The formation of a new political Party is always greeted with scepticism, in the UK.  Emerging sporadically on both the Left and the Right, from Scargill to Goldsmith, they come and they go.  But process is instructive to ol' Party hacks like me - because each new Party must try to carve out its own distinctive "popular" position, to lay claim to distinctive political territory.  And the Manifesto of the new Peoples Alliance Party is forcing me to formulate my own Policy Prescriptions for the future Labour Party.

I make no pretence of placing my prescriptions in order of importance - that must always remain a matter of individual judgment, as would-be members make their own decisions - to join, on balance, or not to join?  To leave, or not to leave?  That is an individual issue.  And to underline that, I place my thoughts in a simple alphabetical order...

Adjustment Pay - Labour should replace the present system of service-related Redundancy Compensation with a universal worker's right to receive "Adjustment Pay", for a period of up to six months following any termination of employment (other than for gross misconduct) - Adjustment Pay would be paid on the same rate and on the same footing and in the same instalments as prior employment pay, and would cease if suitable alternative employment were commenced within the six-month period;

Benefits - in the redistribution of wealth, Labour would commit itself as a Party, wherever practicable, to the use of universal fixed-rate benefits, clawed-back through a progressive Income Tax system, in which the higher rate of tax would be restored to 50%.

Community governance - Labour would strengthen and empower community governance both by granting greater powers to parish, town and community councils and empowering Londoners to elect their own community councils - Labour should implement the spirit and the letter of its own Constitution, which asserts that decisions should be taken by the communities most directly affected by them;

Company governance - Labour should lead an international movement to reform international company law, to combat corruption and crime in the corporate sector, the abuse of corporate power, trade union oppression, tax evasion, and terrorism

Devolution - Labour should continue the process of redistributing constitutional powers away from Westminster and Whitehall, by both legislative and executive devolution, recognising the centrality of UK provincial cities and their regions, using the Welsh devolution model for England and strengthening the Greater London Authority;

Europe - Labour, under future leadership, should strenuously seek to rebuild the UK's links with the European Union, so damaged by the alignment of New Labour with the United States in the Iraqi War - and in due course ensure the UK's full participation in the Euro currency zone;

Foreign policy - Labour should re-assert its traditional commitment to the evolution of a consultative and consensual world order, free of the hegemony of any single state, and re-double its efforts to affirm the role of international treaty networks, including the United Nations;

Guardianship Allowance - Labour should facilitate the lifestyle choices of families where financial support is needed to enable one parent of young children to perform a home-based guardianship function, without being forced to enter the employment market;

Human Rights - Labour should build upon New Labour's important initiative with the Human Rights Act 1998, create a heavyweight Human Rights Commission, and seek to promulgate, both externally and within its own ranks, a recognition that any equitable future social order must honour these universal principles of human entitlement;

Immigration - Labour should initiate the international drive for the creation of a new international concordat, wider than the confines of Europe, for the future humane regulation of international migration, compatible with the human rights of migrants and asylum-seekers;

Income Tax - while low tax thresholds and a large 10% band should be maintained, there should be a more rapid rise in income-tax levels, rising to 50%, to allow a system of universal benefits to be effectively deployed.

Judicial institutions - Labour should recognise that, in contemporary society, judicial and arbitral institutions command a respect and authority which is not accorded to other arms of the State, and should ensure that their composition is diverse and authoritative, thus enabling them to consolidate their role in the maintenance of civic order.

Law - Labour should re-affirm its earlier commitment to upholding the the Rule of Law, both by way of respect for the judicial institutions and development of new legal norms to regulate future forms and sources of conflict.

Lords - The second chamber should be reconstituted on a wholly-elected basis, without impinging upon or diminishing the authority of the Commons as the primary legislative Chamber;

Means-testing, which has become Party orthodoxy under New Labour and Gordon Brown, should be reined back and deployed only as a fiscal method of last resort, where no satisfactory universal-benefit system is practicable.

Minimum Wage - this has proved a successful measure, and should be consolidated and extended;

Nursery provision, childcare - this should be extended as a matter of public policy but it should also be supplemented by a universal flat-rate Guardianship Allowance enabling one parent to remain at home during primary-school years, without having to seek employment outside the home;

Pensions - Labour should as a matter of priority introduce a new and more substantial Old Age Pension commitment, paying to each person at least £150 per week (without marriage abatement) commencing at the earliest practicable age, and payable by the State from general taxation without the need for individual capital-fund accumulation;

Public Interest initiatives - Labour should open up new forms of public-service trading, beyond the present scope of trading charities - by creating a new sector of public-interest companies, operating under the Companies Acts and unlocking new public service resources throughout society.

Royal Prerogative - Labour should systematically dismantle the Royal Prerogative and seek the establishment throughout the UK Constitution of a true democratic order;

Studies throughout the system, during school and certainly up to the age of 21, should be financed (both as to maintenance grants and fees) from general taxation, without recourse to charging at the point of use.

Trade unions should be empowered to act as agents for workers in the enforcement of their individual rights, without the need for any prior "recognition".

Unemployment benefit should be abolished, and replaced with Adjustment Pay - following the Adjustment Pay period, the prevailing minimum-income guarantee system should come into play;

Votes at 16 should be accorded to all teenagers, for all governmental elections;

Workers' rights should be greatly strengthened, giving each citizen the legal means of countering the abuse of employer power, and seeking the creation of a Europe-wide network of common workers' rights as a template for a wider international charter of justice in employment.

Just a few thoughts to be going on with...  These are all, I say, consistent with a liberal socialist approach to formulation of future policy.  i would be interested to near from committed Liberals, as well as those with no particular political affiliation.  Would a manifesto along these lines be attractive to you?

669   31 March 2003  

NASUWT (the teaching union) reports, in a new survey of its members, a rising tide of violence in our schools. Some of the difficulties are clearly societal, for they arise at primary level.  But the more serious violence is being experienced in the teenage years, with 14- and 15-year olds. And it is unacceptable that our teachers should be exposed to violence, and the threat of violence of this rising scale.

"We politicians" (for that is my self-image...) must take action.  And it is no good simply using more coercion against parents, more truanting prosecutions, more parenting orders.  For this "near-adult" violence is to be explained, I suggest, by the phenomenon of compulsory education itself.  We are using coercion against our children, and they are reacting with violence. With teenage maturation arising earlier and earlier, this use of State compulsion is neither wise nor justified - see my earlier thoughts, last October, at Schools Wrongfully Coerce.

I make two proposals.

First, compulsory schooling should finish at the end of the 14^th year – for all students. Effectively, we should reverse RoSLA, the great move to school-til-16 which characterised the 1960s. All children should be required to start secondary school (ordinarily at 12) and stay for their 13^th and 14^th years. But thereafter each child should have the option of leaving, without taking state exams. Teachers and parents would both have a strong interest in working with teenagers to ensure that school was attractive to them, and they wished to remain in school and tackle the school-leaving examinations – but if not, not. That would mean that 15 and 16-year-olds would remain in school only on a voluntary basis, and that would greatly improve classroom discipline and good order.

Second, any child formally "excluded" from school after the age of 13 should simply remain excluded, although alternative discretionary training should be offered, outside mainstream school. There should be no continuing statutory obligation to provide education for a child who had, after all appropriate proceedings had been exhausted, been properly excluded for unacceptable behaviour, whether violent or otherwise.  In the case of younger children, the statutory obligation would remain intact.

Many of my friends on the Left will throw up their hands in horror, at these suggestions. But I say that the secondary classroom should be a place of voluntary participation, not coercion.  At 15, teenagers should be expected as individuals to make their own decisions, without State coercion. As politicians, we owe it to our teachers to create acceptable teaching conditions. By minimising the threat of teenage coercion by the State, I believe that behavioural conventions would be strengthened throughout the whole education system. This change of emphasis would, I argue, be entirely consistent with the adoption, by Labour, of a less authoritarian liberal socialist approach.