Duncan Bowie on finding Labour’s soul
The current Labour government is seen as lacking a clear political objective, which can be viewed as value-based. The party leadership is seen as managerial without being very good at management and pragmatic, while not always managing to find the best way through a problem. The Labour Party membership and especially its activists are increasingly detached from the party leadership and the government, to the extent that not only has membership fallen, but also the extent of party activism has reduced. Membership of the party for many is notional in that party members are reluctant to canvass or promote the party’s policies. There seems to be an increasingly small connection between the policies adopted at the party conference and the actions of the government. Moreover, the management of the party has become increasingly authoritarian, with limitations on the issues which can be discussed at the local party level, with an almost Stalinist management of the professional and voluntary personnel of the party. As activists desert the Labour Party for the Green Party and other groups or retire from political activity altogether, there is a serious risk that the party will not be able to get its troops out on the doorstep., However, though in an age when political promotion is primarily through social media, the party leadership seems to be of the view that this will not matter too much.
However, the electorate is not automatons – we actually need something to vote for, rather than just be relied upon to vote against other political parties. This means that Labour actually has to differentiate itself from other political parties. It is no longer sufficient to say that Labour will govern better than other parties, given that Labour’s record of governing over the last year has not been very positive. This is not just about poor communications, though the Government has been poor at promoting its more positive achievements, but actually about poor decisions. Yes, the Labour government has had to make difficult decisions, as does any government, but it needs to take a significant proportion of the electorate with it, which it has clearly failed to do.
So what are social democratic values? The first principle must be that political and economic decisions need to be primarily of benefit to those with less wealth and less income – in other words, a Labour government should seek to reduce inequalities. This is different from arguing that government should be in the “national interest”, which fails to recognise that within Britain, not everybody has the same interests. The second principle is that both the economy as a whole and the services provided by and through the state should be managed on a collective basis, for public benefit, and not for the financial gain of individuals or corporate bodies. This means that all essential public services should be provided on a non-profit basis and funded out of general taxation. While it is recognised that not all services can always be provided directly by the state, whether at national, regional or local level, market factors should not be dominant, and private sector provision should be subject to strict regulation by a public sector body.
Funding of public services should be through a progressive system of taxation, with the greatest contribution coming from those with the most wealth and highest incomes. Taxation should be used to provide a standard quality of life through both the subsidised provision of services and through income support to those households who have insufficient resources to access services at the market price. This includes, as a minimum, housing, health and education provision.
Democratic socialism supports the right of the productive workforce to benefit from their labour. We therefore support the rights of workers to organise within trade unions and to withhold as well as to provide their labour. We support greater equalisation of wages in a context where differentials between the productive workforce and management are increasing. The benefits of economic growth need to be distributed across the entire workforce. Growth, however, must be measured on factors relating to the quality of life of all citizens, not on the basis of growth in Gross Domestic Product measured by asset value. Growth needs to be sustainable in economic, social and environmental terms. The resources of the planet are limited, and it is necessary to protect the supply of natural resources for future generations and to avoid waste.
Chartist believes in democratic socialism. This means that policy and its delivery need to be determined and managed through representative bodies, which are accountable to those who elected the representatives. Representative bodies operate at a range of scales from the international, the national (parliament) and the local – from accountable regional bodies through to local authorities, parish and community councils, while the judicial system operates within a framework of law set through representative accountable public bodies. We support extra-parliamentary political activity but not anti-parliamentary activity. We do not support the use of violence or violent protests in any context where there is accountable representative government.
It follows that we cannot support the use of violence, including the use of military force, to breach international agreements, including internationally recognised national boundaries. International boundaries should only be modified with the consent of the residents of the area concerned, through a referendum under the management of an international body, such as the United Nations. We do not support military alliances in support of aggression, or which seek to change the governance regime in a sovereign nation, this being a matter to be decided by the citizens of the sovereign state. We do not support the manufacture and export of arms to other countries. Any military action by British forces should be within the framework of a UN-led international peacemaking and enforcement body.
The UN is currently largely ineffectual as the Security Council is dominated by the original five post-WW2 powers, including the UK. No country should be a permanent member of the Security Council or have the power of veto. Decisions taken by the General Assembly, on which all sovereign states are represented, should be binding where there is a 2/3 majority. All UN members should be required to contribute to a UN-managed international force and to all other UN bodies.
The UK needs to extract itself from a military and economic dependence on a single country – the USA, and rebuild its relationship with other countries and trade groupings, including the European Union. The British Labour Party needs to develop an international policy in conjunction with other social democratic and socialist parties.
While within any state, political decisions should be made on the basis of the wishes of the majority, we also support the protection of the rights of minorities, whether in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality, from oppression and discrimination. The rights of any minority should, however, not be prioritised over the rights of the majority.
All political and economic decision-making requires an assessment of who would benefit from a decision and who would be disadvantaged by it. This is not just about how any decision might be perceived as increasing or decreasing support for a specific political party at the next election. This assessment needs to be both publicly available and open to independent scrutiny. Democracy requires the maximum availability of such information. Democracy requires an educated and informed electorate. Socialism is the language of priorities, but priorities should be based on socialist values.
Governing in accordance with principles can, of course, be difficult. Objectives can conflict, and it may be necessary to decide between conflicting principles. Government is a difficult balancing act, but it helps to have some basic values as a starting point, and with this Labour government, it is difficult to assess where the basic values are. The basic objectives seem to be “growth”, which is ill-defined and “staying in power”, which is self-explanatory. The latter is seen as increasingly dependent on the former. The government hopes that a growing economy will bring in more government revenue on the basis of the current tax regime, thus allowing it to avoid difficult decisions as to whether to increase taxation or cut welfare services or both. However, if growth is low, or does not bring in the anticipated revenue, the government assumes revenue, or the government feels under pressure to spend money on unanticipated increased costs, whether buying jets to carry nuclear bombs or the costs of housing asylum seekers in hotels or homeless households in temporary accommodation, decisions on increasing some taxes or cutting some services are unavoidable. The problem at present is that the Government seems to lack the basic values which should determine such choices. It is not unreasonable to expect a socialist government, or even a moderate social democratic one, to decide not to fund additional defence projects, but to raise taxes on the richest individuals and corporate bodies and to protect services on which the most vulnerable and lowest incomes are dependent. Surely that is not too much to ask, and an approach which would be supported by the wider electorate. It should not be a surprise that when a Labour government does not at least have regard to some basic values, the electorate wonders what the Labour Party is for and takes their votes and political commitment elsewhere.