by Blair, Tony
It was a moment for which, at points consciously but more often unconsciously, I had been preparing. For years – at least up to 1992 – I had always assumed Gordon would be leader. I was not only happy with that, I actually rejoiced in it. I didn’t want the job. I was high enough to be able to espy its responsibility and its pain. No, if someone else could do it, I would be the supportive and loyal lieutenant. Fine by me. Good by me, in fact.
But by 1992, we had lost four times in a row. What’s more, our vote was stuck around 32 per cent. After thirteen years of Tory government and in the middle of a recession which you could say they had in part ‘caused’, still we hit a 32 per cent ceiling. Why? For some, electoral reform seemed appealing. No matter how well we did in between times, come the election day, the country reverted. That was the tenor of Labour thinking and of much of the commentary.
To me, such defeatism was not so much wrong as absurd. Why on earth should it be so? From early on, even before my election to Parliament in 1983, I had realised the Labour problem was self-made and self-induced. We were not in touch with the modern world. We could basically attract two sorts of people: those who by tradition were Labour, and those who came to a position of support for socialism or social democracy through an intellectual process. Many trade union activists were in the first category; I was a member of the second. Neither group were what I would call ‘mainstream’, and together they did not remotely add up to a constituency large enough to be in a position to win and to govern.
Furthermore, the first category was becoming smaller. The days of the old trade unionists were passing, along with many of the industries that they dominated – coal, steel, shipbuilding, textiles. The new industries – in particular those driven by emerging technologies, and modern service industries – were not attracted by the trade union mixture of industrial agitation and politics. More importantly, neither were those who worked in them. There was something irretrievably old-fashioned about the meetings, the rules, the culture. Some trade unionists realised this and tried to effect change, but the comfort zone was too big, too enticing, too enveloping for the leadership ever to feel the necessity to change. They could see it was important and occasionally they made steps towards it, as in the development of new union services, but it was not existential. They didn’t feel: change or die. There was no general election that pronounced an unalterable and unavoidable verdict; just the steady draining away of members, support and relevance. Unfortunately, they were still powerful and sufficiently relevant within the Labour Party, where the fact that they were courted and feted only added to their comfort.
Also, the nature of the union leaders themselves was changing. The leaders of the early and mid-twentieth century like Ernie Bevin, or Jack Jones later, were titans: working-class men who, through union meetings, colleges and conferences, achieved the education society had denied them, and who were shining examples of self-improvement. In those days, meetings were well attended – hundreds at a branch meeting was not exceptional. They were arenas of debate, often fiercely conducted, of discussion, of decision. They called for qualities of true leadership, of strategy and tactics combined to advance a cause that at the time was both reasonable and essential.
Old miners who had spent a life in the coalfields of the North-East used to tell me of the solemn ritual of such meetings, their significance in the community, their grandeur even, in terms of what they represented to local people. To be the branch official was a major role. To get to be an official was to have your feet on the rungs of achievement. To lead the Durham coalfield, for example, as Sam Watson, the famous leader of the 1950s, did, was to occupy a position of genuine authority. When Attlee was Labour leader and a dubious proposition was put forward, he would say: ‘Can’t be done. Sam Watson wouldn’t have it.’
But all progressive movements have to beware their own success. The progress they make reinvents the society they work in, and they must in turn reinvent themselves to keep up, otherwise they become hollow echoes from a once loud, strong voice, reverberating still, but to little effect. As their consequence diminishes, so their dwindling adherents become ever more shrill and strident, more solicitous of protecting their own shrinking space rather than understanding that the voice of the times has moved on and they must listen before speaking. It happens in all organisations. It is fatal to those who are never confronted by a reckoning that forces them to face up and get wise. The new leaders of the unions tended to ape the old, but in a context so changed that it became increasingly pointless except in maintaining the morale of those who just wanted to carry on as they were.
When she took on the trade unions, Margaret Thatcher didn’t come out of a sealed chamber with a new idea. It already existed: Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle had it with In Place of Strife; Edward Heath had it in the Industrial Relations Act of 1971. Both were attempts to bring union power within the purview of normal law. The difference was that by the time she took over, it was clear that an evolutionary attack on trade union privileges had failed and only a revolutionary one would succeed. And she had the character, leadership and intelligence to make it happen.
She was also greatly helped by her opponents. When Arthur Scargill became leader of the miners and the strike of 1984–5 began, it was plain that the choice was between on the one hand a very right-wing prime minister who was nonetheless democratically elected as leader of the nation and also correct about the excesses of union power; and on the other a leftist union leadership that was obviously undemocratic and completely out of touch with the modern world.
As I surveyed the wreckage of the Labour Party in the aftermath of the 1983 election, I knew change had to come about. The trade union base simply could not support a modern political party if it was to be a governing party.
In time I came to another conclusion, concerning the second category of people attracted to the party. The intellectual Fabian way of the Labour Party had deep roots and a venerable history. Its leading lights, often born relatively wealthy but who were indignant about inequality, were remarkable people. Like George Orwell, Hugh Dalton, Stafford Cripps and the members of the New Left Book Club and the Haldane Society, they tended to be erudite, committed, passionate and intensely intellectual in approach. Tony Benn was an example. Tony Crosland was another (indeed he had taught Benn at Oxford). As was the case with me, they had their first taste of left politics through university life. In that rather artificial environment, there had been an insight gained into the iniquity of the system; a conversion arising from a realisation that social conditions did indeed beget opportunity or the lack of it; an encounter of ideas that altered their life view. Once so altered, they became staunch advocates of social action and of the party of the trade unions and the working class whose lives had to be liberated from the conditions of poor housing, poor education and poor health care.
It took me a long time to work out what the problem with this second group was: although they cared for people, they didn’t ‘feel’ like them. They were like the Georges Duhamel character who says, ‘I love humanity, it’s just human beings I can’t stand.’ I don’t mean, incidentally, that they were aloof or unpleasant – they were often charming and fun – but they didn’t ‘get’ aspiration. They were almost too altruistic for their own political good. When injustice and inequality were reduced – in part through their efforts – they failed to see what would happen. A person who is poor first needs someone to care about it, and then to act; but when no longer poor, their objective may then become to be well off. In other words, for such a person it is about aspiration, ambition, getting on and going up, making some money, keeping their family in good style, having their children do better than them. My dad’s greatest wish was that I be educated privately, and not just at any old private school; he chose Fettes because he thought and had been told it was the best in Scotland.
The problem with the intellectual types was that they didn’t quite understand this process; or if they did, rather resented it. In
a sense they wanted to celebrate the working class, not make them middle class – but middle class was precisely what your average worker wanted himself or his kids to be. The intellectuals’ belief in equality strayed dangerously into the realm of equality of income, not equality of opportunity. The latter was a liberator; the former would quickly become and be seen as a constraint. The impulse of many of those helped by well-meaning intellectuals was essentially meritocratic, not egalitarian – they wanted to be helped on to the ladder, but once on it, they thought ascending it was up to them.
As the 1980s gave way to the 1990s and the defeats kept coming, I became ever more convinced that there were crucial bits of a governing coalition missing for Labour. Where was our business support? Where were our links into the self-employed? Above all, where were the aspirant people, the ones doing well but who wanted to do better; the ones at the bottom who had dreams of the top? The intellectuals were right in saying social conditions determined success in life – but only in part. So did hard work, character, determination, grit, get-up-and-go. Where were those people in our ranks? Nowhere, I concluded.
Even back in 1983, when I still had ideas on nationalisation and defence that would have astounded and drawn derision from the Tony Blair of 1994, I knew we were a party out of its time. But I had to exercise care. I very nearly failed to become a candidate at all in 1983 because my views on modernising the party were so heretical.
However, I couldn’t stop the mask slipping from time to time. Straight after the 1983 election, as a new MP, I attended the post-election rally in Spennymoor Town Hall. We had lost by a landslide, worse than in 1979, since when there had been a deep recession. The Labour Party had been monumentally rejected.
The rally was entitled ‘Lessons from Defeat’. The blurb on the leaflet advertising it called for the most frank debate. I had been a barrister for near enough eight years and I was used to taking facts, dissecting them, analysing them, reassembling them and drawing conclusions. I was trained to be very rational in my thought processes. So: we had had a thumping great annihilation. Worst ever defeat. What’s more, as I knew from personal canvassing, even those who voted for us told me frequently that they had done so despite our policies and leadership, not because of them.
From 1979 to 1983, Tony Benn performed the political equivalent of a conjuring trick. He convinced the Labour Party that the real reason we had lost in 1979 to Margaret Thatcher was because Jim Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, had been too right wing. Weird, I know, but true. Thus convinced, Labour moved sharply left and advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament, pulling out of Europe and wholesale nationalisation. It was remarkable, and a huge tribute to his charisma and persuasive power. For a moment, it looked like he might even win the election for deputy leader and thus become the dominant force in the party. His opponent was Denis Healey, the former Labour Chancellor who had had to take the tough measures to sort out the economy after Britain went to the International Monetary Fund for help in 1976. Had Benn won, it would have been a defeat for the whole leadership, and most likely Michael Foot would have been toppled by him shortly afterwards. This was narrowly averted; but in the leftward march, the Labour Party split. A new party was formed in the centre, the Social Democratic Party, which immediately drew large-scale support from moderate Labour voters.
So you might reasonably conclude that the period 1979 to 1983 had been an unmitigated disaster and that something had gone rather seriously wrong. Pretty obvious, I thought.
The meeting’s title appeared to indicate people wanted to learn lessons. The platform consisted of me as the local MP, Dennis Skinner as standard-bearer of the far left at the time, and various assorted union people. Only a complete ingénu or total clot – i.e. me – could have thought it was going to be a balanced, frank debate.
Now, I had won my selection as Labour’s candidate for the seat over the far left’s choice, a man called Les Huckfield. He was a genuinely interesting political phenomenon – and only goes to show the odd effect politics can have on people. In the 1960s he had been Labour’s youngest MP; a moderate; a minister; a rising star. However, for reasons everyone assumed were to do with ambition but may have been sincere conviction, he caught the Benn virus and became overnight a fully paid-up ultra-leftist. When his constituency disappeared in the national boundary reorganisation, which had incidentally brought the Sedgefield constituency into being, he then toured the country trying to upend sitting MPs in their reselection. By a mixture of means, the doors were always barred and he became a bit like something out of Transylvania wondering from village to village and having the garlic and crosses hung above the doors. But he damn near succeeded in Sedgefield, and only the organising genius of John Burton, my prime constituency ally and later my agent, prevented it. Les Huckfield’s defeat shocked and angered him and there were murmurings and rumours from his camp that they would aim to deselect me and get him in on the next reselection contest. So it was all very raw.
Anyway, I’m the local MP in Spennymoor, so I speak first. I get up. I give a logical, rational and, though I say it myself, entirely accurate analysis of why Labour lost and the lessons we should draw. I was as frank as the blurb could possibly have meant.
I really quite warmed to my theme. Labour had lost touch. It had failed to spot how society had changed. I had two lines I was rather proud of: one was about Labour’s attitudes being from the era of ‘black-and-white TV’ (most people by 1983 having colour TVs); the other was about the party ‘simply repeating old adages learned on your grandparents’ knees’ or some such.
Even I could tell it wasn’t exactly going down a storm; but in those days, I had everything written out and didn’t have the facility of adjusting mid-speech. Those were my thoughts. I wrote them down. I read them out. I finished to a smattering of applause from the few supporters John had brought along. The rest sat – and I think this is the only time I ever saw such a thing – and folded their arms, in unison, their faces grimacing as if a thousand lemons had been forced down their throats.
Dennis got to his feet. Still in unison, their arms unfolded and their faces began to smirk in eager anticipation. They knew what was coming. I didn’t.
In later years, Dennis was one of my best (if somewhat closet) supporters. He didn’t agree with any of my policies, but he liked someone who whacked the Tories. Though I’m not sure he would thank me for saying so, he mellowed and became a nicer person. In particular, he used to give me brilliant PMQs advice, pointing out with uncanny accuracy the weaknesses of my Tory opponents, feeding me one-liners and explaining what would rouse the troops behind me. But back then Dennis was your original firebrand. He was also a genius at a particular type of left-wing rally speech. He was in his element, and little new-boy muggins had given him an opening as large as your average open-cast mine (which he didn’t much like either, since he had been a miner and to him proper mines were deep underground).
There’s nothing quite like being utterly and publicly humiliated for teaching you a lesson. The meeting learned very few lessons (and those the wrong ones) from Labour’s defeat. But I learned one big one from Dennis that day.
‘So,’ he began, ‘your new MP, supposed to be a Labour MP [particular emphasis on word ‘Labour’], whose experience in Labour politics [again much emphasis on ‘Labour’] up to now includes [here reading from a piece of paper with extraordinary thespian timing and skill] Durham Choir School [private school much hated by the local proletariat]; Fettes College, Edinburgh – the Eton of Scotland I’m told, [in an aside] not that I’d know [much laughter and applause]; St John’s College, Oxford [said with an especial sneer]; and the Bar [here applause] – and that’s not the one you buy a pint in [uproarious outburst of laughter] but one full of lawyers [pantomime hisses]; your new Labour MP thinks our grandparents didn’t know what they were talking about; that it’s time we disowned them; that now’s the moment when we tell them – many of whom never owned so much as a wireless, never mind a black-and-whi
te TV – that they don’t belong in Thatcher’s Britain [looks of horror on faces of audience]. Well, let me tell you, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair [my full name, rather unfortunately printed several times in the course of the Beaconsfield by-election], my grandparents were poor, it’s true; were humble folk, I admit it; were, I dare say, a little old-fashioned in their principles of loyalty and solidarity; but THEY WERE DECENT PEOPLE AND PROUD OF BEING WORKING CLASS.’ The last words rose to a crescendo accompanied by an eruption of applause, cheers and general favour to a degree that fairly lifted the roof off the place.
After that the speakers got up one by one, and you never heard so many heart-rending tales of the fortitude, heroism and near-divine decency of grandparents. Several opined that they were only alive today through their nan’s dedication; others spoke of how entire mining communities had been on the brink of destruction until rescued by some miraculous intervention of grandma or grandad. Without ever quite being explicit, there were dark insinuations that maybe my own grandparentage had been of the landed gentry, possibly even the mine-owning sort whose adages they could only imagine, but were no doubt along the lines of grinding the faces of the poor into the dust.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. The final speaker, after completing his own cover version of the grandparent riff, turned to me and concluded by saying: ‘I am sorry you don’t understand the history or traditions of the people up here; but, comrades and colleagues, here is someone who does . . .’ And, at the back of the hall, in walks Les Huckfield. Cue standing ovation.
As I staggered out, with people avoiding eye contact and scurrying past me like I was diseased, my then agent (and a lovely man) George Ferguson and his wife Hannah each put an arm round me. ‘Don’t worry,’ George said, ‘you were the only one in there talking any sense and I’m as working class as any of them.’