Blue labour forging a new politics

272 Pages·2015·1.423 MB·English

by  Geary, Ian;Pabst, Adrian

‘The “Blue Labour” movement has emerged as one of the most influential and controversial
innovations of the British Left in a generation. Rooted in a deep reading of Labour history and
culture, it offers a compelling critique of the Blair and Brown governments and a potential
route to renewal – revisiting the past so as better to face the challenges of the future.’
– RAFAEL BEHR, Political Columnist, The Guardian
‘Something went horribly wrong with British politics in the 1990s. The modernisers drained
the meaning out of political engagement by focusing on strategy and presentation rather than
substance. As a result all British political parties are now facing mortal crisis. This book on
“Blue Labour” is the most thoughtful attempt yet to help devise an answer to a conundrum
which no twenty-first-century politician has yet been able to solve.’
– PETER OBORNE, formerly Chief Political Commentator,
Daily Telegraph
‘Anyone looking for an antidote to the stale and stultifying brand of liberalism which has
dominated British political discourse for far too long will find a refreshing and thought-
provoking alternative in the contributions to this timely volume.’
– MARK GARNETT, Senior Lecturer in British Politics,
Lancaster University
‘Blue Labour ably exposes the deficiencies of neo-liberalism and offers an inviting political
agenda based on a “moral economy of mutual obligations”. With neo-liberalism discredited by
predatory banking, and socialism by the collapse of the planned economies, the paths back to a
“moral economy” are well worth exploring. They are not the property of any political party,
but will be of special interest to Labour supporters trying to develop an alternative narrative to
that of the free market and the centralized state.’
– ROBERT SKIDELSKY, FBA, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, University of
Warwick
‘Blue Labour isn’t, to me, about that rather glib little triad, Faith, Flag and Family. It’s an
attempt to reconnect the Labour Party with the very people it was set up to protect and
represent. And to devise modern and imaginative policies so that this reconnection might be
best achieved.’
– ROD LIDDLE, Associate Editor, The Spectator
‘In calling for a post-liberal politics of the left, Blue Labour advocates have put themselves in
a very mixed company. Watching them seek out a virtuous path through the ambiguous legacies
of nation, religion, family and other conservative themes is both fascinating and instructive,
challenging the presuppositions of any reader.’
– Colin Crouch, FBA, Emeritus Professor of Governance and
Public Management, University of Warwick

Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Contributors
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION Why Labour Lost and How It Can Win Again
Introduction Blue Labour and the Politics of the Common Good
PART ONE: NARRATIVE AND PROGRAMME
1 The Good Society, Catholic Social Thought and the Politics of the Common Good
2 The Blue Labour Dream
3 A Blue Labour Vision of the Common Good
PART TWO: LABOUR – PARTY AND POLITICS
4 Blue Labour: A Politics Centred on Relationships
5 Community Organising and Blue Labour
6 Blue Labour and the Trade Unions: Pro-Business and Pro-Worker
PART THREE: POLITICAL ECONOMY
7 The Common Good in an Age of Austerity
8 ‘Civil Economy’: Blue Labour’s Alternative to Capitalism
9 Globalisation, Nation States and the Economics of Migration
PART FOUR: ALTERNATIVE MODERNITY – ON NATURE, PROGRESS AND WORK
10 Nature, Science and the Politics of the Common Good
11 The Problem with Progress
12 Meaningful Work: A Philosophy of Work and a Politics of Meaningfulness
PART FIVE: LABOUR’S RADICAL ‘CONSERVATISM’
13 Labour’s ‘Conservative’ Tradition
14 The Gentle Society: What Blue Labour Can Offer Conservatives
PART SIX: FAITH AND FAMILY
15 Vision, Virtue and Vocation: Notes on Blue Labour as a Practice of Politics
16 The Labour Family
Conclusion: Blue Labour – Principles, Policy Ideas and Prospects
POSTSCRIPT TO THE NEW EDITION Blue Labour and Common Good Politics
New edition published in 2015 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London · New York
First published in 2015 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd

Copyright Editorial Selection, Introduction and Conclusion
© 2015 Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst.
Copyright Individual Chapters © 2015 Luke Bretherton, Jon Cruddas, Rowenna Davis, Ruth Davis, Frank Field, Maurice
Glasman, David Goodhart, Arnie Graf, David Lammy, Dave Landrum, Michael Merrick, John Milbank, Adrian Pabst, Tom
Watson, Ed West, Rowan Williams and Ruth Yeoman.

The right of Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

The chapters in this volume comprise the individual views of their respective writers and should not be read as an official
statement of policy or as an endorsement by the editors.

ISBN: 978 1 78453 491 2
eISBN: 978 0 85773 781 6

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

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In memoriam
John Hughes (1978–2014)
Foreword
Rowan Williams
At the heart of our current cultural muddle lies a paradox that far too few people seem to have
noticed. All sorts of intellectual disciplines, from neuroscience to literary theory, have in
recent decades questioned the idea that the ‘starting position’ for human identity is a solitary,
speechless individual who moves out from primitive isolation to negotiate cautiously with
other similar creatures, and learns to use language as a tool for labelling objects that can be
variously managed and utilised. This powerful myth cannot credibly survive the analysis of
how language and consciousness actually work: we ought to be more than ever alert to the fact
that our self-awareness is shaped by the inseparable awareness of other subjects, that
projection into the life of the other is there from the start, that how others speak to us, imagine
us, nurture or fail to nurture us, is not an ‘extra’ to our sense of who or what we are but
completely woven into the very idea of being a ‘self’.
Yet so much of our public rhetoric and popular imagination is still clinging to the myth. Self
and other is a zero-sum game for many; it shows up in attitudes to foreigners and migrants, in
the world of finance, in demands for more explicit teaching about a single dominant national
history to be defined over against others. The language of human rights – an essential moment
in the development of a critical and humane politics – has encouraged some to speak as though
the self-evident needs I identify for myself have an intrinsic authority. We are fast losing, as
many commentators have pointed out, a solid idea of public service and public good – the idea
of universally shared responsibility for shared well-being, and the idea that there are some
goods for human beings that are necessarily held in common and achieved by collaboration.
And that is to say that we are losing the sense that there are other kinds of relationship between
people than the exchange of commodities.
There is nothing new in this reading of our situation; what needs to be brought out a bit more
clearly is that there is a contradiction between this powerful cultural myth and the way in
which sciences and humanities alike are describing us. In other words, we need to wake up to
the fact that a lot of our politics assumes various things about our humanity that are not true;
that we are being actively encouraged to lead lives at odds with what we actually are, with
how our minds and feelings actually work. The challenge to conventional politics at the
moment is the question of what the political world might look like if it tried to work with
rather than against the grain of our humanity. This collection of essays seeks to meet that
challenge.
These essays do not represent a simple argument for the priority of ‘community’ over
‘individualism’. That can too easily become another zero-sum exercise. The difficult and
necessary job is to do with rethinking what we mean by an individual – not lobbying for some
sort of subjection of person to collective. Can we build a realistic political platform from the
vision of persons always in relation, not just ‘entering into’ relation? A political platform from
which our dependence and indebtedness to one another and to the entire material environment
we inhabit can be acknowledged in a way that lets us live within our limits and attend to one
another’s well-being with a measure of grace and generosity? In short, can we make politics a
‘humanist’ affair, in the proper and wide sense of the word that has to do both with the thick
fabric of civic solidarity and with the opening up of imaginative and intellectual horizons to all
citizens?
Any political agenda that reflects this ‘humanism’ needs to think hard about the state and its
task. As several contributors stress, we cannot be content with views of the state that see it
either as the sole and all-powerful provider of values and solutions or as a residual guarantor
of legal stability and not much more. We need to think through what a moral state looks like:
not an authority that imposes values but one that gives due weight to supporting what is already
supportive, nourishing what is already nourishing, in the primary communities that make up
society. Such a state will be robustly capable of challenging localism when it becomes
defensive and exclusive, but not afraid of building local capacity and trusting local perception.
And, as we know all too well, it is not good enough to express aspirations about this without
doing what is needed for that building work. The state as ‘community of communities’ is a
frequently quoted formula, as relevant now as it has ever been: it takes for granted that the state
will be holding the ring in serious and demanding discussion about resources and plans and
relative needs among the diverse communities and localities of a society. And it takes for
granted that participation at local and wider levels can happen and is effective.
Again and again since the financial crisis of 2008 onwards, people have said that we cannot
go ‘back to normal’, if ‘normal’ is a world dominated by the artificial manipulation of
financial exchange, the massive inflation of uncontrolled credit and the assumption that a
virtual economy is more important than the business of making things and maintaining public
well-being. Thus far, relatively few political voices have offered a persuasive way of turning
our backs on the seductions of this bizarre ‘normality’ in the name of what I earlier called
political humanism. Now, if ever, is the time for more voices to be raised. I hope that these
essays will speak effectively to those on all parts of the political map who want to see a
programme that has something more to do with the real processes of human growing, maturing
and flourishing. We cannot indefinitely go on planning against our own nature – not to mention
the nature of what lies around us.