Why is the Labour Party in a mess?

Abstract

The present crisis of the Labour Party has deeper roots than the Conservative victory of 1979, the rise of the Bennite left and the emergence of the SDP (Social Democratic Party). These are only the final acts in a drama of a more secular kind and, if we are to understand it, we must step back from the present apologias being offered on the right and left of the Party and attempt to situate the crisis in a longer term historical perspective. Of course, history of a kind is not absent from the present debate. But the history on offer is generally of the ‘golden age’ variety and, curiously, both right and left are at one in the dating of that ‘golden age’ – the Labour governments of 1945–51. Political memories are short. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the predominant tone of discussion of 1945 was critical. For the right, it had identified the Party too closely with obsolete ‘shibboleths’ like nationalization and the ‘cloth cap’ image; for the left, it had represented a failure to capture the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy and a capitulation to market forces, the civil service and the cold war – in either scenario, it had generated ‘thirteen wasted years’ of Tory rule. But, in the light of the failures and frustrations of the Wilson and Callaghan years, the post-war Labour government has come to be seen in increasingly benign terms. It has come to be associated with a magical moment to which all sections of the party have yearned to return.