For a little while in my blog and on twitter I’ve skirted around the belief that The Labour Party aren’t progressive. This typically angers many Labour party members who throw up policy after decision after legislation to prove their progressiveness and measure themselves on a yardstick of the coalitions actions.
None of which i’m buying. I’m not going to make any excuse for the coalition, or the Conservative party neither in my opinion are throwing up their progressive credentials as an overall movement.
Now the problem with trying to define anyone as progressive or not is the recent move towards using progressive as a meaningless buzzword. Anything that the coalition does by their own standards is progressive, by Labours standards its regressive.
However, there are roughly two definitions on which I’d like to stick, the first:
favoring or advocating change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are…
As defined by dictionary.com, the second i’d like to use is from a public perspective, a poll carried out by PoliticsHome which asked people to associate terms with progressive. The table was as follows:
Most people seem to associate progressive with the following 3 terms, reforming, modernising, enterprising. (It’s also interesting to note that Liberal and Left Wing are down at the bottom)
So I think it’s safe to say that in absence of the meaningless buzz around the word a good solid definition would be a party consistently favouring change that was reforming, modernising and enterprising.
Mostly, I believe the labour party to be mostly conservative, a broad type of working class conservative entirely ruled by self interest and brutal partisanship. There is a key element of the true persuasion of the conservative I believe is often forgotten, Edmund Burke summed it up quite well in talking about natural law:
We must all obey the great law of change, it’s the most powerful law of nature and the means perhaps of its conservation
i.e. a society with out means to change is a society without means of conservation. So it’s not that conservatives rigidly stick to the status quo, quite the opposite, they recognise some change is rightly necessary to preserve the sensible and stable.
That added provision ensures that not all change is progressive, that enterprising, modernising and reforming moves are not always representative of progressive.
Hence why I’d call many coalition reforms those such as EMA and the changing of NHS direct are essentially conservative in nature. Changes to ensure their survival, but recognition that the basic service they provide is something to be protected.
So why don’t I believe that Labour are progressive, why aren’t I convinced that most of the changes Labour made progressive.
I think working backwards slightly, I think we need to look towards the referendum on the Alternative Vote, covered in detail here, as the majority are backing a no vote, we see a massive bit pointing arrow towards conservative, surely a progressive change is to reform the voting system?! Alas, the Labour party does nothing to redeem it’s progressive credentials in opposition.
This kind of political reform is also echoed in the Labour Partys failure to live up to many of it’s manifesto promises on reform. In 1997 Tony Blair promised us AV+ off the back of the Jenkins report, yet it was kicked into the long grass. It promised us real reform of the House of Lords, whilst it implemented the smallest of changes removing SOME hereditary peers, it left many, and left the bishops in there, and it still didn’t get us the democratic reform that many of us wanted, an elected House of Lords.
So surely a failure to reform and a lack of appetite to reform the political systems of the country make them fairer, and improve their democratic credentials is surely a triumph of conservatism over progressive politics?
But ignoring the utterly failed credentials of political reform, one of the key aspects many Labour supporters trump as their political joker is their work on gay rights.
Those achievements in full are; The removal of section 28, civil partnerships, adoption, and the equalisation of the age of consent.
At first glance all admirable aims and achievements, but as previously spelled out, achieving a reform isn’t necessarily a progressive move. I do hope to give a fair hearing to all of the changes made.
The whole undercurrent of reform of gay rights was often made on the tide of changing public opinion and demands from pressure groups. Labour often had significant number of rebels, and one often wonders if these changes wouldn’t have occurred anyway under a Conservative government, although not to the same extent. But to look at the pieces individually we shows a mixture of results.
Now the first, is the removal of section 28. This is the act which banned teaching about homosexuality, or more specifically teachers
shall not intentionally promote or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.
Whilst a brave move to abandon such a terribly illiberal authoritarian law the party was not united, and was positively defeated by its own peers rejecting such a move. To try and pretend this move was anything other than one of progressive, it was modernising and reforming would be silly. For this i’d award a progressive rating.
The next on the list is civil partnerships. Something I believe the Labour Party got completely and utterly wrong. When Labour introduced civil parternships it was done upon the back of a call for gay marriage. With a thumping majority in parliament and a parliament act in it’s arsenal, a marriage bill was something that should have so easily passed. Except, it didn’t. It failed miserably, as Tony Blair a protestant (later Catholic) refused to take on the organised hatred of the churches.
There was a general rejection of the principle in Parliament, I’ll let you guess which one, and what party he was from said this:
“”Marriage is about a union for the procreation of children, which by definition can only happen between a heterosexual couple. So I see no circumstances in which we would ever bring forward proposals for so-called gay marriages”
The answer is…..Jack Straw of the Labour Party. It sounds to me chillingly like something Michael Howard might say or even Anne Widdicombe. Lets not even get into the ridiculous notion of couples who are unable to have children not being allowed to marry on the very same logic. However, Michael Howard said:
Civil partnership differs from marriage. Marriage is a separate and special relationship which we should continue to celebrate and sustain. To recognise civil partnership is not, in any way, to denigrate or downgrade marriage. It is to recognise and respect the fact that many people want to live their lives in different way
The words are almost identical in their rejection of marriage and in favour of a system of separate but equal. As Peter Tatchell dramatically calls it, marriage apartheid. So when you find yourself on the same side as the tories on gay rights straight after the murderous regime of Margaret Thatcher you must start to wonder whether you are on the progressive or conservative side of politics.
Afraid of the churches and offending the nation Blair settled on his miserable little compromise of Civil Partnerships, undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but no where near good enough. This can only be brought more sharply into focus by states such as Spain and Portugal. Countries are who known for their high levels of religious respect and the embedded nature of Christianity. Both of which have gay marriage. Are we really to believe that we couldn’t have gay marriage because the churches opposed it, and that Jack Straw as well as many other Labourites rejected the notion of homosexuality as an equal to heterosexuality?
Polls from the time suggest a small majority in favour of gay marriage, so Blair would not have scared to many people off. But even so, what is right is not always popular.
It seems to me that this was an act not drawn up out of deep conviction in equality, but one of conservative means. A change in order to survive. Many gay people were campaigning, loudly and proudly, threatening to upset the status quo. By doing as little as possible whilst still enacting a change to ensure that the gay rights banner survived, it seems to me that it was an utter failing of the term progressive. In fact I’d call this a very pragmatic move. A very conservative move as to not upset the real status quo in the churches and the traditional conservative values of flag, family and faith. Therefore I’d call civil partnerships a victory of conservative means rather than progressive.
The next two are the equalisation of the age of consent and adoption. The first, the equalisation of the age of consent, lowering it from 18 to 16 for homosexual sex, ensure that discrimination was no longer bound up in the law.
However, it is important to look towards the context of just why the Labour government did this. Having been taken to the European Court by one Mr Euan Sutherland, the court found that the discriminatory act broke two sections of the European convention on Human Rights. The government in response was forced to announce it would enact a bill in the next year to equalise the age of consent.
Forced to change by the European Court, in fear of large fines, and judicial action, the government introduced a bill which eventually passed after much wrangling. The question is, is this a progressive change or a conservative change. Understanding that conservatives accept change in order to survive and preserve, i’d very much all this a conservative change. Labours change was not progressive.
The final piece is the adoption bill, whilst I shall not deny that this was a really positive change backed by good intentions I believe that the bills deference to the churches, which allowed catholic and religious adoption agencies to willingly discriminate against homosexuals. Allowing a small change but still allowing homophobia to run wild despite the wopping great parliamentary majorities? I’d hardly call this a progressive change.
Whilst they were the great Labour triumphs to many within the party, it should also be compared against the things it didn’t do in power including: Ending the gay blood ban, gay marriage, and deporting LGBT asylum seekers.
In 13 years in power the Labour government supported a review in regards to the blood ban, but never spoke out about the illogical and homophobic nature of the ban? Allowing such homophobia to exist in society is hardly progressive now is it? but with the equalisation of the age of consent, it was shown that one must be taken to the European court in Britain to get Labour to overturn such discriminatory rules.
Secondly, even after such a conservative change of civil partnerships, Labour had many years in power to fix their mistake and allow the next step to move forward, always with whopping majorities and lots of parliamentary time due their repeated use of guillotines, what excuse is there to still enforce a marriage ban, marriage apartheid?
Thirdly, deporting LGBT Asylum seekers. Whilst the Labour government often had trouble talking about immigration, and was accused of so. Most notably highlighted in the case of Bigotgate. But one thing the Labour government was often very keen to do was deport LGBT asylum seekers to countries where they would face death, torture, imprisonment. Surely a country with a strong ethic to protect LGBT people shouldn’t be deporting people to where they may face death because of their sexuality? Again i’d hardly call this a sign of a progressive government.
Whilst LGBT rights often play the biggest part of their claims to progressiveness, another big issue that is often trumped is the introduction of the minimum wage. Again a change i think that comes from conservative means that failed in it’s case of progressiveness
The minimum wage is oft suggested as the next bit of progressive legislation that the Labour government introduced. However, i think it is a fair stretch to put into the category of “reforming” (What did it reform?), modernising (What did it modernise?!) and enterprising (I don’t believe the tory line that it cost jobs, but it certainly didn’t make life for business easier, and wasn’t a innovative idea)
I’ve fully explored above all the options that Labour members presented to me, just to why their party is progressive. If you are a Labour party member reading this who think’s theirs something Labour has done that isn’t included, or you think i’ve missed something they didn’t do please comment below!
Other than that i hope to have showed just why The Labour Party is not progressive
