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Can New Labour be socialist?
"TODAY’S LABOUR party has the same values as our socialist
pioneers: the same burning passion for democracy, justice, individual freedom
and for confronting inequalities of power and wealth". Was this Nye Bevan in
1945? No, Peter Hain, writing in The Observer (27 October). The reality is
starkly different to this fine rhetoric.
From day one of the Blair government taking office the
ideology of neo-liberalism has reigned supreme. The pre-eminence of Thatcherite
ideology in shaping New Labour policy was symbolically displayed by Blair when,
within days of taking office, he became the first Labour prime minister in
history to invite an ex-Conservative prime minister to No.10 to seek their
counsel. New Labour’s slavish commitment to private finance initiative (which is
a euphemism for privateers to milk public funds), its continuing use of private
companies to run the prison service, and its specific refusal to renationalise
the railway industry in the teeth of all serious opinion, with the polls showing
that 80% of the public support it, suggest New Labour is not only not socialist
but vigorously implementing policies which correspond with the interests of the
rich and powerful.
In an interview with David Frost Blair himself rejected the
notion of renationalising rail, not because it would have been wrong, but that
it would look too much like ‘Old Labour’. That begs the question: in whose eyes?
Presumably the gaggle of millionaires who currently advise Blair on policy.
Peter Hain dismisses the state intervention and control of
important sectors of industry during the war and the subsequent nationalisation
of big sectors of the economy in the post-war period, as carried out
‘unthinkingly’. In fact it would have been impossible to have prosecuted the war
effectively without the co-ordination of the state, and he hasn’t grasped the
reality that rail, coal and the other utilities had been wrecked under private
ownership, where the greed of the owners overrode the needs of the community and
of the industries themselves. Hain calls on the ghosts of the past like the
Levellers, the Chartists, and William Morris to support his notion of
libertarian socialism, apparently arguing that they would support the present
policies of New Labour. A cursory glance at the policies advocated by these
strands of socialist thought, however, reveal that they opposed obscene wealth
and privilege, advocated the direct intervention of the working class in the
workings of the state, and argued that wealth be redistributed amongst the
community. Can anyone doubt that they would have been implacably opposed to the
obscene differentials in wealth which characterise present day capitalism? Hain
uses rhetoric which doesn’t commit New Labour to even vaguely radical policies;
the word ‘brave’ is employed to describe the break with Labour’s socialism, and
the mantra of ‘libertarian socialism’ advocated as an alternative to public
ownership.
The only hackneyed phrase missing in Hain’s article was
‘traditional values in a modern setting’ so beloved of New Labour clones. The
question is: whose traditional values? The answer is exemplified in the
grotesque spectacle of company executives now earning 500 times more than the
average worker, compared to a ratio of thirty to one 25 years ago. An obscenity
exemplified by the recent farce of privatised company British Energy which
announced losses in May of £493m and received a bailout of £650m tax payers
money. The executive chairman who presided over this disaster trousered for a
year’s work nearly £480,000 and a bonus of £185,642. We await with bated breath
New Labour condemning this legal theft with the same alacrity that they condemn
trade union leaders for taking action to defend their members.
Peter Hain mangles the meaning of the word ‘left’ when he
states that "we on the left... must continue to trust people to decide for
themselves". We are entitled to ask: ‘which people, deciding what?’ New Labour
proudly defends the most draconic anti-trade union laws in the developed world,
rampant low pay, the supply of arms credits to the most bloodthirsty
dictatorships on the planet, and the extension of PFI which places future
generations in hock. In addition, the democratic structures of the Labour Party
have been dismantled. There is no longer a mechanism for rank and file members
to shape let alone determine policy, nor to select candidates of their choice.
The answer to the question, can New Labour be socialist? must be a resounding
No!
Tony Mulhearn,
Liverpool
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