Though Cowards Flinch

I’ve always loved the tongue-in-cheek appellation, “Hero of the Working Class,” often applied to evoke humour through irony (like attaching that phrase to James Purnell) or through satirization of the occasional Left tendency to glorify individuals over thinking (*cough* George Galloway).

Probably bearing some relation to this, I’m quite enjoying the shocking spectacle of Labour cabinet ministers listing those people they believe to be “Labour’s greatest heroes.”

The very idea that Ed Balls can honestly pick Aneurin Bevan as the greatest hero of the Labour Party makes me want to cackle insanely. The master of conformity picks the Labour rebel who suffered at the hands of Labourite McCarthyism? Aaagghhahahahahahahaha. Etc. Alright, there’s some resemblance – after all, Bevan’s “Naked into the Conference Chamber” speech to Labour conference did sort of mark his decline in later life.

Nevertheless, Ed Balls – or anyone from this government – choosing one of the architects of the welfare state, however bureaucratic, undemocratic and inefficient the original model, really makes me laugh. It cannot but smack of a ridiculously obvious opportunism, perhaps driven by the desperation of the doldrums into which this government has sunk almost irrevocably. At least Balls feels suitably grubby in appropriating this legacy to allow real NuLabthink to appear.

Bevan never made it to be Labour leader, in part because he put his beliefs before political expediency at key moments in his career – which is, for some romantics, enough of a reason to bestow hero status. But again, he is far from being alone in the history of our party.

What a way to dismiss the traditions of half the Labour Party as ultimately fruitless because they are driven by consistent ideas rather than a willingness to prostitute onesself for power. That is not to denounce compromise – but Balls’ compromise to achieve power is not deal making between people with the same long-term goals. It is an outright firesale of ideals for the sake of banking enough political capital with Right media, business and establishment to acquire personal status.

That is the legacy of New Labour. For this reason, history will forget their unmemorable contributions to the Labour Party, or it will forget the Labour Party itself.

Once more a grim laugh emanates when I read Balls’ words:

That [Bevan] is a hero of our movement is beyond doubt, right up there with Keir Hardie, Clem Attlee, Barbara Castle, Tony Crosland, Neil Kinnock and – yes – Tony Blair too.

That anyone could regard Kinnock as a hero escapes me. His crusade against Party democracy left us vulnerable to the success of the Millbank Tendency. Frankly I’d have preferred the other lot. We might have remained in opposition, but politically I imagine we’d have become a lot stronger, reinforcing the bulwark of the Unions and winning the struggle against the Conservatives and their allies from the ground up. Yet to place Tony Blair in the same sentence amounts to an insult even for Kinnock.

So far in the series, Patricia Hewitt has chosen Barbara Castle, Kenneth O’Morgan has chosen Keir Hardie and David Blunkett has (outrageously) chosen Clement Attlee. Next up, Gordon Brown on Labour’s Greatest Hero, Tony Benn and James Purnell on “Why I Love Karl Marx.”