Was Labour ever socialist?

Whether Labour is, will be or ever was a socialist party is one of those issues that tends to be as much an article of faith as any kind of objective analysis. If you are in the Labour Party, and especially if you are on the left, it is a temptation to see Labour as a socialist party that has been derailed. This leads to an incredible amount of time, effort and some intellectual gymnastics to establish a symbiotic relationship between Labour and socialism.

As the historian Henry Pelling notes the origins of the party lay not in radical socialism, but in parliamentary reform.  However, as Tony Benn amongst others has noted, the idea that the origins of the Labour Party do not include Marxism and socialism (however defined) is equally false. The much vaunted broad church of Labour has always been an uneasy alliance between those who see parliamentary reform as an end in itself and those for whom parliament is merely a means to the greater goal of the establishment of a socialist republic. 

The Labour Party was a very different beast in it’s early days. Labour’s leader in 1918 was one William Anderson, who according to Ralph Miliband, freely admitted that if “a revolution be the conquest of political power by a hitherto disinherited class, if revolution be that we are not going to put up in the future with what we have put up with in the past, then the sooner we have revolution in this country the better.” Jump forward 100 years and the present leader of the party would most likely say “I’ll have to read the small print before deciding whether having an opinion is likely to win over Daily Mail readers or not”.

What is interesting about the debates which took place in the party until 1929 when Ramsay MacDonald became the first ever Labour Prime Minister, is that they were mainly concerned with two things. First, how to gain power. But, second, what they were gaining power to do. That second question was invariably framed as a discussion of what socialism actually meant.

Ralph Miliband makes an interesting comment regarding the commitment to socialism of the trade union leaders, who effectively controlled the party at that time and still wield considerable influence to this day:

“..when it came to deeds, they made it clear that they had no intention of allowing the movement they controlled to embark upon militant courses they had always deemed disastrous, Nor had most of the political leaders of the Labour Party any such intention.” (Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, 1972,p.60)

Labour was a parliamentary party and believed strikes were dangerous

The reality of the early Labour Party was actually quite simple. Away from office, or the possibility of office, it was unambiguously socialist. But, the closer to government the party became the less committed to socialism, and the more committed to reform. The change was not so much that the party hierarchy were opposed to socialism, but rather that they were intoxicated by the possibility of power. This was well illustrated in 1923 when the General Election resulted in a hung parliament. Then Labour Leader MacDonald was under pressure from the left of the party to take office and attempt to implement a socialist programme. At a meeting at the Fabian leader Sydney Webb’s house a different plan was proposed. Philip Snowden, who was to become Chancellor of the Exchequor, recalled the thinking:

“We might use the opportunity for a demonstration and introduce some bold socialist measures, knowing, of course, that we should be defeated upon them. Then we could go to the country with this illustration of what we would do if we had a socialist majority. This was a course which had been urged by the extreme wing of the party, but it was not a policy which commended itself to reasonable opinion. I urged very strongly to this meeting that we should not adopt an extreme policy but should confine our legislative proposals to measures that we were likely to be able to carry. We must show the country that we were not under the domination of the wild men.” (Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, 1972,p.101)

In short, 1923 and the temptation of office was the first in a long line of sell outs by the right wing of the Labour Party. Those who supported socialist policies, which were now part of the party’s constitution, were considered ‘extreme’ and ‘wild’, unlike the ‘reasonable’ men who were prepared to baby sit capitalism for the Tories whilst they sorted themselves out. Sound familiar?

No Labour Government has ever fundamentally attempted to alter the economic and social system of the UK. The most radical Labour Government of the 20^th Century was that of Clement Atlee, but as Michelle Mioni has detailed his policies were decidedly not anti-capitalist. What the Atlee Government achieved should not be under-estimated, but it was not driven by a Marxist agenda or anything close to it. Indeed, whoever had won the election in 1945 (and it was widely expected that it would be Churchill), would have had to implement at least some of the welfare legislation. 

Arguably the high point for Labour was the sixties when Harold Wilson was leader and won 4 General Elections. Wilson was not afraid to use the rhetoric of socialism. However, as Simon Basketter argues in a retrospective piece in the Socialist Worker:

 “He faced the same choice as every Labour leader—whether to confront the rich and represent those who elected him, or to back British capitalism. And like every Labour leader, Wilson chose the latter.”

At least Atlee and Wilson believed that socialism was worth mentioning, and not something to be ashamed of. By the time Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997 the very word ‘socialism’ had become an embarrassment, and whatever else his supporters claim for his legacy being at the forefront of anti-capitalist struggle was not ever part of it.

Debates about the orientation of the Labour Party have been endemic since the inception of the party. Whilst the early incarnations of the party contained many who were avowed socialists, the nature of the party has changed down the years. The famous Clause 4 Part IV was, so we are led to believe, a blueprint for socialist transformation. As Tony Benn remarked at the end of the seventies: “Whatever problems may lie ahead, no one in the movement doubts that progress must be made, first to bring labour into a truly equal partnership in controlling industry and then in reorganising, so that those who actively create the wealth can shape the processes by which it is done and determine (within the framework of law and the needs of the nation) how the surpluses should be applied to develop our manufacturing, productive and service industries.” (Tony Benn, Arguments For Socialism, 1979, p.43)

Labour has always been a broad church and remained so even during the Blair years where huge efforts were made to remove the last vestiges of power from constituency delegates. It was Blair’s assault on Clause 4 which represented a watershed moment in the Party’s history.  No longer was the party committed, on paper at least, to “secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry”. Now, if you look on the back of your membership card (assuming you haven’t burnt it recently) you’ll find this instead:

“The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”

The Guardian was typically anti-socialist

The abandonment of Clause 4 (actually Clause 4 Part 4) was as much symbolic as anything. What Blair and his right wing cronies were saying to the electorate was that Labour no longer believes in old fashioned notions of socialism and collectivism, but rather is a modern party that believes, despite the words ‘common endeavour’ in individuals ability to succeed in an economy owned and controlled by a few billionaires. 

For those ex-Corbyn supporters now supporting Starmer, Simon Hannah’s words are worth repeating:

“Blairism was a package of measures designed to erode and eventually cut the link  with the working-class base of the party, the better to serve the needs of the global elites. Most of the newer members fervently believed in the new ideology; many older Labour members went along with it as the price they had to pay to get back into government.” (Simon Hannah, A Party With Socialists In It. A History Of The Labour Left, 2018,p202-3)

It is often overlooked that Part 1 of Clause 4 committed the party to “organise and maintain in Parliament and in the country a political Labour Party.” This constitutional commitment clearly lays out the idea that Labour is, first and foremost, a parliamentary party. Bearing in mind that when this was written in 1918 Labour was some considerable distance from winning an election having just 36 seats in Parliament and attracting only 13% of the electorate, it was an important clause directing the party’s efforts.

The real significance for our present debates is that when push came to shove paper commitments to socialism proved far less important to Labour’s right-wing than the possibility of taking office. In office, the party were more socially liberal than their competitors but within very strict parameters. There was no sense at all in the early years of the Labour Party that it would use office to do anything other than what remained in the interest of the dominant ruling classes. And, we might ask: what has changed? The answer is that today’s right wing leadership have abandoned the idea of socialism altogether four years before an election because they believe that they must show clearly that they are reasonable and the party is no longer in the hands of extremists. 

If you are tempted to think that it is Starmer or perhaps Blair who is responsible for turning Labour away from socialism, think again. It was clear by 1923 that the Labour Establishment, personified in the shape of Ramsay MacDonald, who eventually split the party for his own personal gain, was far more concerned with courting the British establishment than the British working class. The problem for Labour has always been that parliament has only so much power as the establishment permit it. So, gaining the keys to Number 10 may well give the illusion of ultimate power but the price of those keys has always been to abandon any hope of changing the system in a fundamental way which would undermine the dominance of the establishment.

Which brings us back to the question of whether there really is any point in anybody who has socialist ideals remaining within a party that, whenever tested, has backed away from socialism? The answer is that it is not just what people in the party think it represents but what people outside of it, Labour voters, believe it represents.

Since 1922 Labour has consistently received the votes of over one quarter of the electorate. The vote ranges from 27.6% (in 1983) to 48.8% (in 1955). Both those elections were lost incidentally. The number of voters ranges, over the same period, from 4 million to 14 million. Of course, the franchise has been extended a couple of times since the 1920’s, but the point is that millions of our fellow citizens retain a belief in the Labour Party as an organisation that represents their best chance of social justice. We spend far too much time, in my view, worrying about people who no longer vote Labour (if they ever did) and not enough time reassuring those who remain loyal that the party is genuinely concerned about them.

Since 1983 an average of 10.5 million people in the UK have voted for Labour. In 2019, the most recent General Election, 10.2 million people put their cross next to a Labour candidate. In 2017, it was over 13 million and by far the most important reason, according to one poll, was the policies in the manifesto.

As I have previously said, Labour is as much an idea as a party. For the average Labour voter Labour represents an ideal of social justice, a commitment to people like them. Most voters do not spend their time on social media looking at the political threads and pages. If they are on social media at all, they are sharing cat videos and recipes with far more enthusiasm than they are searching for left wing blogs (my recipe blog gets far more hits than this one!) Ordinary people do not, on the whole, attend political meetings, watch the news channels all day, or spend much time between elections thinking about political ideology, or indeed politics of any description.

If those of us on the left decide to leave the Labour Party we will not take 10 million voters with us. If we choose to stand against the Labour Party we will be lucky if we take 10,000 voters. Labour is not, nor has it ever been, a socialist party if by such a thing we judge it by its deeds. At best, it is a reforming liberal party, at worst a conservative party of social reform. Labour’s policies and strategies are not decided by the bulk of the membership who would, if allowed, drag them to the left. Rather they are imposed upon us by a Labour establishment whose only real change since the 1920’s has been that they no longer think that socialism is even worth arguing against.

But, for all that, those with socialist views are still drawn to the Labour Party. If you want to meet with others who share socialist views, then the Labour Party remains a good place to start (though, of course, there are plenty of smaller parties as well). The major difference between socialists in Labour and elsewhere is that in Labour you do have the opportunity at election times to engage 10 million people or so. At election times, and sometimes in other crises, ordinary people look to Labour for support and inspiration. Without an active left they will receive neither. 

I don’t personally believe that Labour can be a parliamentary socialist party. It can be a parliamentary party or a socialist party, it will never be both. However, it can be a parliamentary party which includes socialists. Those socialists will raise ideas around socialism and push the careerist wing of the party to use a different type of rhetoric. It can also be a place where those attracted to socialism can share ideas and practice, learn about the history of our movement and develop practical solutions to the problems which face the people who look to Labour for salvation of one kind or another. In the wake of the defeat of the Corbyn project it is tempting to see all as doom and gloom for the left, but this is  a place where the left have been on many occasions in the past and have emerged stronger as a result. The important thing is that wherever people are, inside or outside the party, that we remember that others on the left are not our enemies, but our allies in the continuing struggle to create a just society.

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