An Agenda for Britain. Frank Field
two post-war elections to rectify. The sweepstake amongst Labour leaders guessing the 1945 result was won on an estimate of a 40-seat Tory majority. That guess was the closest to the actual result of a Labour majority over the Conservatives of 196 seats.
The first hint of a possible divergence of traditional class interests and the newly emerging aspirations of voters began to register during that first post-war government. The ration-book approach of fair shares lost its appeal. Much more popular was ‘the bonfire of restrictions’ which, to his credit, Harold Wilson instigated as President of the Board of Trade. But it was left to the Tories to make the most out of the determination to do away with wartime restrictions and rationing. In one of those decisive electoral junctures, in 1951, the Conservatives impressed upon the voter’s mind that they sided with those who wanted the freedom to get on and build their own lives.
A similar political juncture came at the end of the 1970s. Racked by the shift in economic power to the oil producers, those in work tried to prevent the resulting inflation from cutting living standards as this global transfer of wealth took effect. The stage was being set for another of those once-in-a-generation shifts in the political debate. The issue and the moment came together in the sale of council houses. I develop this point because the significance of this issue is still underrated by practitioners and commentators alike. Of course it was an immediate vote winner. But it had equally important long-term effects on British politics.
The Primacy of Home Ownership
The sale of council houses appears to have had a lasting influence on how the Labour and Conservative parties are perceived by many of the electorate to a degree which most political commentators have missed. When in 1976 I advocated that Labour should be the party of ‘freeing the council house serfs’, I was addressing how best politicians could persuade people to devote more of their income to covering housing costs. The only way I believed this possible was to change the rules: hence the option to buy. Only partially did I perceive the long-term political importance of the sales policy. I realized, of course, it was an election winner which could be ours, but I did not then comprehend how one single policy could so symbolize a party’s link with the future. While Labour embroiled itself in vicious internal warfare, the Tories went out to meet the future.
Council house sales have an appeal which extends beyond council house tenants themselves. No policy statement or action comes anywhere near to having the almost sacramental impact this policy has had on what political parties stand for. While the Conservatives scooped the advantages of espousing freedom, Labour’s fractious opposition to the sale of council houses made an equally indelible mark on the electorate. Increasingly, Labour was seen as a party looking backwards and wanting to hold people down. A decade and more after the mass sale of council houses became a political reality, the NEC report on the 1992 election continued to record key voters perceiving Labour as the party of the past.
Council house sales affected the political debate in a second decisive way. It was the issue on which the voters’ aspirations took primacy over class interests. I need to go back again to the 1950s bonfire of controls.
The return to government of the Conservatives in 1950 saw the dismantling of wartime industrial controls. The effects on supplies to the shops, which occurred after the dismantling of controls and regulations, had a wide appeal, not least to those who experienced the drudgery of the 1930s and the hardships of the 1940s. Goods slowly became more available and the end of coupons signalled the demise of the spivs and the black market. The market system which Labour held in such disdain seemed to be working. This was, however, change within old structures. Life went on very much the same. Those who could worked five and a half days a week for fifty weeks of each year.
The sale of council houses came at a time when rising living standards had reached a point when many ordinary individuals could start making decisive choices over how they spent their growing leisure hours. Non-working hours grew in importance both in their length and in the opportunities they offered individuals.
People were opting for their own form of privatization long before Mrs Thatcher began shifting around industrial ownership from public to private monopolies. The most significant visible sign of this came in the inexorable climb in the number and percentage of people owning their homes. The figures rocketed under the Conservative Government’s sales policy. Through their own home, and their leisure pursuits, voters were building their own world which ruthlessly excluded officialdom. While public services remained important, an increasing priority was given to private pastimes. Tax rates thereby took on a new significance. It wasn’t simply a matter of wishing to pay for a pukka health service. That demand now competed with resources which might be spent on a new kitchen, bathroom, extension or in planning regular family holidays.
It was the Conservatives who became seen in the voter’s mind as the party which not only understood this new development, but which encouraged it. Council house sales therefore have to be seen as a second stage in the Tories’ 1950 appeal of being the party which abolished controls, freed business, which began the age of mass consumption. Here the cry of ‘setting the people free’ was immeasurably reinforced with a ‘trust the people’ approach. The policy reinforced the Tory message that they were on the side of the individual. Labour’s stance did the opposite.
The difference between the parties could not have been clearer during the last election. One of the Prime Minister’s more important speaking engagements was at a DIY store. Labour’s spin-doctors snobbishly laughed at his performance. On polling day that laugh appeared on other faces. Significantly, the DIY appearance was not engineered by the pollsters: It was a natural event for a party which shared the aspiring lifestyles of a growing majority of voters. These aspirations are now forming a new block of consumer interests in politics which has to operate within a two-party system.
Labour’s Self-destruction
While the Conservatives were confirming their role as enhancers of individual freedom, Labour, though unintentionally, spent its efforts in making the Party as unattractive as possible. It was not long after the 1979 defeat that Labour fell into a lengthy bout of ethnic cleansing of those in the Party who were deemed not to be true socialists. These actions by the Bennite praetorian guard have done lasting damage to the Labour Party which it is hard to underestimate. The ranting and screaming, and the guard’s use of verbal abuse, were seen too often on television for it not to have entered the subconscious of many voters. Again, in contrast to the Conservative’s action of being on the side of the voters, Labour offered the image of the bully.
The immediate damage brought about by these actions was evident in the 1983 result. Indeed, it is possible to argue that Labour, far from being damaged electorally by the SDP’s secession, was saved from an almost complete electoral rout by the existence of this new party. The SDP gave hordes of Labour voters a convenient non-Tory safe haven in that election. Without the SDP candidates, and their Liberal colleagues, many Labour voters would have shown their contempt for what was happening within the Labour Party by crossing straight over to the Tories. As it was, many did. Even with the existence of a third party attachment, the 1983 result was worse than the disastrous 1931 election.
Time is running out. How many more elections can we lose and still expect Labour voters to remain loyal? The Asquithian Liberals found to their astonishment, and anger, how quickly voters move once they see a viable alternative. The build up of Liberal Democrat councillors – doubling over the decade – and the capturing of local government seats in by-elections on a scale which outpaces both the Conservative and Labour Parties combined is an ominous warning. Moreover, at the time of writing, it is a year after the election and no serious discussion has begun on the lessons we must draw from a record-breaking series of defeats.
So what can be done? I use the remainder of this chapter to sketch out an answer on four key issues for Labour’s future. These are first, why it is urgent for Labour to become an effective challenger for power even if that challenge has to be accomplished in union with Liberal Democrats; second, why even in this context Labour’s political programme matters; third, what lessons are there to be learnt from Bill Clinton’s success in the United States; and, fourth, what kind of party must Labour be for enough of the electorate ever to trust it with sharing power?