Hickson John Smith

Old Labour's Last Hurrah?
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78590-889-7
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten

The death of John Smith on 12th May 1994 was one of those events which sticks in the memory. He was cut down at the moment that it looked as if he was set to become the next Prime Minister after a long political career and after successive electoral defeats for his party. This book, published to mark the thirtieth anniversary of his death, offers a comprehensive assessment of his leadership of the Labour Party, with chapters written by academic experts, on their chosen fields, and by those who knew him as advisers, MPs and journalists. There are two themes running through the book. The first seeks to examine the extent to which there was a John Smith 'effect' in terms of politics and policy and assess whether he succeeded in establishing his own agenda or simply followed that of his predecessor. The second examines the extent to which Smith was a representative of 'Old' Labour or 'New' Labour.

Dr Kevin Hickson is senior lecturer in British politics at the University of Liverpool, where he has worked since 2003. He has published extensively on British politics, particularly in the areas of political leadership, ideology and political economy. He is the author/ editor of books including James Callaghan An Underrated Prime Minister? (Biteback, 2020), Harold Wilson: The Unprincipled Prime Minister? Reappraising Harold Wilson (Biteback, 2016) and John Major: An Unsuccessful Prime Minister? Reappraising John Major (Biteback, 2017). He lives in Liverpool.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hickson, Kevin

Leseproben

2

John Smith and Ideology

Kevin Hickson

‘Politics ought to be a moral activity.’

John Smith, 20 March 1993 1

This chapter aims to locate John Smith within the longer traditions of democratic socialist (or social democratic) thought.* In so doing, it is important to identify some key characteristics of Smith’s ideological views. On the one hand, Smith is regarded as a man who was guided by firm principles, drawn from his Christian background. At the same time, however, Smith is seen as a pragmatist, willing to adapt to changing circumstances and electoral realities as Labour sought to find a way forward from its fourth general election defeat in a row. As the epigraph at the start of the chapter shows, for Smith, politics was rooted in a system of beliefs.

THE NATURE OF BRITISH SOCIALISM

The Labour Party, much like the Conservatives, is itself a broad coalition of people with divergent views brought together by the first past the post electoral system. What defines the right and left wings has changed over time, but broadly speaking, in terms of political economy, the left sees itself as more hostile to capitalism, wishing to see a much more significant extension of public ownership and state direction of the economy. The right has often been seen as more willing to compromise with the private sector.† The left is usually seen as more fundamentalist and the right as revisionist.

Those seeking to revise or modernise the Labour Party’s programme have relied on a distinction between values and policies or ‘ends’ and ‘means’. While the policies are seen as flexible and requiring regular updating, the values are held to be timeless. However, this seemingly neat distinction is problematic because twice since 1945 the ends/means distinction has been important. Labour Party revisionists in the 1950s and early 1960s – such as Hugh Gaitskell and his followers Douglas Jay and Tony Crosland – argued that the left of the party had become fixated on public ownership, which was a means and not even a particularly important one at that.‡ Instead, attention should be placed on ethical principles such as equality and social justice, which could be achieved through alternative policies more effectively.§ The left protested that public ownership was more akin to an end goal, but the party moved away from seeing it as such, adopting a policy that owed more to indicative planning and Keynesian economics. A similar controversy over ends and means came about in the New Labour years, with more traditional-minded social democrats such as Roy Hattersley arguing that the Blair government was failing to tax the richest in society sufficiently. Modernisers responded that this failed to take account of a more globalised economy in which social democratic policies had to be revised. But for traditionalists, the principle of greater equality of outcome could not be achieved without it, making New Labour revisionist – not just of means but also ends.

These debates are relevant when positioning John Smith within the social democratic tradition. According to Mark Stuart, Smith was initially influenced by Crosland.2 Smith first became an MP in 1970, when Crosland was entering what would turn out to be the final decade of his life. Crosland, by this stage, had already established himself as the leading theorist within the Labour Party, having published The Future of Socialism in 1956. Smith was on friendly terms with Crosland, and the two would sit together in the House of Commons tea rooms and bars. However, when Crosland stood for the leadership in 1976, Smith immediately supported James Callaghan, probably on the basis that he was most likely to win (which proved to be a correct calculation). By the time Smith entered the Cabinet, Crosland had died. Smith could be seen as a Croslandite, notwithstanding his support for Callaghan. Despite his pro-Europeanism, Smith was never a close associate of Roy Jenkins and it would seem that he never seriously contemplated joining the newly formed Social Democratic Party in 1981.3 Given this connection between Crosland, the high priest of Revisionism, and the early political career of Smith, it makes sense to analyse the latter’s ideology in terms of the ends/means distinction.

THE ARTICULATION OF ENDS

Smith subscribed to an ethical approach to socialism. In this, he was entirely consistent with earlier leaders. The Labour Party had quickly abandoned the revolutionary route to socialism when it was formed. Despite the revival of interest in Marxism at times of economic crisis – most obviously in the 1930s and 1970s – the Labour Party remained wedded to the ethical or reformist approach to socialism. This ethical approach consisted of an attachment to the principles of equality, liberty and community. The moral foundations for such principles were within the traditions of Christianity and humanism.

In terms of equality, Smith clearly believed in something that went beyond equality of opportunity. In this, he was consistent with the thoughts of Crosland. Though equality of opportunity was desirable, it was an insufficient notion for socialists. Equality of opportunity failed to recognise that starting points were unequal. Differences in income and wealth, family upbringing and innate qualities meant that people did not all have the same starting point. Therefore, there needed to be a focus on equality of outcome. However, for Crosland, complete equality of outcome was inefficient and would lead to an overpowerful state and the loss of personal liberty. There had to be a way of reconciling these issues, and for Crosland this consisted of a strong notion of equality of opportunity, in which people were provided with resources to overcome disadvantages, and greater equality of outcome through redistribution funded by higher rates of economic growth. Economic expansion was essential for the realisation of this agenda, since the rich would not be willing to see a fall in their absolute standard of living. Growth would allow for the maintenance of the absolute position of the better off, while also seeing an improvement in the relative position of the worst off.4 Crosland later linked this to Rawls’s notion of democratic equality in which inequalities were only justified if they were to the advantage of the least advantaged.5

According to Smith, the extension of individual liberty was his core value: ‘Freedom is our goal.’6 In this, he was entirely consistent not just with Crosland but also with his immediate predecessor, Neil Kinnock. Crosland had argued that without greater equality, individuals could not be truly free. In contrast, the New Right had tried to claim liberty from the left by linking it directly to the free market. As the state could only function by imposing laws, regulations and taxation on private citizens and companies, it inevitably eroded their personal liberty. The expansion of the state since 1945 amounted to a loss of liberty. The only way in which such lost liberties could be restored was through a contraction of the state and the expansion of the market, in which people could choose for themselves. Liberty was seen in purely negative terms – freedom from constraint – and Thatcher claimed to be setting the people free. Drawing on the ideas of the likes of the economist Friedrich Hayek, the positive conception of liberty (that people are only free if they have the resources to act) was dismissed.

A central objective of the social democratic left in the 1980s was to reclaim the idea of freedom from the New Right. Philosophers such as Raymond Plant provided the intellectual basis for the restoration of the positive case for liberty. By asking what is liberty for, Plant argued that it is necessary to have liberty in order to be able to do things.7 The theoretical freedom of negative liberty only made sense if people also have the capacity to act, which brings us back to the positive conception of liberty – the freedom of X from Y in order to do Z. Without adequate resources in terms of a social security safety net, free health care, employment, educational opportunities and such like, freedom was meaningless for the less fortunate in society. His ideas were taken up by Kinnock, Hattersley in his book Choose Freedom and others.8 It also informed the Statement of Democratic Socialist Aims and Values, published in 1988, which Hattersley intended would lay the ideological foundations for the forthcoming Policy Review announced by Kinnock.

Smith made it explicit that his understanding of freedom was this positive kind:

Not just the abstract and theoretical choices of Tory privatization – but the practical ability to make the choices that can lead to personal fulfilment: the ability to choose that comes from high class schools and hospitals, and from high wages and highly skilled jobs.9...