The left was right

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

The left was right

(Monday 13 October 2008)

Once labelled the longest suicide note in history, KEITH FLETT recalls a political manifesto that now offers Gordon Brown a few pointers.


MANY Star readers will be familiar with Tony Benn's story about what happens to people who come up with radical ideas.

First, they are attacked as extremists, then they are labelled as mad. After that, it all goes quiet for a while. Then everyone claims that they had thought of the idea in the first place.

This moment has come for a document that is now just over 25 years old, the 1983 Labour Party manifesto.

Gerald Kaufman called it the longest suicide note in history and the party led by Michael Foot went to a crashing defeat to Margaret Thatcher on June 9 1983. The Tories won a 144-seat majority. Foot resigned as Labour leader to be replaced by Neil Kinnock. The great miners strike of 1984-5 followed on.

Yet the judgements of politicians at the time are not always the same as those made by history later.

As Alistair Darling prepared to intervene to bail out fat cat bankers, Geoffery Robinson MP told BBC2 Newsnight that Labour was now implementing its 1983 manifesto. It was taken as a joke.

But, as the crisis has continued to get worse, the joke has worn off and that 1983 document is being taken seriously. The Guardian interviewed Michael Foot about why it is now relevant and the Financial Times noted that its views on what to do about banks and an economic crisis were now very much part of the political consensus not just in the UK but around the globe.

What did the manifesto say?

In the world of 2008, this does not involve delving into a dusty archive. It is freely available online.

It committed Labour to an emergency action plan if elected which would create a public bank run through the post office. It proposed to set up a securities commission to "regulate the institutions and markets of the City ... within a clear statutory framework." It called for a new Pensions Act which would strengthen members' rights in occupational pension schemes and finished by noting that it was expected that the major banks would co-operate with this, but, if they did not, one or more would be taken into public ownership.

No doubt Gordon Brown would say that this was all well before new Labour and nothing to do with him. But that won't work, since he was first elected to Parliament on that manifesto in 1983.

None of the measures that it proposes calls for the abolition of capitalism or the introduction of socialism. It simply suggests that the finance system needs to be far better regulated and that the state needs to play a greater role in doing so than hitherto.

We did not get a Labour victory in 1983, but Mrs Thatcher's second term of office, which allowed free-market capitalism to run riot.

The Tories were followed in 1997 by new Labour who accepted that this was the way things are and made their peace with capital not by making the Bank of England subject to greater state control but independent.

The result of all that has been where we are now. It might be said, well, so what? I am over 50 and can just about remember 1983, although I have researched this article as historians should rather than relying on personal memory.

But anyone under 40 now will have no memory of that 1983 election manifesto and, therefore, no understanding that Foot and the left were right after all.

That is a point well worth making to our still market-obsessed major parties.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

http://www.rinf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3381

"longest suicide note in history"

Just for fun - what other bits of that infamous/iconic 1983 manifesto should be ressurected?

snowflake5 Wed Oct 08, 2008 at 06:13:29 PM GMT Facebook
That 1983 manifesto was dubbed the "longest suicide note in history" by Gerald Kaufman - but it may have merely been a document 25 years ahead of it's time. This post is prompted by Channel 4 mentioning last night that nationalising banks was in that 1983 manifesto. I thought it would be fun to look it up to try to forsee the future as it were, and perhaps wind up our visiting Tories at the same time.


Here's a link to the 1983 manifesto. I suggest readers skip through the intro by Michael Foot, which seems a little longwinded, and skip straight to the manifesto proper.

One thing they promised was the nationalisation of the banks. Of course we arn't seeing full nationalisation now, only a government stake in the banks, but this is as near as we are going to get in our lifetimes!

Other promises in that manifesto:

1. Introduction of minimum wage (Acheived by New labour in 1997)

2. Introduction of Freedom of information bill (achieved by New labour in 2000)

3. Reform of the house of lords (well, it's partly been done, the hereditary peers have gone)

4. Devolution to Scotland (New Labour delivered devolution to Scotland and Wales and London in 1998)

5. "Encourage the development of effective traffic management schemes to alleviate the problems of traffic congestion" (Ken Livingston managed to deliver congestion charge to London in 2003)

6. Program of works to help the Construction industry (er.. delivered by Blair in bringing the Olympics festival of construction to London)

7. Raise pension payments in line with earnings rather than inflation (Labour's Pensions Bill of 2007 brings this in with effect from 2012)

8. Phase out TV licences for pensioners (well, Labour has abolished licences for the over 75s)

9. Reduce VAT (well Labour have managed to reduce VAT on domestic fuel from 8% to 5%)

10. "Establish an integrated system of child care with priority for children in the most deprived areas" (Labour have brought in Sure Start)

11. Increase child benefit in real terms (Labour have increased child benefit by over 55% since 1997, from £11.05 to £18.80 a week for the first child and from £9 to £12.55 for other children)

12. phase out married man's tax allowance (Labour has done that)

13. Increase Health spending by 3% per anum in real terms (we were spending 4.976% of GDP on health in 97, it's now 7.515% of GDP - not quite 3%, but not bad)

14. Abolish corporal punishment in schools (it was the Tories who achieved that in 1986)

15. Increase aid to the developing world to 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product (achieved by new Labour)

16. Reverse Tory cuts in maternity rights and increase the maternity grant (Labour increased maternity leave to 39 weeks at £117.18 per week, and this will increase to 52 weeks)

17. Urgent repair of run-down council estates (labour have upgraded 1 million council houses and built another 336937 affordable new homes.)


What hasn't happened of course is

1. withdrawal from EU (Labour is now opposed to this)

2. stop nuclear power stations (Labour is now committed to nuclear power)

3. introduce a new wealth tax (labour has no plans for this)

4. remove the ceiling on NI contributions (Labour has no plans for doing this, though we did introduce a 1% charge for earnings over the upper limit)

5. Build coal-powered stations (Labour is considering a station, but depends on CO2 emmissions, may not happen because of that)

6. Increase North Sea levy to 50% (we've increased it from 10% to 20% and there are no plans for further increases)

7. Repeal the Thatcher union legislation (not going to happen)

I was also interested to read about gas prices in the manifesto. Gas prices in 1983 (and in 1983 gas was still publicly owned) had been increased by by 116 per cent since 1979 - and it was done by the Thatcher government, not private sector. Which is staggering for just four years. Puts the current situation in perspective (especially as from 1997 to 2007 prices were stable).

Obviously it's a very long manifesto - so what other things in there do people find relevant for the modern world?