Dan Glazebrook, City College Bath
The birth of
New Labour
revisited
Ed Miliband has a tricky job. As the
recent Labour party conference showed,
his electoral credibility seems to depend
on being able to simultaneously
demonstrate that he is serious about
deficit reduction, but also concerned
to protect the poor and vulnerable from
the worst pain of austerity.
This conundrum, however, is nothing new; how to balance the
demands of a globalised economy with the socialist values that
supposedly make the party unique has been a problem its leaders
have been grappling with ever since the Thatcher revolution. With
this in mind, it is instructive to revisit the debate between the
Institute for Public Policy Research and socialist philosopher GA
Cohen that took place twenty one years ago – at the very dawn
of ‘New Labour’.
In 1993, the Institute for Public Policy Research – a ‘think tank’
closely associated with the Labour Party - published two key
documents: The Justice Gap and Social Justice in a Changing World,
which would become key texts in defining the theoretical standpoint
of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’. The documents outlined four “core
ideas”, which it believed should form the core of Labour’s beliefs
in the modern day:
1 The foundation of a free society is the equal worth of all
citizens.
2 All citizens should be able as a right of citizenship to meet their
basic needs for income, shelter, education, nutrition and health
care.
3 Self respect and personal autonomy depend on the widest
possible spread of opportunities and life chances.
4 Inequalities are not necessarily unjust – but those which are
should be reduced and where possible, eliminated.
In response to these two papers, Oxford Professor of Philosophy GA
Cohen published Back to Socialist Basics. In many ways his article
can be seen as a left wing critique of what was to become Blairism.
Dan Glazebrook, City College Bath
The birth of
New Labour
revisited
(continued)
Cohen argued that the IPPR’s four “core ideas” stripped the Labour
party of any of its distinctive values: all four, he argued, could be
happily endorsed by any Liberal Democrat, or even One Nation Tory.
Who, for example (he argued), would really mount a passionate
defence for the maintenance of “unjust inequalities”? In adopting
such a vague definition of ‘social justice’, Cohen argued, the IPPR
had lost sight of the two most important and distinctive values of
the left:
1 Community
2 Equality
By community, Cohen meant ‘non-market’ incentives – the idea that
there are human motives other than personal gain; that people, in
other words, can and do (and should!) do things for reasons other
than selfishness. He gave the example of the health service and state
education to demonstrate that it is possible to run a successful
enterprise without the profit motive.
In the end, of course, the arguments of Tony Blair and the IPPR won
the day. The party had, after all, lost four successive elections, and
most party members felt they had to move away from the left-wing
ideas they had become associated with if they were to ever hope to
get back into power. Yet the debate is far from over. The financial
crash of 2007-8 revealed the apparent failure of free market
economics, and many in the party hoped that Miliband’s leadership
would usher in a turn ‘back to the left’, capitalising on a growing
public distrust of bankers and even capitalism itself. The pitched
debates at conference this year show us, once again, that the
question of how to balance socialist principles with modern
economic realities is still very much an open one.
By equality, Cohen meant equality of outcome: the idea that a fair
society is one in which people have roughly equal living standards.
Whilst he accepted that this may not always be possible, and that
there may be economic reasons to moderate this in practice, he
argued it should still be cherished as an ideal, and an ultimate goal.
He therefore disputes the IPPR’s claim that “redistribution of
income...is not an end in itself” and that “there are limits of principle”
to levels of taxation. Likewise, he disputes the IPPR’s claim that
inequalities of “need, merit or reward...are indeed justified”. The
acceptance of ‘inequalities resulting from merit’, for example,
suggests that talent should be rewarded with higher incomes and
better living standards (what Blair called “meritocracy”). Cohen
disputed this; talent, he argued, is a matter of luck; and if someone
is lucky enough to be blessed with talent, this doesn’t mean they
should enjoy higher living standards than everyone else. Rather, he
argued, the talent should be reward in itself.
Questions
Do you agree that the IPPR’s ‘core ideas’ could just as
well be from a Liberal Democrat or Conservative party
publication as from the Labour party?
Why did the financial crisis of 2007-8 undermine faith
in free-market capitalism?
What examples are there from this year’s Labour
party conference of:
a Policies to demonstrate Labour’s commitment to
deficit reduction?
b Policies to demonstrate Labour’s commitment to
protecting the poor and vulnerable?