About
This blog kind of picks up where my previous blog left off. By the end of my old blog, there was a lot I didn’t like about it. I was updating it far too often, for example. It had a lot of stuff on it that I would have written when I was a teenager, but wouldn’t write now. It’s not wrong to change your point of view, but reading your own opinions from that age bracket in particular is uncomfortable.
The blog was there as one small voice calling for renewal and renovation of the Labour Party. It started off as one big long frustrated mess on the part of an eighteen year old college student, and ended up with me being the Labour parliamentary candidate for the town I have spent the last decade with.
This blog picks up from there, and will also speak in favour of Labour pluralism, democratisation and a general garage sale, an internal Labour Party clearout. It will argue for renewal from what remains. It will argue for Labour to be comfortable with its own democratic-left heritage, and to confidently and professionally assert itself in building a future noticeably to the left of the present political settlement.
To boldly go where Star Trek didn’t really think of. Hmm.
I’m a democratic socialist, but I prefer to describe myself as part of the democratic left, because I feel that those who prefer to see themselves as social democrats are in a similar relative position to me, given the neoliberal political conditions in Britain and the wider world, and the long triumph of various capitalisms more generally.
I am also a cooperator, because I don’t think central direction of massive bureaucracies serves anybody that well, but I do believe in responsive and flexible methods of public ownership as a means to a fairer society.
As a democratic socialist, I’m someone who believes that organised workers are pretty important. These are currently best expressed as trade unions.
I’m a member of the Labour Party. I see Labour as a necessary but insufficient way to get my various environs how I would like them to be. I am an internationalist, and I am guided as much by our sister parties as Labour. I seek guidance from societies I admire, as par the typical cliché, Sweden being top amongst them.
As well as Labour I’m also a member of Compass* and a bunch of other pressure groups. Like any political party, Labour can’t and won’t deliver good policy without some pressure and direction from the progressive communities that surround it. Compass serves as an umbrella for these communities. We shouldn’t chuck Labour governments to the powerful and well resourced business lobbies and trust them not to crack.
A body needs a conscience if it is to do good.
Meanwhile an almost comical fear of the left grips ‘modernisers’. They are modernisers who aren’t prepared to listen to ideas that they didn’t already agree with, and are in control. So ironically, if they get their way, nothing gets updated, improved or otherwise altered. ‘Modernisers against change’. Why would anyone, whatever they conclude, want to insulate themselves against other ideas? What is ‘modern’, anyway? The fear of the Militant Tendency bit, or the part where we all embrace the policies of 1980s Tories?
I entered the Labour Party more inspired by Tony Benn than Tony Blair. Now I disagree sharply with both of them, but still see myself broadly as on the left of Labour, for a number of reasons. I have past figures I admire, but seek to develop my thoughts as an individual, mindful primarily of the future. The fact that I have heroes makes me feel uncomfortable.
Intellectually I identify more with Nye Bevan than any other Labour figure, but I have several key differences, mostly due to times changing. I have found diverse others such as Barbara Castle, Robin Cook and Ken Livingstone (despite all his flaws) to be inspiring. But like everyone else, I am my own person.
I depart from New Labour on a number of key policies around war and foreign policy, public services, trade unions and legal rights in general. Nor can I accept some of the torturous lexis around ‘reform’ and ‘aspiration’. I don’t agree that ‘modern’ and ’successful’ are synonymous with ‘right wing’, ‘rightwards’, or ‘centrist’. If anything, centrism is a conservative acceptance of the current balance of social relations. There can be no such thing as ‘radical centrism’ as a result.
I seek leftwards change through electoral majorities. We have had Thatcherism or accommodation with it for thirty years. It feels like time to give it a rest.
We all play a part in making the future, the ‘modernising’ if you like. I would like the future to be based on the principle above, and you might want something different.
I believe that the Gaitskellite culture of central decision making and the Leninist disciplinarianism within Labour is a recipe for mental stagnation, political conservatism and eventual tiredness.
We could actually do with more central organisation, but with greater political pluralism in party affairs.
This pluralism should be accepted by party staff and paid employees within the youth movement, insofar as we are not fighting Militant.
Our members should feel free insofar as they support Labour. They should feel that they make a difference to the world around them, yes, including the party which they so kindly support with their subs, time and shoe leather.
I support most of Labour’s policies, and throw my support behind some I have misgivings about. But I think that politicians who simply parrot lines or act as lobby fodder are seldom respected by the public or themselves. I think politicians should act a bit more like other people and not be ashamed of it. I am not afraid of saying where I differ from the government, or its opponents. But I seek to do so constructively and as little as possible. When I have stood for election to selection for anything, I have made all of that quite clear.
In any event, it is clear to me that a friend incapable of criticism is a friend incapable of friendship.
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Oh yes, last point: I have a ‘thing’ about political language. If I think you’re using it, and it’s sloppy, I will write about you, and possibly direct some derision in your direction. Amid all this postmodern stuff about ‘the death of left and right’, ‘progress’, ‘liberal interventionism’, and the like, we’re going to have to figure out what stuff actually means. What is ‘modern’ (particularly when we seem to be sliding towards a 19th century economic model which expresses itself politically as the future)? In an age of extremes, turbulence, and sparse political consciousness, who is truly a ‘moderate’?
These questions are worthy ones.
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*Not any more – I left Compass in particular over ‘tactical’ voting, but am close to their policy ideas and ‘take no prisoners’ approach to campaigning.
