I have been a member of the Labour party for over 30 years, and a Labour member of parliament for twenty of those years. When I first entered parliament, we had just suffered our biggest postwar defeat and were settling down to what seemed to define our traditional role in politics – that of opposition.
Opposition was where the party had been for most of its life, so I suppose it’s where some members were most comfortable. In many ways it was an exciting position to be in: you could say and do anything with impunity, making promises in the certain knowledge that you would never have the responsibility of carrying them through.
Being a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party was fun: you had the opportunity to join organised groups of like-minded MPs to plot and counter-plot against each other. These groups also provided routes for the ambitious: a position on a slate would give members a chance of being voted onto the shadow cabinet, and then possibly higher office. I joined one such group, resigned two years later and joined another.
It soon became clear to me that we were keeping ourselves entertained while the Tories got on with running the country.
Gradually, under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, the Labour party began to grow up. I spent three years as his PPS and remember well the internal battles that had to be fought to try to make Labour electable.
The party was riven by mistrust and had been infiltrated by the Militant Tendency, which, by this time, had sympathy, support and in some cases a firm hold in certain sections of the Labour party. It was not until the members of this party-within-a-party were expelled that Labour could seriously contemplate travelling down the road towards government.
The journey was not an easy one and the policy and constitutional changes that had to be made created divisions within the ranks. Some members of the PLP opposed the changes because they are and always will be – in my opinion – the ‘awkward squad’, preferring the freedom of opposition. I do not agree with them, but I accept their individual right to oppose.
What I do not accept is what we have recently witnessed in the vote against the government on the higher education bill at second reading. This was not just dissent – it was organised dissent. The memo from one Labour backbencher to another, published in The Times on 13 January this year, clearly shows that an alternative whipping process was taking place.
In my experience, this went further than any other traditional PLP group ever did. It is the case that groups of PLP members, such as Bevanites and the early Tribune Group, were accused of organising votes. Indeed, at the 1952 Labour party conference the general secretary of the TGWU, Arthur Deakin, told the Bevanites to ‘get rid of their whips, dismiss their business managers and conform to the party constitution.’
The truth is, they never had them. That is not to say that one or two wouldn’t have liked to have them, but wiser heads prevailed, knowing that this would be a dangerous step.
So, to those behind this present collusion – whether ex-ministers, think-they-should-be ministers or those who want a change of leadership – I would say to them: learn the lessons of our history.
Opposition should be our past, not our future.
We are now in the third year of the first second-term Labour government with a working majority in our history. We have put an end to mass unemployment and are investing in education, health and other vital public services – policies we have demanded for decades but which can only be implemented if we are in office. I find it very hard to accept that some members of the PLP are prepared to sacrifice all this. History will never forgive them if they succeed.