BLAIR TRIUMPHANT

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.

NEARLY THERE

New Statesman & Society, 28 April 1995

Tony Blair is heading for an overwhelming victory at Labour's special conference on Clause Four this weekend. He talks to Paul Anderson about the ideas behind the new clause and about where Labour goes from here

It's early Monday evening, and Tony Blair, travelling first class on the 16.20 non-stop from Preston to London Huston, watches the coun­tryside of Middle England flash by the window as he talks.

The Labour leader is obviously tired – hardly surprising after a six-week nation­wide speaking tour in support of chang­ing Clause Four of the party's constitu­tion, which has involved adding 30 extra meetings (and hours more on trains) to an already busy schedule. But he's also clearly jubilant. He is on his way back from the last of the speaking engage­ments, at the annual conference of the shopworkers' union Usdaw in Black­pool, and he knows he has won a famous victory, not just in Usdaw but throughout the Labour Party. On Saturday, a special conference in London will vote over­whelmingly in favour of the new Clause Four. So far, only a single constituency party that has held a ballot has come out against change. There's even a chance, according to transport workers' leader Bill Morris, that the TGWU delegation will ignore its executive's advice and vote for the new wording.

The speech Blair has just given in Blackpool was carefully drafted to max­imise his appeal among those trade unions that have yet to make up their minds. There was even a coded reference to class struggle, when he warned against being "Utopian about the potential for conflict between employees and manage­ment". "There is a divergence of interests at some points inherent in the relation­ship," he said. "There can be a clash on the balance between profits and wages or on how far and fast restructuring should go, never mind disagreements over the individual problems of employees."

Not that Blair has suddenly turned Marxist in his pursuit of votes. "There's no doubt that there are massive social divisions," he says. "But to analyse soci­ety today in terms of Marxist definitions of class is unhelpful. It's possible to do it, but it just doesn't tell you very much about society."

Blair would much rather talk about community and solidarity, as he has since long before becoming Labour leader: like John Smith before him, he is an austere Christian socialist for whom such ideas are at the very heart of social­ism. Echoing the language of the new Clause Four, he explains: "What distin­guishes the left from the right is the belief on the left that to advance individually we need to act collectively. Community is an expression of that. It means to me principally the notion of interdependence. But it also implies that we are prepared to act together to provide those benefits that we are unable to provide for ourselves as individuals. The notion of community for me is less a geographical concept than a belief in the social nature of human beings."

If the rhetoric of community is an alter­native to that of class, it is also a way of talking socialism without embracing bureaucratic statism. "The definition of socialism as more and more power accru­ing to the state has had its day," says Blair, leaning back in his seat, arms folded. "In the early part of the century, it was per­fectly easy: when people wanted the very basic things in life, the state was the way to achieve that. But there's more diversity and choice nowadays. That doesn't exclude a role for the state: the state is going to have to act on all sorts of ques­tions. It does mean that power, wherever it is exercised, should be accountable and that we should have a plurality of centres of power."

But perhaps the most important func­tion of the language of community for Blair is that it allows him to talk of respon­sibilities of citizens towards one another, as well as of their rights. "I think it was a mistake of Labour politicians to stop talk­ing that language," he says as the train streaks through Milton Keynes. "It's the purest drivel to claim that because you believe that rights and responsibilities go together you're in some sense authoritar­ian. The purpose of social action was never to substitute itself for individual responsibility. It was to make it more easily realisable."

Blair dismisses critics who claim that his emphasis on responsibility is a ploy to win support from middle-class voters – being tough on crime and making it clear that Labour supports the family appeals to the party's traditional voters, he argues – and he is scathing about the refusal of many on the left to embrace his approach. "The single biggest mistake of the left in the 19603 and 19705 was that its essential political philosophy got intermarried with, and at points almost dominated by, a crude form of Marx­ism – by which I mean not that people in the Labour Party ever particularly believed in the abolition of all forms of private enterprise, but that they became heavily influenced by a strain of thinking that is almost determinist in its view of social conditions and their impact on individual behaviour. Many Labour peo­ple thought that to talk about punishing people for crime was wicked or wrong – all we needed to do was talk about amelio­rating the social conditions. Any sensible person would have been talking about both." The elderly couple at the table opposite, who are taking a great interest in the conversation, nod in agreement.

There are striking parallels here with the thinking of American communitarians like Amitai Etzioni, but Blair plays down any transatlantic influences. "I've read Etzioni with interest," he says. "But what he's saying is part of what's happen­ing all over the world. The left is trying to recapture the spirit of its belief in solidar­ity while distinguishing it from the form that collective action took – which in many cases was bureaucratic state con­trol. That's the task of the left the whole world over: finding a new relationship between society and individual that moves beyond either old-style collec­tivism or the crude market dogma of the right."

Changing Clause Four is only the first step towards this goal for Labour: what comes next is serious policy work. Of course, there's already plenty of policy. "If Labour were to implement all the pol­icy we have at the moment, it would be one of the most radical governments we have ever seen," says Blair. There's also a strong case for taking things slowly: "People forget that it took the Tories a second term before they got into ballots before strikes or privatisation. You've got to pace yourself, and I make no apologies for that."

Above all, it's necessary to avoid mak­ing specific commitments too long before the election. "In 1992, we ended up committing ourselves to tax and spending plans in a period of boom and found that there were different priorities in the run-up to the election. The same goes for tax and spending now – and in other areas. On the minimum wage, for example, it's important to commit our­selves to a certain floor that no one falls below. But to get ourselves into a tangle over what precise level it should be now, when we're two years off an election – what's the point?"

Nevertheless, Labour does need to push on with policy, "generating a much greater excitement and openness of thinking". "We often argue about the wrong things," he says. "What we need to do instead is identify the new issues that the country faces – for example, the global marketplace, the challenge of tech­nology, the changing nature of the labour market, the reshaping of Europe, the existence of large numbers of elderly people who find their savings eaten away by the need for nursing care at the end of their lives" – once again the elderly couple opposite nod in agreement – " and the requirement for a quite different commitment to education in society. We need to identify and describe much more clearly how we would tackle these problems."

This means casting the net wide for ideas. Blair is keen on the Institute for Public Policy Research's new Commis­sion on Public Policy and British Busi­ness, and does not rule out talking to the Liberal Democrats. "There are no propos­als for anything institutionalised, but there are clear areas of overlap and agree­ment, for example in relation to the con­stitution. I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't take a tribal attitude to left-of-centre politics. The problem for the Lib­eral Democrats is that the position of equidistance is not seriously tenable. It makes life difficult for those of us who recognise that there should be a proper dialogue of ideas."

He is easy about the involvement of Labour backbenchers in plans for a par­liamentary Lib-Lab discussion group – "It doesn't trouble me at all: it's sen­sible" – and is warm about the prospect of cooperation with the Lib Dems in gov­ernment: "The most important thing is that we have a government that doesn't just say 'We're the masters now, things have changed', but is deliberately trying to change the politics of the country – and that requires working to achieve the broadest possible basis of consent."

And consent, he insists, does not mean that he wants no one to disagree with him inside the Labour Party. "I don't mind people disagreeing with me at all as long as it's a genuine debate and is democrati­cally conducted," he says. "A lot of the recent criticism of Labour – not least in the pages of New Statesman – has been either full of bile or plain feeble. What I ask of those who criticise is to deal with the argument. The left is never going to be a place where there' s going to be a una­nimity of view, and neither should it be. Take Europe and the debates over Maastricht. I am strongly pro-European although I think that Europe must be greatly reformed. But there's a perfectly justifiable intellectual argument against it. I don't merely not disapprove of having that debate, I positively welcome it."

By now, we've reached London's inner suburbs. Blair has been talking animat­edly for the best part of an hour and is los­ing his voice. The elderly couple, who can no longer hear what he is saying, have lost interest. One of the two young aides trav­elling with him, who has said nothing throughout, tells his boss that he's being too defensive about the whole Clause Four exercise: it has been a great tri­umph, he says, and he should make that clear. Blair grins. "It's not over yet," he protests, but there's something about his demeanour that shows – for once – he doesn't really mean what he says.

BAN THE TRADE, NOT THE PROTESTS

New Statesman & Society leader, 21 April 1995

The trade in live animal exports is morally repugnant – and by trying to prevent protests against it the police are stepping on basic rights

When the protests against live animal exports from British ports began last year, they divided left and liberal opinion down the middle.

For some, the outrage at the export of veal calves and other animals was a proportionate response to a cruel and unnecessary trade, an expression of a healthy public concern for the wellbeing – or even the rights – of animals. For others, the talk of animal rights smacked of anthropomorphism: to them, the demonstrations were no more than a macabre symptom of a deep-rooted British sentimentality about animals, the protesters people whose worries about soon-to-be-eaten sources of chops and escalopes had never been equalled by concern for their fellow human beings.

This argument will run and run, for the simple reason that both sides have a good case. For what it's worth, NSS comes down in the end on the side of those who would like the export of live animals banned. It undoubtedly causes unnecessary suffering – there is no reason whatsoever that the veal calves and sheep should not be reared and slaughtered in Britain and exported as meat – and causing unnecessary suffering to animals dehumanises those who do it. One does not have to embrace the anthropomorphist notion of animal rights or be a hopeless sentimentalist to believe that cruelty should be stopped.

But this week, all that is in many ways beside the point. Even if we supported the export of live animals, we would argue that those who did not had an inalienable right to protest peacefully against the trade. And that right has now been seriously infringed by the actions of Essex police.

Last week, they delivered a letter to the residents of Brightlingsea informing them that anyone who organised a protest against the resumption of animal exports from the small port this week would be prose­cuted under the 1986 Public Order Act. The threats had the desired effect. Brightlingsea Against Live Exports, the local pressure group that had organised protests of several thousand people earlier in the year, disbanded itself. And on Tuesday, the day that live exports resumed, only 350 people, many of them outsiders, turned out to demonstrate.

According to Liberty, the civil liberties campaign, this use of the 1986 act is unprecedented: until last week, the police had not used their powers to ban marches and demonstrations. Although the police did not carry out their threat to make arrests, the danger is that Brightlingsea sets a precedent not just for animal exports protests, but for any demonstration that the police believe might be a little difficult to control.

The 1986 Public Order Act was intended, we were told at the time it was passed, to deal with serious disruption of the life of the community, serious threats to public order and serious intimidation. The government assured sceptical civil libertarians (and in those far-off days, they included the Labour front bench) that it would not be used to impose blanket bans on protest.

Yet in Brightlingsea the police did just that. A protest movement that has involved a majority of the local popu­lation cannot be said to be a major disruption to commu­nity life; nor can non-violent direct action – which is all that the overwhelming majority of the protestors have engaged in – be considered either a threat to public order or intimidatory.

Of course, the policing of protests such as that in Brightlingsea is expensive. Essex police estimate that the policing of the Brightlingsea demonstrations has cost them an extra £2 million, while recent parliamentary answers reveal that the total extra policing costs incurred by the live animal export protests has been more than £6 million. It is also obviously true that police who are at demonstrations are not catching criminals, doing their paperwork or helping old ladies across the road.

Sometimes, however, the exercise of fundamental democratic rights – and there are few more fundamen­tal than the right to free assembly – means that money and police time must be spent in ways the police find wasteful. And if the police really cannot afford the money or the hours involved in dragging non-violent protesters from the paths of sheep lorries, they should simply tell the would-be exporters that they have more important things to do than expedite their business.

MOSCOW GOLD?

An updated version of Paul Anderson and Kevin Davey's Moscow Gold? supplement to the New Statesman will soon be available as a Kindle book.

TOUGH ON CRIME

New Statesman & Society, 3 March 1995

Paul Anderson and Kevin Davey talk to the guru of the communitarian movement, Amitai Etzioni

Amitai Etzioni has no doubt that communitarianism is as rele­vant to Britain as it is to the United States. "Your trends are American," he says. "In the UK you now have rising crime, the dismemberment of the family, drug abuse and corruption in politics. Look at us and learn. We have a crisis of values. The institutions essential to a civil society are being destroyed. Is this where you want to go ?"

Even though the book in which Etzioni outlines the basic philosophy of the com­munitarian movement, The Spirit of Community, is not yet published here, his arguments have already attracted the attention of the political class and the media – and they will get more the week after next, when he addresses a confer­ence in London organised by the think-tank Demos and sponsored by the Times. But can an approach based on the idea that people have too many rights and not enough responsibilities really take root in a country that doesn't even have a bill of rights? Etzioni is insistent that it can, dis­missing along the way the charge that he is an authoritarian. "All societies face the same basic questions," he says. "They either veer in the direction of too much individualism or towards too much col­lectivism. You always have to return them to a point of balance. In the US, we must move back from individualism towards the point of balance. Western European societies are closer to the point of balance. They have a more solid communitarian foundation. You need to worry about these things less than we do, but you still need to worry."

There are some liberties that British citizens lack, Etzioni admits. All the same, he approves of the restrictions on the right to silence in the Criminal Justice Act. "People here plead the fifth amend­ment. You have the same problem but you've done something about it by dimin­ishing the right not to self-incriminate. That's an attempt to correct an imbal­ance. Another example is your introduc­tion of surveillance cameras into public places. That's another attempt to redress the balance between public safety, the common good and private interests. You're actually having the same debate but using different terminology. You use different tools, but the issues are the same, and they're unavoidable. No soci­ety can avoid the question of where to draw the line."

Not that this is simply a matter of leg­islative changes. Etzioni demands noth­ing less than a transformation of the way people behave. Put simply, we must all embrace our responsibilities without coercion. The only incentive is that it is right to do so." If there is no civil order we risk a police state. We must aim for a moral dialogue and agreement on what is right. We cannot leave everything to the state. We must take responsibility in our families and communities."

On both sides of the Atlantic, such ideas are attractive to politicians who doubt their ability to generate full employment or sustain the welfare state. Etzioni has given them a crusade that can take place despite austerity. But it would be wrong to paint Etzioni as an enthusiast for self-help who would like the welfare state to wither away. If the resources were available, he says, he would have no hesi­tation about strengthening public ser­vices. " I share the ideal that life should be made as easy as possible. But in reality we have to choose what we want to use the resources for. My priority would be chil­dren, children, children. We have to recognise scarcity. By doing things for one another, we protect the welfare state. We threaten the welfare state when we overload it."

The welfare of children is the bedrock for a good society, and the reinforcement of the family essential, he says. "I simply ask this: Are children in our society receiving the parental and societal atten­tion they are due? How do things com­pare to 20 years ago? Everyone is working hard and long hours. That results in a deficit for our children. Children are not being as well attended to. They deserve more than they are getting. They have been devalued and neglected."

Feminists argue that the communitar­ians take a far too sanguine view of the traditional family and have acted as cheer-leaders for those on the right who would like to see women returning to the home. Etzioni says that they are misun­derstanding his position. "I agree with the feminists that we need to do more to enable parents to be parents," he says. "There must be more maternity and paternity leave. Fathers and mothers both need to increase their investment in children. And it's true that in some cases relationships between parents are very bad, and divorce is preferable to mar­riage. But on average it takes three par­ents to bring up a child. Parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents, sometimes the whole village, are necessary. It's a very labour intensive job.

"Some single parents do well by their children, others don't. But all things being equal, I'd rather give a child three parents than one. Two is the absolute minimum to bring up a child under nor­mal conditions. Take any measurement you want – criminality, drug abuse, per­formance at school, asocial behaviour –  and you'll see that it's obvious."

Etzioni is equally dismissive of critics who say that his notion of community is merely nostalgic. "It's no good saying that we can go back to the days of one com­munity," he says. "We are members of many communities. Communities nes­tle within one another in many layers, with many levels of loyalty. We must see each of our communities as part of ever larger and more encompassing commu­nities, so that a community of communi­ties can be developed at the level of the nation, the continent, or even the world."

IMPORT DUTIES

New Statesman & Society, 3 March 1995    

Many on the left are getting excited by a new intellectual movement from the United States – communitarianism. Paul Anderson and Kevin Davey explain what the fuss is all about

It doesn't happen often, but just occa­sionally a big idea from America has a massive influence on the thinking of a significant part of the British intellectual left. The last time was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Har­vard philosophy professor John Rawls' monumental A Theory of Justice provided British social democrats with an argu­ment from first principles for a mildly redistributive welfare capitalism.

First published in 1972, Rawls' tome had become compulsory reading on every university's political theory course by the end of the decade – and its influ­ence even percolated as far as the Labour leadership. By far the most coherent account of Labour's underlying philosophy in the 1980s, Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom, is essentially Rawls translated into popular idiom. Insofar as last year's report of the Borrie Commission on Social Justice has a theoretical underpin­ning, it is Rawls' conception of "justice as fairness".

Now another big idea from America, communitarianism, is exciting many on the left here. It is a school of thought that believes, in the words of Amitai Etzioni, the sociology professor who is its fore­most publicist (see interview), that we need to create "a new moral, social and public order based on restored com­munities, without allowing puritanism or oppression".

As with A Theory of Justice, its influ­ence, although strangest on the left, has been felt across the political spectrum. If the rhetoric of communitarianism is most noticeable in the speeches of Tony Blair, it is also a feature of much Liberal Democrat polemic and even of the work of such maverick right-wingers as David Willetts and David Selbourne. Another echo of the reception of Rawls is that the Brits are catching on late: communitari­anism has been around for the best part of a decade in the United States.

But there the similarities end. A Theory of Justice is one, notoriously difficult and abstract, book; communitarianism is a current of ideas that informs a small but significant proselytising and populist movement in the United States. It has a journal, The Responsive Community, and a political programme that it lobbies – in some cases successfully – to have implemented at various levels of government. Whereas A Theory of Justice became influ­ential in British left politics through the assimilation of its arguments in the uni­versities, the communitarian message has been spread here by pamphleteers and newspaper polemicists – notably Geoff Mulgan and others associated with the think-tank Demos and Observer columnist Melanie Phillips. Most impor­tant of all, the whole thrust of communi­tarianism is radically at odds with the entire liberal tradition of which Rawls is still the outstanding contemporary representative.

Indeed, communitarianism at least partly owes its existence to political philosophers who, during the 1970s and 1980s, rejected the abstract individual­ism of A Theory of Justice and other works of liberal political theory. Rawls' book is essentially an updating of the classical liberal theory of the "social contract". Simplified, his basic case is that, if indi­viduals knew nothing about their posi­tion in society, their wealth, their abilities or their life-chances, they would agree with one another that they should live in a society in which everyone enjoyed the greatest measure of freedom compatible with that of others, with inequalities tol­erable only insofar as the results bene­fited the least well-placed. Or as Hattersley put it in Choose Freedom: "The true object of socialism is the creation of a genuinely free society in which the pro­tection and extension of individual lib­erty is the primary duty of the state."

Political philosophers who have since associated themselves with communi­tarianism (or who have at least been much quoted by communitarians) –  among them Michael Sandel, Alastair Maclntyre and Charles Taylor – argue that this whole approach is wrong. In reality, they say, people cannot help but know about their position in society, their wealth, their abilities and so on: they are not atomised individuals but essentially social beings, rooted in fami­lies and communities. Political philoso­phy should recognise this rather than speculate on what individuals would want in an impossible hypothetical situa­tion; and if it did so it would find that min­imising the constraints on "freedom" is nobody's number one priority.

It would be wrong, however, to see communitarianism simply as a position in an ongoing argument about our basic political principles. Its emergence as a current of ideas in the late 19805 had much more to do with a widespread sense among Americans – not just intel­lectuals – that the ideologies dominant in politics in the previous quarter century had failed in practice. Neither the wel­fare-state liberalism hegemonic in the ig6os and 19705, nor the free-market conservatism of the 1980s had been able to reverse the social fragmentation that many felt was likely to engulf America in crime, drug abuse and moral irresponsi­bility. Indeed, it seemed that both had made matters worse by failing to place the encouragement of social responsibility and the common good at the centre of their concerns.

On one hand, the argument went, 1980s-style liberals – dominant in US politics until the end of the Carter admin­istration – attacked the family as repres­sive, pressed for a never-ending expan­sion of individual rights, and put their faith in ever-greater state provision to cope with the social fragmentation that their permissive ideology encouraged. But they failed to recognise that the wel­fare state actually reinforced fragmenta­tion and irresponsibility, effectively legit­imising family breakdown and creating an underclass of passive clients. On the other hand, 1980s-style free-market con­servatives recognised some of the problems of welfarism. But their favoured solution – simply reducing the scope of the welfare state – did nothing to help matters, and their fetish of individual material wealth made a religion of selfishness and irresponsibility.

The first response to this American dis­illusionment with mainstream liberal­ism and conservatism – which has obvi­ous parallels in Britain – was the ultra-conservatism of the Moral Majority, arguing for a straightforward reversal of liberal permissiveness, punitive sanc­tions against criminals and single moth­ers and a return of traditional Christian values to schools. Communitarianism was the response to the response, Amitai Etzioni explains: "I believe that although they raised the right questions, they pro­vided the wrong, largely authoritarian and dogmatic, answers."

The central communitarian argu­ment, most concisely advanced in Etzioni's The Spirit of Community, is sim­ple. A good society is one in which people live freely, take responsibility for themselves, their families and their communi­ties, and solve most problems at the level of the neighbourhood or household. "Only if a solution cannot be found by the individual does responsibility devolve to the family," writes Etzioni. "Only if the family cannot cope should the local com­munity become involved. Only if the problem is too big for it should the state become involved." Etzioni emphasises that we have not only political and eco­nomic rights to make demands on the state and our fellow citizens, but also duties to others. And in America, he says, the balance between rights and duties has swung too far in favour of rights. The prime task in American society is to redress the balance with measures that encourage people to recognise their duties and to act on them.

This, first of all, puts a premium on par­enting – which, say the communitari­ans, means that parents should be actively discouraged from splitting up and that single women should be dis­suaded from having children. In line with this, the state should provide generous maternity and paternity leave, better child allowances and improved child-care, while making divorce more difficult and introducing economic incentives to make it easier for one parent to stay at home rather than go out to work.

Encouraging responsibility does not, however, end with the family. The educa­tion system is crucially important – and communitarians argue for a wide range of measures to instill a sense of civic duty and to iron out anti-social behaviour. Neighbourhood self-regulation is also vital. Some communitarians argue for compulsory community service for teenagers; some back curfews on teenagers to prevent them roaming the streets at night; some argue for censor­ship of violent television, films and music.

All this is intensely controversial: the communitarians have been attacked by feminists for reasserting the norm of the heterosexual two-parent family, by civil libertarians for authoritarianism, and by a variety of critics for harbouring a nostal­gic or territory-based view of community. It is possible, the critics argue, for new communities to be created, celebrating diversity and maximising individual lib­erty. And it is unlikely, they suggest, that the many residential, occupational, lifestyle and electronic communities of which we are members can be treated as if they nestle comfortably and without con­flict in a community of communities.

None of this would matter very much if the communitarians were just a huddle of like-minded writers with no real influ­ence – but in fact they have played signif­icant roles at several levels of American politics. Bill Clinton's speeches were punctuated with communitarian rhetoric in the run-up to the 1992 presi­dential election and he still has commu­nitarian advisers in senior positions –  most prominently William Galston, a co-founder with Etzioni of The Responsive Community, and Mary Ann Glendon. It's arguable how successful the communi­tarians have been in getting their agenda accepted following Clinton's election: the only substantial piece of legislation since 1992 that has their imprint is the introduction of non-military national service. But the communitarians' teach-ins at the White House have continued throughout the Clinton presidency, and there are signs that their stock has risen in the wake of the Republicans' victory in lasty ear's Congressional elections. Com­munitarianism strikes a chord with many Republicans in Congress – and Clinton is desperate for any new ideas that might staveoff defeat in 1996.

It is at local level that communitarian ideas have had most practical impact, however. Innovative education pro­grammes now address drug abuse, sex­ual awareness, race relations, violence and absenteeism. Gang prevention pro­grammes have replaced street associa­tions with cultural networks. Drivers of trains and buses in many cities undergo random drug testing designed to reduce the risks for the public. Particularly con­troversially, homeless people in Philadelphia who refuse to comply with job-search requirements are denied entry to local authority emergency shelters and communitarians campaign for increased police powers to search for guns and drugs in urban areas.

Much of this is unlikely to be wel­comed by the left in Britain – but it's easy to understand the appeal of a rather softer communitarianism. For some intellectuals, it gives respectability to a local activism that has long existed but which was always compromised in the minds of those searching for big ideas by its parochialism and apparent ideologi­cal incoherence. More important, it also provides the Labour leadership with a convenient populist rhetoric that chimes well with Tony Blair's austere ethical socialism.

Lacking a macroeconomic policy capa­ble of making more than a small dent in mass unemployment, worried that the welfare state as we have known it is no longer sustainable, and desperate to dis­tance itself both from its past and from the Tories, Labour needs to give the impression that it has new, credible solu­tions for Britain.

Communitarianism gives the party leadership precisely the package it wants. It is classless, in tune with some funda­mental Labour values as well as attractive to conservatives, and is compatible with economic austerity. Look out for traces in the new Clause Four.

Three tactics of social democracy? 

If communitarianism really does take hold of Labour's thinking, is this the way future historians will understand the phases of Labour's intellectual development in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s?

 Up to mid-1980s: One-nation Keynesian corporatism

Ideological core: The state should spend to ensure that demand is sufficient to allow full employment. Import and exchange controls and nationalisation are useful tools in many circumstances. The keys to social peace are getting the unions to partake in beer and sandwiches at Number Ten and expanding expenditure on the welfare state.

Key areas of dispute: How far Labour should use public ownership as a tool of policy? How much should Labour increase taxes? How much should Labour devalue? Is an incomes policy necessary? Should Britain be a member of the European Community?

Crucial texts: Aneurin Bevan: In Place of Fear ( 1952); Anthony Crosland: The Future of Socialism (1956); Stuart Holland: The Socialist Challenge (1973); Tony Benn: Arguments for Socialism (1979); Peter Hain and Roger Berry: Labour and the Economy (1993)

Mid-1980s to mid-1990s: Euro-Keynesian liberalism

Ideological core: The medium sized nation-state can no longer be master of its own economic destiny: Europe-wide countercyclical policies are necessary to achieve full employment (if it is indeed achievable at all), backed by strong local and regional economic strategies. Nationalisation and exchange controls are no longer feasible tools of economic management. Old-style corporatism is dead, but continental-style union-management cooperation is a good thing. The main role of the nation-state in economics is redistribution through a reformed welfare state.

Key areas of dispute: Does Labour need to go for a fully federal Europe? Is full employment achievable? What extra powers should local government have? Should Labour increase taxes? Should benefits be targeted?

Crucial texts: John Rawls: A Theory of Justice (19 72);Tom Nairn: The Left and Europe (19 73); Alec Nove: The Economics of Feasible Socialism (1983); GLC: London Industrial Strategy (1985); Roy Hattersley: Choose Freedom (1987); Stuart Hall et al: New Times(1989); Ken Coates et al: A European Recovery Programme (1993); Gordon Borrie et al: Social Justice (1994)

Mid-1990s onwards?: Post-Keynesian communitarianism

Ideological core: Macroeconomics is dead: the nation state has very little role in economic management except as provider of training. Even Europe cannot operate a credible counter-cyclical economic policy. The welfare state is not sustainable in its familiar form, and many of its functions must be taken over by the voluntary sector or privatised. Unions have a role as friendly societies for their members but not in what remains of economic policy.

Key areas of dispute: Is there any future for political parties? Should local government powers be reduced? How can the cost of the welfare state be cut? Are there any benefits that should not be targeted? How should single mothers be punished? How can Labour cut taxes?

Crucial texts: Amitai Etzioni: The Spirit of Community (1993); Geoff Mulgan: Politics in a Post-Political Age (1993); Frank Field: A New Agenda for Britain (1993);David Selbourne: The Principle of Duty ( 1994); David Willetts: Civic Conservatism (1994)

YELLOW JOURNALISM

New Statesman & Society, 24 February 1995

The Sunday Times's KGB smears against Michael Foot are as laughable as they are shoddy. A brief look at Foot's record soon refutes the Wapping lies, writes Paul Anderson

The Sunday Times has run some reprehensible journalism in the past few years – the Hitler diaries, "Kinnock: the Kremlin connection", the obsessional claims that the human immuno-deficiency virus does not cause Aids. But nothing quite matches its front page last weekend.

"KGB: Michael Foot was our agent," announced the splash headline. "Former Labour leader defends cash to Tribune," ran the tagline. Underneath was a long piece from "home affairs reporter David Leppard", trailing a two-page feature, running right across the first two inside news pages, that purported to show that Foot had taken money from the Soviet secret police in the early 1960s to subsidise the weekly newspaper he had helped to found in 1937.

And the evidence? Not much. On the front page, Leppard wrote that a Sunday Times investigation had "established" that Foot had regular meetings with Soviet agents in London during the 1960s. "During these meetings," he claimed, "they occasionally handed over small cash payments of about £150 each time to help Tribune, the influential Labour newspaper of which Foot was then managing director."

To back up this extraordinary allegation, Leppard quoted (after a fashion) "one well-informed Labour Party source" – anonymous of course – who "said yesterday it was believed that, in the 1960s, Foot had 'nodded through' KGB donations of a few hundred pounds to keep Tribune afloat, in return for low-level Labour Party gossip". And he wrote (conveniently without direct quotation on the money) that Oleg Gordievsky, the former KGB defector who has written a book due to start serialisation in – big surprise – the Sunday Times this weekend, had said that Foot had been given the code name "Boot" by the KGB and took money for Tribune until 1968.

Beyond this, there was Viktor Kubeykin, "another retired KGB agent", who said that he "was told" that Foot had received money in the early 1960s – "something to do with a newspaper", he added helpfully – and, on page two, Mikhail Lubyimov, former Soviet London embassy press attache and KGB station chief, expelled for spying in 1965, who was quoted as saying: "I'm sure I didn't give him any money," although he seemed to agree that Tribune was "targeted" by the KGB. Also on page two, Gordievsky was named as the source (although once again not directly quoted) for the statement that "money was never given directly to publications such as Tribune but always – in a series of small amounts of no more than £150 – through intermediaries who could pose as benefactors".

The utter shoddiness of the "exposé" is breathtaking. For a start, there's the credibility of Gordievsky as a witness. Even leaving that aside, his tale as related by the Sunday Times amounts to just two claims. The first, that Foot had a KGB code name and file in Moscow, is no big deal: the KGB opened a file on anyone who had talked, wittingly or unwittingly, to one of its agents. And the second, that Foot took cash as one of the "intermediaries who could pose as benefactors" who funnelled Moscow gold into Tribune, is utterly bizarre. How does the managing director count as an "intermediary" rather than a recipient of a direct payment?

The allegation is, moreover, categorically denied by Foot, who was allowed no chance to rebuff it before publication. And it is unsubstantiated by the statements of the only people named in the piece as sources apart from Gordievsky: both of the Sunday Times's other former-KGB-agent sources had explicitly disowned the story to other papers within hours of its appearance. Even the wretched editor of the Sunday Times, John Witherow, recognised that he didn't have a leg to stand on. The very day of publication, he was kebabbed on the radio by Sheena Mac-Donald: she almost forced him to admit that his paper's "scoop" was no more than a puff-piece for a serialisation for which it had sold what remains of its soul.

So the evidence is appallingly weak if it can be said to exist at all. The real point however, is that anyone but a political illiterate or a malicious propagandist would not have given Gordievsky's tale credibility in the first place. Once again, leave aside reputations, in this case of Foot as an incorruptible man of principle: look at the evidence. The Tribune files are available in the British Library; a near-complete set is kept at the Tribune office in Gray's Inn Road, London WC1. Even the most cursory scan shows that the paper was in no way a fellow traveller of the Soviet Union during the cold war.

Sure, the paper was set up in 1937 as a vehicle for a popular front of communists and socialists against the rise of fascism; sure, it took a pro-Soviet line until the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. Such a position, despite the Soviet Union's role in destroying the revolution in Spain, despite the show trials, is at least defensible as Realpolitik – certainly more so than the British establishment's enthusiasm for Hitler at the same time.

But the pact destroyed the Labour left's faith in the Soviet Union. Even the greenest student of British political history knows that Tribune's decisive break with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union took place in 1940, and that Foot, along with Aneurin Bevan, was on the side of those who ditched the communists. It might not suit the ideological prejudices of the Sunday Times, but the reality is that, from then on, Tribune's – and Foot's – relationship with "actually existing socialism" is as honourable as anyone's.

Of course, the relationship went through several different phases. From 1941 until 1945, Tribune was fanatically in favour of the anti-Hitler alliance with the Soviet Union to defeat fascism – Churchill's own policy. It was in the forefront of the campaign to open a second front from 1942 onwards – along with Beaverbrook, whose Evening Standard Foot edited at the time. After 1945, it backed nationalisation and planning – just like every continental European Christian Democrat party (though no self-respecting Tribunite would admit it). It called for a "third way" between capitalism and communism in the mid-1940s – and then, after the Soviet overthrow of democracy in Czechoslovakia in 1948, swung decisively behind the creation of an anti-communist democratic alliance between western Europe and the United States.

But the allegations in the Sunday Times relate to what came after. The 1950s were Tribune's decade – it was the organ of the Bevanite revolt, resolutely in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament and extension of the nationalisations ofthe 1945 government – and the paper retained its influence well into the 1960s. Throughout, however, it took a position that meshed only rarely (and always tactically when it did) with that of the domestic communists or their masters in Moscow.

The paper's enthusiasm for Nato was smashed by the nuclear brinkmanship of General Douglas MacArthur in Korea, but its anti-Stalinism was not. As the "quality" press gave "great man" obituaries to Stalin in 1953, Foot himself denounced the Soviet dictator as a monster. "The Nazi- Soviet pact and the frightened sycophancy towards Hitler which Stalin displayed in the two subsequent years," he wrote, "still stand as out as probably the most grievous and colossal blunder of the century."

Tribune condemned the Soviet suppression of the workers' revolt in East Germany in 1953; and in 1956, as the Hungarian revolution was brutally destroyed by Soviet tanks, the paper gave near-unconditional backing to the rebels. "THEIRS IS THE GLORY," screamed Tribune's centre-page spread on 2 November 1956, "the workers of Hungary have struck a blow for freedom." Tribune was the first left publication in Britain to scotch the communist excuse for the Soviet invasion that the revolution was cover for a fascist putsch, the only one to argue that the workers' councils at the core of the revolution were an inspiration to socialists everywhere. Only a handful of letters contradicted the line. Soviet stooge? Tell us another.

Through all this, of course, there were a few genuine Labour fellow travellers, and a significant minority on the Labour left harboured illusions about the nature of the Soviet regime. Many more swallowed the idea that socialism was essentially a matter of nationalisation and planning. Unsurprisingly, much of the Labour left, Tribune included, thought that the liberalisation of the Soviet Union, promised but only partially delivered by Khrushchev, really offered a way forward. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the British left hoped for the best and clutched at straws – just as it did with Gorbachev 25 years later. Tribune moved from pessimism into optimism about the future of the Soviet Union.

With the benefit of hindsight, this appears more than a little naive. But Tribune's support for Khrushchev was never uncritical – the Soviet abandonment of the superpower test-ban in 1961 drew a stinging condemnation – and, as the thaw froze over again, the paper became increasingly critical (although it was more concerned with domestic politics, the arms race and Vietnam).

When Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968, Foot denounced it, under the headline "A CRIME AGAINST SOCIALISM", in a bruising polemic: "A crime against freedom, a crime against socialism, a crime against history. It will be hard to express the sense of outrage and tragedy which the Soviet action in Czechoslovakia will spread throughout the world." The rest of the paper's coverage expressed precisely the same sentiment. Once again, some Soviet stooge.

Meanwhile, Tribune continued to take the odd advertisement from Soviet or Soviet-linked advertisers – a page from Aeroflot here, a quarter from Intourist there – and sometimes (even Gordievsky could count the occasions in the 1960s on his fingers) ran blatantly pro-Soviet pieces – though never by Foot. But the advertising from Soviet sources (which continued right up to 1989) was pathetic by comparison with that from the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Daily Herald or even the Times. The idea that the Kremlin bought Tribune's allegiance would be a joke if it had not been given credibility by the Sunday Times smear.

And smear it is. Sure, every journalist talks to all sorts of people, some of whom are morally reprehensible. And sure, the Labour left was a "target" for the Soviet and other eastern bloc security services – not just in the period of the Khrushchev thaw but for many years afterwards. But to talk is not to be taken in by lies, and to be targeted is not to be hit. Nothing can be said against Foot's integrity or honesty simply because he talked to certain people who wanted to influence him – and that, in the end, is the sum of the charges against him. It is difficult in such circumstances to avoid the conclusion that something vile and poisonously anti-democratic lies behind the Sunday Times story.

There is an uncanny similarity between Gordievsky's allegations about Foot and the idiocies put about by the Peter Wright wing of the security services in the 1970s. Gordievsky is living on a British intelligence pension: he cannot have acted without the approval of his post-defection bosses. The Foot allegations look suspiciously like a desperate attempt by the establishment to tar the whole libertarian, democratic left with the brush of totalitarianism. This is shabby nonsense that deserves nothing but contempt.

All those leftwingers who have taken the Murdoch shilling in the past decade should hang their heads in shame. And those still on the Wapping payroll should consider their positions carefully. No one with any decency can justify working for a company or an editor that has published a calumny as obscene as the Foot smear, however large the mortgage, however large the circulation of the guilty rag. Meanwhile, if he has the energy, Foot should sue the Sunday Times, Gordievsky, Witherow and Leppard for every penny he can get. He could even (and probably would) give the money to Tribune. The Sunday Times needs to be taught a lesson – and we all need a good gloat.