Publications Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’s Internet Archive
Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 182 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 182, January 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
When Tony Blair said he was ‘not going to make a choice for my child on the basis of what is the politically correct thing to do’, he spoke volumes about where he intends to take Labour.
His characterisation of ‘political correctness’ as the equivalent of some sort of thought police against reasonable people’s expressions of opinion could just as easily have come from the mouth of any Tory reactionary. The issue itself is not merely one of avoiding using racist or sexist language (though maybe Blair’s concept of freedom now includes the choice to be offensive), but goes to the heart of Labour thinking over state education.
For many Labour supporters the principle of comprehensive state education is one of the central planks of party policy. Blair’s decision to send his son to a school which has opted out of local authority control, schools which Labour are pledged to abolish, has caused much anger and bitterness in the party.
Roy Hattersley – not known as a left winger – reacted in the Observer by writing that this sort of selective education will condemn millions of working class children to an education which is generally regarded as inferior.’ Yet there are others in the party who seem to accept the logic of Blair’s decision on the basis that working class schools are inherently bad. Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking, was quoted as saying, ‘There is a whole range of ingredients to a good school. The presence of middle class children is one.’
All this confirms the impression that the rise to the top by Blair and his cronies is motivated more by personal ambition than by any pretence of fighting for social justice for the millions of working class people for whom such ‘choices’ are just not possible. Blunkett has been forced both to defend the decision and to issue a statement that Labour policy on opted out schools is unchanged. The argument demonstrates the huge gap between the simmering anger that exists against the Tory government and the policies, and priorities of the current Labour leadership.
This row is only one in what seems an ever increasing compulsion by Labour’s leadership to ditch policies which up until recently have been central to Labour thinking. The dropping of Clause Four from the constitution has opened the way for ever shifting ground on nationalisation. Labour no longer says it will take back into public ownership British Telecom, British Gas or even British Coal after it has been sold off, even though the rising prices and huge profits of these companies are hugely unpopular. A survey in the Economist showed that 68 percent of those asked, including Tory voters, supported renationalisation, putting Labour to the right of the majority of the electorate on the issue.
Blair’s comments on the Tories’ defeat over the Post Office privatisation were revealing. He praised the campaign led by the post office workers union (UCW) saying its leaders used ‘intelligence and subtlety’ because they ‘lobbied Tory MPs as well as other parties. They did not try to persuade through threatening strikes. They refused simply to defend the status quo and instead proposed public ownership, but with commercial freedom.’
Again Labour is to the right of the majority of voters – 75 percent said in a recent survey that profit should be invested to the benefit of working people while only 3 percent believed that shareholders and managers should benefit. A key factor in the Tories backing off from privatising the Post Office was the rising militancy amongst post office workers.
Hopes of a radical approach elsewhere were soon dashed. Headlines in the Sun about Jack Straw’s statement on the increasingly unpopular wealth of the royal family proclaimed. ‘He’ll fire Queen Mum.’ It quickly transpired that he proposed nothing more than a slimmed down version of the royals, something the queen herself has already agreed.
Despite the continuous shedding of traditional principles and constant vague references to the need to ‘equip Britain for the new global market,’ Labour enjoys an unprecedented lead in opinion polls, so deep is discontent with the government. But the inability of Labour to articulate the anger and despair of the millions who have suffered under 15 years of Tory rule is displayed with every speech.
When Blair says, ‘There is no bigger problem in Britain than crime and lawlessness’, he doesn’t speak for those who are unemployed, low paid, homeless or waiting for a hospital bed. That job has to be taken up by socialists up and down the country who don’t feel they have to ape Tory policy to be popular, and who don’t believe as Blair does that, ‘The old battles between ... management and workforce are quite simply irrelevant to the challenges Britain faces in the 1990s.’
Far from being out of date, it is precisely those ‘old battles’ between workers and their bosses that will dictate the future of education, health and the other public services under attack.
Socialist Review Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 28 November 2017