Old Certainties Challenged

WARNING
This post is the result of a mounting frustration. It may not be coherent and I may disown it when my mood improves. There is no levity or humour in here. If you want that scroll down.


I have always voted Labour. I've done so at every local and General election, and in '97 I pounded the streets several nights each week and all election day knocking on doors canvassing votes. That election victory in 1997 still ranks as one of the greatest nights of my life. Old friends in the constituency party told me that they had the same feelings of euphoria in 1945 when Attlee won. For weeks afterwards I felt like I was walking a few inches above the ground. At last it was OUR turn. At last we were going to put right society's wrongs.

Well it hasn't quite worked out that way. In 1945 Clem Attlee's Government set about giving us a country fit for heroes. They didn't quite pull it off but they had the balls to try. Blair's first term started superbly. Loads of new ideas and some amazing successes, but then the focus changed and re-election became the target. It's ok we all said - Labour will be radical in the 2nd term. The first term was all about proving they were competant to run the country. We were wrong. Despite another landslide where was the radical programme?

And so now, where are we? A much reduced majority and a PM who probably won't see out the life of this Parliament as our leader. No chance of the Grand Vision coming to the fore then. I hope that Brown becomes the next leader and becomes PM with a majority strong enough for him to take radical action. I have faith that he can still prove that the euphoria of 97 was justified. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have preferred any other party to have been in office despite everything.

But what really worries me is that I was at the launch of the Centre For Social Justice last week. It is an Iain Duncan Smith led project with support from members of all parties. I have my reservations about it (it has a very Tory view of how to achieve social justice) and yet I heard more coherent ideas that evening than I have heard from the Government recently. A case in point being a different conference I was at last week where a very senior civil servant was suggesting what in effect was a nationalisation a large swathe of the voluntary sector in order to make up for 8 years of failure in a particular policy area. I won't name names lest I compromise my employers.

Part of the problem is that there are people and organisations who have the Government's ear, and for the rest of us it's so damn hard to get heard by people that matter. Another part of the problem is that I am just not sure what Labour stands for any more and I don't think they do either. Their mission has become muddied by the myriad pressures they face in power. What I do know is that there are a lot of good people in the Labour Party (in parliament and the country as a whole), and that they need to reclaim the agenda from Blair.

Billy Bragg once wrote the following (while Labour were in opposition):


Another day dawns grey, its enough to make me spit
But we go on our way, just putting up with it
And when I try to make my feelings known to you
You sound like you have changed from red to blue

You're a father now, you see things in different ways
For every parent will gain perspective on their wilder days
But that alone does not explain the changes I see in you
The way you've drifted off from red to blue

Sometimes I think to myself
Should I vote red for my class or green for our children?
But whatever choice I make
I will not forsake

So you bought it all, the best your money could buy
And I watched you sell your soul for their bright shining lie
Where are the principles of the friend I thought I knew
I guess you let them fade from red to blue

I hate the compromises that life forces us to make
We must all bend a little if we are not to break
But the ideals you've opted out of, I still hold them to be true
I guess they weren't so firmly held by you

Labour has moved from red to blue under Blair. In little over a decade the party is unrecognisable from John Smith's Labour Party. It was an absolute tragedy for the country the day he died. I only hope that his legacy will live on in Brown, if and when he gets into number 10. They need a clear vision and a radical programme - I hope to god they come up with the goods.