Michael Foot : from "Suicide Note" to Salvation?

Gerald Kaufman's claim that Labour's 1983 General Election Manifesto was "the longest suicide note in history" has helped to fuel the impression that Labour's subsequent disastrous election result rested primarily on the shoulders of its policy proposals. To this, is normally added the argument that Michael Foot looked like Worzel Gummidge, which in a television era helped to destroy Labour's popular image.

The above crude analysis conveniently ignores two major alternative explanations for Labour's drubbing.

(1) In 1981, the Labour Party suffered a massive split with the defection of the "Gang of Four" and the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) under the leadership of Roy Jenkins. As it takes two to tango, the blame for Labour's split can not be laid exclusively (or even mainly) on the shoulders of its leftward move. Jenkins and company made the break, refusing to accept the legitimacy of Labour Party Conference decisions. In the 1983 General Election the combined Labour and SPD vote was almost exactly the same as that which an undivided Labour Party had achieved in October 1974 when it won an election under Harold Wilson's leadership. A united Labour Party in 1983 could have achieved something similar.

(2) Prior to the split and then the 1982 Argentine invasion of the Falklands, plus Margaret Thatcher's popularist response, Michael Foot had been ahead of her in the public opinion polls. So much so at one time, that Thatcher was seen as being the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history. But the Falkland Factor (added to the split) was played out to her considerable political advantage.

It is also a paradox that Michael Foot was seen to have had a bad television image, for back in the 1950s he had been a popular and regular television performer in discussion programmes. But by the 1980s, television had become an avenue for those with a simplistic style, rather than those with great oratorical skills, passion, intellect and feeling.

See this article by Jon Williams which stresses the contemporary relevance of the much maligned 1983 manifesto. It is likely to turn out to be far more important for the modern Labour Party than anything that is likely to emerge from its current policy reviews.

Coalition For A Labour Victory

"Ed Miliband has been tasked by Gordon Brown to take responsibility for preparing Labour's manifesto for the coming election and has invited contributions and advice from within the party for this purpose. Some 45 Labour MPs, supported by dozens of Constituency parties and trade unionists, as well as Compass and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, are now launching a Coalition for a Labour Victory based on a radical redistributive programme which we believe will resonate with Labour voters whose loyalties have been strained. We are therefore pressing Ed Miliband to focus Labour's campaigning for the election around the following 5 key principles:

1 The recession should be tackled, not with cuts in essential public spending, but by a massive public investment programme in job creation in house-building, infrastructure improvement, public services, and the new green digital economy, in order steadily to reduce the deficit by getting people off dependence on benefit and into work paying tax, national insurance contributions and VAT.

2 Banks should be split up with their casino investment arms hived off. Publicly-owned retail banks should be required to meet new social and community objectives and support manufacturing, with lending to businesses and homeowners restored to 2007 levels. Pay and bonuses should be tightly regulated.

In addition there are 3 other key policy priorities:

3 A clean break must be made with market fundamentalism - de-regulation and privatisation. Public provision should be expanded - in health care, education, housing, pensions, energy and transport. Royal Mail must remain wholly in the public sector.

4 In the face of the huge and unacceptable growth in inequality, a big redistribution programme must swing resources away from the rich to provide sizeable increases in pensions, the minimum wage, the lowest benefit levels, and to fund job creation and improved public services. Union rights must be restored - it is in economic crisis that workers are most in need of that protection.

5 To achieve the 80% carbon emission reduction target by 2050, renewable sources of energy should be promoted on a far bigger scale, industry (including airlines) should be required to reduce its climate change emissions by at least 3% a year, household carbon allowances should be introduced, and the UK targets should be fully met by domestic action and not by carbon-offsetting abroad."

Labour movement support for the above statement should be sent to Ed Miliband here

Hat Tip Michael Meacher

Also see Dronfield Blather here and here.

Update 5 February : see coverage in today's Tribune.

The Turbulent Twins

Tony and Gordon In The Eyes of Capitalism.
Alan Greenspan was the head of the Federal Reserve in America from 1987 to 2006. He was the crown prince of world capitalism. He has written a book entitled "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World" (Allen Lane 2008).

Below I give an extract from a review of his book by Prem Sikka which appeared in Tribune. His quote from Greenspan's book confirms what democratic socialists knew all along.

"Greenspan was a key player in the expansion of Reaganomics and the rolling back of the state...He praises Thatcherite economic policies and offers his evaluation of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and present Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Referring to a meeting in 1994 he says: "It appeared to me that Brown was the senior person. Blair stayed in the background while Brown did most of the talking about New Labour. Gone were the socialist tenets of postwar Labour leaders...Brown espoused globalisation and free markets and did not seem to be interested in reversing much of what Thatcher had changed in Britain. The fact that he and Blair had arrived at the doorstep of a renowned defender of capitalism (namely, me) solidified my impression"

Tribune 1977

A slightly edited version of the following letter appears in this week's "Tribune" -

I was one of those people Robert Pandy describes (Tribune 4 April) who heckled Peter Hain at the Tribune Rally which was held during Labour's 1977 Conference. Peter had just defected from the Liberals and I felt that he first needed to earn left-Labour credentials before being invited to address us.

If my memory is correct, Neil Kinnock had an article in a subsequent issue of Tribune which criticised those of us who booed. I responded with a letter which defended the rights of the "little man" to heckle. (What would now be considered to be the use of a male chauvinist term, tended in those days to be seen as a generic term which covered women as well as men. I would be careful nowadays to talk about the "little person".)

When Peter first appeared for Business Questions as the new Leader of the House in the Commons on 19 June 2003, I added the following introduction to the question I asked him on a local Constituency matter - "May I welcome the new Leader of the House to his post? I have obviously changed my opinion since I heckled him at a Tribune Rally just after he had moved over from the Liberal Party."

Peter started his response by saying - "First I thank my hon. Friend for his historical reference. It was 26 years ago, if I am right, in September 1977 and, as I recall, it was a very friendly heckle."

He was only a month out, but the heckling was far from gentle. I then came to have a great deal of sympathy for what at one time were Peter's regularly expressed libertarian socialist views. I even ran a one-person campaign on my blog recently to try and get him to stand for the leadership and not just the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, as a feasible left-wing standard bearer. Such an approach is seen in the views he expressed in his latest Tribune article about Zimbabwe. Let us hope that he once more starts to apply these values to the internal British political scene, otherwise I will have to go back to heckling.

Harry Barnes, Dronfield.

In Place Of Nye

At a Labour Party Conference in 1959, Aneurin Bevan said that "Socialism in the context of modern society means the conquest of the commanding heights of the economy". It is telling that Martin Rowson should produce this cartoon in the former (and continuing) Bevanite magazine "Tribune". It is a brilliant response to New Labour's embarrassed nationalisation of the disgraced Northern Rock.

Three in One

If I was asked to pick (a) a favourite radio programme, (b) a favourite author and (c) a favourite weekly journal, I would plump for Little Atoms, George Orwell and Tribune.

Imagine my delight, therefore, when I found all three of these recently rolled into one. On the Little Atoms radio programme, Paul Anderson a former editor of Tribune was interviewed about a book he has edited, entitled Orwell in Tribune. It will consist of a collection of Orwell’s writings from Tribune and is due to be published shortly by Politicos.

Paul Anderson still writes for Tribune. He will be known to some as the joint author (with Nyta Mann) of "Safety First: The Making of New Labour" (Granta Books, 1997). In responding to questions about Orwell and Tribune he was articulate, relevant and highly informative.

If you wish to listen to the programme, click here. Let me first give some more information about the favourites I opted for above.

Little Atoms

Little Atoms is a fortnightly radio programme which can be heard upon Resonance 104.4 FM on Fridays from 16.30 to 17.30. It is a live discussion show with an agenda which is Rationalist, Pro-Science, Atheist, Humanist and for the Progressive Left. So it appeals to all my prejudices; except it has the good sense to see these as being commitments to common sense.

In the programme, Neil Denny and Padraig Reidy (who is deputising for Richard Sanderson) interview guests from the worlds of science, politics, philosophy, journalism and the arts on subjects as diverse as conspiracy theories, cosmology, human rights and the state of the left.

What could be more appealing to a former left (but not nutty) Labour M.P. with a background in studying and teaching politics and philosophy - whose readings nowadays include a greater emphasis on the philosophy of science.

George Orwell

I have been reading the works of George Orwell (and works about him) for nearly 50 years. It wasn’t one of his novels which first grabbed me, but the book in which he describes and assesses his experiences whilst fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War: "Homage to Catalonia."

The Spanish Civil War broke out five days before I was born and it came to have a special fascination for me, probably because I was brought up during the 2nd World War against Fascism.

The Chapters in his book alternate between his experiences as a militiaman (leading to him being wounded) and the political and then military infighting on the Republican side; which was amongst the Communist UGT, the Anarchists and the independent Marxist force - the POUM. Orwell had joined the latter through links with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in Britain.

It was perhaps inevitable that I would come to involve myself with the work of the ILP’s successor organisation - Independent Labour Publications.

The best work about Orwell still seems to me to be Bernard Crick’s biography; "George Orwell: A Life" (Penguin 1980). Crick brings together a fine blend of empathy and intellectual rigour in explaining and analysing Orwell’s life and writings.

I only wish that his academic assessment of Orwell’s work had appeared at the conclusion of the book and not as an introduction. For it really flows from the biographical output and could be off-putting to some as a starter.

In a collection of Orwell’s essays, entitled "Orwell and Politics" (editor Peter Davison, Penguin 2001), Timothy Garton Ash states "it was after Spain that he really became Orwell" (rather than retaining his original traits which can be associated with his proper name, Eric Blair). "Every line of his writings now have a political purpose. Imperialism and Fascism would remain major targets of his generous anger".

Although we now face Imperialism and Fascism in modern dress, this even handed and morally significant anger is something we need to nourish to avoid us becoming friends to either side.

Tribune

Tribune (known initially as “The Tribune”) was first published in January 1937 and it still survives. Its heyday was its earlier years up to (and covering) its period of Bevanism. In fact Aneurin Bevan was himself a wartime editor and Michael Foot (his friend and great biographer) had two spells as editor prior to 1959.

Something of the special nature of Bevanism and how it offered a different universe to that now given by New Labour’s Third Way is seen in the following quotation from Bevan’s "In Place of Fear" (1952, MacGibbon & Kee.)

"Democratic Socialism is not a middle way between capitalism and Communism. If it were merely that, it would be doomed to failure from the start. It can not live by borrowed vitality. Its driving power must derive from its own principles and the energy released by them. It is based on the conviction that free men can use free institutions to solve the social and economic problems of the day, if they are given a chance to do so".

The driving power Bevan wished to unleash is seen nowhere better than in Orwell’s writings for Tribune. He wrote some two dozen articles for Tribune from 1940 to 1943 and then became a regular contributor until 1947. For a key period, he was their literary editor and had a personal column entitled "As I Please" to which he made 80 separate contributions.

On Tribune’s 10th Anniversary he wrote that Tribune was "the only existing weekly paper that makes a genuine effort to be both progressive and humane - that is to combine a radical socialist policy with a respect for freedom of speech and a civilised attitude towards literature and the arts". As Bernard Crick claimed in his autobiography of Orwell, "there was less a Tribune line than a Tribune style of argument, which suited Orwell perfectly".

I look forward to reading Paul Anderson’s selection of Orwell’s writings taken from Tribune. Especially as Anderson was first attracted to work for Tribune as its literary editor so that he could follow in the footsteps of Orwell whose work he was 'hooked' upon.

Anderson found a similar satisfaction in that work to that felt by Orwell.

I first ever heard about Tribune when listening to the BBC Overseas Service broadcasting "What the Papers Say" when undertaking my National Service in 1955 and 1956. I wasn’t able to purchase copies until I returned home to be demobbed. These was the heady days of the Suez and Hungarian crises, followed quickly by the marches to "Ban the Bomb".

Today’s Tribune only occasionally reaches the heights of those days. But I subscribe to it still out of past loyalties and in the hope that the Labour Left can flourish again whilst avoiding the twin entrapments of Chomskyism and a fresh Brownite version of New Labourism. As Bevan saw, Democratic Socialists have their own vitality.

Perhaps reflections on Orwell’s Tribune could fruitfully help us to rediscover this.