Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 25 February 2000
I have a sneaking suspicion that if any of the participants in the founding conference of the Labour Representation Committee 100 years ago were alive today they would be horrified by what their creation had become.
This is not, I hasten to add, because New Labour has betrayed the socialism of the founding fathers, as some on the traditional Left would have us believe. There is no doubt that New Labour is not very socialist, certainly as the term was understood a century ago. But then neither were most of the delegates who gathered at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Road to set up what in 1906 became the Labour Party.
What the trade unionists who formed the majority at the conference wanted was simply to get more working men into parliament. (And I mean working men. Women did not have the vote, and there was not a single woman delegate.)
The major problem in British politics, as they saw it, was that the Liberal Party, with which they had hitherto thrown in their lot, was too middle-class. It took the support of the working man for granted and did not stick up for his interests, The Labour Representation Committee was necessary to ensure that that the voice of the working man was heard in the House of Commons.
And if we look at the Parliamentary Labour Party today, what do we see? Plenty of lawyers, lecturers and teachers, and plenty of people who have been professional politicians since their student days. But only a smattering of MPs who can claim in all honesty to come from the working class, let alone to remain part of it. Perhaps the Downing Street Social Exclusion Unit should look into it.
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On a different matter entirely, which idiot was responsible for the cretinous "Out of Europe, Out of Work" campaign just launched by the pro-European pressure group Britain in Europe – with top-level government support – to persuade the British public that leaving the European Union would cost 8 million (later modified to 3 million) jobs?
It is not that I'm in favour of leaving the EU. Far from it: I'm an out-and-out European federalist. But crass scare-mongering is not the way to win the argument for Europe. An intelligent populist would make the case for the European model of welfare capitalism as an alternative to the Wild West capitalism of the United States.
Unfortunately, Tony Blair's agenda for Europe – labour market deregulation, no tax harmonisation and so forth – is completely at odds with such a message. Someone ought to tell him that, however well it plays with big business, "Support Europe and we'll help undermine workers' rights and cut the welfare state" is a real turn-off with voters.
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Finally, I'd like to be the first Tribune columnist to announce that I shall definitely not be voting for Frank Dobson in the London mayoral election. I've nothing against Dobbo personally, but the whole Labour selection process was such a disgusting travesty of democracy that the party leadership needs to be taught a lesson. I've not yet decided whether to abstain or to vote for Ken Livingstone (if he stands), Malcolm McLaren or the Green bloke. But I'm pretty certain that I'm not going to go out door-knocking for anyone, whatever I do in the privacy of the polling booth.
My hunch is that a large proportion of members of the Labour Party and its affiliated trade unions in London are thinking along similar lines this week. What intrigues me, though, is whether publishing an article in Tribune stating that I intend either to abstain or to vote for someone other than Labour's official candidate counts as campaigning against Labour. If it does, and I can't see why it doesn't, I should by rights be expelled from the party – and so indeed should the editor who asked me to write this column.
I'm so uninvolved in the party these days that being chucked out would mean nothing more than that I'm a few quid a year better off. The editor, I'm told, sees things rather differently.
