The history of the Labour Party movement is complex and lengthy so, other than for the satisfaction of an academic interest, it is far less wasteful of time not to study in detail this gradual evolution but instead to look only at before-and-after snapshots of the social environment in which it has taken place. It is by comparing just these two views that one can most clearly see the enormity of the cumulative effect of the myriad incremental changes that have happened since the beginning of the 20th century.
Whether by drafting independent legislation or by incorporating EU legislation into local law, successive UK governments of all shades have transformed the national workplace such that today it would be barely recognisable to anyone employed when the Labour Party won its first seat in Parliament, especially that it has become a reasonable expectation for any and every worker to remain healthy and uninjured by their work throughout the duration of their career.
Other surprises might be that rest periods are compulsory, working hours are limited, holidays, sick and maternity pay are rights of permanent employment, whether full- or part-time, equality is enshrined in law and the average Trade Union Member is in the middle income bracket.
Even when the existence of the NHS and a pretty comprehensive benefits system are added to the list of social improvements, it is still not that the status quo should be considered “job done” and that Labour should just pack up and head to the pub, but the point definitely has passed beyond which new tools are required if they are to carry on without causing damage to the work already completed.
This is not to suggest they should replace like-for-like all their steam-age structural remodelling equipment with electric versions of the same, rather that they need different tools, those with a lighter touch and which are more controllable, if they want to achieve the quality of finish that is expected in the 21st century, modern tools that didn’t exist when Labour was born because there was not yet the need for them.
Gone is the simplistic distinction between the Conservatives defending the interests of the landed, the Liberals doing the same for those in business and Labour trying to stop everyone else getting shafted along the way. Although, even as far back as 1903, Labour, the party of the employed, was doing deals with the Liberals, the party of the employers, to prevent the Conservatives from winning a general election, so things were never really as straightforward as they were made out to be anyway.
Outside of socialist doctrine, in today’s Britain there is no working class struggle because there is no working class. There are those who earn more than others and there are those who earn less or nothing, but the tradespeople the Unions were created to improve the lot of are pretty much fine now and there is no widespread circumstance placing a blanket restriction on self-betterment for anyone.
It is easier today than it has ever been for anyone to study anything they wish to. Attending a better school doesn’t actually get a child access to any more knowledge than they can get on the device they use to moan on social media about how little hope they have of ever achieving anything and to swap pictures of genitals. No adult is disenfranchised for good simply because they didn’t learn something before they left the education system, unless that is what they have grown up to believe.
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Without a genuine oppressed working class there is not only no need of traditional socialism but there is an obvious benefit that would arise were socialists to stop insisting that there is one, because the only folk who cannot take advantage of today’s truly unprecedented equality of opportunity irrespective of birth circumstance are those who refuse to acknowledge it.
It follows that the most urgent and simplest solution to a lack of social mobility is to stop anyone being taught –
A) that there is a working class,
B) that they are part of it,
C) that it’s grim and
D) that there is no way out,
a doctrine uncannily similar to that used by worship clubs to spuriously justify their own parasitic existence and to keep the peasantry in check.
Socialism may have been, in its day, an appropriately simplistic reaction to the then current circumstance but in today’s Britain it has become a pretty straightforward hindrance to those it proclaims its key intention is to assist, spreading self-doubt by preaching the pointlessness of ambition.
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Human nature has it that all people want to be as comfortable as possible and that most people share the expectation that greater effort should bring greater reward but those who cannot provide for themselves should be supported collectively by those who can.
Whether it has been the best hunters running extra quickly to take the best quarry for the village pot or a parent putting in some overtime to enable their own family to enjoy a more exotic summer holiday destination while the taxes they pay support the basic needs of others, the underlying trend can be seen to be the same, as can the inevitability of a small minority thinking it’s fine to invade a village and steal soup or to break in to and nick a telly from the home of a family while they are away.
The majority of people everywhere are naturally moderate in their political view but ultimately, if push comes to shove, they are more concerned with the wellbeing of themselves and those close to them than with anyone else, which puts them fractionally to the right of yet still within the political centre.
If Labour wants to play a more major role in government in the future it needs to recognise that the average working person in Britain today has more than they ever had before, enough that traditional socialism has become to the majority a threat to their personal advancement and not a promise of it.
Workers now do have rights, a benefits system now does exist and the NHS now is there to keep everyone in reasonable health, even under a Conservative government. So it is hardly outrageous to suggest that a nineteenth century philosophical blunt instrument devised when these things were beyond imagine is inappropriate for the political twenty-first century, just as a heavy hammer that serves well to knock a hole in a wall is useless for making good the finish around its edges.
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In 2016, the Labour Party is behaving like a worship club does when its appeal diminishes in a changing society and it becomes faced with a choice between discarding what were previously inalterable tenets promoted as edicts from its god and running out of congregation in the modern and more educated world, the officers who run the club insisting the club’s focus should be returned to the original fire and brimstone performances to boost their audiences while failing to appreciate that today’s public just want to have a bit of a sing-song and to enjoy that they no longer need to worry about burning in hell.
