TWO PRESCRIPTIONS FOR LABOUR’S ILLS
Ray Davison reviews Jon Cruddas’ and John Harris’ Fit for Purpose – a programme for Labour Party renewal. Compass, 2006 pp. 1-34 and Renewal – a two-way process for the 21st century, an Interim Report 2007 from LabOUR, an independent commission on Accountability, Party and Parliamentary Democracy, LabOUR Commission, 2007, pp. (ii)-59.
Those who metaphorically donate their organs and life-blood in the service of the Party, its historic vision and values, will find significant interest in these two pamphlets seeking the prescriptions of renewal and revival for a Labour Party not in the best of health. The symptoms are there for all to see: dramatic haemorrhaging of its membership, down by over 50% since 1997, widespread inertia and atrophy of its vital limbs - its branches and GMCs - chronic abulia, disaffection and alienation of its once active and engaged body of members and supporters. Both documents examine the ailing organs with acuity, pointing out the areas of degeneration and failure like Rembrandt’s Anatomist. Fit for Purpose ranges freely over the Party’s history as an organisation born to fight for the industrial working class and uses a compelling blend of sociology, philosophy and general cultural perspectives to identify the challenges facing Labour policy makers in a post-industrial social order with a much more fluid class base and where politics is centred on a terrain much wider than the workplace.
LabOUR’s Renewal constructs its not dissimilar arguments in a more down to earth language, making really good use of what it calls ‘an evidenced based approach’ information gleaned from focus groups supervised by Professor Stuart Weir of the Democratic Audit, University of Essex and commissioned LabOUR /You Gov polls of members and lapsed members. Both pamphlets emphasise the negative and morale- breaking effects of New Labour’s top-down authoritarian model of policy–making and control freakery; both dwell on the imperfection and sometimes inanities of Partnership in Power; both, of course, have a lot to say about the Party’s financial management and our government’s relationship with money.
Finding the antidotes to our Party’s multitude of afflictions is the pivotal aim of these contributions but there is not going to be an easy answer and certainly no systemic viagra to revitalise, re-engage, renew and even resuscitate. Both works want to retain the federal structure of the Party and keep Conference as its sovereign body; both want to reform the NPF and have its CLP delegates elected by OMOV regionally; both want to empower members and end the era of imposed, monological policy formulation ( LabOUR even advances the idea of a Charter of Members Right to enhance and give a quasi statutory authority to the voice of members); both, crucially, recognise the determining role of egalitarianism, redistribution and democratic procedure in the motivation and political aspirations of members of the Party.
It is to be noted that both these documents pre-date the Brown Coronation and the launch of the new Leader’s own initiative, the so-called consultation Extending and Renewing Party Democracy. The words of the Brown invitation make one wish for an additional section to each contribution, although LabOUR’s report is only interim, so a supplement will come. Timeo Gordonum ac dona ferentum! Like a cunning Dr Finlay with a casebook, Gordon sends us a welcome chance to get better but like that other equine structure, we must beware the swollen underbelly, potentially full of bowmen with their arrows pointed at Labour’s primary organ, its heart. *
*This review was written for Campaign Briefing70, which is the Newsletter of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. The Newsletter is prepared annually for distribution at the Labour Party’s National Conference, which was in Bournemouth this year (go to CLPD.org.uk for current edition). Brown’s proposals were heavily endorsed at the Conference, thus what was left of the sovereign voice of Conference has now been abolished and the annual event has become a rally and fan-club for the Labour government. Attendance levels and payment of exorbitant attendance fees are likely to shrink. Why pay for no say? Also, if the Latin bothers you, think of Trojan horses and suspicious Greeks bearing gifts.
MING TO THE KNACKER
Cursed are the merciless for they shall receive no mercy. He that profiteth from alcohol abuse shall be soberly dispatched. Like poor, exhausted Boxer in Animal Farm, the tired old cadaver to be of the sweet and dignified Ming was unceremoniously sent to the knacker. What a sorry sight was this. This frail and venerable gentleman, with failing teeth and pipe-cleaner limbs, a pitiful shadow of those doric Olympian legs of yore which scorched the very earth they barely touched, was untimely plucked from his dotage. Where there should have been affection, warmth and respect, a celebration of wisdom and experience, there was only a cold steel arrow pointing to a colder coffin. Will Ming now join Gordon’s big tentism to end his days away from the Kafkaesque jackals and ghouls of Liberal Democracy? It was the socks what dunnit(proposal for a Sun headline).
