The Rise of New Labour - Autumn 2000

The Rise of New Labour - Autumn 2000

'The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to create a new financial architecture in which private institutions produce a less degenerate capitalism,' wrote Will Hutton in his best-selling nineties book, 'The State We're In'. This plan perfectly describes the New Labour project that the book pre-empted. Although it's a project not quite as well defined as Hutton would have it, it does share many of the characteristics he outlined in his manifesto: pro-European, pro-business, cosmopolitan and unashamedly liberally bourgeois.

The view of New Labour from below is 'New Labour, New Tories,' or 'Wolves in sheep's clothing' as an interviewee on the street memorably shouted at a BBC cameraman during the fuel crisis. But it's not as simple as this.

Here's an exercise. Take a piece of paper and a pen. Divide the sheet of paper into two columns. Head one column 'The Traditionalists' (or the 'dark forces of conservatism,' as Margaret Beckett labelled them), and head the other column 'The Modernists' (or the 'liberal elite' as William Hague muttered). Under the headings make a list of their choice of newspaper, organisations that they belong to and that support them, where these groups geographically live and work, and their tastes and lifestyles. The two lists will be noticeably different.

The Conservative hegemony is being challenged by a new element within the ruling class whose attitudes, opinions and tastes are noticeably different from the old order that has been champion for centuries. This is one the biggest developments in the fossilised establishment since the 1832 Reform Act and the up-and-coming middle-class assimilation into the aristocratic stranglehold.

The point at which the broad church known as New Labour became a coherent trend in itself is hard to pin point. The abandoning of Clause 4 in the early nineties was certainly a symbolic moment, but not until a number of years after the 1997 victory did New Labour secure the position that it so desperately craved after.

What it is has proved to its age-old detractors is that it can manage capitalism more reliably than the Conservative Party. Notice the positive acknowledgements of Daily Mail editorials towards Gordon Brown, and the £2m donation of Lord Sainsbury - business donations to the Labour Party are historically unheard of.

But not all of business has transferred its allegiances to New Labour. Far from it, most are unable to wrench their support from the traditional free-market party. These come from a section of society - encompassing nobility, landowners, judiciary, and military commissioned rank - whose Conservative allegiances are so entrenched in their behaviour and psyche, that support for Labour would be tantamount to treason.

In order to assess this static group it is worth taking a closer look at the Countryside Alliance, Freemasonry, conservative publications, Unionism and the current demigod of the Right, Peter Hitchens.

Talk of the death of the aristocracy has been much overrated. The hold of the nobility on the land is still a decisive one. Although we live in the most urbanised society in the world, 80 percent of the land is countryside. Of this, a third (30.5 percent) is owned by a hard core of titled families - the aristocratic landowner has not faded away and remains a powerful force. This group continues to play a leading role in public bodies such as parish, district, county, unitary, and national park authorities, the Crown Estate Commission, English Nature, the Countryside Commission and the Forestry Commission.

Some families have managed to hold onto their estates since William the Conqueror first allocated them land after 1066.

Marion Shoard, writing in 'This Land is Our Land', describes their clinging attitude:

'Among this close-knit tribe, certain attitudes have become endemic, and because this tribe is so homogenous, these tend to be taken for granted by its members. They know no different. Two particular characteristics of the land-owning class have implications for the rest of society. The first is their possessiveness - most of them are committed to ensuring that all their land remains in the hands of their family, for ever.'

One way of preserving this privilege is through inter-marriage. For example, look at Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, born in 1957. Old Gerry owns 100 acres of prime Mayfair and 200 acres of Belgravia (amongst much else). This came about when in 1677 Sir Thomas Grosvenor married the twelve-year-old heiress Mary Davies. Her dowry was a collection of marshy meadows covering what is now Belgravia and Mayfair, and it is this dowry that the Grosvenor family still prizes today.

Other than the nobility, the owner-occupier farmers are another big factor in the agriculture industry. Rather that the thrifty, honest, jolly farmer image portrayed by the Country Landowners' Association and the National Farmers' Union, these profit-driven, ostentatious rural folk are far from being the common persons friend.

In reference to a recent study, Marion Shoard writes:

'The picture they paint is of a relatively closed world: They tended to go to public schools, have a spell at agricultural college and then go straight back to the family farm to work, often in partnership with their fathers, never entering a world in which they would have to sell their labour.'

In recent years the Countryside Alliance has provided a forum and outlet for the grievances of the rural axis. Formed several years ago, it wasn't until the rise of Labour that they became more vocal in their demands. Although mainly a pro-fox hunting lobby, in recent times it has offered opinion on a variety of issues. Claiming 300,000 members nationally, its £4.5m annual turnover makes a mockery of the whole farmers living in poverty whinge.

For the minority of the population that live in rural areas, the dramatic post-war changes may as well have never happened. These areas remain predominantly white and far removed from the cosmopolitan life of the cities. A paranoid streak runs through their opinions: 'Rural people feel they have been victimised. They feel that urban Britain couldn't give a monkey's about them.' (Nigel Henson, director of communications for the Countryside Alliance.)

Although the fox hunting debate has made a lowest common denominator for membership, have no doubt to its class nature: Go to any race meeting, and the Countryside Alliance stall will always be situated in the enclosed members section.

Freemasonry. This word conjures up many pictures: middle-aged men in self-delusions of grandeur, businessmen escaping mundane lives with a little mystical fantasy, and funny handshakes and nods of the head.

350,000 strong, and with a disproportionate influence in the judiciary, the police and the boardroom, the Masons influence is more insidious than the comical picture they portray. Martin Short's 'Inside the Brotherhood' is the most comprehensive and well-researched book available. Here's a quote from a current member:

'Freemasonry is meant to be non-political. In the lodge Masons aren't supposed to talk about religion because anyway Mason's no nothing about it. As for politics, they don't need to talk about it: they're all nearly Conservatives.
Freemasonry is a mechanism of social control. It's a feudal pyramid, whereby people of influence in British society can mix with ordinary bloke and lend a little lustre to his dreary life. But only certain types of bloke. Have you ever thought why the police are so cultivated by Freemasonry? I have met scores of policemen throughout my Masonic career, but I haven't met a single fireman or postman. There must be firemen or postmen in Freemasonry but nowhere near as many policemen, lawyers, local government officials and businessmen. By drawing these kind of people into the network, the landed aristocray and big business filter their values through the social structure.'

Its not that the Freemasons have a national agenda against Labour, it's that their structure, environment and influence lends support against change.

In Ireland, the Freemasons provided an opportunity for Protestants to keep hold of their wealth and privilege after the creation of the Free State, while in the north it has acted as the upper-echelon of the Orange Order. 80 percent of the membership of the Irish Freemasons is in the north, with most Unionist MPs as members as well as special lodges for the prison officers of the Maze and Crumlin Road and separate lodges for the RUC.

The Ulster Unionists easily fit into the Traditionalists camp - a read of Susan Mckay's 'Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People' confirms that. Traditionalists are staunchly pro-union which rests easy with their fondness for the dead Empire they still mourn today.

A retrogressive magazine that is tailor made for this group is 'This England'. First published in 1967, 'This England' now outsells the 'Spectator', 'New Statesman', 'Country Life' and 'Tatler' added together. Subtitled 'Britain's loveliest magazine,' it offers the concerned Englishman more than just the provincial prospectus of quaint village life and afternoon tea. Found within is barely disguised rage at the modern world:

'We are in the middle of a carefully-crafted plot going back many years which is designed to create an easily manageable, European super-state to be run like a socialist republic. That means one overall (but unelected) government, one puppet parliament, one federal army, navy and air force, one central bank, a single currency, and one supreme court of law. Our precious Monarchy will be replaced by a President of the Continent, the Union Jack will be banned; and we shall have to sing the new Euro anthem to the tune of Beethoven's Ode to Joy except that its title will really mean 'Goodbye Britain'.'

The apocalypse is upon us! Those promoting the new creed 'officialdom, the Post Office, politicians, journalists, teachers, television newsreaders', surround the embattled faithful.

Other enemies of the Traditionalists are listed by Jeremy Paxman in 'The English, Potrait of a People':
'the unholy alliance of metric measurements, town planners, unelected bureaucrats, squatters, vandals, abortionists, adulators, offensive advertising, political correctness, modern telephone boxes, newspapers, radio, television, multiculturalism and traitorous politicians.'

For the Rights chronicler of 'the deluge', Peter Hitchens, the features of the multifarious opposition are 'classlessness, anti-racism, sexual inclusiveness and licence, contempt for the nation state, dislike of deference, scorn for restraint and incomprehension for the traditions and prejudices that were revered on each side.'

Hitchens, a former Industrial Organiser for the International Socialists and long-standing Express columnist, is paralytic with rage over what he describes as 'a revolution' that has swept the Britain of old away. Gone are 'honour, patriotism, chivalry, and duty,' assailed since the 1960s by the contraceptive pill, television, comprehensive schools, single-parent families and Roy Jenkins (!).

Hitchens is a strange theoretician, easily able to chronicle the defeat of Old England, but unable to theorise a way out. His latest book, 'The Abolition of Britain', is reflective of the confusion on the Right; full of sorrowful hate, it only offers pessimism for the future. In the book he praises 'temperance Methodists and working-class Catholics' of Labour-gone, but he views New Labour as the finishing touches on forty years of damaging decline, or 'the deluge' as he labels it.

The final nail in Great Britain's coffin is EU integration. This act of vandalism will bury the nation forever. Anti-EU ranting is the cornerstone of current Right ideology, but it's more pro-American than segregationist. This goes back to the UK's reliance on the US during the Second World War, and it's a relationship that Britain has been desperately trying to preserve since the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

The average age of the Tory Party is 64 so they are, quite literally, the war generation. They still feel grieved that the rest of Europe capitulated so quickly to Nazi Germany and left us standing alone in 1940. Since then, dubious American foreign policy has long been uncriticised. When Norman Tebbit was recently asked on TV why he is against a common European defence policy, the first reason he gave was that how could British troops be expected to fight alongside France when they surrendered so easily in 1940! This military alliance is being carried into the economic sphere. The owner of The Telegraph, Conrad Black, has long argued for Britain's admission to NAFTA. Right-wingers such as John Redwood have recently taken up this clarion call, and as the Tories increase their number of MPs and influence, then this call will be increasingly heard.

So there is the Traditionalist part of the UK governing class: introverted, entwined, entrenched, and powerful, but unsure and a little paranoid.

New Labour is their bogy. They consider the project as interfering in their natural right to rule.

New Labour, or the Modernists, are not a class in themselves, just a different side of the same class.

They are a movement, but with more ambiguous aims than the conservative block. Have no doubt about their influence though. Their network stretches like a web over institutions that the Tories have always monopolised.

Lets start with Polly Tonybee (Guardian), who is a good friend to Gavyn Davies (Deputy Chairman of the BBC); whose partner Sue Nye is an assistant to Gordon Brown. Tonybee is also good friends with Andrew Marr (BBC Political Editor), who is married to Jackie Ashley (New Statesman Political Editor), who is daughter to Labour grandee Jack Ashley.

Just some of those that are 'on-side' are as follows: Matthew Taylor (head of the Institute for Public Policy Research), Rabbi Julia Neuberger (Kings Fund), Will Hutton (head of the Industrial Society), Sheila McKechie (Consumers' Association), Angela Mason (Stonewall director), Susie Parsons (head of the Commission for Racial Equality), Andrew Whitlam Smith (head of British Board of Film Classification) and Gerry Robinson (head of the Arts Council)and don't forget the sympathetic businessmen such as former £600,000-a-year Prudential boss, Derek Higgs, and Kate Barker, chief economist of the CBI, who is described by a Labour figurehead as 'influential and sympathetic.'

The inter-socialising network of mutual associates are London-based where, according to journalist Ben Summerskill, 'policy lunches are as popular as drinks parties.'

This is the ascending group that Tony Blair repeatedly refers to. 'The Britain of the elite is over,' he announced in October 1997. 'The new Britain is a meritocracy.' And later in January 1999: 'The old establishment is being replaced by a new, larger, more meritocratic middle-class.'

The 'meritocratic middle-class' is completely urban in outlook, whose only contact with the countryside is reserved to weekend breaks in their second homes. Within their ranks are representatives of the plural society they praise: Waheed Ali, the gay Asian Big Breakfast found, and Trevor Phillips, former black General Secretary of the NUS and current GLA member.

Of the Modernists, many are former Left stalwarts. Jack Lock 'Em All Up' Straw and Michael 'Eight Homes' Meacher are the most noticeable two; but converts such as Trevor Phillips also match their spectacular opportunism - he only joined the Labour Party in 1996 when it look that they were definitely going to win.

In religious aspects, they have gradually taken over the mantel as defenders of the Church. The C of E publicly fell from Tory grace in the eighties, and in search of moral fibre for an ambiguous project, Blair has repeatedly made claim to the Christian ethos of paternalism and deference. For instance, there is a distinction being made between the deserving and the undeserving poor. The deserving poor are the elderly who the state will apparently provide for, while the undeserving poor are the unemployed who will be made to work by all means necessary. The deference is reserved for the authority of the police, parliament and the monarchy. Note how quickly during the fuel crisis talk quickly became fixed on respect to democracy and the 'anti-democratic' nature of the protests.

The Modernists are in favour of EU expansion in all areas of governing and trade. For Will Hutton the importance of a strong EU will be its ability to force America and Japan into a more ethical trading policy. 'Britain therefore has a particular interest in the construction of a more stable international financial order.' Otherwise he warns 'the way is open for the return of totalitarian parties of the left or the right. It is a baleful prospect.'

In this plan the trade unions are regarded as junior partners. For the likes of New Labour it's better to have them in the fold, 'on-side' so to speak, then to have them running loose on the outside; but their position is now similar to what the US unions had to the Democratic Party - just another pressure group that can be listened to or ignored depending on circumstances.

So there are differences between the Traditionalist and the Modernists.

The link between them is their complete reverence of all things business, and an uncritical acceptance of the global market.

The working class for these groups fail to exist. For the Traditionalists the working class was something left behind in the eighties after industry was freed form 'uncompetitive practices' - a Tory euphemism for demanding the uncritical right to manage and for unchecked profits.

The Modernists share this view too. When Tony Blair was recently talking about the positive aspects of the Thatcher years, few could doubt that he was referring to the onslaught on the organised workforce.

For the cosmopolitan urban set the working class is something that died with the cloth cap and the mining industry. This political view is only a reflection of the Modernists own personal background and current milieu. After all, Tony Blair was educated at Scotland's top public school and then moved onto Oxford. Now he spends most of his time being chauffeured between tea with the Queen, cheese and wine parties with his fellow clique, and that antiquated nineteenth century gentleman's club, the House of Commons. The only time Tony Blair has any contact with the working class is when the window cleaner comes to Downing Street.

It's not that the Modernists ignore class, or are as crass as John Major by calling for a classless society, it's just that in the technological society they envisage the traditional idea of the manufacturing working class is non-existent.

'Class is a Communist concept. The more you talk about class, or even about classlessness, the more you fix it in people's minds' - Thatcher.

In 1996 81 percent of the respondents said yes to the following question in a Gallup poll: 'There used to be a lot of talk in politics about a 'class struggle'. Do you think that there is a class struggle or not?'
Now, according to the Thatcher thesis, there must have been a lot of chatter about class in the nineties. This question has been asked by Gallup 18 times between 1961 and 1996, and the parties saying yes rose from 60 percent in the 1960s to 70 percent in the 1980s and 80 percent in the 1990s. During the late nineties a whole rash of academic studies concerned with class were published. One perplexed report concluded: 'The central problem is not why classes have been dying but why they are so persistent.' God-damn-it, not matter the speculation of our politicians, it just won't seem to go away. As the friction between the two sides of our ruling class continues, the interesting question is, what would happen if a political organisation declared its intention to only appeal to the working class? - an organisation that freed itself from dogma, and presented itself with conviction and fresh approaches. The response on the doorstep may well be a little different than what our national political leaders would hope for.