A Broad Alliance

It is no wonder that the Twitter Right accuses even Any Questions audiences of being packed with “Lefties” even in such unlikely places as Rothbury and Thetford. How many “Lefties” do they think that there are in such locations? Those audiences are expressing mainstream public opinion among people who have hitherto divided their votes among all three main parties, and others in some areas.

People who do not want the ruinous reduction in provincial disposable incomes by the abolition of National Pay Agreements. The further deregulation of Sunday trading. The replacement of Her Majesty’s Constabulary with the National Crime Agency. The devastation of rural communities by the allowing of foreign companies and even foreign states to buy up our postal service and our roads. Or that devastation by the austerity programme of both Coalition parties.

They are against the privatisation of the Royal Mail. Against the return of the East Coast Main Line, the only publicly owned railway in Great Britain and the one making a profit for the taxpayer, to the private sector from which it has already had to be rescued twice. Against the dismantlement of England’s NHS. Against the discontinuation of the State action necessary in order to maintain the work of charities and of churches. And against the mercifully unrealised disenfranchisement of organic communities by means of parliamentary boundaries agreeable to “sophists, economists and calculators”.

They are opposed to the cruel cuts in our conventional defence, and they are no less opposed to the proposed use of what remains of that military capability in order to remake the world to some fanciful blueprint. They are at best profoundly sceptical of the “renewal” of Trident, with large numbers strongly opposed.

They yearn for a freeze in energy prices. Indeed, all polls show 70 per cent support for the renationalisation of the utilities, show 70 per cent support for the renationalisation of the Royal Mail (the privatisation of which was a manifesto commitment by the Liberal Democrats, perhaps the best of all the reasons to wipe them off the electoral map), and show 70 to a whopping 75 per cent support for the renationalisation of the railways.

Therefore, Labour is going to win in 2015. But Labour must also deserve to win, and Labour must know why it wants to win. Labour must guard against small-mindedness, narrow-mindedness, closed-mindedness, communalism, sectarianism and factionalism. Those are urban, metropolitan, secular, socially liberal, white and upper-middle-class vices no less than they are anyone else’s.

Labour must have no truck with the urban, metropolitan, secular, socially liberal, white and upper-middle-class small-mindedness, narrow-mindedness, closed-mindedness, communalism, sectarianism and factionalism of the ostensibly left-wing opposition to the anti-war and anti-cuts movements, movements that speak for the huge majority of the population when they are permitted to speak at all.

Instead, Labour must be a broad alliance between the confidently urban and the confidently rural, the confidently metropolitan and the confidently provincial, the confidently secular and the confidently religious, those confident in their liberal social values and those confident in their conservative social values, across all ethnic groups, across all social classes, and across all parts of the country: One Nation.

The basis of that alliance includes the contribution-based Welfare State, with contribution defined to include, for example, caring for children and caring for elderly relatives. Workers’ rights, with the trade unionism necessary in order to defend and advance them. Community organising. The co-operative movement and wider mutualism, not least in the provision of financial services, as well as profit-sharing and similar arrangements: not “shares for rights”, but shares and rights.

That basis includes consumer protection. Strong communities. Fair taxation. Full employment, with low inflation. Pragmatic public ownership, including of the utilities, of the postal service and of the railway service, and always with strong parliamentary and municipal accountability. Publicly owned industries and services, national and municipal, setting the vocational training standards for the private sector to match.

That basis includes proper local government, itself including council housing, fiscal autonomy, the provision as well as the commissioning of services, the accountability provided by the historic committee system, and the abolition of delegated planning decisions.

That basis includes the State’s restoration of the economic basis of the civilised and civilising worker-intellectual culture historically exemplified by the pitmen poets and the pitmen painters, by the brass and silver bands, by the Workers’ Educational Association and the Miners’ Lodge Libraries, by the people’s papers rather than the red top rags, and so on. In order to restore a civilisation in continuity with it, that culture must be rescued from “the enormous condescension of posterity”.

That basis includes the Union, the ties that bind these Islands, and the Commonwealth; that last is, and has always been, a social and cultural network, not an economic or military bloc.

That basis includes economic patriotism, itself including both energy independence and balanced migration. The organic Constitution, with the full pageantry and ceremony of the parliamentary and municipal processes. The national and parliamentary sovereignty of the United Kingdom in the face of all challenges: the United States or the European Union, Israel or the Gulf monarchs, China or the Russian oligarchs, money markets or media moguls, separatists or communalists, over-mighty civil servants and diplomats (including in the intelligence services) or over-mighty municipal officers, inappropriately imported features of the economic and political cultures of the Old Dominions.

That basis includes conservation and the countryside, especially the political representation of the rural working class. Superb and inexpensive public transport, with personal freedom, and ultimately free at the point of use. Academic excellence, with technical proficiency, refusing to compromise on either.

That basis includes civil liberties, with law and order, including visible and effective policing, and including an end to light sentences and lax prison discipline through a return to a free country’s minimum requirements for conviction.

That basis includes fiscal responsibility, of which neoliberal capitalism is manifestly and demonstrably the opposite. A strong financial services sector, with a strong food production and manufacturing base, and with the strong democratic accountability of both. A total rejection of the Coalition’s or any other class war, preferring instead “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”.

That basis includes very high levels of productivity, with the robust protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, including powerful workers’ representation at every level of corporate governance. A base of real property for every household, to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.

That basis includes a realist foreign policy, itself including strong national defence, and precluding any new Cold War against Russia, China, Iran or anywhere else. British military intervention only ever in order to defend British territory or British interests. A leading role on the world stage, with a vital commitment to peace, and with a complete absence of weapons of mass destruction.

That basis includes a large and thriving private sector, a large and thriving middle class, and a large and thriving working class; all depend on central and local government action, and with public money come public responsibilities.

And that basis includes an approach to Islamism and neoconservatism defined by a history of equal opposition to Stalinism, Maoism, Trotskyism, Nazism, Fascism, and the Far Right regimes in Southern Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.

This is the basis for the deserved election of a Labour Government in 2015, with Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. Such a deserved victory, under an undeniably deserving victor, can only be brought about by  fighting every seat as if it were a knife-edge marginal. Strong local candidates who subscribed to this basis ought to be selected even if they have not been party members, although they would of course be required to join upon selection. Trade union and other money ought then to be spent to the limit in every constituency.