IN THE bad old days of not that long ago, single trade unions controlled constituency parties in dozens of Labour strongholds. Secure the nomination from the NUM or the GMB, and you had a seat for life, son.
Such practices were undemocratic, obviously conducive to machine politics, and invariably worked to the disadvantage of lefties. But in a rough and ready way, it at least it resulted a cohort of Labour MPs with some sort of demographic resemblance to their electoral base.
I expect parallel mechanisms – not least the dogged independence of local Conservative Associations from Central Office – helped gentlemen farmers, estate agents, former army officers and decent chaps with the right connections find their way to Westminster in no small number. Not exactly equal ops in action, I guess, but it also meant that Tories of such ilk were anchored in their communities.
But the Britain that produced these cosy little set ups is no longer there. There are very few one industry company towns or orderly semi-detached middle class suburbs remaining, and both parties have felt the need to appeal beyond the social layers in the interest of which they once saw themselves as being in politics to propagate.
The solution – so we were told – was to attract fresh candidates to replace all those trade union timeservers and Sir Tufton Buftons, who had to make way for people more reflective of the make-up of the wider population.
Right up until the 1980s, for instance, there was not a single black, Asian or openly gay MP in parliament, while the number of women MPs was pitiful. Hence the advent of all women shortlists for Labour and A-list candidacies for the Tories.
But have these schemes delivered the goods? For all the much trumpeted efforts to broaden the intake at Westminster, in class terms our MPs are perhaps less representative than at any time since the Representation of the People Act gave Britain universal suffrage in 1918.
True, there are more women and there are more blacks. But on the whole they are posh birds or the kind of people Linton Kwesi Johnson dismissed as black petit bourgeois. One of the many reasons that politicians of all parties misread the public mind over the expenses scandal so badly is the increasingly selective circles from which they are drawn.
Nor is this situation set to get any better. According to new research compiled by communications consultancy the Madano Partnership, a full one-third of new MPs elected next year will be from private schools.
With the return of the Old Etonians, even the Tories are becoming more public schoolie than they have been for several decades. Among Conservatives, privately educated MPs will number close to 50% of the new boys and girls.
Yet private schools educate just 7% of school age children, a figure that would have been somewhat lower when this crop of politicians were growing up.
"The overall trends of the figures do suggest there has been massive shift over the last 12 years towards the private and independent sector," the Madano report says. It is further evidence that after 12 years of New Labour in office, Britain has become more unequal rather than less.
A private education, of course, confers a lifetime advantage on those who get it. It massively boosts chances of access to top universities and thus access to top jobs. Yet Britain’s little privilege factories continue to enjoy tax free status, thanks to their nominal standing as ‘charities’.
In a democracy, there are no viable means of imposing any cap or quota on who gets elected. That is as it should be. But the upshot is that the background of Labour MPs is now more and not less socially narrow than when Andy Cunningham ran Tyneside as if it were Tammany Hall, while the Tories are about to put an OE into Number Ten for the first time since the 14th Earl of Home. That is simply not progress.
Posted at 14:40, 6 July 2009
Comments (11)
Actually Andy Cunningham was never interested in being an MP, preferring instead to be the GMB's arbiter of who would become MP's in the North East. It was left to his son, Jack, to sit on the green benches, and oddly enough he was a transition creature between old and new Labour,
... which is exactly the point I was trying to make.
Some cynics would suggest that the GMB Northern Region hasn't moved on much since the days of Wor Andy and his mate T Dan. The only difference now being that the opportunities for advancement (political or personal) are, alas, so much lesser these days.
And don't forget it was the late Tom Burlison, GMB Northern Regional Secretary, who launched and sustained the early career of one P. Mandelson Esq in the area. Cheers Tom.
They're not representative at all.
One really has to marvel at the invasive parasitism of the middle classes.
Still, that's the advantage of being organised and conscious, no wonder they're perpetually striving to divide the working class along whatever lines they consider least threatening to their privilege.
Yes, but at least they've got rid of those dreadful grammar schools. Too many clever oiks taking the best jobs from our children. Not only that, but they've expanded Unis and dumbed them down so that young Giles, who forty years back would never have got into university, has a 2:1 in Politics from the University of the South Coast (formerly Portslade Ex-Servicemen's Club).
From 1964 to 1997 every British PM was State grammar school educated. Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major. 33 years. How many state-educated PMs will there be in the years 1997-2020 ?
The move to more university educated middle class MPs was started in the 1945 election by Morrison who had felt embarrassed by the lack of education in some of the northern working class pre-war Labour MPs. He was later to regret this when the same MPs he had helped into politics turned on him and elected Gaitskell, one of their own, as leader instead of him after Atlee resigned.
New Labour saw the almost total control of the Labour Party by middle class MPs by shortlists and parachuting in candidates. The shame of this is that in general the middle classes almost have a distaste for seeing the good in anyone, only seeing the worst. This has led New Labour to follow the ideas of Thatcher in game theory and Hayek's economics.
"From 1964 to 1997 every British PM was State grammar school educated. Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major. 33 years. How many state-educated PMs will there be in the years 1997-2020 ?"
Wasn't Brown state educated?
Steady on Dave, I think you need to take a step back here.
The fact that 50% of MPs coming through are from private school has a number of possible explanations. It could be that the CCHQ is discriminating against state schoolers or it could simply reflect the fact that a much higher percentage of people from private school actually want to go into politics relative to those who attend state school.
Raw numbers tell us nothing and I would strongly urge against drawing any conclusions (or bringing out any stereotypes) along the lines of 'Tories are all posh private school kids'.
LTT: oh yes, wouldn't it be just awful if we were to be unjustly mean to an oppressed minority like people who went to public school?
Of course it's because of privilege: they make connections at school, they get into university in greater numbers, they view it as possible for them to go into politics in a way that people who went to state school simply don't. Even in terms of raw money, mummy and daddy can usually stump up for their keep whilst they do unpaid internships in a way that they simply couldn't if mummy was a check-out girl at Tesco and daddy was on the dole.
It really is that bleedin' obvious.
From The Guardian's obituary on Jim Callaghan:
"His education, culminating at the Portsmouth Northern secondary school, was patchy and inadequate, a fact of which he sometimes spoke bitterly and which made the right to a decent education one of his great political passions.
That, for purely financial reasons, he never went to university was one of the blights of his life."
Right now in the forthcoming Norwich North by-election, we have the spectacle of a 28 year old management consultant and a 27 year old masters’ student fronting up for the Tories and Labour, backed up by hundreds of taxpayer-paid MPs’ research assistants and other full-time staff to get the leaflets out.
Meanwhile, never mind old Labour GMB or NUM, we have the disgraceful stance of the University and Colleges Union - of all organisations - excluding the distinguished independent candidate Craig Murray from its own hustings event in Norwich on Thursday.
Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador and now human rights campaigner, is the (student-elected) Rector of Dundee University, and has worked with UCU on an anti-cuts and anti-commercialisation agenda!
This by-election is the direct result of the recent expenses scandal and it is a valid and necessary platform to be arguing that we can’t rely on the establishment parties to clean up politics and state corruption. So, even if you don’t agree with it, it is outrageous for a union to deny that platform even the chance to be heard.
More at http://www.putanhonestman.org/ and http://www.craigmurray.org.uk