 | 'New Labour was born: the bastard offspring of Thatcherism and Labour careerists lusting for office. It was the New Gospel according to St Tony. Power is everything; everything else is expendable:
principles, policies, people, colleagues, anything or everything is for the
broth-pot if it serves up votes. Power, positions of power, the exercise of
power, are ends that justify any means.' Jimmy Reid in the Herald 6 th November 2000. |  |
The exaggerated claims made on his behalf at the time of his death were actually insulting to the genuine merits of Donald Dewar that needed no theatrical embellishment. The current criticism of him by his recent idolaters is shameful, particularly as the man is no longer here to defend himself. Everyone knows that the process used by Labour in Scotland for the selection of candidates for Holyrood was worked out by New Labour in London. It was designed to weed out dissidents. By and large, it did. Canavan was one of the victims. The idea that Donald Dewar pursued this agenda, on his own, is nonsensical. Blair and Brown effectively run the Labour Party in Scotland. Donald Dewar was an old-style, right-wing social democrat. He could live with New Labour policies but wasn't a New Labourite. He was too much his own man for that. He also loved the Labour movement: New Labour doesn't. Dewar is now being posthumously stitched up by New Labour, as the fall guy for the fiasco in Falkirk West.
Now, here I must digress more than a little. In the late afternoon of every Sunday, I phone the feature sub-editors' bench at The Herald to check that things are okay with my copy. It's become a kind of ritual. A few weeks ago my dutiful call was answered by a young lady sub; she shouted to whomever was handling my column: "Any problem with Jimmy's piece?" and was told: "No!". The young lady then, by way of conversation, informed me that Dennis Canavan had resigned his MSP seat. I said this was so unlikely as to be virtually impossible; that it would be his Westminster seat he was giving up. She checked Dennis's column that, as you know, also appears on alternate Mondays in The Herald, and confirmed that this was the case. The timing of his proposed resignation from Westminster was obviously intended to embarrass New Labour. It would mean a by-election which the SNP looked certain to win. This would be a nightmare scenario for Labour in the run-up to a General Election for Westminster, expected in the spring of next year.
New Labour is obsessed with elections. You may say that every political party suffers from the same malaise. But that isn't true, or not to the same extent. As a party leader, Thatcher had convictions. They weren't what you might call my cup of tea. She would have stuck with her basic convictions whether they were electorally popular or not. She believed people were driven by self-interest and ignored all the acts of self-sacrifice by mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, workmates, friends, neighbours, comrades-in-arms, that clearly suggest there are other more worthy motives that inspire the human psyche. Thatcher, whether she knew it or not, was a Social Darwinist. She distorted Darwin's law of natural selection, which was centred on the possible genetic adaptation of a species that could thus ensure its survival in a changing environment, or in the absence of such an adaptive propensity, would lead to its extinction. She believed that the survival of the fittest, as applied to human beings, had all the authority of natural law. She believed that the rich were rich because they were fit to be rich and the poor were poor because they were only fit to be poor. To try to end poverty was, therefore, like going against nature. The conclusion was clear. Let not governments dare interfere in the workings of the market, our economic jungle, to try to end or ameliorate the plight of the poor. This, she believed, would lead to a society of wimps and wets.
The most significant political development of the twentieth century was that the poor did organise, formed trade unions, and founded a political party to represent their interests. It was called the Labour Party. Many of the improvements in the lot of the poor in the past century were directly or indirectly attributable to these developments. All such progress ended with the advent of Thatcherism.
For 18 years, career politicians within the Labour Party looked on with amazement. The Thatcherite formula was simple. Preach the virtue of greed, and Middle England was yours. From this, New Labour was born: the bastard offspring of Thatcherism and Labour careerists lusting for office. It was the New Gospel according to St Tony. Power is everything; everything else is expendable: principles, policies, people, colleagues, anything or everything is for the broth-pot if it serves up votes. Power, positions of power, the exercise of power, are ends that justify any means. Its a single-minded minimalist philosophy of government. Its spin-doctors will spin anything, including deaths, funerals, weddings, birthdays, floods, droughts, or any other natural disaster that's going.
Thatcher's beliefs were pseudo-intellectual garbage. New Labour, a party that doesn't believe in anything except winning elections if it can, is up to its neck in her garbage. It reasons that if it worked for her, it might work for it. New Labour is, therefore, more morally reprehensible than Thatcher who, at least, believed in her garbage. If Dennis Canavan has been secretly supping with New Labour, I hope he was using a long spoon. It despises Dennis but will use him, in the short term, to get off the hook of a by-election that could do the party no good. After that, I wouldn't bet on his long-term chances, unless he is prepared to grovel. His alternative support base within the constituency and Scotland will dissolve. Will he take the New Labour Whip at Holyrood? How can he square that with the folk who voted for him because he had renounced New Labour? People who voted for him because they were scunnered by New Labour and shocked by how it had treated him?
He was elected as an independent of the left, and, precisely not as a member of New Labour. If he takes the Labour Whip, what can he say to those people who stood by him and saved his bacon; those who elected him with the biggest majority to Scotland's Parliament? They seem not to have featured in the secret negotiations with New Labour. This is shaping up to be a personal and not a political tragedy. On the Richter scale of Scottish political traumas, it will hardly register. But there will be a lingering residual memory of a man who promised to be different and wasn't. Dennis, there is still time. Tell them to get stuffed and redeem your good name.
- Nov 6
Return to home page