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880   3 December2003   

Suddenly, there emerged from the crowd a girl a little older than most - perhaps 10 (although I am not good at guessing) - and I launched upon my Yo-ho-ho chatter about where she would be at Christmas, in Bath or away?

I don't know where I shall be for Christmas.. 
Why is that? 
Because my parents have just divorced, and I don't know who I will be with, for Christmas. 
I was stopped in my tracks.  But I'm sure there is something you would like as a present for Christmas - what shall I put down in my book? 
I only want my family to be together for Christmas. 
Her eyes were brimming with tears. The crush of children made it impossible to pause, to talk.  I pressed some chocolates in her hand, and she disappeared into the darkening evening.

881  8 December 2003  

In Defence of
Individualism

Labour activists often find difficulty in getting to grips with the "individualism" of current public and political discourse.  Having been schooled in the political advantages of  collective action, they run the risk of rejecting the immanent individualism of the rising generations.  They mistake individualism for selfishness.   Worthwhile reforms, they seem to say, must always proceed from the principle of social justice and equality. Such reasoning permeates the majority of the Parliamentary "top-up fee rebels".  Jenni Russell, writing this week in The Guardian, makes the same mistake - in spades.

Yet it is clear to me that arguments relating to the overall "systems" of society - social justice, equality - cut no ice with younger voters, including my own children.  When I wrote recently in rejection of Equality as a prime socialist value, I had some anguished responses from Labour colleagues: read Young Fabian Matthew Jenkins.

Concerns with "equality" have not gone away.  But they have become quite deeply embedded in the structure of political argument, certainly in mine.  And they no longer generate convincing electoral strategies, in wealthy societies such as ours.

That could still be a problem for Labour, because individualism is here to stay.  And it has two political dimensions, one of style and the other of substance.

Do not underestimate the importance of style in politics.  I consider Tony Blair to be very old-fashioned, in his deployment of collective concepts - "We can do together far more than we can do alone.."   We?  Who does he mean by "we"?  I favour the restatement of all political propositions requiring the first-person in the form "You and I.."   If it makes no sense as a "You and I" statement, then leave it out - find something else to say.

"We" indicates a tendentious, vague mode of speech which obscures the truth and favours evasiveness.   If on the other hand one has to accept the discipline of treating each person in ones audience as an individual, the natural mode of speech is "you and I" - "This may be obvious to you and me, given our experience, but.."  Politicians should be seeking to abandon the monolithic, assertive, "We..." and to move to a more personalised type of discourse, honouring the listener, and voter, by acknowledging his or her individuality.  That is much more than a superficial matter of style.

But there is a second matter, and it is one of real substance.  My observation is that, as standards of education and wealth rise, individualism blossoms as a human trait.   One may say that it has always been there, perhaps as the external manifestation of genetic uniqueness, genetic diversity.  And there may be some societies with greater gifts for cooperation and solidarity than others. 

• But in poor and oppressed societies the grinding struggle requires a focused preoccupation with bare survival, often by subordinating individual interests to those of others, in solidarity with family, with tribe, with nation.  It is only with the coming of self-sufficiency, and then of surplus, that humankind can give full expression to individuality of the human spirit.  And as we move towards global sufficiency (for although the progress is slow, progress is nevertheless being made) all political systems and philosophies, all religions - all political parties and all churches and organised religion - will have to come to terms with the sovereignty of the individual spirit.

There is no going back.

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