| For those seeking a change in the political landscape, the use of a bad guy, of scapegoats, of bogeymen can be incredibly useful in galvanising support for your own ideology. Margaret Thatcher was one of the most unpopular prime ministers in history but stormed to landslide in 1983 after defeating the enemy abroad (the Argentines) and thus giving her chance to defeat the enemy within (the miners). This is nothing new, Winston Churchill attempted to scare the public away from a Labour Government after the war by warning that it would fall back on a gestapo-esque body to implement it's manifesto. The famous hoax, the Zinoviev letter was also a factor used by the Conservatives to defeat the first Labour Government in 1924. The rise and ultimately success of New Labour rested on similar uses of popular misconception. Seeking to re-write history, those behind New Labour sought to lay all blame of defeat in the eighties onto the left within the party. The period of Bennism, so-called was labelled as an 'aberation'. Benn's brand of politics were described as well beyond the pale of 'usual' Labour politics and were painted as inevitably electorally catastrophic. According to the Blarites, there was only one solution; 'New Labour'. Anything else would mean defeat. Yet, how much of this period (1975 to 1983) was indeed out of step with Labour history as New Labour would insist? Who better to ask then one of the countries' most eminent labour historians; Professor Keith Laybourn. Professor Laybourn is an expert on Labour history, socialism and the emergence of the British welfare state. He has written nearly 35 books and more than sixty articles. At Huddersfield University he teaches on the General Strike, Britain between the wars and (British) Social Policy and Administration. He also teaches an MA module on British socialism and the British Labour movement. |
| INTERVIEW WITH LABOUR HISTORIAN PROFESSOR KEITH LAYBOURN |
| PROFESSOR KEITH LAYBOURN |
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| I started by asking Professor Laybourn whether a left/right battle within the Labour Party was truly an early eighties 'blip' or was it there at the Party's inception? KL : The Labour Party has always had left and right in it. Remember, when the Independent Labour Party was formed in 1893, it was basically a socialist party. The ILP (Independent Labour Party) joined the trade union movement to create the Labour Representation Committee and ultimately the Labour Party. You had left and right and in those days many trade unionists would regard themselves not as socialists but as people representing working class interests. Many of the trade unionists were still liberal or conservatives from their old background even though they were part of the Labour Party. Really the sense of conflict has always been there. Labourism has a large number of different elements in it so in the interwar years you get that split as well. In the 1950’s you get that beautiful split between the trade unions who wish to remain on the left and Tony Crosland and Gaitskell who are switching to the right and don’t feel the need for nationalisation and some of those policies which encapsulated the Labour Party when it became a socialist party in 1918. Q : The party started as an amalgamation of many different interests. If the ILP was the socialist input, would you see the trade unions as the more pragmatic element? KL : The trade union element at the beginning were very much the right wing and of course that changed over time. In the interwar years, you could argue that many of the trade unionists were just as left wing, they were active and practical socialists but there were many different strands going across. What is left wing? The Labour Party, when you compare with the Communist Party of Great Britain in those years, looks pretty right wing. If you compare it with the Conservative Party, it’s a fairly left wing party. In the interwar years the main point about the Labour Party is that it was establishing itself for the first time. It almost had to moderate it’s intent. I’ve just written a book on the first Labour government with John Shepherd and if you look at what we’re saying is that the purpose of that first Labour government is to legitimise it as a party that could take political power. It’s inevitable that people like Ramsay McDonald would play down the importance of trying to achieve socialism in one minority government. Obviously, there had to be long term targets. When they go to the Albert Hall before he takes office, he goes to give them a message of moderation. Q : A major factor which gripped the party in the late seventies/early eighties was a feeling amongst the activists that the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and the leadership were ignoring them, ignoring the manifesto, ignoring conference decisions. Could you trace that feeling back to the first Labour Government? KL : You have to remember that there is a difference, you have the Labour Party in the country, the PLP in parliament. When you have a government it’s a different thing straight away. The first thing the Labour government in 1924 faced is that most of the PLP went straight into government so you have to create a new PLP executive and the organisation that went with it. There’s that problem that Labour had to adjust to the fact that it was the party of government not just a political party. As a party of government you represent the nation and most Labour leaders have always recognised that they come from the Labour Party but unlike perhaps Tories occasionally, have recognised that they have to represent the country. Q : With that first Labour Government, was there already an emerging left wing? KL : There was always a left wing. Basically, the prime minister, or the party leader has to occupy the centre ground. In the 1920’s you have leftwingers, many from the middle class as well as the working class, coming from the old union of democratic control, from the first world war anti war groups, the ILP amongst them. At the other extreme you have right wingers. Just as Gordon Brown is mixing his cabinet today, there were people who were ex-liberals and ex-conservatives in the ranks, not an usual feature. People are pointing that out with Gordon Brown’s selection but that was there in 1924. The Liberals were quite happy, and some of the Conservatives, quite happy that some of their former colleagues were joining within the Labour Government, giving them that sense of legitimacy, preventing any real threat of a revolutionary takeover. There was fear, Winston Churchill said ‘a Labour Government, we can’t have that, they can’t rule’. Sir John Banbury stated he’d lead the Coldstream Guards into parliament if Labour formed a government to protect the constitution. There was a fear about what Labour means. In reality most of the political parties very quickly realised that Labour was just going to be another parliamentary party and they could operate with it, perhaps give it guidance. The first Labour Government only lasted nine or ten months, the second two and a quarter years. Both minority governments, they’re not going far. Having said that, the party, contrary to impression of the first two Labour Governments, never operated a Lib Lab alliance. They said ‘we’ll take your support if need be’. On certain issues it might be a resignation issue but the first Labour Government got beaten eleven times, I think it was the eleventh time that did them because it was about Russia and other things. Q : Wasn't the housing minister quite left wing in that government? KL : John Wheatley. He was fairly left wing. He was from the Glasgow Clydeside, that was his roots. The old ILP tradition. Q : Going back to the inception of the party, Tony Benn did a famous lecture in 1980 or 81 on Marxism suggesting that though it wasn’t a huge influence, it was still an influence on the Labour Party at the start. KL : The nearest you got to real influence on the Labour Party and Marxism was at it’s birth. The Social Democratic Federation joined the Labour Party at it’s outset, the Labour Representation Committee. However, within a year or so it had left. Having said that, Marxists, SDF people, worked with the Labour people at the local level. The Marxists re-organised in 1910/1911 as the British Socialist Party and that did become a member of the Labour Party. In 1917 it changed it’s name to the Communist Party of Great Britain. It came in just after the war, very much pressured by Lenin and others and the Labour Party rejected it. It constantly, in the 20’s and partly in the 30’s, it did actually apply to become an affiliated member of the Labour Party. The Labour Party told it where to go. Q : Some of the Labour Left would have approved, not of an official alliance but certainly an unofficial alliance. KL : Most of the trade unionists would have rejected it. Some of the socialist parties within the Labour Party would have accepted it but not readily. In the 1920’s the ILP was developing it’s own strategy and within it had a group who were a bit Marxist but in 1930 they were into the Revolutionary Policy Committee who were active in a Marxist sense. The Revolutionary Policy Committee by 1936 had more or less given up it’s role in the ILP and joined the Communists. There were groups who were always pro-communist, always has been but you’re bound to have that. The Labour Party recognised that and tried to control it. In 1922 at the Edinburgh Conference, they passed a resolution that you couldn’t be a member of two political parties at the same time. To be an MP or a candidate you had to sign up to the constitution. Eventually in 1925, the majority of the Labour Party imposed a decision that members from trades councils could not be communists. Trades councils often sent representatives to Labour Party Conference. The same went with trade unions as well although trades councils were the main target. In the 1930’s the Labour Party, very much from the pressure from Ernest Bevin, pressed to get rid of communists from trade unions and as well as Labour ranks. The irony of that is of course they stopped a lot of communists becoming branch officials or representatives on trades councils but technically if you were a conservative or liberal and a good trade unionist you could get onto the trades council in an official capacity. So there’s an irony there. The Communist Party had it’s greatest influence probably in the 40’s through the Second World War. Particularly after Stalin came in after Operation Barbarossa. Russia joined the allies in the fight against fascism. It's support began to erode very quickly, in the late fourties under a Labour Government. There were conflicts with communists. Gradually what little communist influence there was upon trade unionism began to disappear. The Communist Party itself declined. It was a declining influence and the impact upon the Labour of communist trade unionism is there but it’s limited. Q : Would you draw any parallels between that period and the mid-eighties with the Militant Tendency? Benn was one of the few who didn’t want to expel them. He believed the only way to defeat an argument is through argument. KL : Well that’s right but I would probably disagree with him. Something had to happen with that. You can’t have a party within a party, after all if they are militant tendency and operate to their rules then they are breaking the rules of the Labour Party. I don’t think they can expect anything other than expulsion. I think Tony Benn’s position is a bit different. Tony Benn is really an old ILPer with some little differences. The old ILP was raised in a tradition of individual commitment, living the life of a socialist, not drinking in many cases. They were temperate, many of them were very religious. All those you can recognise in Tony Benn. Also, questioning. The whole style of the ILP was to question who should determine foreign policy for instance. Should it be the nation, should it be people, should it be the parliament? Or should it be a set of ministers? In a sense he never really accepted that collective responsibility of cabinet which actually prevents you expressing your views and perhaps involves you suppressing what can sometimes be a majority view of the party. He would never accept that. It must be strange with his son being a minister. In most respects, I see him as an old ILPer. There may be slight differences in some respects. The ILP were committed to international socialism. They believed in international connections. Tony Benn doesn’t agree with the Common Market. Having said that, the Common Market isn’t an international socialist organisation, perhaps they may not be far apart. The ILP would probably have a wider international perspective, not that I’m saying he isn’t international because in many other areas he is. I still see in him the old Ramsay Macdonald, Philip Snowden type of socialism based upon individual conscience and individual action rather than collective. Individual rather than collective socialism. Q : I’m not sure if he’d thank you for comparing him to Ramsay Macdonald. KL : Well Ramsay Macdonald was a great leader, except there was one problem he couldn’t overcome. I wasn’t comparing him to Ramsay Macdonald but more that strand. The school of 1906, that school of thought. If you look at the MP’s then, many of them were very religious, even if they don’t belong to a particular church. That particular group disappeared in 1931. He is of that style. Of course his father was in the Labour Cabinet. Q : If we go back to the WW1, the common characteristic of the left at present is opposition to war. The Labour Party at the time of the War was supportive. KL : The official position of the Labour Party was that it supported the war effort. Within the Labour Party there were groups who strongly opposed it. The strongest element of that was the Independent Labour Party. Having said that, the ILP’s position on the great war was individual conscience. In other words if you wish to oppose it, fine. If you wish to support it, fine. So it’s liberty of conscience. You’ll find that in Bradford which was one of the centres of wartime opposition, quite a lot of conscientious objectors, same in Huddersfield. You also get in Bradford Fred Jowett who honoured those who went and fought and honours those who fought against the war. The vast majority of those who opposed the war, didn’t oppose the war because they were pacifists but because of the treaties which led us to war. Fred Jowett is exactly that. If you at the ILP in Bradford, there were 1600 members at that time, men and women, all ages, you had about 20 or 30 outright pacifists, a number of others opposed to war. The vast majority supported the war effort. If there approx 900 men in the Bradford ILP, of those half would be in their fourties onwards. That leaves about 400 of war age, of those approx 370 or 80, attested under the derby scheme. If the war needed them, they were prepared to go. As Fred Jowett said, ‘we are tagged as an anti-war party but can any other political party in Bradford show such a proportion of men who are prepared to go’? There are many different sorts of opinions there. It’s too easy to say that they were opposed to war, the vast majority of the old ILP were prepared to go and fight. In the 1930’s, what changed the ILP was the Spanish Civil War. There was up to about 100 ILPer’s who went and fought. The only time the ILP, after 1932 no longer a member of the Labour Party, opposed a war was the Second World War. It actually opposed the Second World War. Partly influenced by communists but particularly influenced by the concern that some of the war contracts taken out by the Germans in the north east in 1936/37 were still being honoured in 1941 via intermediaries working through Switzerland. They saw it as a capitalist war, a capitalist front. I’m not sure I’d agree with them but people did honour the contracts to the Germans that were fighting us. That’s the view that came in. Q : Ramsay Macdonald opposed the First World War . KL : Yes, he wasn’t a pacifist but he opposed the war. He gave up his position as secretary of the party. Q : And Keir Hardie? KL : Keir Hardie both supported and opposed the war. He took that line of individual conscience. His own position was that he didn’t want the war for a number of reasons. He took the individual attitude of the ILP which was basically he honoured those who fought and those who didn’t fight. Q: Moving to the general strike in 1926, the official Labour Party policy was lukewarm? KL : It might have been lukewarm but official policy was support. The aim of it was to fight, as Ramsey Macdonald said ‘to the last minute, of the last hour, of the last day’ to avoid the conflict if we can. Thereafter when the general strike occurred, you could criticise the Labour Party for not doing a great deal but in fact they weren’t in a position to do a great deal. Many trade unionists would have said to the Labour Party; ‘we are running the show’. Q : Can we draw any parallels between the general strike of 1926 and the miners strike of 1984? A lot of people felt betrayed by the lack if support from the Labour front bench at the time of the miners dispute. KL : First of all, they are two completely different events. In 1926 the TUC wanted to avoid that and took the view that you couldn’t beat a government. They have military power and you don’t. There was a lot of frustration at what was seen as betrayal and you get the same in 1984/85. My father was a miner who retired just before the miners strike began. I think there was a moment in that strike, if the various supporting unions in the mining industry had actually stuck out then Thatcher would have had to back off but it didn’t occur. Under the rules of the day, the government had already prevented financial support or the support you would have had in the general strike. It would have been illegal to have taken industrial action. If you had done so then you’re assets would be stripped. In that particular dispute, I think the real problem is that Joe Gormley might have been better, a cleverer leader than Arthur Scargill. You’d have got more subtlety with Gormley. There’s no doubt that what Scargill said was right, that there was a hitlist of pits and there was. He was right but they’re not comparable. Q : Kinnock might deny this, but he felt that to support the miners too fully would be an electoral disadvantage. Tony Benn might say ‘that is true but sometimes you have to fight for your own people’. From the history of the party, would there always be that dilemma? KL : There is always a problem for leadership of the Labour Party. If you become leader, you try to occupy the centre ground, if you become prime minister, you have to occupy the centre ground. If you look at the Michael Foot era, it was not the best. A good leftwinger, a brilliant speaker, one of the best. Someone like Michael Foot had a brilliant mind, brilliant parliamentarian but it was difficult for him to play the part of parliamentary leader which is to occupy the centre. Labour leaders inevitably, wherever they have started, they end up in the middle. Q : Moving to the failure of the Labour Government in 1931 and the betrayal of Ramsay Macdonald. How did the party respond to that? KL : 1931 always haunts Labour. Q : Did the party change after this? KL : The party had to change, it went from 291 MP’s to 50 odd. Some of them were ILPer’s who weren’t going to take any notice of them. So really you a period where Labour tried to build it’s strength with million member campaigns but more importantly it thought about building up it’s policies. Those were led by people like Hugh Dalton, the platform for 1945. There were other things like the Labour leader would not take office of the prime minister of the party or PLP. Q : But from it's collapse in 1931, how did it revive itself? Did it attempt a change in ideology? KL : Well Labour only lost about a million votes. It was a regrouping, a re-establishment of the party. Then the governments of 1945 to 1951, given the circumstances, the financial restrictions, the problems of rebuilding Britain, they did a remarkable job. It was the height of Labour. Q : Would you criticise Attlee for the secret development of the atom bomb? KL : There was already on course before he came in. It’s difficult, I’m anti-nuclear but perhaps it was inevitable in the circumstances of the time and the development of the cold war. Even Nye Bevan changed his views. There is always the hypocrisy of nuclear weapons, we would deny Iran them but we would like to revamp our own. Q : Let’s move onto Nye Bevan, with the rise of the Bevanites, what was the catalyst for that? KL : They didn’t emerge until the early 50’s. Before the Bevanites there was ‘Keep Left’. ‘Keep Left’ had a very long term strategy, Ian Mikardo and others, their strategy was to build a European force to try to ensure America and the USSR would be neutralised. The idea of a European army was to save money and then invest in your own country. Keep Left had a long term perspective with economic policies along those lines. Ultimately, in April 51, three people left government. Nye Bevan as the leading figure, minister of Labour at that time, minister of health before, Harold Wilson and Captain John Freeman. Keep Left gathered around them and the Bevanites emerged. However a lot of the policies of the Bevanites were an immediate thing rather than a long term strategy. Bevan nearly gets kicked out of the party in 1955. He then starts to change his position, on nuclear weaponry, he becomes deputy leader of the party, there’s the famous picture of Gaitskell, Bevan and Barbara Castle. Q : Would you see Bevan as opposed and concerned about the revisionism of Gaitskell and Crosland? KL : At any stage Labour has had that debate. Whether it’s the 1910 period, the 1920’s, the 1940’s, the 1950’s. The interesting thing about the third way, or whatever it’s called these days, Blairism, there is an element where you can reach back to the roots. There was always a commitment that socialism releases you to be an individual and to contribute. Where they wouldn’t have gone, they wouldn’t accept the idea of partnership in the same way between private and public. The great focus was of a lot of these old socialists was that the state and the local authorities need to run affairs. Even then there is marked differences. You’d have someone like Fred Jowett, a socialist all his life, an ILPer, a great labour leader. When it comes to municipal elections, he believes in the workers, the people running affairs. It’s not necessarily in line with the Ramsay Macdonald state control view. It’s not quite the same thing. That has an element of the experts running it which is what some didn’t want. It’s often perceived as the same but it’s not. Q : There is now a lot of people on the left feel the Labour Party is forever lost. KL : My particular position is that I was a member from 1964 to 1995. By 1994 I used to pay contributions to help them beat Thatcher and then Major but I didn’t dramatically tear up my membership, I simply did not renew it. I got a phone call at one stage asking if I’d like to contribute and I said ‘when you find socialism again then I’ll contribute’. Labour had just changed clause four. I used to be able to remember clause four but this new one is so vague. I’ve got a new memory but not that good a memory. Q : But Gaitskell tried to get rid of clause four. KL : Gaitskellism was a little bit different. They did emphasise less the need for state control. They didn’t develop this link of partnership, if you want a route to Blair there may be a stronger route through Harold Macmillan. It’ll be interesting to see how Brown proceeds. He is much more fundamentally old Labour than Blair ever was, what version of New Labour he comes up with, I’m not certain. Labour needs to win but it needs to have a heart. Q : Going back to the idea of leaders of the left, Nye Bevan, Tony Benn, they are always cast in the role of bogeyman . The right wing of Labour use it to scare the party, the Conservatives to scare the voters. KL : It’s difficult to see how either of them would be. People try to suggest that Bevan is an old Marxist. There’s a book by Campbell which suggests that but he broke many connections with Marxism, his career suggested he wasn’t. Tony Benn again, it’s difficult to see him as bogeyman, religious, a family man, doesn’t drink. Q : A vegetarian. KL : A vegetarian! Everything that the middle class would love! His politics aren’t that extreme, perhaps too left wing for the Labour Party, too right wing for the Communists. He’s still a very witty, charismatic lecturer, you forget he's in his eighties. I’m a great admirer of Benn, he would never have been a right leader, the wrong sort of person as that role is assumed. He is a political animal, a very able political animal. He always represented a minority in the Labour Party. He was the wrong person in cabinet and they weren’t the best of times. He was a very far seeing man and on most respects I would agree with him. On things like Europe I might disagree, I think we have to be part of it to play a role although I’d like to see it more socialist. He’s one of the great parliamentarians of the 20th Century. To me, the greatest was Nye Bevan, you couldn’t miss out Lloyd George as a performer. I hate to say but Winston Churchill as a performer. There are some great acts to follow. I would put Michael Foot up there and Tony Benn would not be far behind. He’s got to be in that top group of great speakers. One of the great speakers and great minds. |
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| MANY THANKS TO PROFESSOR LAYBOURN FOR HIS PATIENCE AND GENEROUS GIVING OF TIME AND FOR INSPIRING COUNTLESS NUMBERS OF STUDENTS INCLUDING MYSELF. (THERE IS A FULL LIST OF HIS PUBLICATIONS BELOW) |
Britain's First Labour Government, with John Shepherd (Palgrave, 2006) Marxism in Britain : dissent, decline and re-emergence 1945-c.2000 (Routledge, 2006) Unemployment and employment policies concerning women in Britain, 1900-1951 (Mellen, 2002) A Century of Labour (Sutton Publishing, 2000 and 2001) Under the Red Flag: Communism in Britain, with Dylan Murphy (Sutton Publishing, 1999) Representations and Reality of War: The British Experience, edited with Keith Dockray (Sutton Publishing, 1999) Modern Britain since 1906 (I.B.Tauris, 1999) Britain on the Breadline: A Social and Political History of Britain 1918-1939 (Sutton Publishing 1998) A History of British Trade Unionism 1750-1990 (Sutton Publishing, 1997) British Socialism 1881-1951 (Sutton Publishing, 1997) Social Conditions, Status and Community 1860-1920, edited by K. Laybourn (Sutton Publishing, 1997) The General Strike Day by Day (Sutton Publishing, 1996) The Evolution of British Social Policy and the Welfare State 1800-1990 (Keele UP, 1995) The Rise of Labour: The History of the Labour Party, 1890-1979 (Edward Arnold, 1988) Liberalism and the Rise of Labour 1890-1918, with Jack Reynolds, 1984. Articles and Essays > 'Waking up to the fact that there are any unemployed', Women and Unemployment in the inter-war years, 1918-1939; History (2003) 'The Failure of Socialist Unity in Britain c.1893-1914', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1994) 'The Rise of Labour and the Decline of Liberalism: The State of the Debate', History (1995) 'The Labour Party, 1923-1935', in B. Brivati and R. Heffernan (eds), The Labour Party: A Centenary History (Palgrave, 2000) |
| This interview is also available as a word document, please email thebennites@yahoo.co.uk for a copy |
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