The Limits of Reform in Labour Britain

In the post-World War II period Britain had a government committed to full employment and a massively expanded welfare state (with the NHS, free education up to the college level, a two-tier pension system), which also countenanced the unionization of the work force and was prepared to go so far as nationalization to achieve its economic ends. In the resulting circumstances jobs were plentiful, poverty fell, the country enjoyed a "golden age of social mobility," and there was a broad rise in living standards.

Naturally to many progressives looking back at it from the neoliberal era, and the "New Labour" party of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer it seems an enviable lot--such that, inheriting the New Labour vision in its moment of total bankruptcy, Keir Starmer evokes the memory of the era, the "spirit of '45," with a frequency matched only by his utter inability to convince.

Still, it is worth remembering that in its post-war heyday the Labour Party's record, even setting aside the extent to which the Conservative governments in power half the time halted or even rolled back many of its initiatives (particularly in areas like public housing); or for that matter, the way in which an outsized military profile and the associated balance of payments problems tied the Labour Party's own hands with regard to the realization of its own projects when it was in power; was regarded as a great letdown by many of its most ardent supporters.*

In considering this it helps to remember what Old Labour promised. The party's constitution explicitly committed it to the emancipation of the working class on the basis of collective ownership of the means of production and distribution, and many took this seriously, expecting that a Labour government, especially one with a broad mandate like the one elected in '45, would deliver a society that would really be economically, socially, politically equal, where workers would exercise greater power in society and control over their lives--or at least, go a very long way to this. However, the vision of the politically effective portion of the Labour Party was, at least where the near term was concerned, rather less far to the left, rather more technocratic and meritocratic. Their nationalizations were selective and saw nationalized businesses continuing to run on the same business-like lines as before, the scope they allowed unions was for bargaining over wages and conditions and not workers' control of industry (while much of the work force was still not represented by unions at all), their welfare state was funded by contribution rather than distribution, and they preached equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome (a social ladder still existent, if with working people given somewhat more opportunity to climb it than they had before).

Thus if there was high employment, and poverty was in decline, and workers' living standards rising, even by the differing, more modest metric the center was using to judge the country's progress, it was still not all they might have hoped for. Granted the benefits of postwar consumerism as a consolation prize of sorts as the socialist dream fell by the wayside, workers found that much enjoyment of those benefits required required overtime, second incomes and a good deal of credit, which left them more harried, more insecure, and feeling less in control of their lives than they would have hoped to be in a situation where jobs were plentiful and wages going up. And for all the meritocratic talk the record of social mobility looks less impressive on close examination. Where educational and occupational opportunity was concerned, it was far easier to give students more years in school than to really equalize the educational opportunities of the children of manual workers and the children of privilege, let alone open up access to the more prestigious, remunerative careers that young people were likely to dream of becoming someday, the volume of which did not budge so much. Especially with the economy demanding more assembly-line workers than technologists, more clerks than Chief Executive Officers, more nurses than surgeons, more schoolteachers than Oxford dons or Fleet Street journalists or barristers (never mind novelists), there was not much more room at the top, and traditional public school-and-Oxbridge privilege substantially monopolized it. The result was that in the end not very many moved up, not many of those who did move up moved very far up, and even those who made headway tended to do so only after great exertions and even sacrifices, at the end of which they may have been unsure the game was worth the candle--while more often than not alert to the difference there would have been in the prospects of talent being recognized and duly rewarded, or simple "return on effort," had they been born in a higher social station.

These disappointments and frustrations were by no means slight, or slight grounds for the disenchantment of many with the situation then (memorably dramatized in the writings of "angry young men" like John Osborne). Still, just as with the post-war American anxieties over a business culture turning the country's white collar-wearing workers into "organization men," those worries can seem a comparative luxury in the post-Thatcher, post-Blair world in which working people are told to not even dream of social safety nets and living wages--a reminder of just how far the expectations of what may scarcely be able to call itself a "left" anymore have fallen.

* In the thirty-four years of the 1945-1979 period the Conservatives were the party of government for seventeen years (1951-1964, 1970-1974), fully half the time, with the earlier thirteen year stretch (with its three General Election victories) arguably critical in reining in the party's grander visions.