by Blair, Tony
All these years later, his influence remains like an insistent reminder that life has to be lived for a purpose. Politically, Pete was on the left, but religion came first. Therefore, so, in a sense, it did for me. Not that the two were separated by him, or me, but the frame within which you see the world is different if religion comes first. Religion starts with values that are born of a view of humankind. Politics starts with an examination of society and the means of changing it. Of course politics is about values; and religion is often about changing society. But you start from a different place.
This is vital in understanding my politics. I begin with an analysis of human beings as my compass; the politics is secondary. Later, when I became sure that the ‘progressive problem’ was an insufficiently clear separation between ends and means, this approach – very much instilled by Peter – was what allowed me to come to that conclusion freely.
Geoff would give me books on politics to read. Peter would give me the philosopher John Macmurray’s works, such as Reason and Emotion and Conditions of Freedom. I developed a theory about the basis of socialism being about ‘community’ – i.e. people owed obligations to each other and were social beings, not only individuals out for themselves – which pushed me down the path of trying to retrieve Labour’s true values from the jumble of ideological baggage that was piled on top of them, obscuring their meaning. For me, it was socialism, and wasn’t about a particular type of economic organisation, anchored to a particular point in history.
The Indian was a postgraduate student called Anmol Vellani. One day, sitting in his room on the ground floor of the quadrangle at St John’s College, he gave me an insight that stayed with me and had a curious but profound effect on the public sector reform programme of later years. I can still picture the moment.
Anmol, perhaps because of the experience of India, but also because he had more political maturity, was debating with me the new ideas I had received from Geoff. I was trying them out on him, prodding and pushing, hoping to get a better understanding of the new language I was learning to speak. We were talking about capitalism and the state. I was repeating the view that the state had to take over from the interests of capitalism, which only cared about profit – the usual Marxist line!
Anmol shook his head. ‘It is not as simple as that,’ he said. ‘The state, too, can be a vested interest. It’s not the same as the public interest, you know, not in practice at least.’
‘But it should be,’ I insisted.
‘Should be and is are two very different things, my friend,’ he replied, laughing at my innocence.
The fourth person was Olara Otunnu, a Ugandan. He had been president of the Students’ Guild at university in Kampala and had to flee from Idi Amin. St John’s took him in. He was a gifted speaker, really quite brilliant, and a lovely, spiritual human being. I think he regarded the student leftists enthusing about Marxism in the cloisters of privilege at Oxford with a degree of amused detachment. His politics were all about development and the burden of corrupt and appalling government ruining the prospects of the people. He taught me to look beyond the confines of Western student debate and think about the world that was not debating ‘capitalism versus socialism’, but life, hope and health versus death due to the ravages of poverty, conflict and disease.
It was an unusual group of people – diverse, unconventional, freethinking – who, at a moment when my mind was open, willing and eager to learn, shaped the structure of my thinking for the years to come.
When I was talking through my thoughts on Clause IV with Alastair in France, I could tell he loved the brassiness of it, and by the time I left I could see his mind whirring away on how to sell it. During the course of the conversation I also discovered something I hadn’t been a hundred per cent sure of previously: he had clanking great balls. This was someone you would have to pull back, not push forward. In a world dominated by the timid, cautious and the overcalculating, I liked that. He and Peter Mandelson might fight (and my goodness they did, occasionally literally), but in tandem they would be as formidable a political force as could be imagined. Peter would slip into the castle through a secret passageway and, by nimble footwork and sharp and incisive thrusts of the rapier, cleave his way through to the throne room. Meanwhile, Alastair would be a very large oak battering ram destroying the castle gates, and neither boiling pitch nor reinforced doors would keep him out. With the two of them in harness, the battle would be fought with a boldness just short of madness; but it would be won, and, what’s more, won in style.
As I often did in those days, I had split the holiday between France and Italy. The first part had been near Toulouse and then we caught a train to Marseilles to see Alastair, and thence to the very north of Liguria where Tim Allan’s parents had a house in the hills near Crespiano. It was one of the last really free-and-easy holidays I had. No one in the village had a clue who I was. There was no protection back then, no security or staff, just us as a family together. Bliss. We would go up to the village restaurant where you just sat at a table with everyone else. The food was simple but the pasta was home-made with great sauces, and for variety, you could go and participate in any number of August fetes, where in surroundings of extraordinary rustic beauty, each old village would put on entertainment in the square, including a wonderfully cooked local meal.
It was possibly the last time when I could travel abroad normally (I was already a marked man in Britain) without a glimmer of recognition from anyone. One night we visited La Gavarina d’Oro restaurant in the village of Podenzana to sample the special local pizza called panigacci, only to be turned away since there had been a mix-up in the booking (my poor Italian), and there was no table for us. We dutifully rebooked and went there two nights later. I don’t think that ever happened to me again.
While there, I got news of the latest opinion poll, showing we had achieved the highest rating of any political party ever, and had something ridiculous like a thirty-point lead. I didn’t set much store by it as those leads can come and go, but it was an indicator that my election as leader had been well received by the public. And that would help me with the party. I was under no illusions. Many, perhaps even a majority, who had voted for me had done so not because they shared my vision for the party, but because they thought I was a winner. For now, that was enough. I would use the public to change the party. Only later did I learn that it was a lot tougher the other way round.
Over the holiday period, I reflected on Clause IV and my thinking hardened. I now knew it had to be the first essential step. On my return, I began to consult close and senior people. My own associates were either already in the loop or easily convinced. Anji was enthusiastic of course, as was Peter. Philip was in favour but reckoned it was a really big thing that would mean serious, possibly terminal damage if it went wrong. But my staff, who shared my vision, were never going to be the problem.
I spoke to Gordon. He advised me that I had to ‘get Prescott on board’. It was good advice; though he was very non-committal on his own account, not anti, but I thought it a trifle ominous that he dodged the direct question of whether he thought it was a good idea. However, he clearly wouldn’t oppose it.
I had made up my mind to change the party General Secretary, Larry Whitty. It would be a key position in any party fight. I liked Larry, but our politics were different. I had begun to think that Tom Sawyer would be the ideal choice: a trade union man, but smart, loyal, modernising, and with the reach and authority to help me get things through. This fence had to be leapt at the gallop and there could be no excess baggage weighing us down as we jumped.
John Prescott was indeed critical, as Gordon had said. I knew this had to be approached with care. I saw him at my house, a gentle, reassuring and intimate environment. He was less taken aback than I thought he would be. As wily and perceptive on such matters as ever, he had already worked out that I wasn’t going to be an easy ride and that my desire to change the party – and take it not just to government but to a
different frame of mind – was real and indivertible. Right at the outset, his basic line had been: I will argue in private although if your mind is made up, I will come with you; or, if I feel so strongly, I will go, but I won’t stay and undermine from within. It was not, of course, a pledge of unconditional support; but it was a promise of straight dealing, which was important and, as it transpired, one that was largely kept.
John made it clear that although he thought the project was altogether unwise, he would reflect and consider it. He had a plethora of questions – how, when, replaced with what, drafted by whom, endorsed in what manner – some of which I could answer. I got him to the point where he at least accepted that a debate around what the party really stood for was necessary, and that Clause IV provided the vehicle. He favoured a delay to see how things went with the public – after all, we were so far ahead of the Tories – but I knew in my own mind that it was precisely at this moment, almost for that reason, that we had to act. We had to show that even with this lead in the polls we were going to take a risk because it was right to do so, and demonstrate through taking it that we knew our lead was conditional. Yes, the people were saying, we like the look of this guy and where he wants to take the Labour Party, but now prove it. Any sense of either complacency or caution and I knew the lead would melt under the hot sun of scrutiny.
When eventually party conference came round in October 1994, the public mood was still strong, but I was sure there lurked major doubts underneath. When a party has defined itself in a particular way which is not to the public’s liking, the definition has an uncomfortable habit of sticking around, like the smell of decay in an old house. You can use some air freshener, you can throw open a few windows and you can jolly people up a little with some positive description of how it’s going to be better; but the only thing that works, in the end, is to say: this place stinks, we’re going to make it over, i.e. keep the structure, revolutionise the rest.
I assessed that there were three types of Labour: old-fashioned Labour, which could never win; modernised Labour, which could win and keep winning, which was my ambition from the outset; and plain Labour, which could win once, but essentially as a reaction to an unpopular Conservative government. The last couldn’t win on its own terms with sufficient clarity, breadth and depth of support to be capable of sustaining victory through the inevitable troubled times of government. My favourite parable of the Gospel, the parable of the sower, always served as an example: the difference between plain Labour and modernised Labour was the difference between the seed that sprouted but never took real root, and the seed that yielded thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.
In order to keep winning, we needed to create a core of ideas, attitudes and policy that was solid, sustainable, strong; a sea wall that when the waves beat upon it was impregnable, that gathered friends to it and repelled foes. I knew that to do this meant confronting the old attitudes of the party not from time to time but every day, at every moment, on each occasion when they tried to reassert themselves. Conceding to them would matter not only in itself, but far more as a sign that the old house remained essentially untransformed.
I tried to see Labour as an ordinary, non-political member of the public saw us. I had many friends outside politics who thought the Tories were tired and should be put out. And what did they think of us? They thought we were for the poor; for the downtrodden; for the union men; for the accused and the dispossessed. They thought we were liberals on law and order and peaceniks on defence. Herein lay the problem: all of these sentiments, in their place, are good and worthy – they are why I’m Labour – but only in their place. As dominant, complete definitions of where Labour stood and who it represented, there was no earthly way they formed a broad enough, deep enough or popular enough coalition. Defined in this way, we were a party of protest, not of government.
Moreover, these were the kindest ways of describing these attitudes. In fact, not in their place, such sentiments could be counterproductive for the country: union interests before public interest; a refusal to accept change where it was necessary; weakness on law and order and defence; attitudes that might be principled but could also be naive.
Under Neil Kinnock and John Smith we had of course broadened, deepened and become more popular, but it felt to me – and more importantly to the public – like a negotiation between us and our past. We were talking in an upbeat way, but there was a tinge of reluctance about it, a reverence for the old days that smacked of denial about how bad it had been. There was a care in speaking about the way things were that indicated an uncertainty, a lack of thorough conviction about the way things would be in the future.
I wanted us to be emphatic, to be in the centre ground from belief, with passion, and with the total clarity that left our past behind, not in the sense that we didn’t keep the structure of our traditional beliefs, including their central foundation – the commitment to social justice – but rather that new ways of developing such foundations were needed in the modern world. From the very beginning, I was determined to be the architect of something revolutionary, transformative and undeniable. I had kept the plan on Clause IV very tight. On the opening weekend of party conference, just before it began, I started the consultations with other key people.
Jack Straw, who had written a pamphlet on the subject, was delighted. So was Neil Kinnock. Robin Cook thought it was crazy because it would split the party, and warned it might be the end of me. Margaret Beckett raised an eyebrow. Donald Dewar said, ‘This should be interesting’ in that funny Donaldish way. George Robertson, always sound, was supportive. On the whole, opinion was mixed and apprehensive. I spoke to Gordon several times but was careful not to disclose how it was to be announced. I’m afraid distrust was already present, like a shadow between us.
I had wanted to do it right at the end of my conference speech, and so inflammatory was it certain to be that we decided not to say it in the bald terms: ‘Clause IV is going to be abandoned.’ This was not because we didn’t dare to say it outside of the hall, but to say it in the hall itself could provoke a really adverse reaction which might mar the whole event. I was going to say we needed to decide what our aims and values really were for the modern world, and a debate would start soon (this took on John Prescott’s point about the necessity of a proper discussion). Then we would wait for the purport to sink in. It was a device, but my consultations had shown we needed one.
Late on the Saturday we had a final vigorous debate about the slogan for it, and the use of the phrase ‘New Labour’. Alastair invented the phrase ‘New Labour, New Britain’. He said we should put it up in the hall as the strapline for the conference. Looking back now, it seems obvious that we should have done, but at the time there was a furious dispute, I can tell you. At one point there was even talk of a compromise, ‘new Labour’, i.e. no capital N. And it wasn’t as trivial a point as you might think: New Labour with a capital N was indeed like renaming the party. Some of my inner circle warned there would be a dangerous reaction. Even Peter was worried. Finally, I thought, Let’s go for it. There was indeed a reaction but it was containable, and the impact was massive, an emphatic signal that this was not going to be a minor refurbishment but a wholesale renovation.
When, at the conclusion of my speech, I spoke of the need to redraw the party’s aims and values in its constitution (as George Robertson remarked, the hall was silent for a while, until the silence was broken by the sound of pennies dropping), and it was clear we were going to risk a vast internal party fight, the idea took hold that this leadership truly was different. This was red meat.
As if to underscore how difficult it was all going to be, the next day the party, at the insistence of the unions, passed a resolution reaffirming Clause IV. It was, ironically, helpful: it showed this was not a false wrestle put on for the cameras but a genuine fight, with real opponents and real pain. However, it also meant we had to win it or we were finished.
For me, I was absolutely clear: if the change was rejecte
d, I was off. As we approached the twenty-first century, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with even Communist China embracing the ‘socialist market’ economy, if the British Labour Party was going to assert that it believed in state ownership of ‘the means of production, distribution and exchange’, it meant we weren’t serious. Such a position would confirm all the public’s worst fears.
Of course opponents quickly shifted to asking: why have the internal row? This put opposition on a tactical, lower-ground basis. I retorted: there is a row only because you oppose the change. Either say you really do agree with the existing constitution, or accept the change.
The debate took six months. John Prescott finally came fully on board and that helped settle down the traditional wing of the party enormously. The Scottish Conference – which might have been tricky – passed a resolution in support of change, the first really big victory inside the party, setting the tone for the other swing voters to follow. If we could win in the heartland of the party, in Scotland where traditional thought was strong and where we might have anticipated resistance to such ‘middle-class’ thinking, then we could win in most places, and even in the unions. The opponents tried to rally and rail, but they were hamstrung by the overwhelming support for change among the public, who didn’t follow the detail but, as I anticipated, knew that it was really about whether the old Labour Party had changed or not.
The actual drafting was the product of an unusual collaboration between myself, Derry and Peter Hyman, with others providing commentary and suggestions. The initial draft was done sitting alone in Inverness in the family house of an old friend of mine, Mairi Stuart, just before the Scottish Conference. The final touches were put in place in our house in Islington, sitting in the bedroom with Peter Hyman, as downstairs our daughter Kathryn was having a birthday party. So I would go between games of pass-the-parcel and rewriting British social democracy.