One of the strongest aspects of this Labour administration has been the rebirth of a coherent applied internationalism. Labour has always prided itself on being a party with strong global and European links yet coverting the rhetoric of internationalism into practice has proved difficult.
Labour pacificism in the 1930s sent all the wrong signals to fascist dictators while Labour unilateralism in the 1980s helped keep the party out of power for a generation. In 1950 a Europe trying to rebuild economies and societies shattered by the war offered Britain a golden opportunity to become a leader of a new Europe but Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, turned down the invitation and the long British isolation from European politics began.
The historic contribution of Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair has been to make Labour, not just a leading European government working to strengthen the European Union by reforming its economy and opening the way to enlargement, but a significant political player in fashioning twenty-first century European social democratic and socialist thinking and organisation. In particular, Labour has insisted that its European politics is part of a global politics, looking outwards to promote cross-frontier contacts and solidarity as well as extend the market for British ideas and the output of the UK economy.
A new network of political contacts across Europe has been established since Tony Blair became party leader. Robin Cook, who is soon to become president of the Party of European Socialists, has made the Foreign Office more of a political centre to promote British interests by cultivating contacts with the new political leaderships of European governments who come from the same political family as Labour. Completely unreported by the British media, which remains obsessed with the narrow issues of Brussels versus the UK, there has been quietly put in place a network of policy, political and personal contacts across Europe – not just the EU but the wider Europe – which is helping to inform and shape government policy in Britain.
The process is two-way. The arrival of Tony Blair, with a clear new political vision for the European left, has been one of the major events in recent European democratic left history. For the first time in three decades of my Labour Party membership the policies and ideology of the British democratic left have been taken extremely seriously in Europe. It has been helped by Blair’s ease in speaking French and the sense that other European politicians have that, for the first time, Britain has a Prime Minister who is not nervous, uncertain or hostile to the idea that Britain is a European nation as well as the centre of an English-speaking group of nations and political culture.
The key players in politics – No 10, ministries, Millbank, MPs, MEPs – have more regular contacts with their opposite numbers in European capitals than at any time in British political history. The focus has been away from shaping European policy exclusively through Brussels and EU institutions, important as they remain, and crafting a spider’s web of dense contacts with European capitals.
Blair and Cook have launched joint political initiatives with different European leaders from sister parties, and told their staff to produce joint papers, or write joint articles for different European newspapers. There is both a bilateral and multilateral set of contacts with European decision makers in national administrations and parliaments.
It has gone beyond the formal foreign policy arena. Gordon Brown and his opposite number in France, Laurent Fabius, did a double act at the recent Franco-British colloquy in Versailles, each following the other as speaker to extol the virtues of the strengthening European economy. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Labour can be pleased that the French have brought in a Gallic version of the Working Families Tax Credit, one of the key job-promoting fiscal reforms associated with the Labour government.
Blair has also initiated a wide-ranging government programme called ‘Step Change’ which is leading to increased contacts between ministers and MPs with their opposite numbers in Europe. Well before a European nation takes over the EU presidency Labour ministers start visiting their opposite numbers to discuss issues likely to be promoted during their EU presidency.
MPs and MEPs have been encouraged to create joint working parties with opposite numbers from the German SPD or France’s Parti Socialiste in order to discuss Labour policy thinking and also to learn about practical initiatives and successful policy application in different European countries. The Minister for Europe regularly takes a team of ministers to one of the EU applicant countries like Slovenia or the Czech Republic in order to strengthen political contacts. In contrast to William Hague, Labour is seen as one of the keenest political advocates of enlargement and strong Labour Party contacts have been established with sister social democratic parties in Central and Eastern Europe.
Europe is about process rather than an end product. EU politics are evolutionary rather than looking for a finality. British politicians have much to learn from good practice in Europe. Think-tanks like the Fabian Society, the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Centre for European Reform have all acted as enablers to bring together policy makers and formers from the UK and Europe to discuss what is being done by the new European governments of the centre-left.
The Labour Party also plays a far more active role in European politics than it previously did. Joint events are held with sister parties in Europe to discuss policy as well as organisation and campaigning techniques. Labour’s famous five point pledge card from 1997 has been copied throughout Europe. In December 2000 a mammoth post-mortem on the US election was held in Berlin at SPD headquarters. Labour Party General Secretary Margaret McDonagh led a team of MPs, No 10 policy experts and Millbank staff to share views on how to keep a party enthused during periods of government when not every ideological demand of the left can be satisfied.
There is a continuous throughput of political visitors from sister parties in Europe in London. Visits to Millbank, Downing Street policy units, and the Commons take place weekly as Labour quietly builds up a new network of contacts, comrades and friends in the European capitals.
The Commons has changed its rules to allow MPs to make a visit once a year to a national parliament for contacts with fellow MPs. Modeled on the long-standing annual British-German political Königswinter conference, nearly all EU countries now have an annual political get-together which allows an exchange of views and strengthens contacts. These, of course, take place on an all-party basis but such is the ferocity of Tory anti-European feeling and thinking that the Conservatives have cut themselves off from effective contacts with the traditional right-wing parties of Europe.
Finding the cash for European political work is never easy. Unlike France, Germany and other EU member states, Britain does not have a system of publicly funded political foundations to encourage greater understanding of, and political contacts between, democratic parties of different nations. There is now an active group of Labour MPs and MEPs, however, charged with sustaining contacts with sister parties in both EU and EU-applicant nations. They report regularly to the Labour Party and the Minister of Europe with PLP chair and NEC member, Clive Soley, playing a key co-ordinating role.
Tony Blair has quietly encouraged ministers to improve their language skills. Many of continental Europe’s political players speak good English but not all. In any case, to understand French politics even a good translation of key French political texts does not help. I helped translate a pamphlet written for the Fabian Society by Lionel Jospin. The French Prime Minister referred to the use of state power using three different expressions in French. In French left-of-centre political discourse the state is everything. It was impossible to find adequate language in English because we simply do not have the same political attachment to the republican state as an expression of democratic will that is so obvious to any French citizen. By contrast, Gerhard Schröder, in an interview with Le Monde said that he did not share Jospin’s view of the importance of the state. The SPD, he said, was created to combat a centralised state. Indeed Schroeder, in December 2000, told his party that ‘the state should do less, and society should do more’ – a position much closer to that of Labour than the French socialists.
Thus in the shaping of Labour’s policy on Europe it is vital to be alert to the massive differences in political philosophy and priorities of the different governing parties of the left and its allies currently in power in Europe. Contrary to the provincial political writing on Europe we read, especially in the anti-European foreign-owned press in London, there is no monolithic European position utterly distinct from that of Britain. On some issues we may be closer to the Nordics than to Italy and Spain. On other issues the ideas of political colleagues in Lisbon or Athens may be more in tune with Labour ideas than the line taken in Stockholm or Helsinki. Sometimes we are at one with Paris, sometimes we have the same position as Berlin. Europe is about the realities of daily politics in which Britain can take a lead provided our political leaders are prepared to play a role.
The major difference between Labour and the Tories is that we take Europe politics as a process of serious grown-up negotiation, contacts, and dialogue. We do so as partners rather than starting from the assumption, shared, alas, by some Labour politicians in the last century, that Labour was an inherently superior creation compared to continental social democracy or socialism. Labour politicians are British patriots but our patriotism means pride in our country not a Daily Mail or John Redwood contempt for other European nations or the EU itself.
Labour’s turn outwards to become serious about European politics and policy making has been a contributor to the success of Tony Blair’s government and helped raise Britain’s political status and standing in Europe and elsewhere in the world, where British leadership in aspects of European politics is both welcomed and desired. It is an important new chapter in the story of the Labour Party and needs to be taken further forward both to help develop our country, learn from best policy and practice in other nations and defeat the isolationist alternative on offer from today’s Tories.