New Statesman & Society leader, 28 April 1995
Tony Blair's Clause Four victory is a massive defeat for the
hard left-and it reinforces the argument that the left should work with, rather
than against, the Labour leadership
This weekend the Labour Party's special conference in
London will give a ringing endorsement to Tony Blair's new statement of aims
and values to replace Clause Four of the party constitution. That much has been
certain since long before the Labour leader unveiled the new statement last
month. Indeed, the only real question ever since Blair announced his intention
of replacing Clause Four at Labour conference last year has been the margin of
his eventual victory. Even before anyone, apart from Blair, had an inkling of
the contents of the new statement, the overwhelming majority of Labour Party
members at every level knew that defeat for the leader would be the sort of
humiliation that could lose Labour the next election. If few would have
predicted that the most substantial opposition to change would come not from
the constituency Labour parties, but from the executive committees of trade
unions, few believed that the outcome was in doubt.
Despite this predictability, it would be wrong to play down
the significance of the exercise. Getting rid of Clause Four is extraordinarily
important symbolically. Although it has never accurately described Labour's programme
for government – even in 1945 the party stood for a mixed economy – for most of
its life it has represented the long-term aspirations of many if not most
Labour members. After Hugh Gaitskell's botched attempt to get shot of it in
1959-60, moreover, Clause Four became a symbol of the party rank-and-file's
ability to resist the attempts of opportunistic leaders to ditch principles in
the pursuit of power. It was accepted as untouchable by both leaders and led.
Right up to last autumn, the received wisdom in Labour's upper echelons was
that meddling with Clause Four was guaranteed to stir up a hornet's nest. Hence
the sharp intakes of breath when Blair announced his plan for change – even
from those who, as they inhaled, realised that the received wisdom was nonsense
and that Blair would get his way simply because the alternative was too
dreadful to contemplate.
Seven months on from Blair's declaration that the emperor
has no clothes, his transgression of Labour's unwritten law that no one touches
Clause Four has been completely vindicated. No matter, as NSS said after the
publication of his new draft, that the new wording is inelegant and
uninspiring: some 85 per cent of Labour Party members prefer it to the old.
There's no arguing with the results of the constituency ballots: those on the
left who reckon that the absence of the old clause from the ballot papers made
any significant difference to the result are insulting the intelligence of the
electorate. Everyone who voted knew what was at stake – and the brutal reality
is that the scale of support for Blair in the constituencies is a massive
humiliation for the hard left, worse even than the defeat of Tony Benn and Eric
Heffer when they challenged Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley for the leadership
and deputy leadership in 1988.
Then at least the hard left had the consolation of being on
the winning side at party conference, as the leadership's plans to ditch
unilateral nuclear disarmament were unceremoniously dumped by the party. Now,
the hard left has nothing. It has been stuffed by Blair, who can now argue,
with reason, that his modernising project has complete democratic legitimacy in
the Labour Party. He can do just about what he likes. No Labour leader before
has ever had the authority that Blair now has.
Of course, this does not mean that Blair ought to behave as
a dictator, riding roughshod over all criticism: it would make more sense for
him to be magnanimous in victory – and indeed he insists that he intends to
encourage debate and pluralism inside Labour (see interview on page 24). But
it does mean that he can simply ignore the left if it responds to its defeat by
moping in a corner, waiting sullenly for its chance to get its own back. If
the left is to have any influence at all, it must engage constructively with
the modernisers who are now in command. That does not imply stinting on
criticism when criticism is justified, nor does it necessitate hero-worship.
Still less does it mean embracing the strategy of caution, inherited from John
Smith, to which Blair clings when it comes to specific policies. After Clause
Four, however, anyone in the Labour Party who refuses to recognise that, for
the foreseeable future, Blair is the only show in town, is living in a
dream-world.
