New Labour's Approach to Social Policy - Coursework Example

New Labours approach to social policy (Harvard) The British government attitude toward social policy took a new turn in May 1997 when the Labour Party won the general elections, ending 18 years of Conservative administration. The party with Prime Minister Tony Blair at the helm, referred to its government as the New Labour outlining a new social policy, which would be characterised by a significant deviation to the party’s previous, postwar stand on the matter. This paper explores this aspect particularly in terms of its relationship with traditional Labour thinking and the influence of Thatcherism. Welfare Collectivism The traditional principle of the Labour Party, particularly in pre-war and postwar Britain towards social policy is anchored on the concept of the classic welfare state. Nick Ellison wrote that it operated within the broad framework of Keynesian economic management and that such welfare state was developed according to a dominant ethic of ‘welfare collectivism’ derived from traditional Labour thinking and blueprints, reconstructionism and the practical implementation of the welfare legislation by the Atlee Governments in the late 1940s. (Brivati & Bale 1997, p. 34) However, the past experience of the Labour Party that is in power is perpetually plagued by persistent problems brought about by the conflict that the welfare legacy against economic priorities. For instance, as the Labour government attempts to increase spending to fund welfare services even in the midst of adverse economic circumstances, it is also forced to impose high-level progressive taxation. In Ellison’s words, the Labour governments of the past were often reduced to pursuing “what amounted to little more than a pragmatic economic and social strategy, in which proposed socialist goals seemed increasingly elusive.” (cited in Brivati and Bale, p. 34) That is why the Labour Party has adopted a new wider programme of public service modernisation, which included the endorsement of a new set of “loosened” approach to welfare social policy. Thus, commenced the time when Labour moved away from explicit socialism in favor of a weaker social democracy. To quote Robert Imrie and Mike Raco’s (2003) words in regard to this line of thinking: Instead of assuming that the role of public policy is to act as a safety net, catching those who are unable to fend for themselves, this approach emphasises the need to develop policies capable of enabling people to help – themselves – providing in New Labour’s words, “a hand up, not a hand out”. (p. 225) In short, the New Labour policy in the abovementioned model maintains that instead of just helping the poor to survive, the government should expand the role of its agencies and their partners to look for ways of ensuring that they can be brought into a productive economic role, both for themselves and the society. This new battle cry provided some form of impetus to the beleaguered Labour Party and finally, with the support of the electorate, catapulting it to power in the 1990s. In a bid to capitalise on the reforms and “modernisation” recently introduced within the party, the branding of New Labour was introduced. The slogan, New Labour, New Life for Britain was adopted and the stamp of approval from the electorate came with the party’s resounding landslide win in 1997. The words of Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his speech to Fabian Society in 1995, provided us the summed up roadmap of the New Labour’s plan regarding social policy. He said that the Party’s new social policies “should and will cross old boundaries between left and right, progressive and conservative”. (Blair, 1998) This pronouncement also underscored the contribution of the positive experience of the Thatcher administration in its approaches to social policy. Thatcherism and New Labour In many way, much of the developed and revised ideas of the New Labour were influenced by how welfare was successfully delivered in the Thatcher era. This is significant because Thatcherism rejected the Old Labour’s thinking of consensus on welfare. Because of this, there are observers who argue that the New Labour approach is a reform of a conservative reform not the abolition of conservative policy and a return to postwar social democracy. Mark Walsh, Paul Stephens and Stephen Moore (2000), for instance, argued that the New Labour’s approach to how welfare is delivered marks a significant shift from the individual versus collective, state versus market, public versus private debates of the past. (p. 54) For them, the ‘Third Way’ that New Labour claims to have developed recognises the interdependence of many of these opposites, and crosses what were once seen as boundaries in an either/or approach to the different ways of delivering health and social welfare services. The New Labour government was keen in promoting entrepreneurialism and increased productivity on the part of the public and private sectors which were expected to fuel future expansion in social policy. This may be in consonance with salient Conservative principles, but the New Labour approach made up for its original mandate by adopting a more positive role for social provision. What was intended by the New Labour administration was not to copy the successes of the previous administration’s social policy but to improve on it according to their principles and that revolved around the idea that the transformation of the party’s concept of social policy is geared towards productive welfare. It is the same as utilising sound economic principles to further the socialist agenda as opposed to having them both in different poles persistently in conflict with each other. This was reflected in policies such the prioritisation of investment in human capital wherever possible, rather than the direct provision of economic maintenance. (Giddens, 1998, p. 117) Key Features With the previous factors considered, one can identify distinct approaches in social policy that are uniquely New Labour’s such as the government’s policy in regard to social inclusion and the New Labour’s Third Way project. In line with the “modernised” or reformed Labour Party, the Labour government’s approach to social inclusion shifted from one based on citizenship, status and rights, to one based on obligation and achievement. (Plant, 1997, p. 3) Here, individuals are expected to “take more responsibility than previously for their own employability by acquiring the skills, education and, in some cases, job experience the government provides. Both the government and the individual acquired new obligations: the individual to seek work and training; the government to provide training and sometimes work.” (Powell, p. 169) The offshoot was that the New Labour government that once took responsibility for providing unconditional welfare must now took it upon itself the responsibility of merely acting as the employer of last resort with the adoption of conditional citizenship principle. Here, the distinction between the old Labour and the New Labour is clear: The New Labour social policy is in the process of constructing a welfare state based on rebuilding the system around work and security in contrast to the traditional and classic welfare state of the old Labour which sought the unity of an inclusive welfare system. Meanwhile, the New Labour claims to have found an alternative to the New Right ideas and the ‘tax-and-spend’ postwar consensus. They called it the Third Way which according to Driver and Martell (1998) follows the concept of balancing the opposites in an attempt to combine them into interdependence with one another rather than a synthesis or transcendence of opposites into something new. There had been some debates on whether this was a radical approach or that there is a quantified probability of success compared to its predecessors. Also, the Third Way for Labour has meant articulating a philosophy of citizenship that conjoins notions of rights and duties, hence, it has adopted a more conditional approach to citizenship rights to social security, retaining the Tories’ JSA and promoting a New Deal which stresses the obligations individual owe in claiming rights for their welfare. (Dwyer, 1998) Conclusion There are critics who are doubtful of the New Labour approach to social policy. For instance, there are those who question whether the more progressive elements in the Labour agenda could be sustained. The new social policy, particularly in regard to social inclusion set store on labour-market participation and the role to be played by education and training, which, for its part, is highly dependent on growth opportunities. Also, such policy requires the market to deliver jobs, for the government to solve poverty and social exclusion in the long-term. Unfortunately, as how Michael Hill (2003) put it, “the evidence on the way the labour market is developing gives little scope for optimism.” (p. 271) All in all, it is still hard to evaluate and measure the performance of the New Labour’s social policy. It will take some time to determine if this new approach has produced a significant shift or transformation in the way welfare services are delivered in Britain. Amidst all these, one should remember that the Labour Party has been in power for more than a decade already. Perhaps this is the most glaring gauge on whether the Labour government is succeeding in its promises and programs in terms of social policy. Encouraging entrepreneurialism and using the business sector as a panacea to an increasingly wide-ranging set of social problems seems to appeal to the public in the backdrop of the current British situation wherein the public sector alone can no longer offer credible solutions. The policy of accommodation, pursuit of balance and consensus has brought about a period of stability under the New Labour administration. References Blair, T. (1998) The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century. Fabian Pamphlet 588. The Fabian Society. Brivati, B. and Bale, T. (1997) New Labour in Power: Precedents and Prospects. UK: Routledge. Driver, S. and Martell, L. (1998) New Labour - Politics After Thatcher. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dwyer, P. (1998) Conditional Citizens? Welfare rights and responsibilities in the late 1990s. Critical Social Policy, 18, 493-517 Imrie, R. and Raco, M. (2003) Urban Renaissance?: New Labour, Community and Urban Policy. The Policy Press. Giddens, A. (1998) The third way: The renewal of social democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hill, Michael. (2003) Understanding Social Policy. Blackwell Publishing. Plant, R. (1997) Citizenship, employability and the labour market, Basic Income Bulletin, 24, 2-3. Powell, M. (1999) New Labour, New Welfare State?: The "Third Way" in British Social Policy. The Policy Press. Walsh, M., Stephens, P., and Moore, S. (2000) Social Policy and Welfare. Nelson Thornes. Read More