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Bevan  re-visited

544  2  December 2002   

You have accused me of exaggeration, in arguing that the Labour Party has been displaced by a Government Party, led by Tony Blair.  And I accept - in seeking to make a point forcefully by way of the written word, there is always the risk of exaggeration.

But my proposition should be considered carefully.  For mine is not to be dismissed merely as the disgruntled gripe of an ageing Labour outsider.  It is a general theory about the character of fully professionalised politics, in which all elected representatives, of all Parties, are forced to earn their living by competing for better and better management positions within the governmental establishment.  I am not blaming our professional politicians for acting as they do, or accusing them of perfidy or betrayal. I am merely observing that the whole character of the political system has been changed by the process of professionalisation. 

For this is not the constitutional model I encountered when I first addressed politics seriously, in the early 1960s.  Indeed, this new form of professional democracy, dominated by an elected salariat, poses new constitutional problems for ordinary citizens.  Hailsham no doubt also exaggerated, in coining the phrase "elective dictatorship" - but he did highlight one of the problems.  For it is gradually becoming clear that the Labour Party is now wholly incapable, through its own processes, of influencing the conduct of the Government Party which Tony Blair has built.  This struck me with great force, when I was listening to Labour NEC member Mark Seddon last week, at the heart of Welsh Party loyalty, in Aberdare.   Similar disempowerment characterises the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties, even if it is less obvious when they are out of power.  The professionals do precisely what they wish to do, in the drive for personal election and re-election.  Together, they spent £40,000,000 on the 2001 General Election - just one Election.  Representative democracy has generated its own new demons.

Where do we go from here?  I think the new professionals, acting together across Party lines, will be able to hold onto their role in controlling the fiscal and legislative heights of society.  The sweet lollipop of power is worth fighting for, in terms both of personal fulfilment and material gain.  But their obsession with getting and retaining power is the Achilles heel of the salariat, because well-organised groups of voters will be able to influence what they do by threatening electoral opposition. That is, after all, what is happening with the growth of special interest lobbying, and single issue campaigns.  These campaigners do not seek election to Parliament - they seek rather to exercise influence over the way that Parliament behaves.

That process could take a different turn.  Indeed, I predict that there will emerge new forms of political lobbies, or electoral societies, which will attract adherents to a general philosophical position.  Maybe the Countryside Alliance was one such format, in spite of its ramshackle character.  Last week, I spelt out my own prescription for re-invigorating the Labour Party - I argued that the need was for -

a new assertion of individual, human rights, a new leavening of all State initiatives by a growing sensitivity to human oppression, injustice and the abuse of power - the most important equality will in future be the equal enjoyment of those rights.

new forms of participatory democracy, greater individual lay involvement, communally and regionally, in the governance of society - for every citizen, there must be real equality of access to the governance of society.

a new judicial order, developing the institutions of independent assessment and regulation, expanding on the role of citizen juries, drawing on much more extensive lay involvement - equality before the law is acquiring a new and much more extended meaning, and that process should continue; and

a new drive to contain and manage the emerging political salariat, whose manipulation of the electoral processes is already threatening our other freedoms - many of the enemies are freedom are now to found in the political salariat..

Now - that could equally well be the blueprint for (say) an electoral society preaching a new "Liberal Socialist Covenant" - a movement which made no claim to be a political party or to seek active participation as representatives in the Legislature - merely to propound a view about the organisation of society.  The Society would attract politically concerned adherents who - as electors - could in due course seek to influence the behaviour of their representatives to the Legislature. 

I can well imagine a two-party system of salaried professionals, without any strong doctrinal differentiation between them, roughly taking it in turns to control both the Legislature and the Executive, in the UK system. In the sense which I have used the term, both would be Government Parties - each would eventually run out of steam, allowing the other to take over...  That would be coupled with the emergence of a number of such "electoral societies", decoupled entirely from the present moribund system of "political parties" but dominating public political debate - others might be a Socialist Alliance, a Conservative Monarchy Alliance, and so on.

Hold on - is that what is happening already?

545   26 November 2002   

UN Red Herring  
 

Both the Government and the House of Commons are being diverted from the real question of principle which is at issue in Baghdad.  The Commons Debate yesterday proceeded ponderously to the wrong conclusion.  For the UN has nothing to do with it.

The threat of belligerent force "against Iraq" in the current circumstances is unwise, unprincipled, profoundly destructive of hopes for a peaceful world - and simply wrong.  "Against Iraq", remember, means against the civilian population of Iraq, for there is no practical alternative to blanket bombing.  The US will never risk street fighting through Baghdad.

Indeed, the use of trading sanctions "against Iraq" is also wrong, in my view - that is war by another name, harming the weak and sparing the wealthy and the strong. The actual use of belligerent force would, it follows, also be profoundly wrong, profoundly unwise. The position of the UN Security Council, having been groomed into subservience by the US and UK, does not alter that.  The UN vote may remove the illegality, but it does not make the action right...

I am not a pacifist. I am prepared to use force if the balance of advantage favours it: for example, I am content with the military "No-fly Zones", which protect the Kurds in the North and the Marsh Arabs in the southern provinces of the country.  But I am convinced that the overall "military" campaign against Iraq is misconceived, and raises the threshold of the world's resistance to war. We should choose other means.

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