POLITICS
If you want to know about pain, feel the lash of New Labour's Leninists
MARK SEDDON
`Modernisation is changing millions of lives for the better. . . it is making a pro- gressive future possible. The revolution is not finished yet!' Could this be just the beginning of Mr Zhing's long response? A courteous exhortation for yet more coal production perhaps? Sadly not. For the commissar who produced this antique piece of agitprop about the unfinished revolution was none other than Philip Gould, focus- group guru, soothsayer to the Prime Minis- ter and author of The Unfinished Revolution. (Oh, and I added the exclamation mark, because it should really have been there.) He did so in a piece for the Guardian this week, in advance of the paperback version of his book which is being unleashed on unsuspecting bookshop owners.
Now Philip Gould is a thoroughly modern man. As befits the 'New' Labour manageri- alism, which he espouses, he wishes to go forwards rather than backwards. Yet, as thinking commentators scratch their heads in bewilderment over summer months even more devoid of political content than usual, perhaps they should take a closer look at the mindset of a few of the architects of `New' Labour's quite astonishing apostasy.
They could begin with one of their cre- ations: 'New' Labour's annual jamboree at the seaside, Bournemouth to be precise, in a few weeks. For the conference, as with much else, has been hijacked. The passion and the argument have been stifled, and the conference itself has become a rally, much in the way that the Conservatives' affair always has been. There is much here that loyal deputies to the Congress of People's Deputies in Beijing could recognise and applaud — in unison. Issues are smothered under a grand new consensus. Dividing lines are blurred, ideology banished.
Labour MPs are too worried about their whips' report to present any August alterna- tive. Instead, bored hacks go in pursuit of personalities, as the politicians go in pursuit of one another. When a number of us recently tried — and failed — to resurrect Labour's once noble aim of restoring the earnings link for pensioners at the National Policy Forum, we were mocked for our lofty idealism. The Independent's Don McIntyre felt able to describe this move as a 'failure of the ultra Left'. The modernisers' mindset is divorced from the history and ambitions of Labour, but, without wishing to trespass on territory already explored by Leo Abse, many of their earlier dalliances with far Left sects have left a deep mark upon their souls.
Labour, at its best, was a broad church. Whatever may have divided its members, it had a shared goal. It was just the manner of getting there that provoked the heated argument. Despite its natural conservatism and suspicion of intellectuals, Good Old Labour believed in something, which it defined as democratic socialism. The party's conference, until the advent of 'modernisa- tion', was its sovereign body. Leaders could ignore it — they often did — but, from Left to Right, all understood that its democracy was precious and came from its grass-roots.
Today, in classic Leninist mould, it is cen- tralised and top-down. Even before dele- gates gather at Bournemouth, they will know what they cannot debate and what they will be prevented from raising on the floor. The conference fringe will be their only haven. For the Leninists have taken over. And, if this sounds a little far-fetched, here is Philip Gould again. Recalling in his book that he had advised Tony Blair to adopt a 'unitary system of command' modelled on the com- mand and control system foisted upon the BBC by Sir John Birt, Gould reveals: 'In my quest for Leninist simplicity I had missed the bigger point.' The point apparently was that Stop looking at me with those come-to-bed eyes.' Tony Blair, while approving the gist of Gould's recommendations, did not simply want straight lines on organisational charts, but also, in somewhat messier fashion, want- ed the best talents available. Leninists by nature gravitate towards the vanguard view of politics, infiltrating and controlling. Pro- viding the 'line' and expecting no deviation. This is described as democratic centralism. as prescribed by any self-respecting Central Committee.
I once asked Philip Gould if he was a Leninist, not because I believed he was a raving Bolshevik, but because his mindset appeared to borrow heavily upon their methodology. 'I think,' he said mysteriously, `that in periods of change a little bit of Leninism goes along way.' Indeed it does. For Mr Gould secured his place on the Guardian's pages on the basis that his paper- back version of The Unfinished Revolution has been much trailed for arguing that even more power should be handed to the centre.
Those towering figures of the British Labour movement, from Keir Hardie onwards to Clement Attlee, Frank Cousins, Ellen Wilkinson, Tony Crosland and Aneurin Bevan, would all gasp in horror at such revelations. For their socialism was rooted in democracy and the power of a good idea to genuinely move people. I won- der what they could possibly make of the frequently whispered aside from many a dull-minded apparatchik straight from the student-union production line to excuse some ruthless purge: 'Actually, I am a bit of a Stalinist really.' Do these people really have any understanding of the depths that Uncle Joe plumbed? It would be easy to dismiss Philip Gould if he wasn't so influential, or, indeed, if his self- proclaimed Leninism contained even a scin- tilla of revolutionary socialism. But, sadly, all too many who currently hold sway in my party spent their youth not in the decent old Labour party of Michael Foot and Barbara Castle, but in the Communist party and the International Socialists: Peter Mandelson, Alan Milburn, John Reid and Kim Howells, to name but a few. Such dalliances are part and parcel of youthful activism on the Left, yet such experiences, as many an ex-Catholic will tell you, leave a mark.
Can we have our party back now, please?
Mark Seddon is the editor of Tribune. Bruce Anderson is deer-stalking in Scotland.
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