The Labour Party, constitutionalism and the trade unions
The Labour Representative Committee in 1900 was formed by trade unions. These
unions felt that they needed a political voice and would cooperate with any party
engaged in promoting legislation ‘in the direct interest of labour’ (Miliband, 1973:
19). The Liberal Party did not oppose the two Labour candidates who won their
seats in 1900.
After the formation of the Labour Party in 1906, a Trade Disputes Act was passed
which strengthened the right of unions to strike, while the Trade Union Act of 1913
allowed the trade unions to affiliate to the Labour Party. Ramsay MacDonald, the
party leader, made it clear that political weapons are to be found in the ballot box
and the Act of Parliament – not in collective bargaining (Miliband, 1973: 35).
The party itself received a constitution in 1918 and the famous Clause IV that
spoke of common ownership of the means of production was (rather cynically)
inserted by the Webbs to give the party some kind of ideological distance from the
conservatives and the liberals. Sidney Webb would, Tony Blair commented in 1995,
be astonished to find that the clause was still in existence some 70 years later (1995:
12). It was not intended, Blair argued, to be taken seriously.
The 1922 programme made it clear that Labour stood for neither Bolshevism
nor Communism, but ‘common sense and justice’ (Miliband, 1973: 94). It is true
that it suited the liberals and conservatives to present, in Churchill’s words, Labour
as ‘the party of revolution’ (Miliband, 1973: 99), but in fact Labour’s politics were
always of a liberal and constitutional nature. It is revealing that during the crisis
of 1936 when MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party for entering into a
national government with the Conservatives, the Tory leader, Sir Herbert Samuel,
argued that it would be in the general interest if unpalatable social measures to deal
with the economic crisis could be imposed by a Labour government (Miliband,
1973: 176). In the 1930s the Labour leadership was opposed to the Popular Front
government in Spain (see Chapter 11 on Anarchism), and contributed significantly
to the appeasement of the extreme right.
Although the right-wing publicist Evelyn Waugh saw the country under
occupation after the Labour electoral victory of 1945, in fact Morrison made it
clear that the socialisation of industry would only work ‘on the merits of their
specific cases. That is how the British mind works. It does not work in a vacuum
or in abstract theories’ (Miliband, 1973: 279). There is a clear link between Sidney
Webb’s statement to the Labour conference of 1923 that the founder of British
socialism was not Karl Marx but Robert Owen – the doctrine underlying the party
is not that of class war but human brotherhood – and Harold Wilson’s comment
at the 1966 conference that no answers are to be found in Highgate cemetery (i.e.
where Marx is buried) (Miliband, 1973: 98, 361).
Blair’s socialism
The position of Tony Blair (British prime minister, 1997–2007), and this stance
was also that of his successor Gordon Brown (prime minister, 2007–10), followed
this tradition of pragmatism, moralism and constitutionalism. Indeed, Blair made
it clear that the elimination of the old Clause IV was to facilitate a return to
Chapter 10 Socialism 227