The discussion about aspiration is of course a familiar one. Ed Miliband is quoted as saying, “My dad was sceptical of all the Thatcher aspirational stuff. But I felt you sort of had to recognise that what she was talking about struck a chord”. This comment of course has massive irony in the week the dramatic revelations about Hillsborough became public. Margaret Thatcher was urged to abandon Liverpool to “managed decline” by her chancellor, released National Archives files have revealed, and nobody could view Thatcher’s view towards Liverpool as “aspirational”. The Thatcher government in 1983 enjoyed a landslide election victory in 1983 and an approval rating that seldom dipped below 40 per cent over the course of two years, at which time Thatcher is considered to have tapped into a vein of national aspiration, swollen after years of economic hardship.
The discourse oscillating between aspiration and insecurity is well described by Patrick Diamond in the “Southern Discomfort” pamphlet of the Fabian Society, discussing how Labour might respond to its heavy general election defeat of 2010. In the 1992 election, many voters apparently saw Labour as a class-orientated party rooted in the past, with little to offer ‘aspirational’ families. They wanted change after thirteen years of Conservative rule, but feared that a Labour government would mismanage the economy, raise their taxes, and put the country in the grip of unaccountable trade unions. As a result, despite the unprecedented unpopularity of the Major administration, Labour suffered its fourth consecutive defeat. ??Diamond continues that, in recent years, ‘insecurity’ has replaced ‘aspiration’ as the dominant concern of wavering Labour voters. This means that the party will not recover electorally by reviving the core New Labour assumptions of the 1990s, retreating to the comfort zone of Blair and Brown’s modernisation strategy.
Ed Miliband in reviving talk of aspiration has gone straight back into the comfort zone of New Labour. Miliband is not facing up to the challenge of its relationship with the Trade Unions. Interestingly, Peter Watt describes that there are trade unions who are trying to establish a different profile for themselves, and are seeing their memberships increase through the recruiting of new members and often in the private sector. According to Watt, employers are keen to work with them as they can see the benefits of partnership and employees are keen to join as they can clearly see the service that they will get as a member. The passion behind the Trade Union movement is described well by blogger Darrell Goodliffe. In his article, he recently described how TUC had taken a giant step forward towards calling Britain’s first General Strike since 1926. He pointedly warns that nobody within the Labour Party, and indeed, the wider labour movement should underestimate the significance of this position. The argument is that the trade unions, who depend largely on the public sector for a solid membership base, are “being backed into a corner by this governments decimation of that sector”.
Thatcher indeed had an aspiration about the Trade Unions, and that was to kill them. Secret plans to run down the domestic coal industry and defeat any future strike action by unions were being drawn up by Thatcher even before the year-long miners’ strike had ended, according to cabinet papers. The plans were approved by a group of inner-circle ministers in September 1985 ? five months after the strike ended. It is reported that they sealed the fate of the British coal industry and were rigorously followed by successive Conservative governments. Under these plans, ministers agreed to keep a permanent stockpile of at least six months’ supply of coal, increase coal imports, build more oil-burn, nuclear and gas-fired power stations and encourage development of more opencast mines. The UK’s primary industry sector was once dominated by the coal industry, but the number of pits and miners have been slashed, and output fell by more than 75% between 1981 and 2003. The remaining pits produced 17.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2003, making the UK the 15th largest coal producing nation, compared with 4th in 1981, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2004.
In the narrative about ‘rebalancing the economy’, nobody ever mentions the demolition job of the Unions in the same breath as the over-reliance on the City, the same City which many blame as having contributed to the global financial crash of 2009. This is of course deceitful. Such a discussion does need to be have by Labour, if its political discussion of ‘triangulation’ is not to result instead in a strangulation of important issues. It is woeful that Cable is leading the charge against the ‘no fault dismissal’ proposals of Adam Beecroft. Cable has famously said that, “I don’t see the role for that. Britain has already got a very flexible, cooperative labour force. We don’t need to scare the wits out of workers with threats to dismiss them. It’s completely the wrong approach.” This is of course an argument which would sit nicely with a socialist narrative of Labour, but Ed Miliband does not wish to be seen as socialist.
Ed Miliband’s political identity is far from clear. It could be that Ed Miliband is a classic ‘social democrat’, as viewed by George Eaton, Editor of “the Staggers” blog of the New Statesman. However, an increasing number within Labour are finding themselves without aspiration themselves. Whilst they might appear to broadly agree that Ed Miliband is doing at least ‘a good job’ as leader, and that the economic policy of Labour is correct, many answers do not exist on key arms of policy. Labour has previously agreed to repeal the privatisation of the NHS, but it is unclear whether Labour will carry through this promise, leaving many in the NHS and beyond genuinely confused. Labour has not put its ‘heart on its sleeve’, in standing up against the implementation of the welfare benefits reforms, despite having been asked to by Sonia Poulton and very many others. Elsewhere, law centres are being shut nationally, and Labour does not have a clear policy on the destruction of legal aid. If Ed Miliband were able to talk about aspiration from a position himself of commanding confidence, that would be a different matter. Unfortunately, it’s all very well for Ed Miliband to talk of aspiration, but Labour official policy has little aspiration itself yet despite the passionate beliefs and values of its ‘broad church’ of members. It is not too late to remedy this, of course.
