Labour is better placed now than when it lost previous elections, but overcoming the trauma and division of defeat will be crucial to preventing a decade or more in the political wilderness, warns David Owen
Looking at the aftermath of Labour’s defeats in 1931, 1951 and 1979, it is possible to delineate three distinct phases. First, initial trauma; second, continuing division; and, third, structural cohesion. The length of these phases differed in time and the phases differed in intensity. These variations merit detailed study by historians.
After 1931 the trauma was Ramsay Macdonald forming a National government. The divisions slowly came to an end when Ernest Bevin and Stafford Cripps supported Clement Attlee as temporary leader of the Labour party when the pacifist George Lansbury fractured his thigh in December 1933. Structural cohesion came in 1940 with Labour’s participation in the wartime coalition.
After 1951 the trauma was the continued political effect of the resignations from the government of Aneurin Bevan and Harold Wilson earlier that year over the introduction of prescription charges. The divisions ended and structural cohesion began simultaneously in 1961 when Hugh Gaitskell and Bevan came together to reverse the unilateral nuclear disarmament policy and leave Clause IV alone.
Labour lost the 1979 election in December 1978 when we allowed the Tribune group of MPs to vote down the sanctions on Ford for making a 17 per cent pay award. That vote should have been made one of confidence and we should have risked holding a general election in January 1979. The winter of discontent was, I believe, avoidable and defeat was never inevitable. After the 1979 defeat the trauma continued and was exacerbated by Tony Benn. The trauma was, of course, exacerbated too by the creation of the Social Democratic party but by then the policy differences were profound and the electoral college made it inevitable that they were not changed even after a massive defeat in 1983. The divisions slowly started to end in 1985 when Neil Kinnock took on Derek Hatton publicly at the party conference. Cohesion came in 1992 after Labour lost the general election and chose John Smith as its new leader.
Both Gaitskell and Smith, had they lived, would have won the elections in 1964 and in 1997 for Labour. Gaitskell was very popular among the general public by the time he died in January 1963. Smith would not have led in the populist style that Tony Blair did and would not, therefore, have gained such a massive majority in 1997, but it would have been a clear Labour victory with a working majority and none the worse for that.
After 2010 the trauma of defeat was greatly eased by Gordon Brown’s decision to resign and not hang on as leader which, misguidedly, both Attlee did until 1955 and Jim Callaghan did until 1980.
The nature of the leadership contests following defeats matter, too. Coronations do not fit with democratic politics. Bevan, Herbert Morrison and Gaitskell should have fought for the Labour leadership in 1951. Peter Shore should have kept his hat in the ring when Michael Foot and Denis Healey ran against each other in 1980. And, although it was prior to Labour’s defeat in 2010, David Miliband should have fought Brown in 2007 for the leadership.
The memory of the divisions between Blair and Brown have undoubtedly abated but they have not ended the tensions and divisions that followed the election of Ed Miliband. Cohesion now depends on the readiness of David Miliband, Ed Balls, Peter Hain, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, to name but five, to work together under Miliband as George Brown, Jim Callaghan, Dick Crossman, Denis Healey and Barbara Castle did in 1963 under Wilson, at least until the successful 1966 election.
By any standard the Labour party is better placed in 2011 than it was in 1931, 1951 or 1979. It has a group of talented, relatively young individuals with recent experience of cabinet office. Labour faces a coalition government which is far less cohesive than the one it faced in the 1930s and a less experienced prime minister in David Cameron than Macdonald or his successors, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill in 1951 and Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
Nevertheless, the pundits predict – not wholly unreasonably – that the coalition is likely to last until 2015 and could dominate the second decade of the 21st century. It is perfectly possible that Nick Clegg’s position will mirror that of the Liberal leader in the National government of the 1930s, Herbert Samuel. Samuel held every high office of state, yet lacked real influence and today very few can even recall his existence.
There are few good reasons for a political pessimism in 2011 that believes Labour, on the basis of past precedent, will be out of office for 14, 15 or 17 years. The all-important issue of the economy, on which the legitimacy of today’s coalition government is founded, is not yet looking like being resolved. Charitably, as a crossbencher, and because most of us want to see the structural deficit dealt with effectively, the jury is still out. But there is, sadly, a very real possibility now that by 2012 or 2013 the British people will face stagflation at worst or low growth at best and thus become deeply disillusioned. In that situation, it is not inconceivable that the call will come from the public for a new government to be formed. Much will depend on whether Labour by then looks cohesive and coherent. Whether it will be sufficiently self-confident to be able to offer a genuine coalition, embracing the Liberal Democrats and all the smaller parties to fulfil the remaining years of the fixed five-year parliament, remains to be seen.
Even if a vote of confidence is never carried, a united Labour opposition, more modestly led than for its last 13 years in office, less presidential, more deeply rooted in the values which made the Attlee government such a great one, and more collective in spirit and in intent, could even win an outright majority in 2015. In my judgement, everything depends on the speed at which the shadow cabinet unites, thinks afresh and anew and presents itself not as the Third Way, or its present equivalent, ‘a progressive alliance’, but as a deeply rooted social democratic party. A party where redistribution is not a dirty word, as it never was in the SDP. A party full of ideas which are as vital in opposition as competence is in government.
A party, above all, espousing openly the merits of the social market which is itself now enshrined in the European treaties as a term with both meaning and content. I see no need to try and invent a new term, nor to deny that social democrats and Conservatives will choose a different balance between the social and the market.
There is one other important issue which Labour should not attempt to duck. The electoral college adopted in 1981 must be changed. It looks as if, at long last, it may now be and Labour is right to consider the concept of the registered party voter, as in the US. It may, though, be necessary to have only party members voting for the leader when the party is choosing a prime minister and speed is vital.
I believe the lessons of history are clear: heal the trauma of defeat, end the divisions and demonstrate cohesion and competence and the electorate will think seriously about giving you another opportunity.
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David Owen is a member of the House of Lords and former leader of the Social Democratic party. This article is based on a speech he delivered at a Progress 31-51-81 meeting held with Labour historians