Society
Tribalism places party before country
Published 23 August 2007
Tribalism is unthinking, it brooks no disagreement. It is, essentially, anti-democratic, as we know if we look around the world
In the summer of 1872 the then Liberal prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone, spent nearly a week staying with the future Tory premier Arthur Balfour. "I really delight in him, no more no less," the Grand Old Man later told his wife; this despite Balfour's travel arrangements being so hasty that Gladstone nearly missed his train back to London, and had to wade ashore from a loch in order to catch it. As the coaches pulled out of the station, recalled Balfour, "I saw with intense thankfulness a pair of wet socks hanging out of the window to dry."
Such cross-party civility was brought to mind by the recent death of the former Conservative minister John Biffen. Harriet Harman, his distant successor as Leader of the Commons, described him as making "all members of parliament - even those of us in opposition - feel he was our leader of the House, too". But Biffen's approach is a rarity now. Tribalism, which seeks confrontation even when dialogue is possible, dominates politics. Gordon Brown's hoped-for "government of all the talents" never stood a chance, because it is not what you believe in that counts, but which group you belong to. Party trumps principle at every turn, unquestionably contributing to the popular disillusionment with Westminster.
Does anyone doubt that Paddy Ashdown could have brought valuable experience, if not to Northern Ireland, then to Defence or the Foreign Office? Could the likes of Shirley Williams and David Owen not have provided useful service to a government with which they were unsurprisingly sympathetic? Marooned outside the borders of a party they would never have left if they had known that Labour's extremism in the early 1980s was a temporary diversion and not the true road ahead, the latter two are by no means the only public figures whose talents we have been denied because they belong to the "wrong" tribe.
This is not to deny that a degree of tribalism is perfectly understandable. I well remember the shock I felt when my future wife admitted to being a Tory supporter. Could love bridge such a divide? (Answer: fortunately, yes.) But when group rivalry hardens to the point where it rejoices in the downfall of men and women of good faith and ability in other parties, it has moved from healthy and vigorous debate to placing party before country.
Lunching with a Liberal Democrat peer on the day that William Hague defeated Kenneth Clarke for the Tory leadership, I expressed my disappointment at the result. "No, no," said my companion gleefully. "It's just what we wanted." Anyone able to look beyond party could see that Clarke's election would have been to the advantage of British politics, which is best served by an opposition credible enough to hold the government to account. But the partisan interest is in the ascendant; good of party comes before all else.
How else to explain the ease with which the Labour Party forswore so many of its long- cherished beliefs in the great leap forward that transformed it into new Labour? If the vanguard was genuinely convinced of the virtues of the project, most of the parliamentary foot soldiers were not. The tribal thirst for power was such, however, that they happily cast aside the principles that should have been their motive for entering politics in the first place.
No wonder still-loyal figures from a previous generation like Neil Kinnock have to pick their words so carefully when talking about the Blair government, or that its election victories now appear so thin. No wonder, too, that only 13 per cent of voters profess a "very strong" attachment to any particular party today, compared to 42 per cent in the 1960s; or that election turnout has declined to the point where one might begin to question whether the term "participatory democracy" is still apt for Britain. The public can see that tribal attitudes are unhealthy, even if our MPs cannot.
Parties have always fought and sought power, of course. But many of their leading members used to give a greater impression of desiring office in order to implement policies based on principle; of prizing power as the means to an end, rather than power being the end itself, a prize to be shared out among the tribe.
Roy Jenkins resigned as deputy leader of the Labour Party - and ruined his chances of ever winning the leadership - over a point of principle (Europe, in 1972). It was John Biffen's principled insubordination that led Margaret Thatcher to end the man's cabinet career. Men of principle, recognising each other as such, formed friendships across party divides, as Michael Foot and Enoch Powell did.
Tribalism is different. It is unthinking, and it brooks no disagreement. It is, essentially, anti-democratic, as we know if we look around the world. Is not the strength of tribal allegiances one of the reasons why liberal democracy finds the Middle East barren terrain? Members of the same tribe in Papua New Guinea call each other "wantoks" (one talk) to signify that they speak the same language, and not those of other tribes. Often, they are barely capable of communicating with each other. You will not be surprised to learn that democracy in PNG is not in a healthy state.
The age of tribes in Europe passed into the history books and museums many centuries ago. It is time for today's politicians to recognise that such a primitive culture does not belong in Westminster, either.
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