Speak For Britain

John Campbell's Mail on Sunday review of Martin Pugh's Speak For Britain! A New History of the Labour Party is not yet online, if it ever will be. That review contains the following passage:

The history of the Labour Party has largely been written as a story of betrayal and disappointment, from Ramsay MacDonald to Tony Blair. This is because it has been written mainly from the Left. Labour, so the story goers, has failed to usher in the socialist millennium because the successive generations of leaders have been too timid, too venal, or seduced by the Establishment. In this excellent and provocative new history, Martin Pugh argues that this is wrong.

Instead, he focuses on Labour's success in evolving, between 1900 and 1950, from a minor sectional party into a major national one, growing beyond [note, no more than that] its trade union roots by absorbing recruits and ideas from both the Tories and the Liberals. He points out that there have been many more biographies of left-wing heroes such as Nye Bevan, Stafford Cripps and the romantic but entirely unimportant Victor Grayson than of much more influential Labour right-wingers such as J.H. Thomas, Herbert Morrison and Ernest Bevin, whose robust working-class patriotism did far more to make Labour a majority party.

"The Workers," Thomas boasted, "are even more conservative than the Conservatives," and Labour's loyalty to the Monarchy and the Empire was a large part of its electoral success. It was above all Morrison - Peter Mandelson's grandfather - who as Leader of the London County Council in the Thirties extended Labour's appeal to the white-collar suburbs, first creating the 'big tent' without which Labour could never hope to govern. At the same time it was the cheerfully vulgar Daily Mirror, not the dull trade-union-funded Daily Herald, that created the wartime mood of 'patriotic egalitarianism' that swept Labour to power in 1945.

Who now will grow beyond trade union (and co-operative, and other) roots by absorbing recruits and ideas from both the Tories and the Liberals? Who now will articulate, and give practical expression to, robust working-class patriotism? Who now will be "even more conservative than the Conservatives" (not saying much), loyal to monarchy, Union and Commonwealth? Who now will reach out to the white-collar suburbs and create the real big tent, not the fake Blairite one? Who now will embody patriotic egalitarianism? Who now will speak for Britain?