by Ken Coates mep & Hugh Kerr mep
May 1st, 1998 marks the anniversary of a New Labour Government.
It also marks a more convulsive anniversary, of continuous protestations of Labour solidarity over more than a century. The first May Day in modern times was celebrated in Chicago in 1886, after the achievement of an eight hour day in some companies in that city. A very large demonstration to extend this benefit more widely was followed by days of strikes and ferocious police intimidation, culminating in mayhem, with a bomb thrown into a large contingent of policemen, and the subsequent trial and execution of a number of anarchist leaders. All this persuaded the American Federation of Labour to call for an international demonstration on the 1st May 1890. All over Britain trade unions answered this call. Thousands of working people demonstrated in every part of the country, and began a tradition of London May Day celebrations which has been observed continuously ever since. And all over Europe the same pattern established itself.
The rise and fall of fascism crushed some labour movements, and temporarily eclipsed their demonstrations. The rise and fall of communism, over a much longer period, turned some demonstrations into official parades, and removed both their spontaneity and their affirmation of alternative possibilities. But still May Day continued, and in many countries was able to insist on the possibility of an alternative society, on liberty as well as equality and fraternity.
The profound heresies of emancipation are still more than ever necessary. Mass unemployment has returned to haunt Europe, and with it have come back poverty and despair for millions of people. Unheard of riches have now been amassed to mock the poor, who are more numerous than before. The advance of invention, far from bringing freedom to wider populations, is craftily subverted into ever more sophisticated methods of manipulation and oppression. The UK has the most unequal distribution of income of any country in the European Union.
It was always honourable to stand for human freedom, and May Day offered a useful symbol of the unity of mankind and mutual support. At first sight, the election of a New Labour Government should have been a notable contribution to a continuous historical celebration.
But on this May Day we already know that New Labour confronts socialists in Britain with problems they have hardly hitherto considered. It is true that the Labour Party has always been a coalition of different forces, and that previous Labour Governments have combined different policy commitments, faltering from time to time in their pursuit of their supporters' ideals and interests. But New Labour is something else. It has explicitly abandoned a large part of the broad socialist tradition. Redistributive policies, and planned public intervention to create jobs and uphold higher social standards have now gone. Instead, the new Government defends an economic strategy based on 'the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition', a philosophy of de-regulation, and 'a partnership with business … that puts industry first'. It seeks 'to enhance the dynamism of the market economy, not to undermine it'. It is determined 'to extend the flexible labour markets to the rest of Europe, not to import 'Euro-sclerosis''.
These engagements are linked with a policy of less direct taxation, and refusal to 'impose burdens on business', although in fact British business bears lower taxes and makes less contributions to welfare than almost any other industrialised country.
It is within the context of stringent curbs on public expenditure that New Labour seeks to 'reform the welfare state'. Unsurprisingly, these commitments do not impress organised labour, or those non-governmental organisations which have always worked with the poor, the disabled, pensioners, or young people, nor do they impress compassionate Church people. All these social groupings know that public spending on welfare and social cohesion has suffered from prolonged neglect during the previous years of Conservative administration, and that further stringency can only mean increased hardship for many people.
As the implications of these deep policy commitments of New Labour have come home to more and more people there has been a growing sense of revulsion among 'old' Labour Party members. Many thousands of people have left the Labour Party. Others remain members, but suffer a growing sense of frustration and despair. Because the Labour leadership had aroused resistance from Labour Members of the European Parliament before the General Election, it decided to abolish the autonomy and independence of this Group. Using the pretext of their pledge to introduce proportional representation, they invented very autocratic procedures designed to impose a central discipline, with central control of the composition and numbering of the lists of candidates that would be presented in the forthcoming European Elections in 1999. Constituencies will be abolished, with the removal of the bond between elected Members and their electors. Although Party members will be allowed token participation in the nomination of candidates, the actual selections, and their crucial ordering in the lists which are presented, and which will determine who actually gets elected, will be done by the Party leadership. When these plans became clear, a number of MEPs sought to inform Labour Party members and their constituents of the undemocratic nature of the proposed reforms. The National Executive Committee immediately imposed a gagging order, and four Members were suspended from the European Parliamentary Labour Party because they would not sign such an order.
During this argument, and the parallel argument about restrictions on welfare, two Members were expelled. They have sought to consult within and outside the Labour Party on the need to establish an Independent Labour Network, ensuring a political space for the left, continuing the development of a relevant socialism encouraging and promoting new ideas, and defending and campaigning for:
The Independent Labour Network, however, does not seek to become another political party. It seeks to promote association between those who have supported the traditional social programme of the Labour Party, and to help organise protests against the ill-effects of New Labour's attacks on those policies. This has become necessary because the new rules and structure of New Labour, pushed through in the 1997 post-election honeymoon, prevent Labour members and Constituency Parties having any substantial control of, or even influence over, New Labour policy. This disenfranchises not only members but, more importantly, all those non-members, thinking people who lack wealth and power. No Party now speaks for them.
The Independent Labour Network seeks to ensure that there will be a political party speaking for ordinary people. Its preferred means of achieving this is by exerting sufficient pressure, internal and external, to persuade the Labour Party to return to this role. Only if this proved impossible would it be necessary to consider beginning again, to form a new Party of Labour. The historical Labour Party served three overlapping functions. It was the keeper of a social conscience. It was an agency for the defence and improvement of working and living conditions of all that part of the population which suffered most from inequality and discrimination. It was also an electoral machine, seeking to extend its representation in democratic assemblies in order to advance the other two functions.
Pluralism actually assisted these processes. It ensured that the social conscience could develop continuously, refining the approach to equality, and developing ideas of common ownership and democratic accountability. Pluralism served the pursuit of immediate objectives, and widened the electoral appeal of the Party as a whole.
New Labour has a minimal social conscience, ringed around and cramped by the constraints of the market place. The same constraints inhibit practical action to improve the condition of the poor, the low paid and the excluded. Up to now, however, New Labour has been successful in elections, in spite of these impediments. True, the 1997 election majority was smaller than that in the European elections of 1994, under John Smith's inspiration, but since then New Labour has won votes from many of the same people whose standards of life it has seemed determined to attack. How long can this continue?
The Independent Labour Network is consulting actively about the feasibility of protests in the electoral field. But it would be a profound mistake to concentrate only on this area, leaving a great vacuum where the conscience of the Labour movement used to exist, and lapsing back to live within the minimal space of individual compassion, where the necessary collective action in defence of decent standards of life has been subverted by managed conformity. There are other problems, of peace and environmental sustainability and public transport, to take three examples, which are being grossly mismanaged.
That is why we are launching the May Day Manifesto. The first part of this Manifesto concerns the maintenance of the Welfare State, and contests the reasoning of those who would seek to dismantle it. Other parts of a rolling manifesto will follow during the coming year. The reason we began at this point was quite simple: it was here that many of the most vulnerable people in society were coming under attack. Strong complaints by Labour and former Labour supporters have mitigated part of this cruel offensive. Some U-turns have been made. No doubt the focus groups which advise the Government on its growing unpopularity have made some contribution to tactical adjustments. But only open protests seem to have changed Government minds. Even so, disabled people have a great deal to fear from the continuance of the Benefit Integrity Project, which follows the precise strategy of its Conservative progenitors, in cutting, piecemeal, the cost of maintaining disabled people. Official rhetoric needs careful scrutiny where such matters are concerned, here, as in the promises now being made to the coal miners.
But this publication seeks to discern the wider picture as well as to assist the present victims of official cuts. To establish this wider analysis it is necessary to invite discussion, not only about the details of the argument, but also about its implications for future action. In this sense, we hope that the May Day Manifesto will provoke a continuing discussion, extending itself into other crucial areas of policy, and inviting responses from all those who used to expect from the Labour Party the intellectual space in which to develop ideas and ideals.
Today, New Labour has closed down this space, and it needs to be reopened. We have earlier made our protest about the Government's failure to maintain free higher education or to find money for its promised life-long learning project. We invite further contributions to the May Day Manifesto series, combining analysis and prescription. We shall seek to promote seminars and conferences which can assist this process, and help bring together the different streams of argument which develop. By May Day 1999, we hope to be nearer to a synthesis, which can help those inside and outside the Labour Party to clarify their objectives, and to resist the displacement of socialist values from the political argument.
The subversion of the Labour Party by New Labour Aliens may or may not be reversible. Control of a powerful machinery of patronage is a substantial asset for reaction, and there appears to be no shortage of generous contributions from powerful tycoons to ensure that the left remains permanently dispossessed of its traditionally political framework.
But socialist ideals will live, as long as socialists have the courage to tell the truth as they see it. This May Day Manifesto is an invitation to participate in an intellectual adventure: but it is also a challenge to the power of Mammon in the Labour movement.