From Left To Right

Labour leaders are starting to revolt me as much as Tories always have. Am I becoming rightwing? By Charlie Brooker at The Grauniad’s CiF.

It is something that has bothered me just lately too. But with me it is not so much just the leaders, but the whole Left ideology, philosophy, world-view or call it what you will. Maybe Charlie ought to seek some reassurance from Melanie Philips, and realise that it is not such an unusual thing to do, to move from left to right, even though your former 'comrades' will never forgive you for it.

I grew up in a time when it seemed almost impossible to be anything other than Left-wing, at least to some degree. I always used to regard myself as Left-wing in political terms, voting Labour in every election since I've been old enough to vote. I grew up during the 1960s & 70s and went through the 1980s, living here in the Black Country, a traditional heavy industry area. The Black Country has long industrial roots going back to the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution. So - or so it seemed to me at the time – it would be unlikely for someone like me, from these solid working class roots to be anything other than Left Wing.

However, one aspect of the Left world-view that has always been problematic to me has been the notion of collectivism. This is exemplified in the way the Left see everything in terms of groups from the old style ‘bosses V the workers’ to the more modern championing of various ‘minority’ groups like women, ethnic minorities and so forth, and seeing the individual as only defined by the group. The Left used to mythologise ‘the workers’ in this way. However ‘the workers’ themselves proved to be reluctant to play this game. As Nick Cohen says:

You can see the disappointment of the middle class in the attempts to prevent democratic votes and deny freedom of speech. The centralisation of decision making in the undemocratic bodies of the European Union, the fondness for asking unelected judges to take political decisions and politically correct speech codes all flow from a belief that the working class cannot not be trusted to think as the middle classes would like it to think.
Beyond a fear that they cannot win majorities in open elections, the liberal middle class across the developed world feels a deeper unease. History no longer seems to be going its way.

In fact, there has always been a strong tradition of working class Tories in the UK. For example, the working class - in general - gravitated towards ITV a commercial (and therefore capitalist) TV channel, rather than the more Left-leaning liberal BBC. Also, the more successful tabloids read by the working class, The Sun, The News of the World, The Daily Mail and so forth all tend towards being right-wing too. See: How Margaret Thatcher won me over By Andrew Pierce.

There was almost universal working class distrust of 'middle-class' do-gooders like social workers et al who try to ‘improve’ the working class lot, and suspicion of education and 'people getting above themselves'.

I soon realised that socialism was not a working class thing after all, it was middle-class through and through. Something a bit like this:

Within the Labour Party, constituency parties, which had lost membership alarmingly in the seventies (an official total of barely 600,000 individual members was recorded at the end of the decade), found themselves taken over by younger elements. Often they were single-issue groups such as Irish republicans, black activists, or advocates of ‘gay lib’. The feminist movement, increasingly influential in the seventies, developed an important Marxist wing which also moved into local Labour parties, especially in London boroughs such as Lambeth, Brent, or Tower Hamlets. Many of their leaders were young products of the abortive student movements of the 1960s. An important body that acted as a focus for them all was the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, founded in 1973, much influenced by an émigré Czech, Vladimir Derer, and a young unemployed ex-Cambridge graduate, Jon Lansman. Corrupt and decaying Labour parties in the inner cities were, indeed, uninspiring and all too ripe for take-over. They were notorious citadels of unthinking male ‘chauvinism’. A report by Reg Underhill on ‘entryism’ in local parties mentioned ominous signs of far-left activity by Militant Tendency and other neo-revolutionary groups. But the NEC suppressed it and

no action was taken in the Wilson—Callaghan period, until it was too late.

There was consequently a curious phenomenon which showed up the divided consciousness and inner weakness of the Labour movement. As the party in Cabinet moved away from socialism, neutralizing the doctrinaire demands of Benn, and towards monetarism, cash limits, and a total accommodation with capitalism, the Labour Party as entrenched in local government, as in the new metropolitan council and in Greater London, became associated with far-left postures, open resistance to demands for expenditure cuts, and association with Marxist and other groups not at all attracted to the pragmatic Labour tradition of Attlee, Gaitskell, and Wilson. As black flags of solidarity with South American Marxist guerrillas flew from Labour-run town halls (Oxford was ‘twinned’ with a town in Nicaragua) and declarations of support were made on behalf of Sinn Fein, CND, or lesbian activists, ratepayers and indeed traditional Labour supporters began to wonder how their old party had become

a Trojan horse for a miscellaneous coalition of the discontented. In the national party, these movements now dominated the constituency parties, as well as a growing number of unions. Party conferences now became far more tense affairs than in the days of

Attlee, with delegates enthusiastically passing motions in support of mass nationalization, total nuclear disarmament, the withdrawal of British troops from Ulster, and removing Britain from the Common Market. When leaders like Wilson and Callaghan tried to negate or circumvent these demands, they provoked cries for more inner party democracy’ from the CLPD, including the election of party leaders and members of the shadow Cabinet, the popular drawing up of the

manifesto, and reselection (or de-selection) of members of parliament to ensure that they kept firm to the edicts of the party and its local management committees. They found an excellent target in Reg

Prentice, a far-right-wing Labour minister under fire from his constituency in Newham. Prentice was indeed to be disowned by his local party: he was later to oblige them by turning Conservative and serving in Mrs Thatcher’s government.

From: BRITAIN SINCE 1945 by Kenneth O Morgan.

These single-issue groupings however, were – and still are – just another manifestation of the middle-class paternalism that once romanticised ‘the workers’ and claimed to speak for them, but is now transferred to other ‘victim groups’. However, the Left must keep the members of these groups entrenched in these groups, keep them as victims that it can ‘represent’ and claim to speak for. Once people escape from these groupings; like ethnic minorities becoming middle-class, or women achieving in the workplace, they become individuals and therefore individuals outside of the victim group they are often then seen as ‘traitors’ to that group, which brings us nicely back to that Melanie Philips article again.