It had to come sooner of later. Two conflicting ideologies are now engaged in a fight to the death for the soul of the Labour Party.
Until the defeat of the Attlee in 1951, the Labour Party was solidly committed to the standard socialist agenda of public ownership and compulsory wealth redistribution. The first sign of new thinking emerged five years later with the publication of Anthony Crosland's The Future of Socialism. In this book, Crosland admitted that nationalisation had not been an unqualified success. "For the first time for a century there is equivocation on the left about the future of nationalisation", he wrote. At the same time, he also attempted to point socialism in a new direction, focussing on social, rather than economic equality. Socialism, he claimed, was “about the pursuit of equality and the protection of freedom – in the knowledge that until we are truly equal we will not be truly free."
On the Continent, parallel thinking had taken place some 20-30 years earlier. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, along with the group of Marxist intellectuals known to history as the Frankfurt School, had observed that the Russian Revolution of 1917 had failed to create any great love of Marxism, either among the peoples subject to it in the Soviet Union or among the population of the Western nations. Their solution was a gradual undermining of every aspect of western culture and civilisation, including Christianity. As with Crosland, they sought to shift the emphasis from economic transformation to social transformation.
The students of the 1960s imbibed all this stuff, even though most of it is extremely hard to read, while at the same time Crosland's social agenda gained ground within the Labour Party, notably in the person of Roy Jenkins, who served as Home secretary during the Labour government of 1964-70, led by Harold Wilson.
As a child in those years, I can still remember how these new-look socialists were seen as more "moderate" than the hard-liners still committed to public ownership of everything that moved. Tony Benn was the Bête Noire of those days, certainly among the members of my fairly typical middle-class family. The following decade saw the rise of Militant Tendency and Arthur Scargill, who seemed to be wanting nothing less than a Soviet-style economy in the UK. Fear of "Reds under the Bed" was never as widespread in this country as in the USA, but the chaos generated by rampant trade union militancy was sufficient to sweep Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979, and to condemn Labour to 18 years in opposition.
Thatcherism was the final nail in the coffin to the planned, state-run economy beloved of old-school Socialism, particularly once the Soviet Union started to unravel. If Labour was to return to power, its commitment to public ownership of the means of production (embodied in the Clause 4 of its constitution) had to go, and under Tony Blair it did. Blair, a protégé of Roy Jenkins, transformed the Labour Party, putting the "social equality" agenda at the heart of its policy programme, and finally rejecting the quest for economic equality through nationalisation and further wealth redistribution. One could argue cynically that this suited the lifestyle of New Labour's new leading lights, many of whom came from privileged backgrounds. By not being seen as anti-wealth, not only could they make Labour more acceptable to the middle classes, but they could continue to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle without needing to feel hypocritical, unlike some trade union leaders. After all, Labour could still sell itself as the party of the underprivileged and of the marginalised majorities - just different underprivileged and marginalised majorities - gays, women, ethnic minorities, Moslems, etc, rather than the poor working classes.
Blair made Labour electable again, but many of its traditional supporters only went along with the "New Labour" project because it kept the hated Tories out. They were never sold on the social agenda, and the trade union leaders in particular never gave up hope of reinstating the commitment to nationalisation. Once Labour lost power in 2010, the unions were keen to flex their muscles when it was time to choose a successor to Gordon Brown, and Ed Miliband's victory over his brother would not have achieved without the Union block vote.
But "Red Ed" has shown no signs of tearing up the New Labour agenda - in fact, he has shown little sign of doing anything much. Meanwhile. behind the scenes, union leaders like Len McCluskey of Unite have been attempting to take control of local parties, and to ensure that candidates supportive of their agenda are chosen. Things came to a head in Falkirk, where it appears that trade union members had been enrolled as Labour Party members en bloc, and without their consent, to ensure that a Unite-friendly candidate is chosen in 2015 to replace the disgraced Eric Joyce. Now it's all over the press - Labour is in a state of civil war and Miliband is caught in the middle. As both camps within the party observe the declining Labour lead in the opinion polls, Blairites are insisting that Labour cannot win in 2015 if it ends up controlled by union barons who want a return to the bad old days of the 1970s, while McCluskey and his comrades are equally adamant that Labour won't win unless it ditches the Blairite agenda and declares war on capitalism.
Who is right? Hopefully both groups, for they both represent two variations of the same idology - an ideology which is fatally flawed and has already done such damage to our beloved country. However, a Labour civil war is not unadulterated good news, as it would allow David Cameron's disastrous modernising agenda to limp on for a further few years, and would postpone the formation of a new party from the ruins of Cameron Conservatism until perhaps 2020 or after. Britain desperately needs a decent centre-right party combining Thatcherite economic policies with social conservatism, and in my opinion, the sooner the better. However, God may be holding things back. Perhaps things have to get even worse, be it under Cameron or Miliband, before sufficient consensus emerges that we must leave the EU, slash the size of the state and reverse the permissive social agenda that has done such damages since 1997. Perhaps, as God told Habakkuk the prophet, my vision of a new party - a vision shared by a good few others - is "yet for an appointed time", but I am sure that "at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry."
Until the defeat of the Attlee in 1951, the Labour Party was solidly committed to the standard socialist agenda of public ownership and compulsory wealth redistribution. The first sign of new thinking emerged five years later with the publication of Anthony Crosland's The Future of Socialism. In this book, Crosland admitted that nationalisation had not been an unqualified success. "For the first time for a century there is equivocation on the left about the future of nationalisation", he wrote. At the same time, he also attempted to point socialism in a new direction, focussing on social, rather than economic equality. Socialism, he claimed, was “about the pursuit of equality and the protection of freedom – in the knowledge that until we are truly equal we will not be truly free."
On the Continent, parallel thinking had taken place some 20-30 years earlier. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, along with the group of Marxist intellectuals known to history as the Frankfurt School, had observed that the Russian Revolution of 1917 had failed to create any great love of Marxism, either among the peoples subject to it in the Soviet Union or among the population of the Western nations. Their solution was a gradual undermining of every aspect of western culture and civilisation, including Christianity. As with Crosland, they sought to shift the emphasis from economic transformation to social transformation.
The students of the 1960s imbibed all this stuff, even though most of it is extremely hard to read, while at the same time Crosland's social agenda gained ground within the Labour Party, notably in the person of Roy Jenkins, who served as Home secretary during the Labour government of 1964-70, led by Harold Wilson.
As a child in those years, I can still remember how these new-look socialists were seen as more "moderate" than the hard-liners still committed to public ownership of everything that moved. Tony Benn was the Bête Noire of those days, certainly among the members of my fairly typical middle-class family. The following decade saw the rise of Militant Tendency and Arthur Scargill, who seemed to be wanting nothing less than a Soviet-style economy in the UK. Fear of "Reds under the Bed" was never as widespread in this country as in the USA, but the chaos generated by rampant trade union militancy was sufficient to sweep Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979, and to condemn Labour to 18 years in opposition.
Thatcherism was the final nail in the coffin to the planned, state-run economy beloved of old-school Socialism, particularly once the Soviet Union started to unravel. If Labour was to return to power, its commitment to public ownership of the means of production (embodied in the Clause 4 of its constitution) had to go, and under Tony Blair it did. Blair, a protégé of Roy Jenkins, transformed the Labour Party, putting the "social equality" agenda at the heart of its policy programme, and finally rejecting the quest for economic equality through nationalisation and further wealth redistribution. One could argue cynically that this suited the lifestyle of New Labour's new leading lights, many of whom came from privileged backgrounds. By not being seen as anti-wealth, not only could they make Labour more acceptable to the middle classes, but they could continue to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle without needing to feel hypocritical, unlike some trade union leaders. After all, Labour could still sell itself as the party of the underprivileged and of the marginalised majorities - just different underprivileged and marginalised majorities - gays, women, ethnic minorities, Moslems, etc, rather than the poor working classes.
Blair made Labour electable again, but many of its traditional supporters only went along with the "New Labour" project because it kept the hated Tories out. They were never sold on the social agenda, and the trade union leaders in particular never gave up hope of reinstating the commitment to nationalisation. Once Labour lost power in 2010, the unions were keen to flex their muscles when it was time to choose a successor to Gordon Brown, and Ed Miliband's victory over his brother would not have achieved without the Union block vote.
But "Red Ed" has shown no signs of tearing up the New Labour agenda - in fact, he has shown little sign of doing anything much. Meanwhile. behind the scenes, union leaders like Len McCluskey of Unite have been attempting to take control of local parties, and to ensure that candidates supportive of their agenda are chosen. Things came to a head in Falkirk, where it appears that trade union members had been enrolled as Labour Party members en bloc, and without their consent, to ensure that a Unite-friendly candidate is chosen in 2015 to replace the disgraced Eric Joyce. Now it's all over the press - Labour is in a state of civil war and Miliband is caught in the middle. As both camps within the party observe the declining Labour lead in the opinion polls, Blairites are insisting that Labour cannot win in 2015 if it ends up controlled by union barons who want a return to the bad old days of the 1970s, while McCluskey and his comrades are equally adamant that Labour won't win unless it ditches the Blairite agenda and declares war on capitalism.
Who is right? Hopefully both groups, for they both represent two variations of the same idology - an ideology which is fatally flawed and has already done such damage to our beloved country. However, a Labour civil war is not unadulterated good news, as it would allow David Cameron's disastrous modernising agenda to limp on for a further few years, and would postpone the formation of a new party from the ruins of Cameron Conservatism until perhaps 2020 or after. Britain desperately needs a decent centre-right party combining Thatcherite economic policies with social conservatism, and in my opinion, the sooner the better. However, God may be holding things back. Perhaps things have to get even worse, be it under Cameron or Miliband, before sufficient consensus emerges that we must leave the EU, slash the size of the state and reverse the permissive social agenda that has done such damages since 1997. Perhaps, as God told Habakkuk the prophet, my vision of a new party - a vision shared by a good few others - is "yet for an appointed time", but I am sure that "at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry."