New Labour and the erosion of labour movement morality
Posted on Thursday 30 April, 2009
Filed Under New Labour
LABOUR backbenchers did not rebel against the Blair government in sufficient numbers to prevent war on Iraq, major curtailments of civil liberty, the privatisation of air traffic control, the abolition of student grants, or benefit cuts directed against single mothers and the disabled.
Yet last night the Brown administration could not muster a parliamentary majority to overturn a Liberal Democrat motion allowing Ghurka veterans to live in Britain.
I’m not commenting here on the merits of the substantive issue; I’m opposed to immigration controls and recognise that Nepalese service personnel have as much right to reside in the UK as anyone else.
But the point is that the 27 Labour MPs who voted for the Lib Dem position – and the dozens more who abstained – did so in response to a campaign led by the Daily Telegraph and a kukri-wielding Joanna Lumley, plainly motivated more by reactionary jingoism than support for open borders. The comparison with votes on what should be core ideological concerns for democratic socialists is surely instructive.
Meanwhile, it appears there is more trouble in store shortly, with the imminent publication of MPs expense claims before the July recess. The Daily Mail seriously reports fears that three Labour MPs are contemplating suicide, as a quick recce through the hotel receipts will show them up as infidel spouses.
Tough it out, guysk don’t top yourselves. Nine times out of ten, the average missus/hubbie will forgive a dalliance or two, if only for the sake of the kiddies.
I somehow suspect that most adults will take the view that politicians’ love lives are their own affair, as they did after that little John Major-Edwina Currie bombshell. What will hurt rather more will be revelations of double claims for the hotsheets hotel rooms.
In the mid 1990s, Labour and the entire left rightly castigated those Tory MPs found to have accepted a few hundred quid in plain brown envelopes as their reward for tabling parliamentary questions.
I suppose an argument could be made that it is slightly less morally reprehensible to accept bungs from the Phoney Pharaoh than it is to scam the taxpayer directly, if only because no political favours are involved.
But what is depressing is the persistence of low-level peculation. MPs seem not to have twigged it, but they are in fact on a better than decent middle class wedge that should run to all reasonable household bills and then some.
Yet some seem determined to cream off a few extra bob by any means necessary. They sell their integrity not in return for a six figure sum, in the manner of certain members of the House of Lords, but for less than the price of a made-to-measure suit, the better to facilitate a clandestine bonk.
Several commentators today draw parallels to the fag end of the Major government and where we are today, something I myself did last year.
It is worth noting that at no time in its history, prior to the rise of Blair and Brown, would it even have been conceivable for a Labour government to find itself in such a situation.
The left’s ethical standards have traditionally been higher than those of the corrupt and business-funded political right. But then, not the least effect of business-funded New Labourism has been the erosion of basic labour movement morality.
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16 Responses to “New Labour and the erosion of labour movement morality”
I wouldn’t say that there had been an erosion of labour movement morality, for the simple reason that they are not labour movement people just middle management drones.
You claim to know the Telegraph motivated 27 Labour MPs to rebel – on what evidence? Rather more voted against the invasion of Iraq – it’s just that in this case the Tories were for. The civil liberties is something that I would agree with you about but there are, as I’m sure you’re aware, a rather large ahistorical crew in the Labour party that have managed to convince themselves that this isn’t a left issue at all but is the preserve of toffs and a species they like to refer to as ‘libertarians’. These in turn are aided and abetted by columnists – some of whom work for the Murdoch press – who despite their inflated salaries, imagine themselves to be channeling the will of ‘ordinary people’.
But it’s the timing thing that’s crucial here surely – rather than the issues? Brown is completely fucked and Labour are completely fucked. I’m assuming that the rebellions and all these leaks are a part of this: party loyalty breaks down when people feel there’s no future in it. Or to put it more specifically, why put up with team-Brown bullying you when there’s no job prospects in it anymore?
“The left’s ethical standards have traditionally been higher than those of the corrupt and business-funded political right”
Any evidence for that ? If ‘tradition’ is the touchstone I thought that Labour were undone by money, Tories by sex.
I think you are calling the Gurkha issue wrong Dave. In the past it would be a reactionary Tory government keeping them out. The fact that people like Gordon Brown, Jacqui Smith and Phil Woolas are making these reactionary policies allows the tabloids to have the Cameron, Clegg and Lumley photos showing how much New Labour is out of touch with the public.
The sleaze around New Labour directly reflects the type of people that the leadership parachutes into constituencies, just a bunch of carpet baggers. Georgia Gould anyone?
While we’re on the subject, let’s not forget teh Iraqi translators who have been abandoned to their fate.
After Blair got into bed with all the City corporate types and big businesses, it was always going to end like this – when you start chasing the cheques, bad things will happen.
Labour will come out of the next election despised by business and the Labour movement, leaving them in a rather uneviable (but still thoroughly amusing) position.
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar”
T.S. Elliot ~ “The Hollow Men” (1925)
“rats feet over broken glass” ~ What better metaphor for Labour.
TWO requests/humble suggestions :
That we STOP the endless evasion and sophistry of a “New Labour/Labour” juxtaposition. After twelve years, THIS is the Labour Party. There is NO other “Labour” party “out there”, on Ebay or even on Planet Zed. No-one is polishing their smart brown boots in Tredegar before catching the steam-train to London to “reclaim the party we loved”. ITS OVER.
And can those who “rejoined” the Party after 2003 (“One million dead and counting”) shut the fk. up about morality and ethics. It’s like Rose West talking about family values.
It used to be a New Labour narrative that they had stopped the loony left therefore they had put a stop to corruption. Hmmmmm.
I’d almost forgotten, but then I read Shiraz Socialist with a video of ‘The Internationale’ embedded and that cheered me up. Next, I read the BBC News and I saw that there are massive demonstrations in the rest of Europe and the World, protesting the economic situation, so I feel much happier now. HAPPY MAYDAY EVERYBODY. As Walter Crane titled one of his drawings, ‘The Cause of Labour is the Hope of the World.’.
“A few extra bob”? What, like 2-3 times their already generous salaries? Slightly less morally reprehensible?
Fuck’s sake, Dave, stop being so fucking forgiving. The entire load of them, Labour, Tory and LibDem, are fucking thieves.
Happy May Day everyone. I presume after the revolution this will be a public holiday. I look forward to it.
The precise date of the revolution is a closely guarded secret, which means there will be a post on SU blog about it in 5 mins, nevertheless, discussions are on-going as to who should lead it, expect a decision in the next 40 years.
I agree with Les: there’s no evidence that the Labour MPs who rightly voted to let the Gurkhas in were motivated by Telegraph editorials or jingoism. It’s a sign of how not-a-labour-party the current government is, that it would actually whip its MPs to vote to the right of the Tories. Leave, I tells ya!
MEANWHILE: Bloomberg May 1st, 2009.
“Labor unrest is on the rise in France…In March, as many as 3 million people, or almost 5 percent of the population, marched in 213 protests. A January strike brought out 1.1 million people, according to police, and spurred President Nicolas Sarkozy to meet union leaders and offer more money in the country’s stimulus plan.
TODAY’S (May Day) turnout was better than in May 2008, figures from unions and police show. The Confederation Generale du Travail, or CGT, estimated 1.2 million people marched in 283 demonstrations, according to a report on its Web site. The figure is FIVE TIMES AS MANY as participated in 2008, it said.”
***********
ANYONE heard a whisper from the British TUC lately? A Peep? A Snivel? A sob? Hey, not even a whine?
Happy Days.
Received an email from a senior bod today. Seems the Post Office privatisation is to be kicked into the long grass. The Gurkha fiasco was the last straw for the straw PM.
But where were the unions on the issue. Where are they now?
Are Royal Mail posties public servants or not?
If they are, and their pensions are under threat, then so must be every soldier, doctor, nurse, street cleaner and diversity outreach co-ordinator for the restitution of May Day as a workers paradise parade and awareness day.
If they are not public sector workers, why does the government own the company, and set the terms of its operation?
The ONLY reason that the issue of mail privatisation is going away for a bit is because the government hasn’t the confidence in its whips at the moment. Another defeat, another 2% off the polls.Another ugly NuLab apologist hints that all is not so rosy in Westminsterland…
What is the point of unions? I’m a member of two, despite being an unashamed capitalist. Yet, apart from some very weak class warrior crappy leaflets and letters, and a gym membership, and a dog show, what do they achieve?
Is it true that Cruddas voted with the filth to implement ‘Welfare Reform’?
For someone who who’s been posting Chez Coatesy about his present experience of the New Deal see:
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/ymca-new-deal-training-shut-thedetention-centres-down/