UK Politics
The history boys
Published 20 September 2007
As Gordon Brown fends off troubles on all fronts ahead of the Labour conference, Martin Bright says the PM should look to his party's roots to revive public confidence
One of the most important functions of a Labour party conference, perhaps the only useful one left, is to bring activists together to talk about their heritage and history. Bournemouth 2007, like all conferences in recent memory, will be an exercise in collective nostalgia, a celebration of a once great movement. The rhetoric may say that everything must be "new" (Gordon Brown has already announced that politics itself must be new in 2007), but it is tradition that really matters here. Anniversaries are marked with due reverence and the colossal figures of the past honoured appropriately. Last year it was the turn of Tony Crosland, whose Future of Socialism was reprinted by the Fabian Society to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its publication.
This year the Co-operative Party turns 90, and its contribution to Labour will be noted with a series of fringe events. Most of its founders are now forgotten by all but the most committed students of Labour history, but in Bournemouth tribute will be paid to the party's pioneers: Sam Perry, the first Co-operative national secretary (and father of Fred Perry, the last English Wimbledon men's champion), Alfred Waterson, who became the party's first MP in 1918, and A V Alexander, who was its first minister.
The Co-operative movement, whose most visible expression is in Co-op retail outlets and banks across the country, originally put up its own candidates, but since 1927 has had a formal electoral alliance with the Labour Party. A short history of the movement, written by Greg Rosen, has been published in time for conference. Like the reprint of The Future of Socialism, it has a foreword by Gordon Brown, who has been a Co-operative member all his political life.
In his foreword, Brown writes that he believes "the Co-operative Party stands for social responsibility, for global decency and for people having a say in the running of their communities". On the party's website the Prime Minister is also quoted as saying that it stands for "fair trade" and "ethical business". So the Co-operative Party represents everything Brown stands for. The old politics, it turns out, is the new politics after all.
There is a sense in which the Co-operative was indeed a precursor of new Labour. Rosen quotes from a pamphlet published in 1947 by another forgotten figure, Harold Campbell, then the party's 31-year-old assistant general secretary. Even during the high-water mark - the Attlee administration - Campbell remained unconvinced of the benefits of centralised state socialism. "If socialism is to end at nationalisation, or at public ownership administered through the state, co-operators are more radical than socialists. The kind of society that co-operation entails is much less 'totalitarian' than that. The glory of human society is in its diversity, not in any uniformity. If the object of democracy is to identify government with the people ever more closely, then there must surely be an extending devolution of authority from the centre."
His words have a familiar ring. I don't know if Brown is a student of Campbell's Wanting and Working pamphlet, but it is similar in spirit to the Prime Minister's recent speeches about re-engaging the British public in the political process.
Young Turks
It could be argued that the Co-operative is now one of the most influential groups of MPs within Labour. Its chair, the international development minister Gareth Thomas, is a respected figure. Ten cabinet ministers are Co-operative Party members, as were four of the deputy leadership candidates (Hazel Blears, Peter Hain, Hilary Benn and Harriet Harman). All the most influential younger Brown-era ministers are also members (Ed Balls, the Miliband brothers, Andy Burnham and James Purnell).
Could it be that those searching for a definition of a progressive Brownite politics will find it here? For Rosen, "Brown's international agenda is rooted in the same ethical framework which led the Co-operative Party to be an early advocate of a trade boycott and the fair-trade agenda pioneered by co-operative retail". And Sarah McCarthy-Fry, Labour and Co-operative MP for Portsmouth North, is quoted as saying: "The themes that Gordon is bringing forward reflect co-operative ideas such as devolution to communities and giving people the tools to participate effectively."
Yet there is good reason to be sceptical. In a book to be published this month, Simon Lee of Hull University will argue that Brown's greatest influences are right-wing thinkers: historical figures such as Adam Smith, but also the neoconservative Gertrude Himmelfarb and James Q Wilson, whose title at Pepperdine University, California - Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy - tells you all you need to know.
In Best for Britain? The Politics and Legacy of Gordon Brown, Lee suggests that Brown's instincts for centralising decision-making contradict his avowed aspiration to devolve power. Lee has long been the most challenging thinker on Brown from within liberal academia and dubbed him a Thatcherite long before the pink lady was invited back to Downing Street.
There are already signs that people are beginning to see through the new government's mania for consultation. When I wrote two weeks ago about citizens' activism and the "new politics", I asked readers to write in with their experiences. Although I was really looking for examples of where grass-roots politics was making a difference outside government, the responses were revealing about the government consultations that have already begun.
Richard Wilson, director of Involve, which promotes political participation, wrote to alert me to the almost complete collapse of the government's "citizens' jury" on whether to build more nuclear power stations. Several environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, the Green Alliance, WWF and Greenpeace, withdrew their support after it became obvious that ministers had already made up their minds.
The question being asked of participants in the exercise (run by Brown's favourite polling organisation, Opinion Leader Research) was as follows: "In the context of tackling climate change and energy security what role should nuclear power have in the UK's energy mix?" As Wilson said on his blog: "That makes uncomfortable reading for anyone who believes public participation should open up, not close down public debate. You could just as easily have written, 'In the context of the highly uncertain economic costs and personal health impacts of nuclear power what role should it have?'" If all citizens' juries follow this model no one will be fooled about their real purpose: to give a spurious extra layer of devolved legitimacy to policies already decided centrally.
Government mission
The most depressing email I received was a press release with the headline "Expert partnership on empowerment committed to support government participation agenda". The document continues: "A body of experts in empowerment has developed a partnership to support the government's mission to increase levels of participation at local, regional and national levels. The National Empowerment Partnership (NEP) . . . aims to improve the quality, co-ordination and evidence of empowerment across England." The initiative was announced this month by the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, and given the government's backing. On this evidence, the government is even trying to centralise the debate over participation. This is not a little sinister.
The debate at conference will rage over Brown's intention to scrap contemporary resolutions (last-minute motions at conference, proposed by constituency parties and the unions, which can embarrass the leadership). But this is a sideshow. Conference has long ceased to be the driver of debate with the party. Labour members should concentrate instead on testing Brown's bona fides where he claims policy is really being developed: at the party's National Policy Forum and at the devolved citizens' juries themselves.
With the public increasingly disengaged from the political process, and a string of crises affecting the new government, the reflective words of that Co-operative Party pamphlet of 60 years ago take on an added resonance. The object of democracy must now be "to identify government with the people ever more closely", it says. The "devolution of authority from the centre" is no longer a mere aspiration, but an imperative. For this to happen, those consulted in the process must come to their own conclusions, not be eased towards ratifying decisions already made by the government.
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