Labour and Socialism - Essay Example

Labour and Socialism The Labour Party suffered a huge defeat in the 1983 general election, which it blamed mostly on the radical left wing strategiesadopted in its 1983 manifesto. Consequently, between 1983 and 1994, and under the stewardship of Neil Kinnock followed by John Smith, the party tried to modernise itself. This modernisation involved modification of its image and reputation but also resulted in more moderation of its policies and ideals (Taylor, 2012:24). When Tony Blair ascended into power, he accelerated the process started by Smith and Kinnock. It is vis-à-vis the leadership of the ostensible New Labour Party by Blair that it could be reasonably questioned whether the Labour Party has been a socialist party. Labour policies under Blair showed that they were motivated by aspects of neo-liberal ideals, slightly social democratic ideology and backing for constitutional changes that is common among Liberal Democrats and Liberals. The impact of neo-liberalism on the policies and ideology of Labour regimes post-1994 can be seen in many aspects. First, in 1995 New Labour omitted its dedication to public ownership from its manifesto and did not renationalise industries privatised under Conservative administrations (Budge and McKay, 2013:18). Second, New Labour magnified the role of the private sector in government operations by expanding public-private sector cooperation whereby private firms construct and maintain schools, hospitals and other public facilities and lease them back to the government at a huge profit (Tanner and Thorpe, 2014:29). Third, New Labour retained the policies adopted by the Conservatives to limit the influence of the trade unions. Since 1994, Labour has been significantly influenced by old social democratic policies. For example, New Labour did significantly lower the extent of relative poverty partly because unemployment stayed low, partly because of its introduction of the minimum wage, and also partly due to its subtly redistributive social security and taxation policies. Economic growth was quite stable under New Labour, and it was able to significantly increase state spending on Education and Health (wholly influenced by the Croslandite recommendations of the 1950s). New Labour failed in significantly reducing economic inequality as estimated by income and wealth distribution (Budge and McKay, 2013:34). However, while in the Thatcher administrations income inequality grew significantly partly due to natural trends in capitalist states and due to Conservative taxation and social security policies which further promoted income inequality, New Labour’s social security and taxation policies, viewed in isolation, considered the poor but they were not impactful enough to counter the natural descent into income inequality (Steinnes, 2014:43). In any case, New Labour luminaries argued that major growth in economic equality would lower financial incentives and hence lower economic growth and efficiency, hence lowering the living standards of the same people they were intent on helping. New Labour also adopted a variety of liberal constitutional reforms that demonstrated its new inclination towards socialism. The devolution strategies could be perceived as symbolising an attempt to improve public participation in politics in Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. It is important to note that the elections to the Welsh Assembly and European and Scottish Parliaments are all based on the more balanced additional member approach, and Northern Ireland employs the single transferrable approach (Hattersley, 2013:64). Tony Blair and his proponents claimed that in implementing a hybrid of social democratic and neo-liberal ideologies and augmenting them with liberal constitutional changes they had nevertheless maintained their social democratic principles while not necessarily changing their policies so as to consider changing social and economic conditions. They therefore argued that they could triumph in general elections with New Labour policies alone which a winning coalition of ambitious middle and working class voters could relate to, and that only New Labour strategies could help poor people in the globalization era (Budge and McKay, 2013:22). As a result, only Labour is still a social democratic party – or even based on its own manifesto a democratic socialist party – because it is supporting poor people as much as possible in the current social and economic conditions in line with its social democratic principles. Other people disagree with this notion (Heppell, 2013:31). They state that New Labour moved clearly toward neo-liberalism and despite the fact that their slightly social democratic policies have minimised average poverty, economic inequalities remain mostly at the same level they were when the Conservatives handed over power in 1997. Most socialists contend that a high degree of economic equality is required to guarantee individual liberty and equality of opportunity and New Labour’s socialist approach to the challenge of economic equality may show that it is truly a socialist party (Budge and McKay, 2013:26). Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have been viewed as the joint engineers of New Labour but Brown has also been closely associated with the historical ideals of the party. There have also been beliefs or suspicions (depending on one’s perspective) that as Prime Minister he opted for a return to the party’s traditional social democratic principles (Muravchik, 2013:15). When Brown became Prime Minister his poll ratings improved initially due to what was perceived as his effective management of some important events. These included two quite minor terrorist attacks, major floods and an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Soon, David Cameron’s leadership was being doubted, and there was growing speculation concerning a possible snap general election, something Brown did little to silence (Budge and McKay, 2013:56). Despite this, a series of occurrences would soon erode Brown’s credibility as PM and the poll ratings of the entire Labour government. These events included the government’s failure to approve a referendum on the suitability of the EU Treaty, accusations that Labour was effectively copying Conservative taxation policies, and the resignation of Peter Hain due to irregularities concerning the funding of his contestation of the deputy leadership of the party, etc. (Pearce, 2014:27). In spite of all these potential pitfalls for the New Labour during that time, the most important and severest condemnation of the party under Brown’s stewardship was that nevertheless, it seemed to have abandoned its social democratic values and, consequently, alienated some of its disadvantaged supporters. The criticism concerning disregard for its founding social democratic principles shows that the New Labour was still a socialist party well into Gordon Brown’s tenure, and supporters expected it to remain that way (Adelman, 2014:25). This seemed relevant especially in connection with moves in the 2007 budget to lower the standard income tax rate from 22 to 20 pence, and to remedy this by removing the 10 pence tax rate which ultimately affected 5.3 million poor people (Pugh, 2012:39). The truth is that the New Labour was different from the Old Labour in that it emphasised the need to return to its founding ideology: social democracy and socialism. It is, therefore, safe to say that the New Labour was more socialist after 1994 and operated in a way that confirmed this assertion. This claim is backed by numerous statements issued by senior Labour officials since Brown exited office. The statements suggest that since 1994, the party has viewed itself as socialist than ever before. In September 2013, for example, shadow Chancellor Ed Balls stated that the Labour Party is “happy” to be called socialist (Holehouse, 2013:1). In a 2013 article published by the Wall Street Journal, the author stated that Labour would contest the next election on a platform that shuns the foundation of its most successful election winner, Tony Blair, and adopt traditional European socialism with policies that include seizing land left idle by developers and freezing energy prices (Winning, 2013:1). This shows that the party is even more socialist than it was from 1995 to the early 2000s. References Adelman, P. (2014) The rise of the Labour Party 1880-1945 (3rd ed.), London, Routledge. Beer, M. (2014) Fifty years of international socialism, Oxfordshire, England, Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Budge, I. & McKay, D. (2013) The New British Politics (4th ed.), Hoboken, Taylor and Francis. Hattersley, R. (2013) The socialist way social democracy in contemporary Britain (Revised ed.), London, Penguin. Heppell, T. (2013) How labour governments fall: From Ramsay MacDonald to Gordon Brown (Illustrated ed.), London, Palgrave Macmillan. Holehouse, M. (2013, September 23) Ed Balls: The Labour Party are happy to be called socialists, Retrieved January 7, 2015, from . Muravchik, J. (2013) Heaven on earth: the rise and fall of socialism, San Francisco, Encounter Books. Pearce, R. (2014) Attlee, Hoboken, Taylor and Francis. Pugh, M. (2012) State and Society a Social and Political History of Britain since 1870, London, Bloomsbury Pub. Steinnes, K. (2014) The British Labour Party, transnational influences and European Community membership, 1960-1973, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Tanner, D. & Thorpe, A. (2014) Building the Labour Party. The politics of the left in early twentieth century Britain, London, I.B. Tauris. Taylor, G. (2012) Guild Politics, a practical programme for the Labour Party & the Co-operators, London, HardPress. Winning, N. (2013, September 25) U.K’s Labour Party Moves Back toward Socialist Ideas, Retrieved January 7, 2015, from . Read More