicly challenged. They include the widespread belief that in government it reached too readily and unthinkingly for the levers of the central state, and was overly bureaucratic and rule-bound in its method of governance. Responses such as ‘we did this better than the Tories’, or calling the Big Society a gimmick, do not begin to address this deeper question of identity and reputation.

Just as the Conservatives found themselves after 1997 saddled in the popular mind with deeply held associations formed after a long period of government that ended in acrimony, so Labour will need to work very hard to show that it truly understands the limits and downsides of the excessive centralism it showed in office.

It should start by gathering together the different strands of its thinking that operate on the territory of the Big Society and work out how these might be turned into a narrative for government, society and communities that works for tomorrow. Mutuals and co-operatives should play an important part in this thinking. But they form only one part of the repertoire that Labour will need in this area.

A serious review of its policies means posing new questions. In what areas does Labour believe it appropriate to devolve more responsibility to individuals, neighbourhoods and communities – in areas such as education, health and law and order? And, what changes are needed to the structures and cultures of central and local government, if the kinds of decentralised and citizen-centred forms of governance which the Big Society promises, are to be achieved?

A Reply to Harris and Lawson

Good to see debate. This is from the Labour Uncut blog.

You don’t build the future by trashing the past
by Will Straw

With Labour still recovering from its second worst defeat in 90 years, now is the time for a thorough reassessment of what the left stands for. The policy review and reforms to party structures that Ed Miliband has announced should be welcomed. Before ink is spilled on the “blank sheet of paper”, time should be taken to debate and consider a range of different perspectives on the future direction of the left.

The five-point plan set out in Neal Lawson and John Harris’ essay in this week’s New Statesman should therefore be welcomed. But by trashing new Labour’s record with little consideration of the many achievements that 13 years in power delivered, Lawson and Harris risk alienating a group of reformers who could, in other circumstances, find common cause with their mission. The Labour party could easily unite around a programme dedicated to defeating inequality, building a new model of capitalism, localising public services, tackling climate change, and creating a more pluralistic politics – as Lawson and Harris suggest. But their approach is not the way to get there.

In their essay, Lawson and Harris write:
“New Labour stayed in office for 13 years because the world economy
was so strong and the Tories were so weak. But even in such benign
circumstances, the poor got poorer and the planet burned … The only
plan they had was to stoke a finance-driven, lightly regulated economy,
and then surreptitiously take the tax skim to fund social programmes”.

What a simplistic view of Labour’s time in office. Few saw the financial crash coming; even fewer set out the remedies in advance of the Lehman’s collapse. Adverse criticism of new Labour around 2003 was primarily concerned with the war in Iraq and the marketisation of public services; not the reregulation of the City. Basel I and II passed without a murmur. Where was the compass paper in 2005 calling for a ban on short selling or a British uptick rule prior to 2007? Twenty-twenty hindsight is a fine thing but those who call now for a new form of capitalism should be more realistic about the collective hubris of the boom years.

More here.

Jon Cruddas on the Big Society

Aneurin Bevan Memorial Lecture: Let's take back the big society says Jon Cruddas
Wednesday, October 20 2010

Thank you for inviting me to give the memorial Lecture tonight. My subject is ‘Taking Back the Big Society'. Now I was going to speak about the specifics of the Big Society debate, about its different forms across Whitehall; its tensions and contradictions and about Labour's own record and how we should respond.
I now think, however, that in order to do such work we have to firstly consider some more fundamental first principles.
Because this debate is really about Labour; about what it has become and what it has been in the past and about what it has lost. And how - through the lives of historic Labour figures like Bevan- we can rediscover our own identity; through the rediscovery of a sentiment around Labour.
Why? Well, put simply, we are in crisis.
Arguably we are experiencing the third great crisis of Labour following those of 1931 and 1981; each driven by patterns of economic rupture. How will we get out of this? And where do we start?
I believe we will find the answers to these questions here in England. I admit this is a strange observation when discussing a towering Welsh Labour figure; but bear with me. England is where the fight for Labour's future will be fiercest; where the crisis is most acute.
Now, I have to make an initial admission. I did not grow up in a family schooled in the great Labour contributions of Hardie, Lansbury or Bevan.I had never heard of them till I went to University. Our heroes were the Kennedys - born not of party but of diaspora- and Oscar Romero - born of creed not of political science. We lost the brothers over 40 years ago. And it is now 30 years ago last march since Romero was assassinated by San Salvador death squads.
Whilst I personally was very much attracted to his mixture of catholic social teaching and Marxism - to give a ‘voice to the voiceless' - in fact at home we owed everything to Labour.
Aneurin Bevan told Jennie Lee: ‘it is the Labour party or nothing'. He was speaking for the working class but he was also speaking about himself. And for me too - and many, many millions of us. I still see it the same way, almost as a life sentence; a fundamental part of my and our identity.
But what is the identity of Labour now? The threat facing Labour is bigger than the Coalition. It’s bigger than the millions lost to us at the last election. Or the tens of thousands of members lost.
We have lost the respect of many who put their trust in us. Now I am not here to bury Labour; but there is a pervasive sense of loss around our Party. It is a loss of identity. We do not possess some kind of historical right to exist.
Across Europe social democracy has been reduced to parties of the public sector and the liberal middle class. 30% in Sweden; 23% in Germany; 29% here in the UK. Capitalism has been through a revolution and the old working class has lost its economic function. Its culture is dying; its patterns of family and kinship under siege. Its political parties are fading. Many are turning to the far right cultural movements that are sweeping across Europe. And this is the coming front line.
The new battleground is one of identity, race and religion, of class and culture. Witness Merkel this week; Sarkozy and the Roma.
Labour has to be in this swim; to ensure that right wing populists are not the only ones navigating this terrain. Bevan understood Labour's faults and dangers. He said, ‘We can't undo what we have done. And I am by no means convinced that something cannot yet be made of it.' It is true, there is hope for Labour precisely because we have a powerful tradition; a collective memory built in previous periods of dispossession.
But Bevan also gave a warning. To retreat into purity will bring impotence. Success will require boldness in word and deed. The task at hand is for Labour to rebuild its identity grounded in ordinary, everyday working class culture. If we don't change, the mood will turn to weariness and despair; possibly captured by right wing populism. The people will continue to desert us.
There will be dark times. It is therefore an obligation to rebuild. For that we need audacity. Think of England Today My dominant image of politics in 2010 is not the election, Gordon Brown and Mrs. Duffy, nor Cameron and Clegg in the Downing St garden; nor of Ed and David Miliband. It was in London; just recently. I was walking behind a big African guy coming home from church with his toddler. The little boy was wearing a t-shirt with two simple words on the back. In very big bold type, 'Pastor Jones'. Was all it said; all it needed to say. It was the height of the Mosque in Manhattan controversy and Pastor Jones in Florida was ready to burn the Qur'an. International Burn a Qur'an Day.
In real time his message had reached the centre of cosmopolitan London. Where people felt moved to dress their kids in solidarity with this cultural and religious fight in North America. And go to church so dressed. The man and his child belonged to a London church; on inspection we find links between this church and the English Defence League.
Indeed we find links between the EDL and organisers of the New York protests. Moreover, these shadowy figures are also in touch with key Tea Party people in America, inviting them over and building links across Europe. On 30 October they will be in Amsterdam supporting Geert Wilders.
What is this about?
Sure the BNP has been crushed by electoral defeat. The EDL is a new kind of threat- a cultural movement; unpredictable and violent; a new politics of ‘flash demos' and open wildcat networks. It copies the old Anti Nazi League slogan: ‘Black and white to unite'. It demands democracy not racial purity: ‘While our troops fight for democracy overseas we're losing it here' they shout. Its leaders welcome all races to join in defending England's ‘Christian culture’. It is patriotic, it loves the military.
The EDL is a small, violent street militia but it speaks the language of a much larger, disenfranchised class. A politics born out of dispossession but anchored in English male working class culture; of dress and sport. Camped outside the political centre ground, a large swathe of the electorate. The making of an English Tea Party. A people who believe they have been robbed of their birthright .They want community and belonging.
I would argue that in the last three decades England has suffered a social calamity. Thirteen years of Labour governments had only begun the repair.
Deindustrialisation. The malign elements of globalisation ripping through communities. For many, ways of life ruined. Civic decency and families compromised by crime and drugs. Scores of thousands suffering chronic illness and premature death. The institutions that supported the labour movement a shadow of their former selves.
In his essay, Culture is Ordinary, Raymond Williams described the working class culture he grew up in: neighbourhood and security, mutual obligation and common betterment. Precisely those things often now felt to be under threat. People make a culture to make identity and their home in the world. A Labour working class culture grounded in the ordinary.And another great Welshman Dylan Thomas described this culture of the labour movement as ‘parochial' and yet ‘magical'. But what happens when that is lost? When the things that give you and your family meaning are rendered obsolete? When you are dispossessed of that culture you lose a sense of who you are.
It can be to suffer humiliation. It can become harder to find and keep a sense of honour and dignity. It can create the anger of the defeated. It can destroy family and community. And culture. The old industrial order with its male breadwinner and head of household has gone. Men have lost traditions of skilled work that were a source of pride. What now do fathers pass down to their sons? Many young men have lost the traditional rites of passage into adulthood: getting a decent job, establishing a family, making a homeland there can be the shame of those who are unable to defend themselves.
There are the beaten and defeated, the ‘feckless' poor and the so called benefit scroungers, those who suffer chronic illness, depression, alcoholism, addicts, who have not worked for years, who are living reminders of what happens to those who can't cope, and who don't succeed in this rat race.
This is the fate that our society deals out: not compassion but more often contempt.
At times people will use violence to avoid this shame.; respect garnered in different ways. Here lies an angry politics of dispossession.
Is it to become crystallised - or framed - in Europe and North America - in a new politics of Patriotism, Family and Faith. A ‘civilisational politics' that stretches across the Atlantic. A politics of loss. Loss of a sense of identity and a way of life. A loose coalition pulled together by what they are against: often this is Islam. The enemy is not, to them, just Islam it is also the liberal middle class elite who reside over injustice and who have betrayed England and humiliated its people.
Labour must stop this refracting into an English populism; by building our own optimistic politics. To return to Williams: he said ‘to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing'. We have been here before. In the 1960s, Enoch Powell built an English nationalism that drove a wedge between the liberal elite and the people. Powell sought to make despair convincing. He said, ‘There is a deep and dangerous gulf in the nation'. The liberal intelligentsia is the ‘enemy within', destroying the moral fabric of the English nation with its promotion of multiculturalism. A permissive elite that renders the majority of English people passive and helpless, and abandons England to those who hate her.
Are we witnessing a new cultural struggle in civil society? A growing gulf between the political classes and the people. Could this develop into the real challenge of our time. Played out in the context of massive public expenditure cuts.
It is incumbent on Labour to once again make hope possible. There is much talk in Labour about our Southern Discomfort. But the politics of dispossession point to something bigger: Labour's English Discomfort.
Bevan said be bold. He taught us how to begin the political struggle.Ask the question: ‘Where does power lie in this particular State of Great Britain, and how can it be attained'
So let's return to some fundamentals in terms of England. Because although these issues are contemporary- they are actually not new. They lie deep within Labour's own culture through waves of dispossession.
Let’s briefly return to England's past. In the winter of 1799 Dorothy Wordsworth and her brother William settled in Dove Cottage in Grasmere. The industrial revolution was in its most intense period. A period of economic rupture. She decided to keep a diary. She writes about nature, their walks and the garden. But there is more. She describes her encounters with beggars: ‘a poor girl called to beg', a ‘broken' soldier, ‘a pretty little boy' of seven - ‘When I asked him if he got enough to eat, he looked surprised, and said ‘Nay'', an old sailor 57 years at sea.
She asks them about their lives. Where have these sick, destitute and uprooted people come from? Countless pamphlets of the time attempted an answer: wages were too high, wages were too low, paupers were feckless; they had bad diets, they had drug habits; they drank tea that impaired their health.
A strange contemporary feel to the debates if you read them now. The national debate about the causes of pauperism literally led to the idea of society itself. In turn the idea of society laid the foundations for socialism and social democracy.
We are having the same debate today. Big Society, Good Society, we cannot talk about them without talking about class, power and dispossession. Since Wordsworth the English working class was defined in three acts of dispossession.
First. The dispossession of the people from their land and livelihood and from a common way of life. Gerrard Winstanley summed up the history of enclosures in his ‘Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England'. .He told the landowners: ‘The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into creation by your ancestors by the sword’. Enclosing was standardised in the General Enclosure Act of 1801. The industrial revolution turned the common people into shiftless migrants'.
Second. The dispossession of the labouring class from the political life of the country. The enclosures dispossessed the people of their land. The 1832 Parliamentary Reform Act excluded the landless from the franchise. ‘In England', writes Karl Polanyi, ‘it became the unwritten law of the Constitution that the working class must be denied the vote'.
Third. The dispossession of the people from their own labour. The 1834 Poor Law Reform Act established a competitive market in labour. The poor were divided into helpless paupers who were confined to the workhouse and a new category, the unemployed. Free labourers must earn their living by working for a wage. Unemployment meant the hated workhouse or death by starvation. Labour was turned into a commodity and the capitalist system was born.
So began what Polanyi describes as the double movement of capitalism. On the one hand the market destroys old social networks and reduces all human relations to commercial ones. On the other, is the counter tendency to defend human values; the search for community and security.
What is Labour in its deeper meaning? What is then the Labour Sentiment? Historically it is the response of people to their dispossession. It is a timeless fight against such dispossession. It is the defence of their social life and relationships from commodification. It is the politics of a common life, a common law and a common wealth. It is being played out today.
Labour has been at the centre of the historical struggle for democracy. Since Wordsworth; through successive waves of dispossession. This is our tradition; to be reclaimed today.
Turn then to New Labour. For the last three decades Polanyi's double movement has been working in the favour of capital. Trade unions decimated. A massive transfer of wealth and political power to the rich. Like our ancestors in the first decade of the nineteenth century, we are faced with profound questions about capitalism and dispossession. About the role of the market and state and the relationship of the individual to society.
New Labour was at its best a contemporary, popular response to these questions. Tony Blair set out his vision of New Labour in his 1994 inaugural conference speech: ‘This is my socialism...‘A nation for all the people, built by the people, where old divisions are cast out. A new spirit in the nation based on working together, unity, solidarity, partnership. That is the patriotism of the future. Where your child in distress is my child, your parent ill and in pain is my parent, your friend unemployed or homeless is my friend; your neighbour my neighbour. That is the true patriotism of a nation.'
But it did not survive. By 2005 New Labour politics had become a desiccated materialism where people either sink or swim. At the party conference Blair said, ‘there is no mystery about what works: an open, liberal economy, prepared constantly to change to remain competitive. The new world rewards those who are open to it.' A dystopian worldview.
Social solidarity is essential, but its purpose, he said ‘ is not to resist the force of globalisation but to prepare for it, and to garner its vast potential benefits.' In that arc between 1994 and 2005 Labour lost its identity. A communitarian politics built around the good society had been defeated by a utilitarian privileging of personal choice and liberal individualism. A stripped down notion of aspiration dominated.
Philip Gould said in his ‘Unfinished Revolution' that his parents ‘wanted to do what was right, not what was aspirational'. When asked what was Labour's essential message Alan Milburn said it was to help more people ‘earn and own'. In contrast Romero - speaking for our labour ancestors- and indeed speaking for a different Labour sentiment - said ‘aspire to be more not to have more'.
Now the consequence of this drift within Labour- was of course the ‘Big Society. David Cameron seized the opportunity. He reframed New Labour's ethical socialism into his idea of ‘building a pro-social society': ‘There is such a thing as society, but it's just not the same thing as the state'. Iain Duncan Smith and the Centre for Social Justice gave pro-social, anti-state politics a moral underpinning.Cameron called Britain a ‘Broken Society'. In 2008, he wrote ‘ the aim of the Conservative Party is nothing short of building the good society'. Notice the use of both the big and the good society- seen as inter-changeable.
By 2010 he was talking about ‘Our Big Society Agenda’: ‘It’s about the biggest and most dramatic redistribution of power from elites to the man and woman in the street. It's about liberation. ‘He is colonising a language- around fraternity; duty; obligation and yes belonging. It is a profoundly important challenge for Labour as our loss of language reinforces that loss of identity.
His party is unenthusiastic. Sure. His right are disgusted. Sure. The electorate and commentariat don't get it. Yet Cameron persists. His 2010 Conference speech called for a ‘Big Society Spirit': ‘it’s the spirit of activism, dynamism, people taking the initiative, working together to get things done.'
Labour has been slow to respond. We have said
-Big Society is just about dismantling the state. -It's vacuous and shallow.-Cameron's mistaken obsession.
But Labour cannot afford complacency. Labour built new schools and hospitals; a massive social investment. .An historic achievement. No-one seems very grateful. Labour in government pursued efficiency, ‘value for money', and ‘customer satisfaction' but it did not take care of the human relationships and trust that lie at the heart of public services. It used the market and the state as heartless instruments of reform. People felt excluded. They did not feel an ownership of the new grand buildings. With embarrassing speed the Conservatives detached Labour from its own achievements. The market failure of the banks was turned into a crisis of public debt and blamed on Labour.
Cameron's Big Society is a mix of social Tory activism and old fashioned volunteering. It speaks about mutualism but is stuck in market transactions. It believes in fairness but won't tackle the causes of unfairness. It wants power to the people but opposes democratic reform. It is Cameron's version of what Stuart Hall once described as New Labour's ‘double shuffle'; a sophisticated, warm political language that disguises what lies beneath; its neo-liberal wiring. Its warm and generous words obscure- quite functionally - a deeper fundamental assault on the state.
Cameron's goal is to seize the centre ground and remake it around a centre right politics. He has seized Labour's most precious asset: society and its relationships.He has left Labour looking like a technocratic, micromanaging, 'we know what's best for you' party. The coalition with the Liberal Democrats has only increased the potency of this strategy.
Labour has been dangerously slow to respond. Yet buried underneath the last few years there was other work in progress that was in direct contrast to the trajectory of much of this Labour thinking. It urged us to challenge this dominant notion of materialism and acquisition. It talked about fellowship and human relationships; it talked about dispossession and neighbourliness. It talked about England: of Tawney and William Morris; of Orwell. It talks of virtue, love, collaboration and kindness. The task was to build the ‘decent society'; grounded in the ordinary working class culture of the country.
I would urge people to read Hazel Blears 2004 pamphlet; ‘The Politics of Decency'. Second I would urge people to re-read the Compass Pamphlet ‘The Good Society'. The parallels - and the common ground- yet from different wings of the Party - are crystal clear. Hazel and Compass might appear strange bedfellows; but I believe Labour's future is to be built within these two texts.
And now things appear to be moving further. For example, in July, David Miliband reacted. He recognised that Labour lacked a creed - ‘a strong idea of a good society and a life fit for all human beings for all citizens.' In turn, Ed Miliband has pushed it into the centre of Labour politics. In his inaugural leadership speech at the 2010 Party Conference, he called on Labour to ‘inspire people with our vision of the good society'.
Taking back the Big Society from the Conservatives means building Labour's Good Society. It is about rediscovering a sentiment around Labour. Let’s think about the notion Labour's Good Society Let’s return to New Labour: at the beginning it captured the popular mood. It had a vision of the Good Society. The pluralism, the ethical socialism, the stakeholding economy, the idea of a covenant of trust and reciprocity with the people, the powerful emotional language that ignited popular hope.
It made a powerful, vote winning story. I believed in this politics, I still do.But it is no longer enough. Arguably, with the move away from stakeholding, it tended to see globalisation as essentially benign and understate at best the destructive forces of capitalism; its double movement as described by Polanyi. It developed a naive faith in markets and a fatal deference toward the City of London.
We now have to go on a return journey to rediscover our language and identity. So let’s start with a number of central propositions that lie deep within our own history- captured in the life of Aneurin Bevan himself. First, that Labour is a moral force. It emerged out of the harsh puritanism of non-conformist culture. But it broke the status quo and it began to transform the culture that had given it life. It grew out of the Mutual Improvement Societies dedicated to literature, a love of learning and the liberating power of culture. It grew out of a vast popular movement of voluntary collectivism. Bevan's politics were formed in the Tredegar Query Club, the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, the Miners Institute, the Miners Welfare Committee.
It was a movement of civility, liberty and self-education. It was dedicated to social justice, intellectual freedom and the desire for self-realisation. Not the brittle aspiration that became New Labour's signature tune but a deeper human desire to live a good life.
Second, Labour is for the common good. Its ethical intention is aimed at the good life with and for others and the creation of just institutions. Its politics of virtue is rooted in Aristotle and grows out of the shared life of friendship. The common good provides the general conditions through which each has access to their own fulfillment.
Third, Labour is for reciprocity. There is a story always quoted by Karen Armstrong in her studies of comparative religions. She refers to the way Hyam Maccoby quotes the Rabbi Hillel's Golden Rule. Some pagans came to Hillel and said that they would convert if he were able to stand on one leg and recite the whole of the Jewish scriptures in full whilst keeping his balance.. A pretty tough ask. Well, Hillel stood on one leg and simply said the following: ‘Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you. That is the Torah. The rest is commentary.'
The rest is commentary- stripped bare this is the core of all religions- and none- as it also lies as the core of much humanism found around labour; a sense of reciprocity and obligation to others. Reciprocity is the ethical core of Labour. Reciprocity is the give and take that creates the social bonds that hold people together in a common life. And it is not exclusively religious.
Consider this written about Bevan by Jennie Lee in a letter to Michael Foot - the day after he died on the 6th July 1960. She writes thus:
‘Nye was never a hypocrite. No falsity must touch him once he is no longer able to defend his views. He was not a cold blooded rationalist. He was no calculating machine. He was a great humanist whose religion lay in loving his fellow men and trying to serve them.'
The Golden Rule: ‘Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you' reappears. Further Jennie writes:
‘He could kneel reverently in chapel, synagogue, Eastern mosque, Catholic cathedral on occasions when friends called him there for marriage or dedication or burial service. He knelt reverently in respect of a friend or a friend's faith, but never pretended to be other than he was, a humanist. Often in the last few years he talked of ‘the mystery that lies at the heart of things', nothing more definite than that.'
This is vital as we seek to rebuild Labour. In contrast to much secular European social democracy, Labour succeeded in the UK in building a workers movement-built around a common humanity beyond money or power alone- that was not divided between catholic and protestant, or between secularists and believers, but the movement itself provided the common life which reconciled these different elements.
It was genuinely plural, respectful of difference; fraternal; courteous. This open pluralist sentiment has to be rediscovered again in order to make Labour a vibrant contemporary force. Not a haven for a shrill, closed and exclusive, middle class secular metropolitan liberalism.
Fourth, Labour is for liberty and joy. The ethic of reciprocity is the basis of human freedom. We are interdependent and liberty is mutual; the freedom of one requires the freedom of all. There is no liberty for all without solidarity and democracy. There is only one force capable of countering the profit seeking of capitalism and the social damage and insecurities it causes, and that is democracy. Political democracy alone is not sufficient; it has to extend into the economic sphere.
Bevan - as we all know- used the term serenity- it is an elusive term - but is a sense of contentment. It is a notion of self realisation again traced back to Aristotle- the Polis- the City State- politics- is about establishing institutions that allow us to live a virtuous life- the search for wisdom, compassion, the cardinal virtues. Bevan was not a religious man- although close to death he did - as we have see- ponder the ‘mystery that lies at the heart of things'. He found this self realisation in walking, in learning and culture, in the pleasures of life. Where there is joy there is a life lived well
Fifth Labour is for a common wealth Labour's political economy was born out of the experience of dispossession. It seeks:
-To ensure the worker receives a fair reward for their labour.-To build up democracy in order to regulate markets, and use capital for the common good.
-A productive, wealth creating, wealth spreading economy for a common prosperity and not for the enrichment of the few.
-A system of welfare for all funded by all according to their means, that preserves the dignity of the people and that protects them against the inequities of capital and the misfortunes of life.
-A just distribution of assets such that all can live independently according to their want.I will conclude with a couple of points. Tonight I anticipated simply talking about ‘taking back the big society debate' by offering a critique of the Tory agenda. But the more I kicked it around, the more it becomes a case of firstly rehabilitating a sentiment around Labour as part of rebuilding a party and movement. In our history Labour has always responded to dispossession; to economic and social loss.
It must do so again by rediscovering a warmth and generosity; especially in England by learning from our previous generations who have all dealt with the same patterns of loss. As such, Labour's Good Society lies deep in the English struggle for popular democracy. As well as a struggle forged in Celtic Labour traditions and culture through such heroes as Hardie and Bevan. Yet it is a distinctly English crisis that Labour must now respond to - by learning from our own comparative history.
Literally, it’s a journey of self discovery; of rediscovering a virtue politics of compassion, fraternity, duty and obligation. The next few years will be difficult; we are obliged to re-anchor Labour in ordinary, mainstream culture of the country. As we have done before. Not least to counter those sinister forces who seek a politics of division. ‘To make hope possible rather than despair convincing'.
The Conservatives Big Society is founded in its history as the defender of the status quo and the property rights of the rich. They profited from the Satanic Mills.
By reclaiming the Good Society, we can again seek to build that Jerusalem. Thanks very much for having me this evening.

Crisis of Social Democracy

With the leadership race settled in Ed Miliband's favour there is going to be debate about the future of social democratic politics. A contribution from just before the Labour party conference has been made by political pollster and commentator Peter Kellner at Demos on 'The Crisis of Social Democracy' out-of-the way, which reads to me like a continuation of the revisionist case, but might be labelled Blairite.

An SWP critique is made by Richard Seymour at Lenin's Tomb, Kellner's Blairite intervention in the Labour leadership race, who certainly does consider it Blairite.

Compass Conference 2010: A New Hope

A galaxy but no stars Jun 21st, 2010
WILLIAM BROWN reports from the Compass annual conference where the Labour left considered the post-election political landscape
(from ILP)

In a conference hall not so far away, the labour left gathered on June 12th for the Compass annual get together. Launching this year’s event, optimistically titled ‘A New Hope’, Compass chair Neal Lawson set off on a slightly curious note declaring ‘we’re not rebel fighters, we’re building a death star’. If that was slightly off-key, much of the rest of the conference followed, exposing a Labour left that is only slowly getting to grips with the new politics of opposition.
Of course, Compass by its nature is a very broad organisation and its conferences are interesting partly because of this, a large (1,000 people), comradely forum for the exchange of quite divergent views. In fact, over time, two ideas seemed to form a core of opinion at the conference: that proportional representation is essential for the future of left politics and that Labour should be a ‘pluralist, not tribalist’ party.

The first of these is a long standing one on the left and has been central to the efforts of those – from Blair and Ashdown leftwards – to fashion a realignment of politics around the centre left. Current government plans for a referendum on the AV system, with Tories campaigning against, leave this aim tantalisingly out of reach for those who see it as essential.

The second pillar – for a Labour politics that is not tribal but pluralist – is becoming a frequent refrain in Compass, among Labour leadership contenders and among the wider commentariat.

Pluralism
But there are very different versions of this call for pluralism. At the level of party politics, one explanation is that it is a reaction to the perceived failure of Labour to fashion an anti-Tory ‘rainbow coalition’ in the wake of the general election. The ‘tribal’ interventions of David Blunkett and John Reid, both of whom came in for considerable stick over the course of the conference, were seen by many to represent an ‘old politics’ that we need to move away from in the new coalition-dominated future.

There were also those present on the Labour left who clearly feel some empathy for the small parties that are seen as more left wing than Labour – such as the Greens’ Caroline Lucas who, despite having defeated a Labour candidate in the general election, was given an enthusiastic reception by this clearly non-tribalist crowd.

However, it was Lucas who presented the least compelling case for pluralism and highlighted the limited vision of this variant of political pluralism. Teaching the assembled grannies to suck eggs, she pronounced on how remaining in the Labour Party meant many people had to make difficult compromises to accommodate the distance between their own beliefs and the Labour’s policy. No shit. Her solution, for a flowering of smaller parties (like her own in fact!), in which members can feel comfortable in their purity leads down a strange path, however. The left knows something about this, having taken the purity strategy to absurd People’s Front of Judea lengths in the past. But it also ignores the question of what then? What happens after this party pluralism has blossomed and PR has delivered a parliamentary mosaic of principled representatives? Presumably there are real issues of principle that necessitated the creation of separate parties in the first place? Don’t they then have to engage in the very same dirty compromises that she was lamenting a few moments earlier?

Some even asked whether you would want to see a majority Labour government again, with the clear implication that if your answer was ‘yes’ then you were obviously still wedded to the ‘old politics’. But what is so inherently progressive about having to make deals with the David Laws of this world? or in giving concessions to Alex Salmond’s narrow, particularistic, nationalist demands?

Rather more convincing and carrying greater potential, is the idea of a pluralist politics that connects the Labour Party and parliamentary politics generally in a more open and constructive way with non-party groups and campaigns. A party that is active on a local level, engaged and engaging, and at the forefront of campaigns around opposition to cuts would indeed help reinvigorate Labour’s internal politics. Such ideas are clearly having some purchase on leadership candidates debates with both Milibands arguing for a revitalised, active campaigning party. Even here there may be dangers however, and the Blairite dream of a dissolution of party memberships into looser networks of supporters, clearly still has some adherents. Internal party democracy still ought to matter, and for that to mean anything then membership has to become again something real.

A progressive alliance?
On other issues the conference veered wildly in its reading of the contemporary political scene. Throughout there was a persistent sense of denial about the formation of the ConDem coalition which clearly shocked some speakers quite profoundly. Compass’ political strategy, such as it is, has centred on the formation of ‘the broad progressive coalition’ and one feels that the group still has to come to terms with the fact that this notion has been blown out of the water by the Liberals’ post-election choice. The continued adherence to PR and pluralism does look a bit less convincing in world in which a Lab-Lib coalition is no longer the central element.

Even so, Compass also continue to reject the Blairite notion that the country is essentially conservative with a small c. Their, and much of the left’s, argument against New Labour centred on this claim. Where New Labour used the ‘conservative’ nature of public opinion as a reason to move rightwards, those further to the left argued that this reading of the public’s values was mistaken. A different option that neither takes, is that New Labour was right on its assessment but wrong in not seeking ways – long term, hard and slow – of shifting that opinion. Lawson even commented that over thirteen years in government Labour did nothing to build a progressive movement. The left, one suspects on this evidence, would now rather take the easier option of thinking that the country is with us and build a political strategy on that assessment.

Indeed, several speakers cited the combined vote for Labour and Liberals as evidence of a ‘progressive majority’ in the country. Yet much in Labour and the Liberal manifestos was anything but progressive: both argued for substantial and damaging cuts, neither gave a convincing case for the public sector and against the private, neither presented a convincing critique of the financial sector, both indulged in anti-immigration gutter politics to pander to the ‘bigoted women’ (and men) of the country. Most amazing was New Statesman political editor, Mehdi Hassan, who cited the polling that 1 in 4 LibDems were unhappy with the coalition as evidence of a progressive opportunity, seemingly ignoring that that means 3 in 4 are happy with rampant expenditure cuts, the dismembering the public sector and the creation of a two-tier schools system.

In a warning that ought to give Compass and all on the left pause for thought, John Harris argued that ‘if your argument is also the one you are most comfortable with, it is probably wrong’. Maybe some in Compass fall prey to reading from the political landscape what they are comfortable seeing – a country that is ‘with us’ and a political strategy that seamlessly mobilises a coalition to bring the progressive majority into power through PR.

Coalitions and cuts
Opinions also differed markedly on the prospects for the ConDem coalition and what the appropriate response to the cuts should be. In a seminar on the cuts there was much debate over the appropriate balance between raised taxes and reduced expenditure. Only one speaker made a serious case for limiting cuts, arguing that the widespread austerity policies now being enacted in Europe would trigger a renewed recession. Some contributions from the floor were predictably simple – ‘we say no to cuts!’ – but in the main Polly Toynbee, who chaired the session brilliantly, did not allow simplistic answers, or questions, to go unchallenged.
A more serious omission was of any quid pro quo that the left should ask for in return for reduced public expenditure. If cuts are to be something other than a process of making the poorest pay for the sins of the financial sector, then they must be accompanied by some attempt to challenge the power of financial markets over the longer term. Several speakers cited ‘market reactions’ as a key reason why cuts were necessary, yet none signalled any discomfort with that situation. The irony that the very credit ratings agencies who acted so irresponsibly in the build up to the crisis should now be arbiters of what the government should or shouldn’t do did not seem to register with the speakers. Next to that, all the talk of a ‘Canadian-style’ consultation over the cuts, even democratic politics, comes to nought if markets have the final say.

How soon these questions bite will in part depend on the fate of the governing coalition. Here too, opinions differed. The coalition was, Lawson said, ‘the thing none of us expected’, a claim that betrays a certain lack of foresight if nothing else. Yet both he and John Harris were, rightly in my view, alert to the changed terrain that the coalition may bring into being, an ‘audacious grab’ for the centre-right ground that shared considerable continuities with Blairite policies and which could leave the left looking very isolated. Others, notably Mehdi Hassan of the New Statesman, were more hopeful of a quick end to the coalition, calling it ‘a strategic disaster for the Lib Dems’.

Leadership election
How well Labour responds to the coalition will depend on a revitalisation of the Party’s politics and so far the leadership campaign has not revealed any clear direction either. At a hastily arranged hustings, a packed hall listened to the assorted Eds, Milibands, Burnham and Abbott set out their stalls and answer the predictable questions on PR, cuts and schools. While the greatest cheer during the opening statements came for Diane Abbot, a walking embodiment of tokenism in this election, enthusiasm for her waned as the debate proceeded, possibly reflecting the vacuity of Abbott’s politics. More encouragingly, both Milibands and Andy Burnham emphasised revitalisation of the party and its membership as key aims though as yet none as spelled out a convincing programme of democratic reform of Labour’s internal structure.
Showing some in Compass what might have been, John Cruddas rounded off proceedings with a forceful and at times powerful speech. His attack on the ‘sour, shrill, hopeless politics’ of attacking the poor and immigrants was a direct and timely counter to those arguing that Labour lost the election by not being tougher on immigration. Cruddas’ alternatives, of a thorough ‘1987-like’ policy review, a revitalisation of Labour’s values and culture and a politics based on progressive English nationalism, are clearly based on his energetic campaign against the BNP and his view that Labour has fallen into a ‘moral and intellectual coma’. Whatever the shortcomings of his politics, Cruddas showed a passion and vision that is lacking from much of the race so far and his absence from the contest clearly disappointed some in Compass.
However, Lawson’s recognition that ‘the time perhaps is just not right’ for his kind of politics was an appropriate acknowledgement of where Labour and the left currently is. Looking rather more like a rebel band that has just taken a thrashing at the hands of imperial stormtroopers, the Compass conference was nevertheless an energetic and welcome moment to reflect on the options facing the left.

‘A New Hope is Forged’, a report of the Compass conference on its own website, is here.
For news of the Labour leadership campaign and information about the candidates, go here.

Cruddas and Rutherford say No Right Turn

New Statesman 31 May 2010
See the bigger picture
Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford

Labour lost, not because it was too soft on immigration and welfare, but because it failed to convince working people of its core values.

People have a common desire to search for something good in their lives. Labour in power did not give voice to this hope: we broke our tacit covenant with the people - a covenant about housing, work and security, a sense of neighbourliness and community. We lost their trust and so lost the election; and we lost it badly. Now we need to rediscover our campaigning traditions of democracy and socialism, and build a grass-roots movement for a new coven­ant between the people and Labour.

Yet Labour appears to be heading elsewhere. Since polling day a new orthodoxy has emerged: it is all about immigration and welfare recipients. Let's prioritise the "indigenous" folk, the argument goes; let's crack down on those hoovering up welfare and take the gloves off when it comes to dealing with new arrivals. This wretched prognosis is all about Labour rediscovering the "working class" and camping out on the governing coalition's right flank. That is a deadly position to adopt.

This is a "working class" long present in Lab­our history. It is the working class of the Webbs and the late-Victorian social investigators, of William Beveridge and fellow members of the Eugenics Education Society - the degenerate mob at the gate, undermining secular, rationalist progress. The distinction between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor is back.

Political economy
Where in these current debates are issues of political economy? Where is the deep analysis of power and structural inequality? Indeed, where are the hope and generosity, the optimism and warmth, the search for a different world? Why are we retreating into a sour, kiss-up, kick-down politics?

The future of Labour will be shaped by how we judge our incumbency. Let us celebrate our achievements in government, but also face up to what went wrong. In a hostile climate, we rebuilt our public services. We lifted nearly a million pensioners out of poverty. The fall in child poverty rates was the second largest in the OECD after Mexico. Education, health care, childcare have all improved. And Britain is a more tolerant place than it was 13 years ago.

But we cannot avoid looking at the larger picture. The National Equality Panel made it clear in its January report: "the large inequality growth of the 1980s has not been reversed". In 1976, the bottom 50 per cent of the population owned 8 per cent of the nation's wealth. By 2001, the figure had fallen to 5 per cent. Labour presided over some of the highest levels of poverty and inequality in Europe, despite ten years of uninterrupted growth.

The power of financial capital was left unchecked and a banking oligarchy captured the financial regulatory system and the political class. While business productivity failed to grow, the business model of shareholder value ensured that the pay of company directors and of those working in the upper echelons of the financial houses soared. Meanwhile, the housing market became the centrepiece of a casino economy. Instead of investment in homes for future generations, there was asset inflation and speculation. Like an imperial cantonment in a colonised land, the City exerted economic control and gave nothing back. As for Labour, it made its Faustian pact: in return for tax revenues that were a fraction of City profits, it played cheerleader to a new "golden age" of finance.

The crash in the financial markets that followed was a crisis of fixed investment. But it was also a crisis of democracy - a profound political failure, on the part of our government, to manage the economy and to protect the security of British citizens. The banking bailout and quantitative easing stopped the collapse of the financial system, but did nothing to halt the transfer of wealth to the rich. Between the third quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2010, national income grew by £27bn. Higher profits have accounted for £24bn of the increase, while wages have risen by £2bn. This is an almost unprecedented growth in profits over wages in absolute terms.

Between 1978 and 2008, more than four million jobs in manufacturing vanished. Deindustrialisation undermined the income base of the working class. The share of the national wealth going to wages peaked at 65 per cent in 1973; by 2008, it had dropped to 53 per cent. Over a 30-year period, there was a huge transfer of wealth and power to a rich elite. To maintain their living standards, low- and middle-earning households increased their borrowing, fuelling the debt crisis in the process.

Labour's response was to prepare workers for the global market. It began to promote an entrepreneurial way of life and the aspiration of "earning and owning". The drive towards a more flexible labour market increased the use of short-term contracts, agency work, subcontracting and the hiring of those who were "self-employed". The model encouraged immigration into Britain, but left the British workforce one of the worst protected in Europe.

The whirlwind of globalisation has destroyed working-class communities. In the most deprived areas, a culture of shame and failure has taken root. Children grow up expecting nothing, and so give nothing in return. People fear that their identity and way of life are under threat; in consequence, they fear the stranger. This fear then spreads outwards to the wider population, like ripples across a pond.

Broken Britain?
Nowhere has the impact of liberal-market modernisation been felt more acutely than in the family. The strains placed on women as they juggle the roles of worker, mother and housekeeper make ordinary family life much more difficult to sustain. Time poverty in working families deprives children of contact with their parents. The intensification of work has led to significant increases in levels of anxiety and sleep problems.

For many young people without decently paid work and housing, it has become impos­sible to follow the conventional rites of passage into adulthood - leaving home, getting a job, establishing a family and taking on legal obligations and rights.

The consequences of this social marketisation were inevitable. Insecurity and a feeling of dispossession turned into hostility to foreigners. Righteous anger at class injustice soured into ethnic hatred. Self-interested individualism eroded the bonds of community and corrupted the ethics of public life. Chronic deprivation spawned self-destructive behaviour, addiction, mental illness, criminality and "conduct disorder". These are symptoms of incivility, however, not its root causes.

The media responded by scapegoating recipients of welfare, single mothers and immigrants. Images of "chavs" and "feral" children legitimised the criminalisation and incarceration of the young and the poor. Government welfare reforms identified the poor as responsible for their own unemployment and poverty. As it sought to repair the tensions in its electoral coalition using right-wing populism, Labour lost its moral compass. More of the same is not the post-election solution that Labour needs.

“Third Way" politics was based on the mistaken beliefs that Britain's class-bound society was giving way to a meritocracy and that globalisation was essentially benign. Labour has to find a narrative about this period that allows it to move on and build a future.

The good society
A first step would be to rediscover a politics of the common good. What type of society do we wish to create? Labour can draw on two coherent, deeply rooted strands of British political thought here. One is the kind of social democracy that is influenced by ethical socialism, and that grows upwards from the people. The other is the radical liberalism of thinkers such as Leonard T Hobhouse.

This politics is conservative, in that it values the continuity of the social goods which shape people's lives: home, family, relationships, good work, locality and communities of belonging. Yet it also promotes social justice in its commitment to personal freedom and to the deepening and extension of equality and democracy in the economy and society at large. Such a politics would enable Labour to engage with the contradictory elements of conservatism and cosmopolitan modernity in British society, and also with the contradictory desires for freedom and security, for the unpredictable and the familiar, that exist in each of us. However, an ethical politics on its own is not sufficient to realise a new society. It will require far-reaching changes in the organisation, control and ownership of the economy to achieve a just distribution of wealth, power and resources.

New covenant
A new covenant between Labour and the people would have three strands. First, it will be for an ethic of reciprocity: "Do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you." It will begin in the daily life of our neighbourhoods, in the commitments of family life. And it would extend to our working lives and our participation in society as citizens. In return for fulfilling our obligations as neighbours and parents, we will expect the government to create a fair tax system and to ensure a proper level of universal social protection, and guarantee a minimum income entitlement. The market, as well as the government, must provide a living wage for all, secure employment and decent working conditions and pensions. People need homes to live in - therefore a national housebuilding programme, along with reform of the private rented sector and the mortgage market.

Second, the covenant would be for an ethical economy that secures capital and employment in localities, creating the conditions for social growth. We are still in the early stages of the economic crisis, and rebuilding the British economy in the long term will require policy strategies for substantial wealth creation and its equitable distribution through well-paid jobs and regional spread. This will entail our government working with manufacturing industry to identify and nurture potential markets, and also demand "patient" or long-term capital investment. J M Keynes, no socialist, recommended this "somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment" when fixed investment collapses. Meanwhile, reform of corporate governance would bring firms under greater democratic control by stakeholders, and thus make business more accountable.
Third, the covenant would be for liberty. Labour is the product of the long popular struggle for freedom and democracy. And its role has been to defend society against the power of the state and the market. Each person has the right to be human in his or her own way. Each has obligations to family, work and society. These rights and obligations can best be achieved by deepening and extending the democratic covenant. Britain needs a constitution based on a democratic state and the devolution of power. We need to bring elites and corporate power to account and our democratic cultures need strengthening by improving the opportu­nities for active participation and deliberative decision-making by the people. We need a new culture of freedom of information, and more plural ownership of the media.

A new Labour covenant would be the beginning of a new ethical relationship among individuals, and between individuals and society. This ethics will be the basis for an agreement between society and a new kind of democratic "developmental state", as well as a productive, wealth-creating economy. It will not thrive on soundbites, public announcements, passive listening, or the broadcasting of information. Rather, it will be made in campaigning, in the active process of building leadership through dialogue.

The task for Labour, as Raymond Williams once put it, is to "make hope possible rather than despair convincing". Listen to much of the post-election soul-searching and you detect an emptiness within Labour; the replacement of hope by calculation and a base pandering to its worst instincts. The anecdotes told by canvassing MPs about immigrants and scroungers are allegories of a deeper uncertainty about what the Labour Party stands for.

Richard Rorty once wrote that "the best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete and powerless". This is an experience that many former Labour voters describe. To use dry terms such as "disconnection" to comprehend it is to underestimate the seriousness of what they feel: grievous pain and loss. The optimism of progressive politics seems to have been leeched from a party that once, at its best, was a byword for it. That is why we need a new covenant with the electorate.

Jon Cruddas is MP for DagenhamJonathan Rutherford is professor of cultural studies at Middlesex University

Jeremy Gilbert: Democratise or Die

OpenDemocracy
Democratise or Die: The status quo is not an option for Labour
Jeremy Gilbert, 31 May 2010

About the author: Jeremy Gilbert is Reader in Cultural Studies at the University of East London. His publications include Anticapitalism and Culture.

There is one key reason why we now find ourselves in a new political era; one aspect of the election result which few predicted and which has decisively prevented it from being a re-run of 1979 and 1997. That is the surprising robustness of the Labour vote in various key constituencies up and down the country. Had it not been for the unexpected success of the party on the ground in many constituencies, Labour would have been defeated as convincingly as incumbent governments were at those two critical elections.

Despite the failure of the campaign as it was managed and presented from the centre, in those places where Labour has a vigorous local culture of organising, involving members and politicians in an active and participatory dialogue with communities, the Labour vote remained solid or even increased. This was even more true in Wales, Scotland and London, where devolved power has enabled Labour-led administrations to deliver real social democratic reforms for their electorates in recent years.

These facts are striking because they indicate the final failure of the New Labour strategy. Probably the best term ever coined to describe that strategy was Anthony Barnett’s phrase ‘corporate populism’. New Labour was based on the idea that a new kind of popular politics had to imitate the organisational and communications techniques of corporations, while pursuing a political programme which tried to align the interests of voters with those of actual corporations. When reflecting on this history, it’s striking to consider that New Labour’s full embrace of market liberalism came some time after its adoption of this approach as its own basic organisational mode.

Long before it became clear that New Labour wouldn’t break in any serious way with Thatcherite economics, while Blair still tantalised his supporters with references to Christian Socialism, ethical communitarianism, and the ‘stakeholder society’, the organisational form of New Labour prefigured the models and the value that it would later try to impose on the state, the public sector, and the country at large.

The basic organisational idea of New Labour was that the party membership were the problem and not the solution. Between 1994 and 1997 huge numbers of new members were recruited to Labour, enthused by the prospect of electability which Blair seemed to have brought back to the party. At just the same time, however, a programme of ‘reforms’ saw almost all meaningful decision-making about policy or campaigning strategy taken out of the hands of local parties and their memberships, and handed over to largely unaccountable bodies and officials, appointed by the leadership and only weakly accountable to anyone else.

Key decisions which required some degree of democratic legitimation, most notably the re-writing of the Labour constitution to remove any commitment to the socialisation of the means of production, were to be taken through postal ballots which presented members with the opportunity either to endorse the leadership position unequivocally or to reject it outright (a politically suicidal option for the party), without any significant opportunity for modification or discussion. The ideal New Labour member was someone who paid their membership, who got their messages from the leadership via the BBC or The Guardian, and who might deliver a few leaflets at election-time, but who never even wanted to participate in localised discussions or decision-making.

There was a certain logic to this. The prevalent idea in intellectual circles at the time was that the professionalisation of politics was an inexorable process: like it or not, political parties could no longer be vehicles of mass democracy, but had to fulfil their new historic function of producing and servicing successive generations of a specialised political class. This in itself was based on a partially-accurate, but ultimately lop-sided understanding of the many ways in which the world was changing at the time.

The decline of old forms of social solidarity, old industries, old patterns of geographical settlement, class culture and party loyalty all seemed to have resulted in a situation in which every voter would be a floating voter, and the only way to communicate with them effectively would be through the mass media. Only the experts who knew how to play the media game could be trusted both to formulate and to deliver the party’s message.

At the same time, according to New Labour thinking, those strange individuals who did remain nostalgically attached to ideas like democracy and collective actions were precisely the kind of people to whom the swing voters of middle England could never relate; and unfortunately those were exactly the kind of people who still showed up to Labour party branch meetings. Creating a new body of non-participating members, and removing all power from the party’s own democratic structures, was an understandable response, as was the decision to turn to focus-groups and opinion polls as better guides to policy than the will of party activists.
But there were two problems with this strategy. On the one hand, its basic analytical presuppositions already look antiquated. In the age of Facebook and Twitter, which enable millions of citizens to share ideas, to build campaigns and to communicate across great distances, the idea that a handful of professional politicians touring the TV studios of central London can be an adequate substitute for democratic politics looks clunky and forlorn. And while the televisual persona of the leader clearly remains a crucial factor in determining the success of a party today, the failure of Cleggmania to materialise at the ballot box shows that this is clearly not the overriding issue which can determine electoral outcomes. Add to this the failure of the Suns’s endorsement to deliver a clear majority for Cameron, and we have a mountain of evidence that the era of Spin, when a command-and-control communications strategy could always win the day, is now behind us.

But this isn’t just about shifts in the media landscape. What these changes demonstrate is that New Labour only ever understood one part of the story about the decline of old political forms. While they may have been right that the 19th / 20th century model of mass political campaigning was reaching its end, they failed to notice the extent to which the coming era would present new opportunities for community-building and for democratic action, and new problems for any attempt to stifle democracy and debate. The success and growing political importance of the blogosphere and of sites like this one is just one sign of this!

The second major problem with the New Labour model was this: in politics, as we so often forget at our peril, form dictates content. Lenin’s bloodthirsty, secretive revolutionary organisation produced a bloodthirsty, secretive state, despite the nobility of its aspiration to liberate humanity from servitude. New Labour started off promising to rebuild community, but in the end all it could offer in government was more corporate populism, always putting the interests of capital ahead of those of the people it was supposed to represent, and pursuing an unpopular programme of public-sector ‘reforms’ designed to fit all social relationships into the mould of transactions between corporations and their customers.

This programme never had any democratic legitimacy - polls showed time and again that most of the public, and the vast majority of Labour voters, didn’t want to have the same kind of relationship to their schools or their government that they had to Tescos - but New Labour pursued it relentlessly anyway. Only where Labour seemed to stand for something different did it escape electoral meltdown at the general election.

The lessons from this history are clear. The details of the programme on which Labour will fight the next election could not possibly be determined now, when so much remains uncertain about the intervening half-decade. What is certain is that unless it is the product of a radically renewed democratic process, that programme will not have the capacity to inspire the public, to mobilise the membership, and to break the Con-Lib coalition which now threatens to do to Labour what Blair and Ashdown once dreamed of doing to the Tories, shutting it out of government for at least a generation.

As Jon Cruddas, Compass and others have argued, a complete overhaul and reinvention of the Labour Party for the 21st century is the only thing that could achieve this end. In the era of ‘we-think’ and network culture, the collective intelligence of the membership - including the 12,000 who have rushed to join now that the age of New Labour looks likely to have ended - is the greatest possible resource that the otherwise-impoverished party has at its disposal.
New Labour was predicated on the idea that it was the membership that stood between Labour and power, but the election result has turned this assumption on its head. All over the world, from Brazil to Scandinavia, new experiments in participatory governance and radical democratic renewal (see, for example, Hilary Wainwrights’ book Reclaim the State) are finding ways of developing such collective resources in ways which go way beyond the kinds of mild constitutional reforms which the coalition is now contemplating, which themselves threaten to make Labour look like a democratic dinosaur.

If the party is to begin to learn from such experiments and to empower itself for the 21st century, then it will have to begin at home, with the most radical review of its own structures of decision-making and membership participation in its history. The alternative: fossilisation, petrification, extinction.