Billy Bragg, writing in the Guardian has said:
In trying to understand how it lost 4 million working-class voters between 1997 and 2010, the Labour party has found itself in strange waters. The notion of "Blue Labour" put forward by Maurice Glasman is already being used by some to propose a socially conservative, economically liberal agenda, which, with its appeals to flag, faith and family, sounds more like something that would go down well on doorsteps in Birmingham, Alabama, rather than in its West Midlands namesake.
I think he's over-reacting. I don't think Blue-Labour (not that I like the term) is about 3 Fs. I think it's about three Cs:
- Community
- Care
- Cooperation.
Now that's very different. Community is vital: much of what is said and written about the family by the right is myth based on something that was happening when I was a child - that a little nuclear unit lived in a house where dad worked, there were three children and mum went quietly mad in the isolation and desperation of it all.
Community is what we need: families are meant to be extended and when geography eliminates that possibility now communtiy replaces it.
Care underpins relationships: it is the foundation f trust, for provision for those less able and compassion for those in need. This is a bedrock of left wing thinking that differentiates its sense of the individual free to function in the community libertarianism from the right's vision of individuals acting alone.
And cooperation is surely another bedrock - the basis for our vision of enterprise? Isn't it by common effort that we build wealth?
These are old values. These are traditional values. These are values Labour lost for too long. These are surely what Maurce Glasman is talking about?
Yes there may be some overlap with faith - in my case there is - but please don't let the fact that some have faith get in the way. Never forget (and those of faith should never forget) faith is a choice, the right to which needs defending but which is optional. It's part f liberty - but all of fiath should accept to option of no faith is also a completely valid option.
And let's move on and on the left build that broad church around the positives of community, care and cooperation that we need to underpin what our society so badly wants - a compassionate government in a world that needs leadership.
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“In trying to understand how it lost 4 million working-class voters between 1997 and 2010”
Unfortunately the article gets it wrong in the very first sentence. Labour did not lose 4 million working class voters between 1997 and 2010, it lost 4 million, almost exclusively, middle class voters. Everything he says after that is therefore the wrong prescription.
I think Billy Bragg got the wrong end of the stick here because of terminological confusion. The term ‘Blue Labour’ was originally coined by Tony Benn I believe, to describe New Labour – the idea being that it was a copy of the Tories (which in some ways it certainly was).
The Maurice Glasman/Jon Cruddas conception of ‘Blue Labour’ is completely different in that it stands in opposition to much of New Labour – in particular the Blair/Brown Faustian pact with the city – and for a stronger sense of community, and protecting cherished institutions like the NHS against destruction by big business. What is ‘blue’ about this is something I don’t fully understand, and I think the term “Blue Labour” made more sense in the Tony Benn incarnation than in the Cruddas/Glasman usage, but that seems to be the terminology we are stuck with. There’s also something of a comparison going on with “Red Tory” Philip Blond, in that some of the ideas of Blond and Cruddas/Glasman are similar – although again I find this unhelpful because surely “Blue Labour” should be the opposite of Red Tory?
So it seems to me that Billy Bragg has got the wrong end of the stick here. Certainly there is NO evidence that Maurice Glasman or Jon Cruddas endorse neoliberalism – quite the opposite in fact!
I agree – the Blue thing is misleading – and also the comparison with Philip Blond – who I tried to get my head round and met several times but have now utterly given up on (and he seems to have disappeared – did he inb fact ever publish that book he wrote about for so long?)
Maurice seems to me to have grasped the true roots of what it is to be on the British social democratic left – and I like that
When did Billy Bragg have any credibility, writing about anti-racism and living in the whitest, richest pocket in the land, Dorset? His mother makes the point that he never goes NEAR Barking. Only the BBC give him credence.
The fight is not at the ‘community’ level, it is at the national level.
Democracy must be bounded – it is a system as well as an ideal, as well as anything else, and it is bounded at the national level.
‘Democracy’ at the EU level is a con, so it has to be the national.
As for ‘community’ and ‘local’ levels – we’ve seen how the national govt can pull the financial plug, The national govt holds the purse strings.
So – though the likes of the big phoney, Billy Bragg, might not like it – who cares, it is at the national level that we need to take back control.