Suppressing Dissent
As a Labour Press Officer under Neil Kinnock, ROSIE BROCKLEHURST helped make the party electable in the 1990s. But now she welcomes the resignation of Hastings Councillors from the party and argues that Labour under Keir Starmer has become overly authoritarian.
I first came across the queen of focus groups, Deborah Mattinson, in 1985. With the late Philip Gould she advised Neil Kinnock and Peter Mandelson as part of Labour’s Shadow Communications agency, largely credited with helping to change the Party’s image. Deborah is now a chief strategist to Keir Starmer. Labour is now so fixated by focus groups that it has lost touch with its grassroots.
I had joined Labour as one of two Press Officers in 1984 from LWT where I had a great time as PR for the South Bank Show and Weekend World, where Peter Mandelson also worked.
Working for Labour sobered me up. For a start, there had been a disastrous 1983 election defeat. You could hear a pin drop at Labour’s HQ in Walworth Road. Everyone was depressed. There was no money. Peter Mandelson’s office had one table with a broken leg which we propped up on books.
But change was afoot, not least to improve the shambolic presentation of Labour in a world mediated through Conservative-friendly press and television. The red flag was about to be replaced by the red rose.
Eager and strained, Kinnock had been given the task of shaping the ranks, making the Party more effective and professional and getting rid of entryists like Militant. They had their own party after all.
But Murdoch’s Sun adored Thatcher. This was an era, just post-Falklands war and pre-miners’ strike, of greed-is-good, mass privatisation and the sale of the family silver – which included oil licences that could have given us a sovereign wealth fund like Norway – and of course, the water companies who were starved of funds before sell-off.
Demonstrate Competence
When Kinnock visited the USA, he was almost completely ignored (unlike Blair, welcomed by Clinton a decade later). After the 1987 and 1992 defeat, it would take many more years to expose the hollow policies of the Conservatives, woo Murdoch and polish the spin machine. We had also to find a different, charismatic leader and reach an understanding with the electorate. To give the Labour Party a chance we had to demonstrate competence and promise Britain would have a new place on the world stage. But under Blair came the Iraq War, which diminished his reputation and undermined his government.
Thirty years on and the latest attempt to mould the Party into an image of something that people might vote for again is in its final stages. ‘Anything is better than the Conservatives’ seems to be the mantra. But why should we expect so little from the party most likely to replace them? This is not representative politics. It is a ‘false dawn’ – to borrow a phrase used by my favourite pessimistic philosopher, John Gray.
When the politics of consent is replaced by the politics of suppressing dissent, which is what has happened under the uncharismatic Keir Starmer who got into power on ten pledges and then ditched them, the political discourse which must involve some freedom of thought is threatened. The Party becomes authoritarian, lacks grass roots energy and starts to atrophy.
I was asked by HIP’s Politics editor if it was not important to control unruly constituency Labour Parties? I realised he too had fallen for the centrist spin. CLP meetings were, until 2015, moribund dull affairs of members who were useful for fundraising and stuffing envelopes. Debate was silenced entirely under General Secretary Ian McNichol in 2015/16.
Locally, Labour has been dictated to by the national party. Hastings’ Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) is not local – whatever she has claimed – and was parachuted in from Merton. She is a supporter of Wes Streeting who said he would encourage private companies to come into the NHS to help bring down waiting lists. I believe by his actions he would rather pay those companies than fund doctors and nurses properly.
Yes, I do like discipline. But unruliness has its place. To my mind it has been the only thing that has ever brought about genuine social change. Women only got the vote because of the unruliness of the suffragettes. Trade unions when they flexed muscles in syndicalist form, were the bedrock of early forms of the Labour party back in the 19th century.
I understand as a nation, we can’t live by unruliness. People want peace, security, safety, food on the table, warmth, housing, and education. We have to trust our leaders to do what we want them to do at some point, so they can try to provide these things, while they in turn need us occasionally to put down the pitchforks and conform. Discipline is one of the key markers of an effective force for change. But authoritarianism stokes fear and muffles new ideas.
Discipline and Purging
Currently in Labour, express any form of dissent at all and you are immediately called an extreme leftwinger or a ‘Trot’ – epithets drawn from an abusive lexicon. It’s your dissent they can’t abide. It then becomes a matter of not having any individual view at all. This is why at the Hastings Hustings for Labour’s PPC neither questions nor statements from the floor were allowed. Discipline and purging will never replace values or principles.
Two weeks after eight leading Hastings councillors left Labour to become Independents, Jon Cruddas MP, founder of Blue-Collar Labour, was the subject of a story in the Observer by Toby Helm the Political Editor, who visited Hastings in 2017 to talk to a group of young Labour members about a renewed Party. I showed him round. Jon is married to Anna Healy, a former press officer who worked with me at the Press Office under Neil Kinnock. In his new book A Century of Labour, Cruddas says: “It is difficult to identify the purpose of a future Starmer government … Labour appears to be content for the coming election to amount to a referendum on the performance of the governing Conservatives rather than a choice between competing visions of politics and justice.”
In London, Labour Party strategists believe that most council tax payers don’t really understand that their payments only cover a tiny part of council budgets. They are not concerned that it is Conservative government cuts which are to blame for reduced services in Hastings. Dissenting Labour councillors therefore can be accused of cutting services and take the rap. In this way, Labour nationally would rather destroy their own members, not simply because of an obsession with command and control, but because of a strategy which is to claim the territory upon which the Conservatives stand, convinced that this is the only way to win power.
This is not broad-church politics. It is a triangulation which will end up suffocating authentic local voices because its only objective is power for power’s sake.
We are facing huge challenges in this country and in this town and, goodness, we need able leadership. But currently ‘The Party’ does not want to tell you what to think. It wants you not to think at all.
Local elections are set for May. I hope some Independents stand in Hastings and change the way politics is done.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply