Don’t blame Bevan
A substandard comment on the Labour party would have slipped past my otherwise observant radar, were it not for the collation of good and bad blog entries by the super observant blog of Poumista.
Hywell Williams, in a piece entitled Nye Bevan: the Militant Godfather, states unapologetically that:
Bevan created a party within a party and together with his Bevanites he brought a Leninist skill to the business of organising internal dissent to Clement Attlee and Gaitskell.
All the typical stuff about Bevan being a Marxist and entryist to bring about his rancid communist beliefs in a normal decent party (my bombast). Not true, but even so, the point about Bevan creating a party within a party (as though this had a direct effect on the militant tendancy of the eighties – can Bevan be blamed for this, yet referred to as its Godfather, if it is true that Hatton and the like looked to the Bevanites as inspiration) is a sin, a lie like no other.
But there is hope for Williams, and his nonsense, yet. He goes on to say:
He [Bevan] then justified his scheming as the only way to keep Labour a socialist party
Save for the “scheming”, precisely! Bevan wanted to keep the Labour party socialist, not create a (socialist) party within a party. A pity Williams had not realised his own perfect critique was contained within his own Kinnockite drivel.
Discuss.
I believe that had Kinnock not done what he did, the Labour Party would either have lost its credibility or would now be facing the same impossible tasks the French Socialist Party currently faces.
Modernisation is not a question of moving to the right or abandoning socialism, it is a way of re-applying socialist values in a context of globalisation. Labour was right to accept it, and leftist parties that have not done so have not been in government for a long time.
Hadleigh;
It’s for good reason I’m not a Labour party strategist because I put principle over popularity, but what occurred during and post-Kinnock was not socialism, it was arguably social democracy, and of late neo-liberal/welfare state mix. For the grace of God there was little talent out there to give Labour a run for its money, however what that did mean was progressives had to vote for a party that had frankly ignored them (Polly Toynbee voting with a nosepeg if you remember did reflect the feelings of many who felt they had no choice but to vote Labour, though Labour’s trajectory had gone amiss).
You would not convince me that the rise in third/protest parties (Greens, Respect for example) has not had Labour’s move rightwards to blame – even in the context of globalisation there is reason to believe socialist politics has a place today; a grave error may be located in the fact that certain critics fail to see that modern European politics is at the beck and call of a single, capitalist economic model which operates through EU free trade zones.
This, I would suggest, has more to do with why leftist parties have not had their run in Europe, not that the willing is not there, or that the world has “moved on”.
‘Modernisation’ has nothing to do with ‘socialism’, if by socialism you are referring to any worldview which espouses equality or democratic control.
As for it being socialism in the context of globalisation, as should come as no surprise to you, Hadleigh, I think you just lack imagination here. A globalised socialism should surely mean democratic organs of workers that stretch across borders and can hold capital accountable, not a retreat from any accountability whatsoever?
You’re right in that Leftist parties which haven’t modernised (i.e. swung to the right, as witnessed by the disconnection between these parties and the very people they were set up to support whenever these parties are in government) haven’t been in government – but it is facile if not tautological to merely say that this is because everyone else has moved on and the parties in question haven’t.
Why and how have they moved on? The socialist answer involves talking about casualisation of labour, the development of new union-busting techniques and the effect that such disorganisation has on mass political consciousness – which has stagnated, rather than developed, as a result. I would suggest that for anyone other than the run-of-the-mill parliamentarian careerist wannabes, fighting these things is the basis for a socialist party – and that those Leftist parties which haven’t ‘modernised’ haven’t grasped this fact any more than the insubstantial soundbyte-laden hairdos who push for ‘modernisation’.
Hadleigh, for me its not a question of were the Bevanites or the Bennites right in terms of policy, maybe they were perhaps they werent. The problem with the modernisation process you refer to, is that it institutionalised the views of one section of the party over another.
The Kinnock reforms and more importantly Blairs time in office, let to the development of a very dogmatic approach to democratic socialism, an approach where the left was continuously dismissed and excluded, despite mass support for particular policies at a grass roots level (think railways, council housing etc.)
Labour should be a coalition of socialists, social democrats, trade unions, communitarians etc, that engage within a democratic, pluralist atmosphere. That kind of vibrant organisation would be able to adjust to the times the best, as its the dogmatic nature of organisations with a lack of ideological diversity that tend to get stuck in their ways.
Much as I appreciate that point of view, I’ve seen first hand what happens when you have such a “coalition of socialists, social democrats, trade unions, communitarians etc.” – it describes perfectly the Parti Socialiste. I’ve been looking at the challenges (and trying to identify solutions) and the one word that I keep returning to is discipline, which I understand is just the other side of the coin to the dogmatic nature you mention.
Nevertheless, such a coalition isn’t electorally viable; debate looks like dissent, and dissent looks like disunity, and disunity looks like incompetence. Again I appreciate the principles versus popularity argument, but I don’t need to tell Labour members more senior than myself that if you don’t win the election, your principles are just a consolation. As you saw in the 80s, “moral victories” don’t actually count as victories. Not for the party or the people it tries to represent.
For someone who had such an enormous ding-dong over no platform policies on the basis of the primacy of debate, that answer is awfully anti it.
Debate is just as crucial as discipline. Neither can live effectively without the other. Lack of debate is normally what causes lack of discipline. It also creates intellectual stagnation and the phenomenon we saw here during this election, that of ‘tiredness’.
Didn’t the Parti Socialiste win in every region bar one in the most recent elections in France?
Hadleigh,
And if you don’t have any principles, winning the election leads to 13 years of (largely) failing to deliver. 13 years of capitulation to the neoliberal consensus. (Not accusing anyone in particular here, just an observation in general terms). Parties acting on convictions can win elections and actually go on and achieve.