{"id":3167,"date":"2020-02-05T16:34:31","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T16:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3167"},"modified":"2020-02-05T16:34:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T16:34:32","slug":"lisa-nandy-says-social-conservatism-is-a-labour-tradition-shes-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3167","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Nandy says social conservatism is a Labour tradition. She’s wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Of all the\ncandidates vying for the party leadership, Lisa Nandy appears to have put the\nmost thought into why Labour was so badly beaten in the general election. She\nhas been saying it for a few years too: the party has lost touch with a large\nslice of its working-class base in the North and the Midlands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is surely\nunderstood by now. What is more controversial is Nandy\u2019s conviction that Labour\nwould be honouring its own past (and not just reconnecting with lost\nworking-class voters) if it became more \u201csocially conservative\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social\nconservatism tends to be something of a hollow phrase when Labour politicians\nuse it \u2013 probably because it\u2019s difficult for a social democrat to stare\nunblinkingly into the face of social conservatism without feeling at least some\nrevulsion for what it might mean in practice. What happens to gay marriage?\nWhat happens to ethnic minorities? What happens to corporal punishment in\nschools \u2013 and, indeed, what happens to capital punishment in the state?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Nandy\ntalks about social conservatism, she tends to steer clear of these questions.\nShe shifts the conversation to \u2018community\u2019 instead.  The social\nconservative, in her prospectus, is dedicated to giving post-industrial and\nnon-metropolitan towns more power and \u201cpreserving the elements of working-class\ncommunity\u2026 that anchor people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of\nempowering communities is interesting, though far from straightforward, and I\u2019ll\ncome to that shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is social\nconservatism part of the Labour tradition?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But first,\nwhat should we make of Nandy\u2019s idea that Labour would rediscover its lost soul\nif it went down the social conservative route? Last summer she told a reporter\nat UnH<\/em>erd<\/em> that \u201csocial conservatism has always been a very, very strong\npart of the Labour tradition,\u201d<\/a> and that it represents \u201ca very strong strand\nof socialism and especially working-class socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\nsympathise with Nandy here. The idea of social conservatism is not immediately\nattractive to most Labour party members and nor would it appeal to the party\u2019s\nnew \u2018heartlands\u2019 in London and the university cities. So what better way to\ndignify the term than describe social conservatism as a return to Labour\u2019s\nsocialist roots?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is it\ntrue? Well, the term \u2018social conservatism\u2019 was never\nused by the Labour party in the past. Its minting is fairly recent. But it\ndoesn\u2019t really describe any elements in the Labour tradition or British\nsocialism either (or even \u201cworking-class socialism\u201d if there is such a distinct\nentity). The Labour tradition was economically radical, but also socially\nprogressive \u2013 or socially disruptive, which is even trickier for Nandy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout its\nhistory the party has certainly had to deal with a good deal of social\nconservatism in its working-class vote, but it has rarely sought to appease it.\nLabour people were typically impatient with the \u201ccake of custom\u201d and what they\nimagined to be the reactionary consequences of ingrained habit in working-class\ncommunities. These customs and habits were something to be overcome, not\nflattered. Likewise, working-class culture held few attractions to them and\nwhere things like pubs and taverns were concerned, socialists tended to want to\nreform them away or, particularly in Scotland, ban liquor altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the\nhardest sells was over compulsory secondary education to the age of 16. This\nwas a Labour policy since 1918 that promised to blow open the communities its\nMPs represented but which \u2013 notoriously \u2013 was opposed by a high percentage of\nits working-class supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was\nespecially the case in Lancashire where Lisa Nandy has her seat \u2013 mainly\nbecause keeping kids in school threatened to deprive working-class families of\nthe income derived from \u2018half-timers\u2019 in the cotton mills. Many a Lancashire\nLabour MP banged their heads in frustration over this, including Allen\nParkinson (Wigan\u2019s Labour MP between the wars), a former coal miner and\nschool governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the party\ndid not relent. Labour\u2019s educational reforms might have been \u201celitist\u201d in the\nsense that they lacked popular backing, but there was absolutely no way they\nwere going to be dropped. Secondary education was considered to be a good thing\nfor working-class children, regardless of whether their parents wanted it or\nnot. And it would be made compulsory under Labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the\nkind of attitude – educative if you are being generous, elitist if you are\nbeing unkind – that led the Harold Wilson governments to support a raft of\nliberal reforms on race relations, family life, homosexual rights and gender\nequality which did not command widespread support in its heartlands. Many\nworking-class communities, indeed, were hostile to the changes. But Labour\u2019s\ninstinct, honed over the years, was to plough ahead, do the right thing, and\ntrust in the educative power of legislation and the advocacy skills of all its\nmembers – from MPs, to local councillors, to union reps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that\nLabour existed to \u2018preserve\u2019 working-class\ncommunities would have made no sense either. In fact the word \u2018community\u2019 had\nlittle traction in Labour circles. \u2018Modernity\u2019 did far more\nof the heavy lifting. Even George Lansbury<\/a>, the most sentimental leader Labour has ever\nhad, could become pitiless when considering \u2018community\u2019. \u201cI do not want Dowlais\nor Merthyr, Poplar or Canning Town, the Black Country or the coalfields of Lanarkshire\nor anywhere like that re-planned\u201d he wrote in 1934. \u201cMy object would be to\nsweep away these and similar places.\u201d The pit villages, too, would all have to\nbe \u201cabolished\u201d when a Labour government assumed power. Miners would move lock\nstock and barrel to newly-built garden cities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is social\nconservatism the same as devolving power to communities?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Labour\nwanted to do was empower workers, not necessarily communities. It was the mine\nand the factory that British socialists hoped to democratise, not the town or\nvillage as such. This brings us back to Nandy\u2019s signature policy of wanting to\ndevolve power to local assemblies, which was also articulated in the UnH<\/em>erd<\/em> interview,\nand subsequently in her BBC cross-examination by Andrew Neil.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both\ninstances, Nandy was eloquent and interesting. But each time she dodged the\nquestion of what would happen if a newly-empowered community obeyed its social\nconservative instincts and voted for something that the Labour party\nfundamentally disapproved of. Would refugees be forced out of a particular\ntown?  Would wind turbines be taken down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nandy declined\nto answer these questions, saying instead that if working-class communities\nlike her own were given more power and more authority it would activate their\nliberal and universal instincts. The refugees would be welcome and the turbines\nwould continue to rotate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a nice\nthought. It may even be true. But it isn\u2019t social conservatism.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the candidates vying for the party leadership, Lisa Nandy appears to have put the most thought into why Labour was so badly beaten in the general election. She has been saying it for a few years too: the party has lost touch with a large slice of its working-class base in the North […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":3169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1395,1524,1396],"tags":[2105,1534],"coauthors":[2215],"class_list":["post-3167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-comment","category-devolution","category-uk","tag-blue-labour","tag-labour"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Lisa-Nandy-says-social-conservatism-is-a-Labour-tradition.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3167"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}