Frank Field - An Agenda for Britain

A second wave of thanks goes to four people. Jill Hendey worked on the manuscript in addition to all her other work. Matthew Owen did likewise, as well as trace material and discuss with me the book’s line of argument. I am particularly grateful to them for absorbing the considerable amount of extra work that producing a book entails, and doing so in such a way as to make working with them such a pleasure. Damian Leeson went through the whole document and sharpened both the prose and presentation. In Rebecca Wilson I was the beneficiary of being given by HarperCollins an editor whose talents were matched by a dedication to a production of books of the highest technical quality.

John Grigg, Lord Bonham Carter and Calum MacDonald read through the first draft of the introduction. I am grateful to them for their comments. In addition, Mark Bonham Carter read through the original lectures, commented upon and encouraged me to publish them. He also kindly thought of the book’s title. Robert Twigger, Robert Clements, Richard Cracknell, Adrian Crompton, Richard Dewdney, Nicola Chedgey, Ed MacGregory, Mahmed Nawaz and Jane Dyson of the House of Commons Library produced a number of statistical papers, and Dora Clark and Andrew Parker traced innumerable sources for me. MPs are blessed by having a library research staff whose qualities are unsurpassed. While I am grateful to all these people who helped produce this volume, its opinions are my responsibility, as are any errors which have escaped their watchful eyes.

The book is dedicated to Nick and Cathy Warren. Nick worked with me as solicitor to the Birkenhead Resource Unit and Cathy too worked for the Unit in a voluntary capacity. During Nick’s twelve year’s stewardship my constituents received a Rolls-Royce legal service. His standing in the town is testament to that, as was my vote at general elections. Due largely to the happy fallout from Nick’s work, of which I was the beneficiary, Birkenhead was turned into one of the safest seats in the country. The book’s dedication is, therefore, a small but public means of thanking Nick and Cathy for the care they lavished on so large a number of my poorer constituents.

FRANK FIELD

June 1993

The Vision Thing

Poor old George Bush got it right. Stumbling through the presidential election campaign he realized what was missing. In true Bush style he blurted out that he was short on ‘the vision thing’. What was true of the defeated Republican campaign is also true for a defeated Labour Party.

The ‘vision thing’ affects both Government and Opposition parties. That the Government is almost bankrupt of ideas is not surprising. Four election wins in a row and fourteen years in office is enough to convince any group of human beings that they are destined to remain there to the end of their days. Winning, after all, is the major test, so why worry too much if Cabinet Ministers cannot spell out in precise terms what the Government is trying to achieve? And yet?

In times past the pendulum has always swung back. So why won’t it next time? That must be the worry at the back of the mind of every Government supporter. It is, however, far from the back of the mind of Labour activists. In order to talk up morale a political law of averages reigns in Labour Party thinking. No swing back on the last three occasions makes it more, not less, certain that the swing will occur next time. It is a belief of all gamblers that their chances improve the more they lose. This is not the case, neither in the casino nor in the election arena. Political memories are inevitably short. No member of the current House of Commons was elected to the 1945 Parliament, so that the pendulum years appear to most politicians as the natural rhythm of politics. But such a pattern does not fit the decades before 1945 when the Conservatives were rarely out of power. The dreadful thought which ought to be stalking the Left is that the close fought elections of the early 1950s and mid-1970s might prove to be the exceptions rather than the rule.

Fundamental changes have been taking place which make a regular sharing of power between the two main parties a less, rather than more, likely future turn of events. For one thing, the swings which do occur, and which would have swept the board for the Opposition party, now merely reduce the overall size of the Government’s majority in the House of Commons. The 2 per cent swing gained last time by Neil Kinnock would have been enough to land him in Downing Street if only the election had been held in the 1950s rather than in the 1990s. It is the size of the Government’s lead amongst voters on election day, combined with the disappearance of the traditional marginal seat, which is part of the stumbling block. The clear polarization into ever more safe seats presents a microcosm of what is happening across the country.

The nagging doubt of many Labour activists is that the change in British politics is more fundamental than this. Two forces are at work. The first is that the social groups from which Labour’s traditional support has come have shrunk, are shrinking and look set to shrink further. It is as though Labour is trying to advance on a downward moving escalator.

But why is Labour on a down escalator in the first place? Here lies the second and more deadly of the two forces working against the Party. A large number of people raised in Labour-voting homes have simply walked away from the Party. In fairness many of these people would argue that Labour has simultaneously been marching off in a different direction anyway. These voters compare their past loyalty to Labour to the bonds which they used to have with their school friends. At the time, few people could be more important. However, even in the most stable of circumstances people can grow apart. Britain, far from being stable, has seen not merely the collapse of its traditional manufacturing base but of new strains throughout its social fabric. Partly as a result of this, but also because of rising living standards, people are on the move. A third of all households moved during the last decade. Old ties and friendships are thus broken, commitments reduced to memories which are valuable as part of our past, but definitely no longer of present significance. As with the ties of friendship, so too with political parties.

It is as though the country has been shaken up in a gigantic political kaleidoscope. Many of us, with different aspirations, have settled down in different places and are relating to different areas and people. Class loyalties have been loosened and in many instances have simply disintegrated. The political kaleidoscope might well be shaken again; the Government could simply fall apart. Whilst it came close to doing so in the twelve months after winning the 1992 election, the Opposition cannot rely upon it doing so again. The Government may lack vision but it enjoys exercising power which it will not give up easily. The Government may be divided over Europe, but John Major is no Peel. His indentureship in Mrs Thatcher’s Whips Office should not be forgotten: if his apprenticeship there taught him anything it was how to hold a party together in the roughest of political hurricanes.

The shaking of the political kaleidoscope has changed many people’s perspective of the Labour Party. This is not simply because voters remember the rule of the bullies in the early 1980s. It is one thing to have one’s life run by a series of barely competent Governments. Incompetence is a widely shared human failing, we are all incompetent in different ways. It is quite a different ball game to think of electing a party that has cowered before political extremism in its own ranks. Those images of supposed Labour Party supporters ranting and screaming at Labour leaders have become too much part of the folk memory of all too many voters for an easy accord to be again struck between the ruled and those wishing to rule. And there are still examples – though fewer, thank goodness – of this behaviour at a local government level. But each time there is an exposure of such an instance the scar tissue which the national party has been so carefully growing is ripped off.