Spirit conversation, or my mother on why Labour has to be a Broad Church

My mother, a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party and member for nearly four decades, liked to tell me her party was a Broad Church.

The Duomo in Milan: one of the broadest churches I know

One of the proudest moments of her long life was the day in 1945 when she learned, in a roomful of her Labour Party staff colleagues, that for the first time Labour had a majority in the House of Commons. Clement Attlee was about to become Prime Minister, heading what was, indeed, a broad-church government. On its left, were men around the fiery Welsh orator, Nai Bevan; on its right, those who lined up with the wily old Trades Unionist, Ernest Bevin; in the middle, the mainstream around Attlee himself.

Not the least of Attlee’s skills was the capacity to hold that disparate band together. Above all, that meant compromise, so that no one felt they were being denied more than they could bear, or that someone else was getting too much. Even Attlee couldn’t handle it for longer than six years and, eventually, the government was brought down from the inside by Bevan’s intransigence. It achieved a huge amount in that short time, however, not least launching Britain’s most cherished institution, now under existential threat, the National Health Service. Ironically, it was that same Bevan who acted as its midwife.

My mother would probably have been shocked to see how contemptuously the notion of a ‘broad church’ is treated these days. The dominant group within the Labour Party these days seems much more intent on homogeneity than diversity. They want everyone to be a supporter of their faction, even though that faction has just taken the Party to a historically massive defeat.

It would be a great pleasure to welcome my mother’s spirit here in Spain, if she chose to visit us from the other world. She would, I’m ensure, enjoy a Christmas in better weather than she’d been used to in England, but I imagine the conversation would quickly turn more serious.

“Unfortunately,” I’d have to tell her, “the Labour Party’s being run these days by people who think we shouldn’t have to compromise any more. They think it’s time for a Labour government more aligned on a single tendency within the movement – the one Nai Bevan represented in your time, and Tony Benn later.”

“But,” I suspect she’d reply, “they need the others too.”

“It’s hard for me to speak for the leadership, but I think they like the idea of something purer, less corrupted by compromise, firmer on its principles.”

“Doesn’t that mean narrower?”

“I suppose it does.”

“Well, there you are then,” she’d exclaim triumphantly, “if it’s narrow it won’t be able to put together a majority.”

I can just see the gleam in her eyes as she points out the fallacy in the position I’ve been trying to present.

“Funnily enough, it couldn’t. We’ve just had an election and Labour won a bit over ten and a quarter million votes. The Tories took just shy of fourteen million. We got 202 seats.”

“202? But that’s worse than 1983!” she’d exclaim, “and… that’s after nearly ten years of the Tories in office!”

I’d hang my head.

“That’s the worst result I’ve ever seen, not counting 1935 when I was only eleven and not really paying attention. Extraordinary. How could they do that badly?”

“Well, it’s lousy, I admit. It means we need getting on for a couple of million voters to switch from the Tories to us.”

“That’s a big ask.”

“I know. Maybe beyond a single election. But we might do it in two.”

“Only if you broaden your appeal. You can’t do it by being pure and narrow.”

“You think we should become a broad church again? That wouldn’t be popular with the characters running the party at the moment.”

“Then,” she would say decisively, “it’s time for them to get out of the way. Broad churches win elections. Narrow ones lose them.”

“You know that. I know that. But they don’t want to hear that.”

“Explain it to them.”

“I try. I’m not getting far,” I’d point out thoughtfully, as I start mulling over a new idea, “couldn’t you have a go? You know, haunt them a bit?”

“Not a bad idea. I could try. I’ve always been good at making my views clear when people are being silly.”

“I know you have,” I’d say, shaking my head, partly out of some painful memories, but partly also out of doubt. “Trouble is, this lot seem terribly hard of hearing when you’re trying to tell them something true they’d rather not know.”

“Well, it’s up to them. If they’d rather stick with what makes them comfortable and lose, they’re even sillier than I thought. But you can only get things done when you’re on the winning side. Attlee knew that. He told me himself. Bevin knew. Why, even Bevan knew, before he brought the whole house crashing down.”

“Sadly, his heirs seem intent on bringing the house down before it’s even built.”

“Seems a hopeless case. You can’t save people who don’t want to save themselves.” She’d shake her head in turn. And then, as if making up her mind, she’d add, “Let’s have a glass of that red I brought you.”

The NHS at 70. And my mother at nearly 94.

The NHS celebrated its 70th birthday last week. And my mother is due to celebrate her 94th this coming week.

The two aren’t unrelated.

My mother is part of a diminishing band of people born before Britain had its National Health Service. Indeed, she played a peripheral role in its creation. She reached adulthood during the Second World War, and decided to throw her lot in with the Labour Party which, at the time, had never formed a government with a parliamentary majority.

It must have been a challenging time to be with Labour. Under the leadership of its first Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, the party had entered a coalition government with the Conservatives. That action was widely perceived as a betrayal. The punishment had been dramatic, rather as with the Liberal Democrats when they betrayed their voters in the same way nearly 80 years later: Labour had been reduced to a rump in parliament.

By the time my mother became involved, it had increased its number of MPs substantially, but still had only a third the force the Conservatives could muster. And it was back in coalition again. This time, however, that step was widely seen as a proof of statesmanship, since the country was at war. Indeed, the Labour leader Clement Attlee had played a significant role in making sure that the Conservatives would have to select Churchill, and not one of the appeasers of Hitler, to lead any government he would join.

My mother, as I mentioned recently, took a job as secretary to a Labour MP and the reformist Fabian Society. That too was was a challenge: in those pre-#MeToo days, young women were simply warned to be careful with some of their bosses, who were of course almost exclusively men. 

‘Careful, that one has wandering hands,’ they’d be told.

The onus would be on the women to avoid the hands, rather than on the men to withdraw them. It will probably come as no surprise that some of those who couldn’t control their urges had control of significant departments of state.

In her work, my mother wasn’t at the centre of power, but she was on the edges of that centre. She saw how Labour worked with the Conservatives towards victory in the war. And then she was actively involved in the campaign for victory in the peace. At the 1945 election Attlee’s Labour finally won a parliamentary majority, in a landslide victory over Churchill’s Conservatives.

It was that government which launched the NHS in 1948.

Health Minister Aneurin Bevan visiting a patient in Trafford, Manchester
on the first day of the NHS, 5 July 1948

Unfortunately, that’s not the only link between my mother and the health service. She has been occupying a bed in one of the great teaching hospitals of the NHS for two weeks now with no sign of her being discharged. She is unresponsive, spends most of her time asleep and, even when she does open her eyes, seems not to recognise any of us, relatives or friends, who come to visit her.

It was only three weeks ago that I had lunch with her for the last time, in her favourite Oxford restaurant. We both knew she was getting weaker, that she was spending an increasing proportion of her time asleep, that she was losing some of the acuteness of her conversation. But a real exchange was still possible: she and I talked about her favourite subject, history, and also about politics and the fact that Labour is again in a difficult state today.

Yet it was only days later that she started the precipitous decline that led to her present condition. Will she recover? Who knows. At the moment there’s little sign of it. My wife and I took our youngest son and his fiancée over to see her two weeks ago, and then she was alert enough to recognise us all and to wish the engaged couple well with their wedding, even though she was already having trouble finishing some of her sentences. I saw her again with my brother a few days later, and sentences seemed beyond her reach, though at least there was still recognition.

Today, that too has gone. I can’t help feeling that I’ve said goodbye to her already, in those earlier visits. Physically, she survives and continues to eat and drink a little, but my mother, the sharp, sometimes exasperating, but always intellectually bright woman I’ve known for 65 years, is already gone. Or at least away, with no certainty she’ll come back.

So I’m not sure whether she’ll see her 94th birthday. She may survive until it happens, but is it really a birthday if one isn’t conscious of it? All that kind of thing, I fear, is behind us.

The story is not without its more comforting side. She is in no pain. She is being looked after by a group of people, both physicians and nurses, who strike me as highly committed and professional but, above all, humane and focused on helping people. My mother has been in pain for many years; I’m glad to say that she seems now to be out of all pain and at peace.

For that I’m deeply grateful. And all the more so because at no point has anyone asked for any kind of payment for all this. The fundamental principle of the NHS, still one of the best-loved institutions in Britain, remains: as when the Attlee government founded it, the NHS prides itself on being free at the point of care. You need help? They provide it. And no one asks for a credit card first.

The great old NHS that my mother worked to make possible keeps doing what it does best: looking after patients as well and as kindly as it can. And today it’s doing it for her.

My mother in happier times with, I believe, my brother

Attlee: a quiet celebration of a quiet man

It’s far from inappropriate that the anniversary on 3 January passed quietly. It was the anniversary of a quiet man. A modest man, a shy man, but the architect of some of the more remarkable achievements Britain has seen.

There are some things about Clement Attlee that are incontrovertible, a matter of historical record. He was born on 3 January 1883. He led the Labour Party into a wartime coalition with the Tories, under Winston Churchill, in 1940. And, five years later, he led Labour to its first spell in government with a parliamentary majority.

Other issues are more open to interpretation.

It was a key factor in Britain’s war effort that the country was led by a national government – in which Labour played a major role. Indeed, Attlee was described as ‘home front Prime Minister’ since Churchill’s key contribution was on the international scene, above all in securing US support. And yet it must have taken extraordinary courage to join a coalition with the Conservatives just nine years after a previous Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald, had split the party and reduced its parliamentary strength to just 50 by doing the same thing.

What was a betrayal in 1931 was essential in 1940. Labour’s role as the voice of the downtrodden and of workers had to be laid aside for a while, to ensure the very survival of a country in which that voice could be heard at all. The mood was perfectly captured in a cartoon by David Low, showing Labour having to turn away from its appointed task for a while, to focus on something more urgent – but it would be back.

Labour leading 'our democratic institutions' in the shelter
But only for a time

In 1945, triumphantly, it was.

Again, few would dispute that major reforms were achieved by the 1945 government Attlee led. Indeed, many would argue that it was the greatest reforming government Labour has formed. The welfare state was launched, with both universal social security – independent of means, available to wealthy and poor alike – alongside the NHS were key pillars of the post war consensus. They’ve survived to this day, though they’re increasingly battered now.

He also ensured that India achieved independence, persuaded as he was that it was time. By doing so, he set in train the process by which the British Empire would be dismantled over the next twenty years.

Other aspects of Attlee’s time in office are more controversial. One was the secret drive to build a British Atom bomb, once it became clear that the US was not going to continue the wartime practice of sharing nuclear secrets with the UK. Another was his determination to preserve British colonial power in certain colonies, even through the use of military force, around Africa, for instance, or in Malaya. What he felt about India he didn’t necessarily feel about every part of the Empire.

Is that inconsistency? Or a willingness to compromise? A readiness sometimes to be pragmatic which led him sometimes to do things we might admire, and sometimes to do things that we might not like so much?

Still more controversial is his attitude towards the left of the Party. Before Attlee formed his government, one of his most outspoken critics was Nai Bevan, clarion voice of the Labour left. It is a tribute to Attlee’s breadth of vision that he invited Bevan to join the government and gave him the opportunity to build the NHS. But the differences remained as powerful as ever and, indeed, Bevan eventually resigned from the government in its dying days, an act for which Attlee may never fully have forgiven him.

The tale of his relations with Bevan give a measure of Attlee. He was a conciliator, and that allowed him to able to lead a government which contained both Bevan to the left and Ernest Bevin to the right. It was all the stronger for it.

As well as the left and right of his own party, Attlee could also work with the Conservatives, as he showed in the wartime coalition. Indeed, he could fight the Tories – though not an outstanding public speaker, his powerful response to the vicious attack launched on him by Churchill during the 1945 campaign was a major factor in giving him the victory – but that didn’t stop him cooperating with them when necessary.

I’m not convinced that someone like that would find it easy to forge a career in the present Labour Party. Given the chance, he became arguably Labour’s most successful leader. But would we give him that chance today?

Ah, well. At least I raised a glass to him on his birthday. A quiet celebration in memory – nostalgic memory – of a quiet man who achieved so much.

Far more than many who are a great deal noisier.

Labour: getting back to its roots. But which roots?

“The only lesson to learn from history,” to paraphrase the German philosopher Hegel, “is that no one learns any lessons from history.”

In the course of the great debate over the leadership that is currently rocking the UK Labour Party, the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn frequently tell me that we need to get the party back to its roots. It’s because we’ve abandoned them for the last forty years – a precise figure quoted to me on Twitter, though what specifically happened in 1976 I’m not quite sure – that we’re in the mess today.

It never strikes me as a particularly good approach to call for a move “back to” some set of values. John Major, British Prime Minister between 1992 and 1997, Thatcher’s successor, launched a “back to basics” programme that was criticised even within his own party. Generally, it’s best to be moving forward and getting ready to deal with the next set of challenges, for which we’re likely to need different attitudes than worked when we faced the last.

Still, even in a forward-looking process, it’s useful to to see if we can at least learn enough from the past not to make the same mistakes again. Perhaps being aware of our roots might be a more useful approach than getting back to them. However, if we’re to do that well, we need at least to make sure we’re remembering them correctly. A mythical past isn’t going to help us at all in planning our future. It would be a pity to go back to the wrong roots, wouldn’t it?

What, then, were the roots of the Labour Party?

The great historic leader of the early days, and Labour’s first MP, was James Keir Hardie. He died long before Labour had its first chance to form a government, but he had among his advisers a young man, full of fine rhetoric and powerful views, who would lead Labour in government for the first time: Ramsay MacDonald was an early intellectual of the party and one of its most effective voices. He had principles too, and stuck to them: he was a pacifist and nothing could persuade him to back Britain’s involvement in the First World War. So, though he was one of the earliest Labour MPs, elected in 1906, he paid the price for his beliefs, losing his parliamentary seat in the elections at the end of the war.

Ramsay MacDonald: watered the roots of the Labour Party
But it didn’t end well, did it?

MacDonald came back, though, leading the first two Labour governments. Sadly, his second administration took office in 1929 and had to deal with the Great Depression. MacDonald, man of principle, thinker, left-winger, champion of the socialist cause, decided that was needed was a sound-money policy and reduced public spending. So he slashed unemployment benefit, to the fury and dismay of his Labour colleagues. In order to cling on to power, he formed a coalition with the Conservatives and remained Prime Minister, at the head of a government dominated by the party he’d always opposed, until 1935.

Are those the roots we’re supposed to get back to?

To be fair, when people talk about the Labour Party’s roots, they’re much more likely to be thinking of the great, reforming post-World War 2 government led by Clement Attlee. In particular, they’re probably thinking about one member of that government: Aneurin ‘Nai’ Bevan, founder of the NHS. They probably don’t remember that when someone mentioned to Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary in the same government, that Nai was his own worst enemy, Bevin growled back “not while I’m alive, he ain’t.”

Nai Bevan, father of the NHS. Much easier to get enthusiastic about.
As long as you’re not too worried abut nuclear disarmament.

Actually, that’s one of those stories that comes up again and again in different contexts, with different speakers. Another version has Bevin saying it about a different fellow Minister, Herbert Morrison. Then again, it was apparently said of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by his fellow Democrat “Cotton” Ed Smith. What all these versions have in common, though, is that they all reflect deeply destructive internal divisions in parties of the centre-left.

Sadly, we’re in exactly the same position today, but surely again this isn’t where we want to be, is it?

Much more significant than any comment of Bevin’s on Bevan, though, is a remark of Bevan’s himself. Jeremy Corbyn has made himself a bit of a name by his resistance to the renewal of the Trident nuclear missile programme. Interestingly, for a man and a member of a movement that swears by the sanctity of party decisions, he took that stance against Labour policy. He nonetheless enjoyed widespread support among his fan base, who tend to be pretty keen on Bevan too. So perhaps they need to ponder the words Nai spoke at the Labour Conference of 1957, during the debate on unilateral nuclear disarmament:

I knew this morning that I was going to make a speech that would offend and even hurt many of my friends. I know that you are deeply convinced that the action you suggest is the most effective way of influencing international affairs. I am deeply convinced that you are wrong. It is therefore not a question of who is in favour of the hydrogen bomb, but a question of what is the most effective way of getting the damn thing destroyed. It is the most difficult of all problems facing mankind. But if you carry this resolution and follow out all its implications and do not run away from it you will send a Foreign Secretary, whoever he may be, naked into the conference chamber… You call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.

Curious, isn’t it? That a past idol of the left referred to the policies espoused to the policies of today’s idol of the left as an “emotional spasm.”

So – are those the roots we’re supposed to be getting back to?

Mustn't take joy in Tory misfortunes. Must we?

Schadenfreude is the despicable emotion which leads us to take pleasure in the suffering of others.

Obviously, we ought to avoid it in all circumstances. At all times. That just has to be our rule.

Still, like all good rules, that one has to have exceptions, doesn’t it? And right up there with the most exceptional has to be the British Tory Party. In particular, those of its members who form the present enlightened government under which we groan. Sorry, prosper.

To be honest, I feel no shame over exulting in their discomfiture. They’re so self-satisfied, so certain of their entitlement to consideration and authority, so used to acting on their whims with complete impunity as to the consequences.

Besides, what’s happening to them is so much more commonly the destiny of the left, and in particular of the Labour Party. If there is one characteristic of a party of the left at any time, it’s that it is always being betrayed. Someone in its ranks is, it’s alleged, a crave backslider or a wild radical who risks derailing the movement in its mission. And that person is hated by someone else.

It’s a long tradition. Told that Nye Bevan, father of the NHS, was his own worst enemy, Ernie Bevin, who had been his ministerial colleague in the post-war Labour government, replied “not while I’m alive he isn’t.”

These internecine feuds rumble on for years. The whole Blair premiership was dominated by conflict between him and his Chancellor of the Exchequer and eventual successor, Gordon Brown. Even now, the conservative press has leaked a list of Labour MPs, drawn up by someone in the party, which categorises them by their loyalty or lack of it to the present leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s not clear to me that drawing up such a list was ever a particularly judicious move. Wasn’t it obvious that someone would leak it? After all, we’re always being betrayed…

It’s exasperating that anyone thought this was a good idea, and what I’d really, really like to suggest is that people stop keeping records about people’s supposed loyalty and, equally, that the people who are perhaps not as loyal as one might wish, learn to put a sock in it and knuckle down and support our present leader. For better or for worse. After all, he’s the only leader we’ve got, and any move we made to replace him by someone else would provoke further bitter feuding that would do no one any favours but the Conservatives.

Besides, quite a lot of us think he’s not such a bad leader, and maybe we ought to give him a chance. 

In any case, it would be fun if those who seem intent on making life difficult for Corbyn, turned their ire – and their fire – instead on the other side. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of having a go at each other, all of us in Labour concentrated on bringing down a Tory government all of us know needs to go?

We can do it. Take Angela Eagle, for instance. The other day she told Parliament:

Last Wednesday the Chancellor stood at that despatch box and delivered what he farcically claimed was: "a budget for the next generation."

What we actually got was a botched budget.

A Budget which has disastrously unravelled in just a few days.

Angela Eagle, putting the boot into an inept Chancellor
flanked by Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell

That’s the kind of thing we want to hear from leading Labour voices: picking up on the ineptitude of the Tories and powerfully, effectively denouncing it. She was helped by the incompetence with which George Osborne handled his hopelessly constructed budget, but it still took talent to wield the hatchet as Eagle did.

Which brings me back to the problems of Cameron’s party. Because as well as Angela Eagle’s comments I was delighted to read this assault:

This is not the way to do government…

I believe [Cameron and Osborne] are losing sight of the direction of travel they should be going...

But these remarks weren’t made by anyone in the Labour Party. They came from a former leader of the Tory Party, Iain Duncan Smith, who dramatically resigned from his position as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions last week.

Now, he has an axe to grind. He’s opposed to Britain’s membership of the EU, and his fellow Tories at the top of the party are in favour. His resignation may have been in part to serve the Brexit cause. But it contributes to the sense of disarray in Tory ranks, and that will only increase as the EU referendum approaches. That’s a wedge that Labour should be striving to drive deeper.

Meanwhile, other fissures are also opening up among Tories. Today we learned of the views of a Tory former head teacher and a member of Leicestershire County Council, where he takes a leading role on children’s and family matters. Ivan Ould was reacting to the decision by the government to force all schools to take ‘Academy’ status and therefore leave the control of councils such as Leicestershire’s. He commented:

This seems to be throwing out good practice for the sake of dogma and risking the possibility that standards may fall. I do not believe a system driven by dogma will meet the needs of children.

He’s so right. It’s dogma that drives this government, and centralisation of power: there’s absolutely no need to drive all schools to become Academie – indeed, one of the Academy chains that Cameron identified as exemplary has been placed under investigation for financial irregularities.

It’s dogma, too, that drives the constant obsession with austerity, despite six years of evidence that isn’t delivering growth or even reducing debt.

Taken together, the kind of Opposition Angela Eagle has shown Labour can still produce, and the internal attacks that the likes of Duncan Smith and Ould are launching, suggest that we can after all really do something about this dogmatic, inept government. Which is failing to meet the needs not just of children, but those of all but a tiny minority of the nation.

So I’m doing nothing to restrain my Schadenfreude over the Tories’ woes.