The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97 9781526144430

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The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97

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The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97

Christopher Massey

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Christopher Massey 2020 The right of Christopher Massey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 4442 3 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not ­guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: © Lord Tom Sawyer

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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To Kelly for her unconditional love. To my Dad for everything. To my Mam, Aunts and Grandparents for their eternal support.

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Contents

List of tables List of figures Preface and acknowledgements List of abbreviations

viii ix x xii

Introduction 1 Halting the advance of the left, 1979–83 2 The realignment of the left, 1983–87 3 The Policy Review, 1987–92 4 One Member, One Vote, 1992–94 5 Clause IV, 1994–95 6 Partnership in Power, 1995–97 Conclusion: The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97

1 19 52 89 130 159 189

Notes Bibliography Index

225 264 275

vii

219

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Tables

1 The ideological composition of Labour’s NEC between 1983/84 and 1985/86 2 The recorded votes of the soft-left at Labour’s NEC: September 1984 to October 1986 3 The effect of small swings in the CLP section during the vote on Rule Amendment (E) 4 The composition of Labour’s NEC before and after the 1997 Partnership in Power changes 5 The composition of Labour’s National Policy Forum, 1992–97

viii

57 83 155 202 207

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Figures

1 A comparison between Tom Sawyer’s ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ (1987) and the Labour Party’s Meet the Challenge, Make the Change (1989) 2 A comparison between Tom Sawyer’s ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ (1987) and the Labour Party’s Policy Review (1987–92)

ix

102

104

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Preface and acknowledgements

This book had its origins in 2015 when I was appointed as a postdoctoral researcher at Teesside University to study the life and times of Lord Tom Sawyer, the university’s chancellor. Arising from this project, a further three-year post on the modernisation of the Labour Party was funded by the Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of Teesside University, Professor Paul Croney, to whom I am incredibly grateful. This book draws on extensive archival research alongside the private papers and Journal of Lord Tom Sawyer. My thanks go to the archive staff at the five major archives I have visited: the Bishopsgate Institute; Churchill College; the Modern Record Centre; Hull History Centre; and the Labour History Archive and Study Centre. Particular thanks go to Darren Treadwell at the Labour History Archive for his help and assistance over the years. I also thank Lord Prescott for granting permission to access his archive held in Hull. The research also owes a tremendous debt to the twentyfour interviewees who participated in the project, including, but not limited to, two former Labour leaders (Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock), three former party General Secretaries (Larry Whitty, Tom Sawyer and Margaret McDonagh), and numerous former MPs and members of party staff. My eternal thanks go to Tom Sawyer. Without his help and support this work would not have been possible. The kind x

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Preface and acknowledgements

donation of the Sawyer Archive to Teesside University has been of incredible assistance. Additionally, I am incredibly grateful for the unfettered access I have received to Tom’s private papers and journal. These resources have provided a unique and entirely untapped insight into the modernisation of the Labour Party and trade union movement between 1983 and 1998. Finally, Tom’s assistance in securing interviews for myself with the key actors in Labour’s modernisation during this project has opened doors closed to most researchers. However, none of the individuals interviewed or mentioned in this work have steered any of the independent judgements or arguments made within this academic study and none of these men and women knew what conclusions would be reached in this monograph when they took part in the project. I extend my thanks to the staff at Manchester University Press and the anonymous reviewers of the monograph for their support throughout the construction of this work. I would also like to thank my entire family for their love and support on my journey but particularly my aunt, Kathleen Massey, and my fiancée, Kelly Butcher for their tireless assistance in proof-reading this work. Finally, I extend my deepest gratitude to Kelly who encouraged me to return to academia in 2015. To her, my greatest debt is owed. Christopher Massey, Teesside University, September 2019.

xi

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Abbreviations

AEU AEEU ASTMS BLP CLP CLPD CLV COHSE DLP EPLP ERM GMPU JPC LCC LHASC LPYS MSF NALGO NEC NOLS NUM

Amalgamated Engineering Union Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs Branch Labour Party Constituency Labour Party Campaign for Labour Party Democracy Campaign for Labour Victory Confederation of Health Service Employees District Labour Party European Parliamentary Labour Party European Exchange Rate Mechanism Graphical, Paper and Media Union Joint Policy Committee Labour Co-ordinating Committee Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People’s History Museum Manchester Labour Party Young Socialists Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union National and Local Government Officers’ Association National Executive Committee (Labour Party) National Organisation of Labour Students National Union of Mineworkers xii

List of abbreviations

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NUPE OMOV PLP RMFC RMT

National Union of Public Employees One Member, One Vote Parliamentary Labour Party Rank and File Mobilising Committee National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers TGWU Transport and General Workers’ Union TSSA Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association TUC Trades Union Congress TULV Trade Unions for a Labour Victory UCW Union of Communication Workers USDAW Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers

xiii

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Introduction

The period between 1979 and 1997 saw fundamental changes in the structure, ideology and electoral appeal of the Labour Party. This process, the ‘modernisation’ of the party, led to the formation of ‘New Labour’, a movement in sharp contrast with the party’s left-wing position of the early 1980s. This modernisation altered Labour’s policies, internal structures and constitution. Across these years, the party moved away from calls for widespread nationalisation, unilateralism and European withdrawal, towards an embrace of supply-side economics and a closer relationship with the market. Through organisational reform, Labour’s structures were also modernised. At the beginning of this period, Labour gave a 90 per cent share of its conference vote to the trade union movement, granted constituency and conference votes to ‘delegates’ only, allowed MPs alone a vote in leadership elections, and had a left-leaning manifesto that was out of touch with the median voter. By the 1997 general election, Labour had a 50/50 split between unions and constituencies at conference, One Member, One Vote (OMOV) within conference, candidate selection and leadership ballots, and a manifesto far more in tune with the views of the British public. These changes, alongside the reformulation of Labour’s policy-making avenues (and redirection of policy outputs), through the Policy Review and the creation of the National Policy Forum (NPF), 1

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

substantially changed the constitution, organisation, and electoral fortunes of the Labour Party. Labour’s modernisation had three principle strands: policy, organisation and presentation. The presentational reforms in these years have been highlighted in some depth by Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell and Philip Gould,1 whilst the effects of Labour’s policy changes have been widely debated by Stephen Driver and Luke Martell, Colin Hay, Richard Heffernan and Tudor Jones, amongst others.2 The organisational reform of the Labour Party, however, outside analyses by Meg Russell and Lewis Minkin which focus largely on Tony Blair’s revolution and not the organisational reform undertaken before 1994; Thomas Quinn who provides a theoretical analysis of the major changes, using a rational choice model, though occasionally at the expense of some detail; and Gerald Taylor whose work focuses mainly on the 1987–92 Policy Review, has largely been overlooked.3 A thorough evaluation of Labour’s organisational modernisation from 1979 to 1997, which was the necessary prerequisite for changes to policy, presentation and strategy made in the latter part of this period, has not been researched in full. This monograph provides a reappraisal of Labour’s internal modernisation during the party’s eighteen years out of office, between 1979 and 1997, using entirely new source material, exhaustive archival research and interviews with Labour leaders, politicians, party staff and other major protagonists. The reform of Labour’s constitutional and organisational structures in this period marked the first major change to the party’s internal arrangements since 1918. Significantly, the settlement achieved by 1997 remained unaltered during New Labour’s entire period of office until 2010. Labour’s modernisation was also catalysed by a variety of external factors which influenced the party’s internal struggles. These enabling events involved challenges to Labour’s electability, principally the party’s four election defeats in 1979, 2

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Introduction

1983, 1987 and 1992 and the impact of Thatcherism. A further factor in the 1983 and 1987 contests was the danger posed to Labour’s base by the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Although this work does not seek to engage directly with the policies of the Conservative governments between 1979 and 1997, it would be imprudent to negate the impact of Margaret Thatcher’s and (to a much lesser extent) John Major’s administrations on the fortunes of the Labour Party in this period. Whilst Labour in this period ‘did not become Thatcherite or SDP mark II’,4 the Conservative ascendancy clearly influenced changes within the Labour Party. Labour’s 1979 defeat enshrined the party’s turn to the left, not only in policy terms but also in the party constitution. This era resulted in changes to Labour’s system for leadership elections and mandatory reselection, alongside the election of Michael Foot in 1980 and the left-leaning 1983 election manifesto. Nevertheless, it must be noted that in policy terms The New Hope for Britain in 1983 had much in common with Labour’s Programme 1973.5 The crushing 1983 defeat led to a change in direction, culminating in Neil Kinnock’s leadership victory and his attempts to build a consensus for change in 1983–86. Defeat in 1987 instigated Labour’s Policy Review, which drastically changed the party’s policy outputs. Indeed, some academics view this exercise as an attempt to ‘catch up’ with Thatcher,6 although this viewpoint is disputed in Chapter 3 of this book. Finally, the 1992 defeat led to a change in Labour’s leadership and a reassessment of the party’s links with the trade unions under John Smith. The Labour Party’s organisational change in this period was a direct response to both Conservative electoral success (1979–92) and the 1980s ascendancy of Labour’s left. This response did not amount to an accommodation with the Conservative Party, rather Labour’s policy changes were rooted firmly within its own history, whilst organisational change created a party with a ‘New’ identity, constitution and internal structure.

3

Modernisation of the Labour Party

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The structure of the monograph Labour’s modernisation can only be explained by a full investigation of the major internal changes implemented across the party’s years in opposition between 1979 and 1997. The cumulative impact of the organisational reforms of Kinnock, Smith and Blair are discussed across the following six chapters. The progress of Labour’s modernisation, across the entirety of the party’s period in opposition, is crucial to the understanding of the different approaches taken by Labour leaders on organisational reform. Early analyses of the party’s transformation, particularly those of Colin Hughes and Patrick Wintour, and Martin Smith, highlight the seminal importance of the 1987 election defeat and the party’s subsequent Policy Review in changing Labour’s direction.7 Yet, to some extent, these analyses neglect the period between 1981 and 1986. Conversely, contemporary histories of Labour’s modernisation, such as Lewis Minkin’s Blair Supremacy, and the equally valuable Building New Labour by Meg Russell, only briefly discuss – and thus, in this author’s view, incorrectly devalue – the 1980s reforms by focusing largely on the renewal of the party under Blair.8 On these lines, Adam Lent has argued convincingly that the period before 1987 has not been adequately covered in the historiography of Labour’s modernisation.9 But his search for the ‘point of origin’ in Labour’s transformation in these years overlooks the multi-faceted reality of Labour’s modernisation.10 Labour’s modernisation had a variety of strands and a multitude of authors. Consequently, in this work, Labour’s modernisation is broken down into six key areas which form the basis of the following six chapters: 1 2 3 4

Halting the advance of the left, 1979–83 The realignment of the left, 1983–87 Labour’s Policy Review, 1987–92 One Member, One Vote, 1992–94 4

Introduction

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5 Clause IV, 1994–95 6 Partnership in Power, 1995–97 Although the six chapters of this monograph are in chronological order, they have been carefully selected as the six major organisational events of Labour’s modernisation between 1979 and 1997. This work does not seek to cover every event across Labour’s eighteen years out of power, but instead investigates the six key areas of Labour’s modernisation in this period: the advance and realignment of the left, the Policy Review, OMOV, Clause IV, and Partnership in Power. Chapter 1 investigates the high-water mark of Labour’s left in the early 1980s and describes the inheritance of Labour’s modernisers at the beginning of their fightback. In 1979–81 the Labour Party was dominated by the trade unions and, to some extent within the constituencies and the conference, the hard-left. In this period, the move towards the mandatory reselection of MPs and an electoral college for leadership selection, split 40/30/30 between the unions, Constituency Labour Party’s (CLPs), and MPs respectively, highlighted the party’s shift to the left. The election of Michael Foot as Labour leader in 1980 further showcased the change in the party’s ideological outlook. In addition, Labour’s policies also began to reflect this viewpoint. The party’s 1983 election manifesto included commitments to left-wing tenets such as unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, the repeal of Conservative trade union laws, and widespread nationalisation. Each of these policies were to be reversed over the next eighteen years, principally through the Policy Review, but the organisational changes of the left were unpicked far more gradually. The ascendancy of the ‘hard’ or ‘outside’ left in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the constitutional changes sponsored by these groups led directly to the formation of the SDP and the defection of twenty-eight Labour MPs in 1981. The story of Labour’s 5

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

modernisation begins with the centre-right MPs who remained within the party, alongside the trade unions, to agree the ‘Peace of Bishop’s Stortford’ which prevented any further constitutional changes that would benefit the left. The reversal of the left’s organisational victories in 1979–81 and policy victories before 1983, began under Kinnock’s leadership. During his tenure, Labour radically reformed both party organisation and party policy. Chapter 2 highlights how Kinnock’s alliance with soft-left members Tom Sawyer, David Blunkett, Eddie Haigh and Michael Meacher on Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) was forged in the aftermath of the miners’ strike and the Militant Tendency’s insurgency in Liverpool. This coalition paved the way for fundamental changes to party policy to pass through the NEC. Chapter 3 details Kinnock’s major reform project, the Policy Review, led by Tom Sawyer, which saw Labour abandon its commitments to unilateralism, European withdrawal and widespread nationalisation. Yet, Kinnock stalled in his attempts to introduce widespread reform to Labour’s internal structures following his defeat on OMOV in 1984. However, the seeds of Labour’s modernisation were firmly sown in the Kinnock era. Chapter 4 investigates the organisational reform enacted by Smith through the campaign for OMOV and the reduction of the trade union bloc vote, from 90 to 70 per cent of the conference share. Labour’s traditional organisational structures had been only slightly modernised during Kinnock’s period of office. Before Smith’s tenure, Labour still operated a system of delegatory democracy that gave great power within CLPs to elected delegates and disenfranchised the lay party member from decisionmaking. This system of delegatory democracy also extended to the trade unions, where elected executive committees made decisions on behalf of thousands of members. Within the union movement, power was invested in union general secretaries who controlled the ‘bloc vote’ of their individual unions at Labour Party conference.  Until 1993 this bloc vote amounted to 90 per 6

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Introduction

cent of the conference,  with only  9 per cent being held by constituency parties on a non-OMOV basis. The fierce battle for OMOV, whilst successful, stalled further talk of modernisation within Smith’s camp, much to the dismay of Blair, Mandelson and Gordon Brown. The Smith era also saw the introduction of the NPF, first suggested under Kinnock in 1990, which continues to function as Labour’s major policy organ in 2019. Tony Blair’s early leadership of the Labour Party was characterised by his accelerated pursuit of modernisation. This monograph examines the impact of Blair’s organisational modernisation in the period before Labour’s general election victory in 1997. Chapter 5 investigates Blair’s campaign to reform Clause IV, part 4 of Labour’s constitution, which brought Labour closer to the electorate and distanced the party from an anachronistic millstone. Chapter 6 details Blair’s quest to modernise the party’s internal organs through the Partnership in Power reforms, largely neglected in the historiography of the period. These reforms aimed to create a partnership between Labour’s leaders and lay members, but in reality, shifted power within the party further to the centre. The changes also heavily involved Sawyer who, after Blair’s election to the leadership, became the party’s General Secretary (1994–98). Partnership in Power fundamentally altered the composition and powers of Labour’s once mighty NEC, which was divested of its policy-making role within the party apparatus. In addition, the reforms also removed the ability of Labour constituencies to submit unlimited resolutions to the party conference. In their place, a revamped NPF, with representatives from every section of the party, became Labour’s chief policy-making organ. Historiography A wealth of books and monographs have been published on Labour in the 1980s and 1990s,11 and equally abundant are the tomes of biographies published about the main actors in 7

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

Labour’s modernisation.12 Furthermore, following the end of the Blair project, there has seemingly been a rush to publish autobiographies and diaries by former Labour leaders, cabinet members, backbenchers and staff members, who have all sought to establish their place in the history, and to stake their claim on the successes of these Labour governments.13 Although the modernisation of  the Labour Party has been touched upon in these studies, the majority of works focus on the party’s policy changes and not  the  substantial organisational reforms made in these years, despite the salience attached to the politics of organisation by Labour’s leaders. Labour’s deputy leader (1994–2007), John Prescott, claims that ‘organisation is as important as the policy’, whilst Blair believed that if Labour had ‘not changed’ internally then the party would not have been able to ‘change the country’.14 Yet, no single monograph has focused on the entirety of the Labour’s organisational changes which took place between 1979 and 1997. Whilst a number of volumes consider elements of the changes introduced during Labour’s modernisation (for instance, the realignment of the left, the Policy Review, OMOV, Clause IV and Partnership in Power) such areas are examined either individually, or in isolation. Consequently, no academic study has traced Labour’s modernisation and organisational reform throughout the party’s eighteen years in opposition. General works which cover the majority of the period in question – James Cronin’s New Labour’s Pasts; Steven Fielding’s Labour: Decline and Renewal; Tudor Jones’s Remaking the Labour Party; and Leo Panitch and Colin Leys’s The End of Parliamentary Socialism – trace the precursors to Labour’s organisational modernisation very effectively.15 Yet, although these are four undoubtedly detailed studies, Cronin devotes only four of eleven chapters, Fielding three of ten, Jones two of seven, and Panitch and Leys one of twelve, to specifically cover Labour’s modernisation of 1979–97. It is fully recognised that modernisation itself is not the complete scope of the aforementioned works, but their lack of focus on this topic 8

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Introduction

allows these authors only to skim the surface of the Policy Review and OMOV, whilst very few references are made to Partnership in Power. On the other hand, Philip Gould’s The Unfinished Revolution does provide a comprehensive assessment of the whole period, although from a somewhat partisan viewpoint as a former senior advisor to the Labour Party. Yet, Gould makes only passing reference to the Policy Review and Kinnock’s organisational changes and neglects to mention Partnership in Power, despite a deep analysis of the Blair era. Thus, the following chapters seek to fill a clear historiographical gap in the literature of the modern Labour Party by examining Labour’s modernisation in the period between 1979 and 1997. A number of studies have examined the foundations of Labour’s modernisation in the late 1970s and 1980s but none of these have investigated the impact of the 1979–83 period on Labour’s later organisational changes. Dianne Hayter’s Fightback attaches great weight to the initial struggle of Labour’s centre-right to keep the party afloat following defections to the SDP, but her analysis ends in 1988, bar a brief epilogue, and even in the years assessed does not focus on the equally important, in this author’s view, contribution of the ‘soft’ left from the mid-1980s.16 Likewise, David and Maurice Kogan, Austin Mitchell, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley have all produced detailed studies on the immediate antecedents to Labour’s modernisation but none of these, largely owing to their dates of publication, cover the period after the mid-1980s.17 Beginning with a study of the left’s 1979–81 pursuit of constitutional changes in Chapter 1, this monograph provides a complete picture of Labour’s modernisation from this point through to Labour’s 1997 general election victory. With regard to the Kinnock era, a number of texts have investigated the impact of the Policy Review, but few include a reference to either Labour’s prior issues or its future development. The most authoritative study of this period, Taylor’s Labour’s Renewal, provides a detailed overview of the party’s Policy Review 9

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

and Blair’s reform to Clause IV, but only lightly touches upon the atmosphere within the party before the Review took place, neglecting to investigate Kinnock’s cultivation of and reliance on the soft-left, or the impact of the Militant Inquiry, and ends before the Partnership in Power reforms and Labour’s ultimate renewal in 1997.18 Similarly, Hughes and Wintour’s Labour Rebuilt, whilst providing a detailed study of the Policy Review and a passing mention to Kinnock’s work with the soft-left, due to its publication date, does not include an analysis of the Review’s later years, or the modernisation undertaken by Smith and Blair.19 Richard Heffernan and Mike Marqusee cover both the realignment of the left and the Policy Review in a negative analysis of the Kinnock years but, again, their study ends in 1992.20 These works, whilst providing some depth on the Policy Review itself, do not sufficiently highlight the prominent role of the soft-left in Labour’s modernisation, particularly in the mid-1980s when the most fundamental changes to party policy and party organisation took place, as argued in Chapter 2 of this work. Kinnock has emphasised the decisive role of the soft-left throughout his leadership of the party: ‘I couldn’t have done it, in the way that we did it without Tom Sawyer, or Eddie Haigh, or Charles Clarke.’21 Whilst the emergence of the soft-left has found a place in some, but by no means all, accounts on Labour’s modernisation, a debate surrounds the date of their break with the Bennite hardleft. Hughes and Wintour, Bob Fryer and Stephen Williams, and James Cronin claim the realignment of the left took place as early as 1984, whilst Heffernan and Marqusee, and Andy McSmith date the split to the following year.22 Chapter 2 strongly argues that these works overlook a number of soft-left members’ positions, especially Sawyer’s, and that the breakaway cannot be said to have occurred before 1986. Once complete, the alliance between the soft-left and Kinnock allowed Labour to proceed with fundamental policy and organisational changes under the Policy Review from 1987. 10

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Introduction

A significant historiographical debate surfaces around Labour’s organisational and policy changes in the later Kinnock years, principally the Policy Review. In the aftermath of Labour’s fourth successive general election defeat in 1992, a ‘modernisation’ thesis began to emerge amongst academics and journalists. Ivor Crewe, David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, and Martin Smith all contend that Labour ‘modernised’ in this period by moving the party away from both Old Labour and Thatcherism, towards either European social democracy, or back to Labour’s 1960s revisionism.23 In contrast, Colin Hay and Richard Heffernan have argued that Labour’s Policy Review was actually an accommodation with Thatcherism and not a return to the party’s roots.24 In Chapter 3 it is strongly argued that Kinnock’s Policy Review had neither the aim, nor the effect of accommodation with the Conservatives. Rather than playing ‘catch-up’ with the Conservative Party, Labour’s policy and organisational changes between 1987 and 1992 were broadly within the parameters of the party’s history but were not a conscious attempt to turn the clock back to the 1960s. Stephen Driver and Luke Martell have described this as ‘post-Thatcherite’ politics.25 Whilst the key changes assessed in this period, particularly the move towards multilateralism and the watering down of public ownership, were returns to previous Labour policy, the party’s move towards a full embrace of the market alongside an interventionist, enabling state, rather than being an accommodation with Thatcher, marked the beginning of a ‘new’ Labour Party with an updated economic outlook for the 1990s. In addition, the organisational changes pursued in this period had neither a previous parallel within Labour history, nor a direct equivalent within the Conservative Party under Thatcher. John Smith’s pursuit of OMOV has been covered in passing by a number of works, but few detailed analyses of his leadership exist within Labour’s historiography. Mark Stuart’s John Smith: A Life and McSmith’s John Smith: A Life, 1938–1994 remain the only two biographical studies published, and these works devote only 11

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

five of twenty-six and three of twenty-one chapters, respectively, to Smith’s leadership of the Labour Party. Furthermore, both works dedicate only one short chapter to Smith’s crowning achievement as Labour leader, the passage of OMOV. Separately, Keith Alderman and Neil Carter, and, in particular, Mark WickhamJones have advanced the OMOV debate across a number of journal articles, but the understandable focus of these pieces is on the Smith era itself and not the entirety of Labour’s modernisation.26 As pointed out by Wickham-Jones, historians have given little attention to the work of the 1992–93 Trade Union Links Review Group in preparing the ground for OMOV.27 Besides WickhamJones, the only authoritative study on the group’s work is provided by Lewis Minkin, a member of the Review Group itself.28 Chapter 4 engages with this debate by examining the minutes of the Trade Union Links Review Group alongside interviews with major protagonists. In this area, a scholarly debate emerges around OMOV’s eventual impact in transferring power away from the unions with Fielding, James Naughtie, Quinn and Stuart asserting that the change weakened the unions.29 In contrast, Russell and Wickham-Jones have argued that the 1993 change to OMOV did not reduce the role of the trade unions in Labour’s internal affairs.30 Chapter 4 argues that Smith’s change was more symbolic than revolutionary with the trade unions trading a reduction in their bloc vote (from 90 to 70 per cent) along with a small decrease in their electoral college vote (from 40 to 33 per cent), for an increased role in candidate selection as individual trade unionists, if not as a collective movement. This gradual, but symbolically significant, reform led to charges that Smith was not a true moderniser and catalysed Blair to pursue immediate organisational and constitutional changes under his own leadership after Smith’s untimely death. Under Blair’s leadership, the rewriting of Clause IV placed an identifiable ideological, organisational and constitutional gap between old Labour and New, building on and cementing 12

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Introduction

the changes made by Kinnock and Smith. Rather than being merely a symbolic change, as advanced by Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann, and Jennifer Lees-Marshment,31 or an unnecessary one, as described by Prescott, Chris Mullin and Clare Short,32 the reform of Clause IV was central to breaking with Labour’s past. As detailed in Chapter 5, the change to Labour’s constitution secured in 1995 was a watershed moment and provides a key example of the significance of organisational change, as advanced throughout this monograph. Whilst Labour policy has alternated between left and right throughout the party’s existence, the constitutional change secured by the revision of Clause IV made an indelible mark on Labour’s future outlook, firmly distancing the party from its past. Finally, whilst some works exist on most of the topics covered in this text – although as expressed previously, these studies often focus on single issues presented in isolation – very few books on the modern Labour Party investigate the impact of the Partnership in Power reforms covered in Chapter 6. These changes fundamentally altered Labour’s constitution, policy formation avenues and the composition of the party’s NEC. The vast majority of these rule alterations have survived through to Corbyn’s leadership. Yet, within the wealth of history written on New Labour, only Minkin and Russell cover the Partnership in Power reforms in an academic monograph, but both Minkin, as a member of party staff, and Russell, as a member of the NPF, played some role in the very groups they analyse. In addition, Minkin’s respected work, The Blair Supremacy, provides a thorough analysis of party management in the Blair era, but does not trace back the story into the immediate past; likewise, Russell’s detailed study pays little attention to the Kinnock era in ‘building New Labour’.33 Patrick Seyd has also published a number of articles on Partnership in Power but, understandably, these analyses do not link, in any great depth, to the organisational changes preceding the 1997 reforms.34 Outside these three analyses, academics have devoted little attention to the 13

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

Partnership in Power reforms. Fielding, Panitch and Leys, and Quinn have criticised the project, citing the diminution of conference sovereignty, but they do not provide a holistic analysis of the complete package of reforms, chiefly, the renewed NPF and the reformulated NEC.35 As such, Chapter 6 provides a uniquely detailed study of Partnership in Power, utilising the previously undocumented papers of the Cranfield School of Management NEC sessions, alongside the minutes of four NEC Task Forces, supplemented by interviews with those involved: Sawyer, Blair, Jon Cruddas, Maggie Jones, Sally Morgan and Margaret McDonagh, and critics such as Dennis Skinner. Tom Sawyer This monograph reassesses Labour’s modernisation between 1979 and 1997, alongside an emphasis upon the undocumented and vital contribution made by Tom Sawyer. The former Labour General Secretary (1994–98), NEC member (1982–94; 1999–2001), and NUPE/UNISON Deputy General Secretary (1982–94) played a central role in many of Labour’s major internal organisational projects throughout this period. Sawyer, moved the amendment establishing the NEC’s Inquiry into the Militant-dominated Liverpool District Labour Party (1985) alongside serving on  the  Inquiry team itself; chaired Labour’s Home Policy Committee (1986–94); authored and chaired Labour’s Policy Review (1987–92); was the Chairman of the Labour Party (1990–91); moved that the Executive should examine the link between the Labour Party and the trade unions (1992) and consequently, served on the Trade Union Review Group which discussed the move to OMOV (1992–94); served as Labour’s General Secretary (1994–98); convinced Blair to consult and ballot party members on Clause IV (1995); and authored the Partnership in Power reforms which substantially changed the role of the party conference, NEC and NPF (1997). Yet, despite his role at the forefront of 14

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Introduction

Labour’s modernisation, Sawyer has been relegated to a footnote in the historiography of this period. Although most histories of the modern Labour Party make reference to Sawyer,36 few expand on his crucial role at the vanguard of Labour’s modernisation under both Kinnock and Blair. Beyond a two-line quotation in a three-page biographical entry on Sawyer by Greg Rosen stating that: ‘Next to the triumvirate of Kinnock, Blair and Brown, Tom Sawyer played probably the greatest individual part in the birth of New Labour’, Sawyer’s full contribution is not accurately recorded in any major text.37 Sawyer’s impact in shaping the modern Labour Party, although often unseen and uncredited, was rarely unappreciated or unnoticed by a succession of Labour leaders and senior politicians. During the interviews undertaken for this project, although one opponent of Labour’s modernisation, Dennis Skinner, believed Sawyer to be insignificant, the majority of participants including Blair, Kinnock, Charles Clarke, Anji Hunter, Mandelson, Margaret McDonagh and Sally Morgan have all emphasised the absolute importance of Sawyer’s role in the party’s reformation from the mid-1980s through to 1997.38 The two former Labour leaders within this group make the most profound statements about Sawyer’s contribution. Blair reflects that: ‘Tom Sawyer was extremely important because he pushed the modernisation agenda and he could explain it in the right way’, whilst Kinnock emphasises that he ‘couldn’t have done it’ without Sawyer.39 Intriguingly, Sawyer began his political career firmly on the left, working on Benn’s deputy leadership campaign in 1981 and opposing the expulsion of the Militant editorial board in 1983. From this point, Seyd states that Sawyer’s ‘career closely mirrors the transformation of the Labour Party’.40 This is undoubtedly true. Sawyer, and other members of the soft-left (detailed in Chapter 2), gradually moved towards Kinnock in 1985–86, after their dismay at the left’s conduct during the Militant Inquiry and the miners’ strike, alongside Labour’s continued struggles in 15

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the polls. Sawyer’s ‘Damascene conversion’41 led him working ever closer with Kinnock, as the author of the Policy Review, and chair of the Home Policy Committee. Due to his history of modernisation under Kinnock and his standing within the union movement, Sawyer was hand-picked by Blair, upon becoming leader, to serve as Labour’s next General Secretary, despite the reluctance of the incumbent, Larry Whitty, to depart. From this position, Sawyer completed both his and the party’s journey to modernisation: organising the operation to change Clause IV, moving the party’s campaign unit to Millbank Tower, delivering Investors in People status and, crucially, devising New Labour’s major organisational reform project, Partnership in Power. Tom Sawyer was one of the modern Labour Party’s chief architects. As a trade union NEC member and later as Labour’s General Secretary, Sawyer did not formulate policy, but crucially provided the scaffolding for the party’s organisational reform from which Labour leaders established far-reaching changes in Labour’s direction. Whilst many actors can lay claim to a role in Labour’s modernisation, none share Sawyer’s continuity at the very top of Labour’s organisational structures between 1982 and 1998. Sawyer’s leadership on seminal party organisational reforms, coupled with the appraisals of senior politicians and colleagues, make the absence of a comprehensive assessment of his achievements from the historiography of this period staggering. Significantly, Sawyer’s authorship of the two major organisational reviews in this period: the Policy Review and Partnership in Power, fundamentally changed the direction, organisation and electoral fortunes of the Labour Party and make the history of this period worthy of reappraisal. These reforms made substantial changes to Labour’s policies and internal organisation and have survived for over twenty years. The party still uses the NPF, as suggested by Sawyer, to formulate policy, and conference remains, despite criticisms, a stage-managed showcase, rather than an arena for confrontational debate. 16

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Introduction

Using previously untapped source material: the handwritten Sawyer Journals42 (1982–98) and Archive43 (1970–2016), alongside interviews with key protagonists from this period across the Labour Party’s ideological spectrum, this work reassesses Labour’s modernisation by emphasising the vital role played by Sawyer. The monograph, however, extends far beyond Sawyer’s own contributions to the party’s changes. This includes extensive archival research into the Labour Party Archives, held at the Labour History Archive (LHASC), Manchester; the Neil Kinnock Papers and the Charles Clarke Papers, held at Churchill College, Cambridge; the records of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, held at the Bishopsgate Institute, London; the archives of John Prescott, Chris Mullin and Roy Hattersley, held at Hull History Centre; and the records of the National Union of Public Employees, UNISON, Rodney Bickerstaffe and the Militant Tendency, all held at Warwick University. This variety of material, alongside Sawyer’s Journals and Archive, has been accessed to present an academically balanced account of Labour’s modernisation. Using these archival works, alongside oral testimonies, and the previously unreleased Sawyer Journals, this monograph redefines the modernisation of the Labour Party in the period between 1979 and 1997. Conclusion The Labour Party radically altered its organisational structures and policy outlook between 1979 and 1997, with many commentators, alongside Blair himself, describing the party’s eventual terminus as a new creation: New Labour.44 However, Labour’s modernisation was an accumulation of different organisational initiatives, from different authors, across the party’s period in opposition. The following chapters trace the beginnings of this modernisation from the fightback against the hard-left’s ascendancy in the early 1980s, through the Kinnock era, ending with Blair’s constitutional 17

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and organisational reforms, and election victory, in 1997. Labour’s eighteen years in the wilderness brought about the greatest degree of organisational reform in the party’s history. The settlement conceived by Kinnock, cautiously nurtured by Smith, and birthed by Blair, survived Labour’s entire period of office (1997–2010). Yet, the salience of organisational reform and organisational control within the party has acquired greater importance since the Collins Review and Corbyn’s election in 2015. Indeed, Corbyn’s leadership has seen the unpicking of some of the Blair era reforms, through changes to the composition of the NEC and suggested alterations to Labour’s policy formulation routes, alongside calls for the return of the original Clause IV and mandatory reselection.45 These moves make the reappraisal of Labour’s modernisation of the 1980s and 1990s both timely and apposite.

18

1

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Halting the advance of the left, 1979–83

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the Labour left establish and assert their supremacy within the Labour Party machine. The constitutional and policy changes pushed through in this era ultimately led to a reaction by Labour’s right, centre and soft-left in the mid-1980s and catalysed Labour’s modernisation. Thus, the history of how Labour came to be dominated by its left wing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, is vital to the understanding of the modernisation process from the mid-1980s onwards. From 1979 to 1981, Labour’s left grew to dominate CLPs and the NEC and began to find favour amongst the trade union bloc vote at the party’s annual conference. Through these advances, the left were able to pursue both constitutional and policy reform within the party. The former was typified by three key left-wing demands in this period: the mandatory reselection of MPs, the election of the party leader by a wider franchise, and the control of future manifestos by the NEC and not the party leader. Regarding policy, the left steered the party towards unilateral nuclear disarmament, widespread nationalisation and away from the European Economic Community. The changes to both internal party mechanisms and party policy in the period before 1983 became the driving force and justification, after this period, for the party’s modernisation. Following the defection of twenty-eight Labour MPs to the newly founded 19

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Social Democratic Party in 1981, the trade unions, after the Peace of Bishop’s Stortford in 1982, and the Labour soft-left – who broke with the hard-left in 1986 – formed an alliance around the party leadership in the mid-1980s to reverse the changes instituted in the 1979–83 period. The modifications introduced to the party’s machinery, and the damage done by years of constant infighting, however, had a profound impact on Labour’s electability through the 1980s and early 1990s. In effect, Labour’s modernisation was a direct reaction to the constitutional and policy changes introduced by the hard-left between 1979 and 1981. Reasons for change Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Labour left grew increasingly frustrated by the actions of their parliamentary leadership. In particular, the left felt betrayed by the 1974–79 Labour Government, particularly its positive attitude towards Europe, the abandonment of an interventionist industrial policy, and the austerity programme introduced in 1975–76.1 Grassroots pressure began to build during the lifetime of Harold Wilson’s, and particularly Jim Callaghan’s, governments for changes to the party constitution that would enable the left to not only have control of policy documents, but also of the selection of Labour MPs and the election of the leader of the party. Before the left’s successful pursuit of these changes in the 1970s, Labour’s organisational structures had remained largely unchanged from those set down in the party’s 1918 constitution.2 Foremost in the demand for changes to Labour’s constitution (and policy outlook) was the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD). The CLPD was founded in 1973. Although other groups came to the fore later in the decade, broadly termed the ‘outside’ or ‘New’ left, the CLPD took up the fight for mandatory reselection from its foundation, but held little significance within the party until the late 1970s. The organisation’s creation 20

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was catalysed by Harold Wilson’s veto of the NEC’s approved policy for a Labour government to pursue the nationalisation of the country’s twenty-five leading companies. Wilson’s rejection of Labour’s Programme 1973 led to a watering down of the party’s nationalisation proposals in the 1974 manifesto and triggered the CLPD into demanding radical changes to Labour’s constitution to give more powers to the NEC and the wider party.3 The CLPD’s initial Statement of Aims included a clause that Labour conference decisions ‘should be binding on the Parliamentary Labour Party’.4 Yet, the document contained no overt reference, at this stage, to mandatory reselection or changing the franchise for electing the party leader, two of the CLPD’s major campaigns in the late 1970s. At the CLPD’s first public meeting, held at Labour’s 1973 Annual Conference, however, the attendees demonstrated an overwhelming interest in mandatory reselection.5 Consequently, as the 1970s progressed, the CLPD made a conscious decision to focus exclusively on constitutional reform and intra-party democracy, thus avoiding explicit – and potentially fractious – discussions on party policy. This was a pragmatic decision: by promoting constitutional reform as the organisation’s central aim, CLPD hoped that ‘party members and trade unionists holding very different views on policy issues could unite in support of this vital democratic reform’.6 A further reason for the left’s pursuit of constitutional reform was the cumbersome system for deselecting Labour MPs in place before 1979. Contentious deselections throughout the 1970s: Dick Taverne in Lincoln in 1972, Edward Griffiths in Sheffield Brightside in 1974 and Reg Prentice in Newham North East in 1975, brought the deselection of MPs into public focus. The controversies caused by these deselections, and crucially – for the left – the party leadership’s and media support for those who were deselected, led calls for the mandatory reselection of all MPs to grow ever louder. The left was able to substantially increase the pressure for reform following Labour’s defeat in 1979. They argued that Callaghan’s 21

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‘abandonment’ of socialism and his confrontation with the trade unions had caused the party to lose office. As such, fundamental revisions, it was believed, were needed to Labour’s constitution to ensure that future party leaders and MPs would be bound by the decisions of the annual conference and the NEC, and would be accountable to their local members. The first such change to find a successful path through Labour’s machinery was the mandatory reselection of MPs. Mandatory reselection Before the 1979 election, CLPs had the power to sack their MP by passing a motion of no confidence, but this process was fraught with difficulty as the MP retained the right of appeal to the NEC in such cases. Labour had traditionally held the view that an MP’s loyalty was to the national party and not his or her local constituency party. Mandatory reselection sought to change this procedure and demanded that MPs face a mandatory reselection conference, where they could be opposed by other party members in their seat, before every general election. The demand for mandatory reselection of MPs was first thrust on the political agenda in 1972 following the long-drawn-out campaign of Lincoln CLP to deselect their pro-European MP, Dick Taverne.7 The CLP expressed no confidence in Taverne in November 1971, but by December, had voted to take no further action. The constituency passed a further no confidence motion in June 1972.8 The CLP’s move against Taverne provoked him to resign as an MP and to fight a subsequent by-election as a Democratic Labour candidate, against the Labour Party. The embarrassment caused to Labour by Taverne’s victory at the 1973 Lincoln by-election, popularised calls for mandatory reselection. Two resolutions on mandatory reselection reached the annual party conference agenda for the first time in 1972, but on the advice of the NEC, these resolutions were remitted.9 A further resolution on mandatory reselection was 22

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submitted to the Labour Party’s 1973 Annual Conference, but this was again remitted to be considered by an NEC review over the next year.10 The review engaged with 2,700 activists and 570 constituency parties around the country and published its ‘Report on Re-Organisation of Party Structure’ in 1974.11 However, this broad report asserted: ‘there shall be no change from the present procedure for the selection of a prospective parliamentary candidate’.12 At the 1974 Conference, Ken Coates of Rushcliffe CLP moved an amendment to the party’s constitution which demanded that ‘every constituency party shall hold a selection conference at least once in the lifetime of every parliament’.13 Ian Mikardo, replying for the NEC, asked delegates to reject Coates’s amendment, remarking that the party’s constitution already included provisions for removing a sitting Labour MP. He argued that removing a sitting MP ‘should not be easy; divorce should never be easy, because divorce is a last resort’.14 Coates’s amendment fell by 3.26 million to 2.044 million votes.15 Despite this setback the left achieved a significant victory at the 1974 Conference with the adoption of the Mikardo Doctrine.16 Mikardo declared that the Executive would only intervene in deselection cases when local parties had not followed the correct procedures, regardless of the political allegiance of the MP concerned, asserting: ‘Our only function as NEC is to determine whether the procedure has been carried out.’17 In retrospect, Mikardo claimed that his Doctrine, ‘opened the door to the reselection process’.18 The Doctrine, according to Eric Shaw, was the most important ‘example of the retraction of central control’ in this period.19 The change aimed to release CLPs from national party intervention and attempted to establish better relationships between MPs and their constituencies as a half-way house towards mandatory reselection. After the 1974 Conference defeat, three major problems faced the proponents of mandatory reselection: a lack of demonstrable support, the bloc voting system, and the party’s ‘three-year rule’ which prohibited the change being debated again until 1977. The 23

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latter issue was a constitutional problem. The standing orders of the party constitution declared that ‘when the Annual Party Conference has, by resolution, made a declaration of a general Policy or Principle, no Resolution or Motion concerning such a Policy or Principle shall appear on the Agenda for a period of three-years’.20 This forbade further discussion of mandatory reselection until 1977, although the CLPD advised CLPs to ignore this rule and to continue to submit resolutions on reselection to the annual conference. On the first issue, the lack of demonstrable support, the major issue was the lack of resolutions – a barometer of constituency concern about a topic or policy – submitted to conference calling for the constitutional change. In 1974, only one request for mandatory reselection was submitted by Ken Coates and this was done outside the CLPD’s structure. To get the issue another hearing at annual conference, particularly with the problems posed by the three-year rule, the CLPD needed to prove that mandatory reselection was a major issue for party members through the number of resolutions submitted to conference on the topic. Thus, the CLPD increased the pressure for mandatory reselection by using ‘model resolutions’. This resulted in CLPD-sponsored resolutions to the conference being printed and sent to every CLP for debate. The motions circulated by the CLPD highlighted new issues to local Labour parties such as mandatory reselection and these ‘model resolutions’ were increasingly adopted by CLPs who then sent the resolution, in their name, to the party’s head office. Consequently, by 1975, twelve such resolutions on mandatory reselection were submitted by CLPs to the annual conference.21 Strikingly, the number of resolutions increased yet further to fortyfive in 1976, seventy-nine in 1977, with a slight decrease to sixtyseven in 1978, showcasing the growing influence of the CLPD.22 Support within the trade union movement also increased in this period, removing the second major problem for proponents of mandatory reselection. In 1974, the CLPD had no trade union 24

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branches or institutions affiliated to the campaign, however, by 1977, thirty-nine branches and institutions had affiliated, and by 1980 this number increased to 161.23 External to these three factors, the campaign for mandatory reselection was greatly assisted by the very public deselection of Reg Prentice in 1975. The day before Prentice’s deselection hearing, 179 MPs – including twelve Cabinet Ministers – signed open letters in support of the Newham North East MP.24 The Prentice Affair was ‘brilliantly exploited’ by the CLPD, whose members on the night of his deselection paraded outside the meeting with posters advocating mandatory reselection.25 The CLPD’s biggest public relations victory was, rather than being of their own making, handed to them by Prentice’s later defection to the Conservative Party in 1977. The disconnect between the Labour leadership, who had supported Prentice in 1975, and the Labour membership (which, at least in Newham, had not), after the Prentice Affair, is highlighted by the fact that not only did the number of motions submitted to the annual conference grow, but the number of organisations affiliated to the CLPD also greatly increased and membership of the group more than doubled.26 Mandatory reselection was kept off the 1975 Conference agenda, despite the submission of twelve resolutions calling for the constitutional change, by the party’s Conference Arrangements Committee, citing the three-year rule. In November 1975 at the NEC, Mikardo, who had converted to the cause of mandatory reselection following the Prentice Affair, moved that reselection should be debated at the 1976 Conference, but the motion was remitted to the Organisation Sub-Committee.27 At the SubCommittee meeting in January 1976, Mikardo’s motion lost on a casting vote after a five–five draw.28 Consequently, the issue was kept off the 1976 Conference agenda with the CAC again citing the three-year rule. Due to this decision, the CLPD drew up a plan to disrupt the 1976 event by hissing and interrupting debates, but the Conference largely moved ahead without issue.29 25

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By the 1977 Labour Party Annual Conference, with the three-year rule period having elapsed, the approval of mandatory reselection seemed increasingly likely. A procedural error by supporters of the constitutional change, however, led to further delay. As previously highlighted, seventy-nine CLPD-sponsored resolutions were submitted to the 1977 Conference on mandatory reselection. However, according to Shaw, ‘in a deft piece of agenda management’, the CAC removed the vast majority of these resolutions from the Conference agenda by citing the ‘1968 rule’.30 This rule demanded that all constitutional amendments should refer to the NEC in their first year of submission. This interpretation of the rules was challenged by moving the reference back to the CAC’s report, but this was roundly defeated by 5.145 million to 1.217 million votes.31 Thus, the 1977 CLPD model resolutions failed to make it through the compositing process. One resolution on mandatory reselection did reach the 1977 Conference agenda: a composite motion moved by supporters of the Militant Tendency. This demanded that ‘a selection conference be held not later than forty-two months after the date of the last general election’.32 The NEC opposed the Militant-sponsored composite as it stipulated that Constituency General Management Councils could hold reselection conferences at any time, a much more radical proposal than the failed CLPD motion.33 Mikardo responded to the Militant composite, on behalf of the NEC, and guaranteed that the Executive would present a constitutional amendment on mandatory reselection to the 1978 Conference, ‘in the way and in the sense that the sponsors of the sixty-odd resolutions want’, assuring delegates that there was ‘not the least chance of the Executive reneging on the undertaking’.34 The Militant resolution was also remitted to the NEC for further discussion by 4.858 million to 1.560 million.35 The 1978 Labour Party Conference did not bring about mandatory reselection in the way and the sense that its supporters had been assured that it would. In the interim period, a NEC working 26

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party was set up in February 1978 to investigate constitutional issues. The solution arrived at by the working party, whose membership was largely weighted against change, was to leave the decision of whether to hold a reselection conference down to the local constituencies.36 It was proposed within a period of 18–36 months after a general election, that General Committees of CLPs should hold a special meeting to pass one of two resolutions: 1) to readopt their sitting MP as the next parliamentary candidate; or 2) to instigate a full selection procedure.37 The working party agreed this recommendation by ten votes to three.38 The majority’s recommendations essentially removed the mandatory element from reselection and were taken to the 1978 Conference as a middle ground option, later dubbed the Mikardo Compromise. At the 1978 Conference, the Mikardo Compromise was amended by Terry Hunt of Basingstoke CLP, to demand mandatory reselection. This amendment, backed by the CLPD, was widely expected to pass; however, the failure of the AEUW (Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers) General Secretary, Hugh Scanlon, to cast his bloc vote in favour of mandatory reselection, led the amendment to fall by 3.066 million to 2.672 million.39 At its pre-conference delegation meeting, the AEUW had decided by twenty-five votes to twenty-two to support mandatory reselection, against Scanlon’s recommendation.40 The General Secretary even recalled the delegation prior to the conference vote, but the delegates voted by an increased margin of twentyfive to nineteen to support mandatory reselection.41 Despite being mandated to vote in favour of the policy, Scanlon failed to deliver his union’s 900,000 votes. Benn alleged that Scanlon’s decision was influenced by the fact that he was ‘leaving the AEUW in a couple of weeks and wants a job’.42 Scanlon raised a point of order, noting his confusion about which measure was being voted upon, but his calls for a second vote were refused by the party chair, Joan Lestor.43 Thus, the pursuit of mandatory reselection failed at the 1978 Conference and the Mikardo Compromise, adopting 27

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a two-stage process of non-mandatory reselection, was passed by 4.081 million to 2.519 million votes.44 The defeat of mandatory reselection at the 1978 Conference should have kept the issue away from the conference agenda, under the three-year rule, until 1981, yet after Labour’s defeat in 1979, the change was debated and passed at the 1979 Conference. Minkin argues that the constitutional changes should not be understood ‘in terms of a sudden shift in attitudes or a swift seizure of power after 1979’.45 Whilst, on the one hand, this is accurate – mandatory reselection had only been narrowly defeated in 1977 and 1978 – on the other, it is clear that Labour’s electoral defeat in May 1979 did have one very sudden impact: it reopened the question of the three-year rule. This rule had been narrowly reaffirmed by eleven votes to ten during a further discussion of reselection at the NEC in February 1979, however, the May 1979 general election proved a catalyst for change.46 Labour’s 1979 election defeat substantially altered the party Executive’s thinking on constitutional reform. In contrast to Minkin, Shaw has convincingly argued that the 1979 election ‘radically altered the political climate … [which] effected a further change in the NEC’s role’.47 Moreover, Timothy Heppell has claimed that the constitutional reformers gained ‘considerable leverage’ from the defeat.48 Along these lines, in the post-election climate, the NEC reversed its February decision, recommending that the three-year rule should be bypassed, in July.49 This placed mandatory reselection on the 1979 Conference agenda. At the Conference, the NEC also recommended support for mandatory reselection, directly contradicting the majority report of its 1978 working party.50 Ultimately, in October 1979, the three-year rule was removed from the party’s standing orders by a huge majority: 6.161 million to 678,000 and mandatory reselection was finally achieved by a margin of 4.008 million to 3.039 million votes.51 The CLPD regarded this as their ‘first major victory’.52 The NEC’s July decision, the abolition of the three-year rule and the passage 28

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of mandatory reselection clearly demonstrate the radically altered political climate post-May 1979. Not only did this climate bring about mandatory reselection, but also – for the first time – opened the door to further constitutional change: the franchise for leadership elections, and the control of the manifesto. Owing to the increased demands for constitutional changes, the pre-conference NEC in 1979 recommended the creation of a Commission of Enquiry to examine the finances, constitution and membership of the party.53 The  Commission had a much greater impact upon changes to the leadership franchise and the manifesto’s authorship than it did on reselection, on which the horse had already bolted. Indeed, despite internal wrangling, the Commission ultimately reinforced conference’s decision on mandatory reselection by seven votes to six.54 Mandatory reselection was not quite the panacea that the left  had hoped for. During the 1979–83 parliament, only eight Labour MPs were deselected and seven of these were over the age of 55.55 Moreover, despite the left’s increasing influence within the party’s apparatus, the 1983 election proved even more of a disaster for Labour than the 1979 defeat, and by this point, the tide had begun to turn against Labour’s left. As detailed further in Chapter 4, mandatory reselection survived, with some tweaks, all the way through until 1990 when Kinnock finally reversed the 1979 changes.56 The election of the party leader and the electoral college Following their victory on mandatory reselection, the CLPD, and eventually other groups on the Labour left, sought not only to consolidate this achievement but to advance it through further constitutional reform. At CLPD’s 1979 AGM, Vladimir Derer, the group’s secretary, stated: ‘CLPD’s main priority in 1980 must therefore be to defend what has been achieved and carry 29

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on the struggle to a successful conclusion on the manifesto and leadership issues.’57 The franchise for leadership elections and the control of the manifesto became the battlegrounds for constitutional debate after the 1979 Conference. In May 1980, the CLPD also joined with other left-wing groups: the Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC) (Socialist) Campaign for a Labour Victory, Institute for Workers Control, National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) and the Clause IV group to form a Rank and File Mobilising Committee (RFMC) to promote further constitutional changes.58 In these years, the RFMC was united around five constitutional objectives and spent little time on policy matters. Their objectives were: the defence of mandatory reselection; defence of the present structure of the NEC; NEC control of the manifesto; election of the leader by the party as a whole; and open and democratic decision-making within the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).59 Yet, these further reforms did not have the long history, or the sustained pressure, of the move to mandatory reselection. On the election of the leader, there had been few calls for change since the foundation of the party. Indeed, Labour’s leader was chosen solely by Labour MPs from the party’s foundation in 1906 through to 1983. The elected leader of the PLP became the leader of the wider party by default. Although it was pursued without the publicity or vigour of the reselection campaign, the principle of an expanded franchise for leadership elections can still be traced back to the early 1970s. In 1972, forty-two Labour MPs signed a Tribune pamphlet, entitled Labour: Party or Puppet? which demanded that the party leader be elected annually by conference.60 Yet, minor resolutions to the 1972, 1973 and 1975 party Conferences were dismissed without a vote being taken and it was not until 1976 that the issue was debated.61 In the aftermath of Callaghan’s election as party leader in April 1976, Labour began to take the issues surrounding the franchise for electing the leader more seriously. The 1976 Conference 30

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accepted a composite resolution to establish a working party to ‘consider appropriate means of widening the electorate involved in the choice of leader’.62 The composition of the working party was primarily left-wing, including Mikardo and Frank Allaun who had published Party or Puppet? The group met between November 1976 and July 1977 and collected evidence from across the labour movement, which demonstrated that the majority wished to see a continuation of the current method. The PLP were strongly opposed to change, whilst nine of eleven unions and thirty-six of 126 CLPs also favoured maintaining the status quo.63 However, further afield, the working party’s research showed that the labour or socialist parties of Denmark, France, West Germany, Israel, Italy, Holland, Norway and Sweden, all elected their leaders on a wider franchise than the British Labour Party.64 Yet, the 1977 Conference confirmed the status quo and two amendments extending the franchise beyond MPs were lost.65 Furthermore, the 1978 Conference rejected two proposals on reform of the leadership franchise by substantial margins: the election of the leader by party conference was rejected by 6.084 million to 475,000 votes, and the creation of an electoral college was defeated by 4.158 million to 2.407 million votes.66 Support for a wider franchise for the election of Labour’s leader, perhaps even more so than mandatory reselection, was catalysed by the party’s 1979 general election defeat and the feeling that Callaghan was unlikely to continue to lead the party for long in opposition. In June, the Organisation Sub-Committee of the NEC voted, eight to four, to reopen the question of the election of the party leader.67 As highlighted earlier, one outcome of the 1979 Conference was the abolition of the three-year rule. This change – alongside NEC support – allowed not only mandatory reselection to be debated at the conference, but also afforded the opportunity for debate on the extension of the leadership franchise, which had been defeated in 1978 and, by rights, should not have had another airing until 1981. 31

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At the 1979 Conference, the campaign to extend the franchise for leadership elections was thwarted. Composite 18 called for the leader and deputy leader of the party to be elected annually at the party conference, by an electoral college consisting of: Labour MPs, prospective parliamentary candidates, CLP delegates (one per constituency), and affiliate delegates.68 This was defeated without the need for a card vote. Instead, the NEC recommended Composite 19, which instructed the Executive to submit proposals for an electoral college to the 1980 Conference, although this too was defeated on a card vote of 4.009 million to 3.033 million.69 One saving grace for the reformers was the establishment of the Commission of Enquiry, which would give the left another opportunity to push for further changes. After ten separate meetings, the Commission of Enquiry met for their final deliberations in Bishop’s Stortford at a country house owned by the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs union, between 13 and 15 June 1980. The trade unions, and particularly Trade Unions for a Labour Victory (TULV), sought to manage the party crisis through the Commission by gaining consensus on the key reforms in order to bring the constitutional debates to an end as quickly as possible.70 No single constitutional amendment was ever submitted by the unions on the three major constitutional issues, yet, the Commission of Enquiry had been suggested to allow the unions to act as Labour’s arbiter. The Commission received 2,460 pieces of written evidence from across the labour movement, but struggled to find a consensual answer to Labour’s constitutional issues.71 David Owen claimed that the balance of the Commission was ‘appalling’ and Tony Benn believed the left held a ten to four majority.72 The PLP had formally asked to be represented on the Commission but the NEC had refused this request in October 1979.73 Initially, Callaghan and Foot argued for the status quo to be maintained.74 From the left, Benn and Heffer argued for an electoral college with an even split (33/33/33)75 between the PLP, CLPs and the 32

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unions.76 Both proposals were defeated which ultimately caused Callaghan and Foot to compromise, despite being mandated by the PLP to resist change.77 Backed by the leadership, Moss Evans, of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), suggested a split of 50/25/25 between the PLP, unions, CLPs and the remaining affiliates respectively. This was narrowly carried by seven votes to six.78 The Commission’s conclusions did not satisfy the left or the right of the party. Joyce Gould, the Secretariat to the Commission, recalled: ‘What came out of it was a rather pathetic, I thought, weak document, but I was stuck with it. The big issues never came to conclusions and had to go to party conference.’79 Many on the right believed that Callaghan had sold out by accepting the principle of an electoral college,80 whilst the left – CLPD in particular – were angry at the 50 per cent share of the college suggested for the PLP.81 In the aftermath of the Enquiry, the CLPD rejected the formula agreed at Bishop’s Stortford and countered with a proposal of 25/25/50, with the biggest share going to the unions. The NEC’s Organisation Sub-Committee in July 1980 decided to endorse the 25/25/50 formula, sponsored by the CLPD, thus throwing out the Enquiry’s compromise.82 An attempt to move the ‘reference back’ of this decision was defeated by fourteen votes to eleven at the subsequent NEC meeting.83 Consequently, the 25/25/50 formula was endorsed by the full Executive.84 The 1980 Conference narrowly approved that the procedure for electing the leader (and deputy leader) ‘should be changed to allow for a widening of the franchise’ by 3.609 million to 3.511 million votes. However, the Conference rejected three constitutional amendments which would have determined the composition of any electoral college.85 Consequently, the CLPD warned that ‘“celebrations” on the issue of the election of the party leader would definitely be premature’.86 Owing to the confusion brought about by having a wider franchise accepted by the Conference but no scheme to implement it, David Basnett of the General 33

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and Municipal Workers’ Union (GMWU) moved an emergency resolution that ‘a special rules revision conference’ should be held in three months’ time.87 The months between the October 1980 and the Special Conference in January 1981 saw a number of developments. Most  significantly, Callaghan resigned as Labour leader on 15  October 1980, to ensure that his successor would be elected under the old rules with only the PLP eligible to vote. The NEC passed a motion, by sixteen to seven, calling for the suspension of Labour’s standing orders – to delay the leadership election – until the electoral college was in place.88 However, the majority of the PLP, 119 to fifty-nine, rejected any suggestion that the leadership election should be postponed until after the Special Conference.89 The major consequence of the leadership election taking place before the electoral college was implemented was that Benn refused to stand, claiming that a PLP ballot was illegitimate and that any leader elected before the imposition of the electoral college would likely only be a caretaker.90 Benn felt that his chances of victory would be greater under any forthcoming college than on the current system of PLP election.91 His decision not to stand cleared a path for Michael Foot’s election on 4 November 1980. Following his election, Foot immediately sought to solve the electoral college issue and worked to get an NEC proposal formulated to guarantee that at least half of the electoral college votes would go to the PLP. Labour’s December 1980 NEC meeting, however, voted for a 33/33/33 split against Foot’s preferred option of 50/25/25.92 On the eve of the Special Conference, Labour Weekly reported: ‘unless there is a change of heart by at least one of the major unions’ it was ‘likely’ that the Special Conference would back the NEC’s proposal.93 In the background to this, the RFMC and CLPD were actively canvassing to ensure that the PLP did not gain the majority share of the college. On the other side of the divide, the Labour’s right – owing to the decisions taken at the 34

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1979 and 1980 Conferences – were in deep debate over their future in the party.94 The Special Conference on leadership selection convened at Wembley in January 1981. The Conference debated seven compositions of an electoral college, but only three of these had a realistic chance of acceptance: the NEC proposal of 33/33/33, the GWMU proposal (also backed by the PLP) of 50/25/25, and an Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) option of 30/30/40. On the first ballot the GMWU proposal gained 2.386 million votes, compared with 1.763 million votes each for the USDAW and NEC options, whilst the other four formulae dropped off the ballot.95 Of the remaining three, the outside left feared that the USDAW formula would be the first to be eliminated and that the union would then switch its support to the GMWU option.96 Consequently, the CLPD very astutely began to direct its supporters to switch their votes to the USDAW composition: ‘it was essential that the USDAW formula (with the union’s 429,000 votes) should be kept in the running, as this union’s second choice was the 50 per cent for the PLP’.97 In a letter to supporters, Derer asked ‘all supporters of reform to cast their vote for the USDAW option right at the first ballot and irrespective of what is their first preference’.98 Accordingly, the left’s initial proposal, put forward by the NEC, of 33/33/33 was narrowly defeated on the second ballot: GMWU 2.685 million, USDAW 1.813 million, NEC 1.757 million.99 Thus, the final ballot was between USDAW’s motion and the GMWU’s. The USDAW motion carried the day by 3.375 million to 2.865 million.100 Throughout this process, the left was also greatly aided by the abstention of the right-wing leadership of the AEUW who had got themselves into the quandary of refusing to accept any scheme which did not give less than 51 per cent of the college votes to the PLP.101 This stance meant that the AEUW abstained on the final ballot, giving the outside left, in the words of CLPD member Jon Lansman, victory ‘against the NEC, the TGWU, the Parliamentary Party and Michael Foot’.102 35

Modernisation of the Labour Party

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Control of the manifesto The final element of the left’s three-pronged campaign around the Labour Party constitution in this period centred on the control of Labour’s manifesto. Clause V of Labour’s constitution declared that ‘The NEC and the Parliamentary Committee of the PLP shall decide which items from the Party Programme shall be included in the Manifesto’ at a ‘joint meeting of the two Committees’.103 In 1973, however, Harold Wilson introduced the idea of a leader’s veto through the Parliamentary Committee (Shadow Cabinet) and threatened to block any proposal to nationalise the twentyfive leading companies in his speech to the 1973 Conference.104 Furthermore, in 1979 Callaghan directly vetoed a proposal to abolish the House of Lords, a policy which had been agreed by a huge majority at the 1977 Conference.105 As highlighted previously, Wilson’s rejection of Labour’s Programme 1973 was the stimulus for the foundation of the CLPD in June of the same year. Likewise, Callaghan’s 1979 veto solidified the outside left’s pursuit of NEC control over the manifesto. Benn stated that the constitutional amendments were ‘fuelled by the way in which the 1979 manifesto had been drawn up and by the more general complaint that Labour MPs and Labour governments often ignored policy agreed at conference’.106 After Labour’s disastrous result at the 1979 election, the party immediately sought to change direction. Key to any future shift in policy outlook was the control of the manifesto. In the eyes of the left, Labour had fought the 1979 election on an anodyne manifesto, owing to Callaghan’s refusal (and veto) of potentially radical policies.107 Thus, directly prompted by the leadership’s actions, the CLPD and LCC encouraged twenty-five CLPs  to submit resolutions to the 1979 Conference demanding that the NEC  should have control of future manifestos.108 In July 1979, the NEC decided by nine votes to eight that the NEC should have the final say over the party’s election manifesto and declared 36

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that a constitutional amendment should be put before that year’s conference.109 However, prior to party conference, the NEC debated two resolutions, a CLPD-backed motion which demanded the immediate control of the manifesto and another motion calling upon the Executive to submit proposals for change to the 1980 Conference.110 In September 1979, the NEC overturned its July decision – which had demanded an immediate change – by fourteen votes to twelve.111 At the 1979 Conference, the NEC supported a composite which demanded that a constitutional amendment should be brought to the 1980 Conference ‘which would lay down that the NEC alone … would take the final decision as to the contents of the Labour Party general election manifesto’.112 This passed through Conference by 3.936 million votes to 3.088 million.113 At the 1980 Labour Conference, despite the success of mandatory reselection and the acceptance of the principle of an electoral college, the outside left’s proposal that the NEC should alone decide the contents of Labour’s election manifestos was defeated. In the period between the 1979 and 1980 Conference, the Commission of Enquiry met and concluded that the manifesto should be written by neither the NEC nor the party leader but should be drafted by the NEC and endorsed by the electoral college.114 Thus, there was no unified demand amongst the left as to how the control of the manifesto would work in practice. At the Conference, the NEC sponsored an amendment to Clause V to grant manifesto control to the Executive alone, but this was defeated by 3.625 million to 3.508 million votes.115 Despite the return of the three-year rule at the 1980 Conference, the new standing order allowed the NEC to override the rule in special cases.116 Consequently, the control of the election manifesto returned to the Conference agenda in 1981. A composite demanding that the NEC had ‘final approval’ over the manifesto was successful by 3.609 million to 3.4 million votes.117 Yet, no agreement could be reached over the resulting change to the constitution then required, with an amendment to this effect falling by 3.791 million 37

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to 3.254 million.118 Similar to Scanlon’s ‘confusion’ when casting the AEUW bloc vote in 1978 on mandatory reselection, at the 1981 Conference, a motion on the future control of Labour’s manifesto fell due to an another ‘unfortunate error’ by a trade union.119 At the 1981 Conference, USDAW were mandated to vote for the NEC having final control of the manifesto and voted in favour of the first composite. However, when deciding upon the required changes to Labour’s constitution, USDAW changed its mind and voted against.120 Thus, the proposals for NEC control of the manifesto were defeated, due to no agreement being reached to bring the change into effect. Outside the outside left, the Militant Tendency and the right’s first counter-attack Whilst the ‘outside’ left of the Labour Party, typified by the CLPD, LCC and NOLS, caused some concern in this period, they operated within the Labour Party rules. In contrast, the Militant Tendency were accused of unconstitutional activities. Militant, founded as the Revolutionary Socialist League in 1955, began to achieve some influence within the Labour Party following the establishment of the Militant newspaper in 1964.121 Over the following two decades Militant effectively became Britain’s fifth most important political party.122 The issue for the Labour Party was that the majority of Militant members were also Labour members, and this led to accusations of infiltration and entrism. By the mid-1970s, Militant were in the full glare of Labour’s National Agent, Reg Underhill, who produced a number of reports to highlight the unconstitutional activities of the group. Underhill’s 1975 report, ‘Entrist Activities’, was a brief analysis of Militant’s actions based on extracts from the group’s own publications. In this period however, Labour’s NEC was in the hands of the left who thwarted Underhill’s quest for action. The NEC’s Organisation Sub-Committee considered Underhill’s report  in 38

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November 1975 and resolved ‘that the matter be left on the table’.123 The full Executive, by a vote of sixteen to twelve, confirmed that no further action would be taken.124 In January 1977, Underhill brought further evidence to the NEC’s attention. This resulted in the creation of a sub-committee to examine ‘documents in the National Agent’s possession’.125 The committee noted ‘with concern a number of reports … of entrist activities in Constituency Parties’ but did not suggest any action against Militant.126 The issue of Militant’s entrism returned to the NEC after Underhill leaked numerous Militant documents to the press upon his retirement in 1979.127 In December 1981, Michael Foot, who had played a large role in suppressing Underhill’s 1975 report, called for an inquiry into Militant at the NEC’s Organisation SubCommittee, stating: This Committee instructs the General Secretary and the National Agent to provide a report on the activities of the Militant Tendency and whether these conflict with Clause II (iii) of the constitution of the Labour Party; to obtain from the organisers of Militant Tendency details of the scale of their operations within the Labour Party, its funding, organisation, full-time staff and international connections.128

The recommendation was carried narrowly by ten votes to nine, with Neil Kinnock’s vote providing the majority.129 At the full NEC on 16 December, an attempt by the left to move the reference back of this decision was defeated by the surprisingly large margin of nineteen to ten.130 David Hughes, Underhill’s successor as National Agent, and Ron Hayward, the party’s General Secretary, produced a report into Militant activities in June 1982. The Hayward–Hughes report concluded: We believe that the Militant Tendency is not a group formed solely to support a newspaper. It has a hard core of supporters who form an organisation with its own programme and policy for distinctive and separate propaganda which is determined outside the structure of the Labour Party.131 39

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To deal with this problem, the Report further suggested the creation of a ‘Register of non-affiliated groups of members to be recognised and allowed to operate within the party’.132 This was the first step in seeking to re-establish centrist control within the party since the abolition of the Proscribed List in 1973.133 The report was passed at the NEC by sixteen votes to ten, and by the substantial margin of 5.173 million to 1.565 million at the 1982 Conference.134 It was made clear at the December 1982 NEC that Militant would be ineligible for inclusion on any such Register.135 As a result of this decision, charges were brought against the Militant newspaper’s editorial board, resulting in five members being expelled, by nineteen votes to nine, in February 1983.136 The Register was used as the tool to attack Militant, due to the precarious political balance between left and right on Labour’s Executive. Until the implementation of the register, Militant had operated as an entrist faction within the Labour Party for eighteen years. However, it was only after the group’s ideas began to take hold, first in the Young Socialists and then in a few constituencies such as Bradford and Liverpool, that the Labour leadership began to insist on such a vigorous application of the party’s constitution. It was practically certain that a widespread purge of Militant members – beyond merely the editorial board – would not have received the backing of Labour’s left wing, consequently, the Register was the only acceptable compromise. As detailed in Chapter 2, before 1986, the Labour leadership could not rely on a stable majority on the party’s NEC, hence the difficulty in securing action against Militant in 1975, 1977 or 1982. Until such a majority was achieved, a wider purge of Militant members from the Labour Party could not occur. The split and the fightback The ‘outside’ left, considering their status as a relative unknown at the beginning of the 1970s, had by 1981 stunningly achieved two 40

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of their three major aims: mandatory reselection and the electoral college. Their third aim, NEC control over the manifesto, only fell at the final hurdle in 1981. Alongside these constitutional changes, Labour’s policy also took a decidedly left-wing turn. The 1980 Conference, which endorsed mandatory reselection and the principle of the electoral college, also committed Labour to widespread nationalisation, unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community.137 The 1980 policy document Peace, Jobs and Freedom exemplified this shift. Due to Labour’s lurch towards the left, the 1981 Special Party Conference, held at Wembley in January, would mark both the start of the fightback within the Labour movement against leftwing control and the end of the line for Labour’s social democrats. The social democrats Although Labour’s right fundamentally disagreed with the policy direction of the party, they recognised that Labour manifestos had oscillated between left and right throughout Labour’s history. Mandatory reselection and the electoral college, however, brought a fear that the Labour right would never be strong enough to reverse these constitutional changes. According to David Owen, an emerging social democratic right feared that ‘Tony Benn was masterminding a fundamental change in the balance of the Party: a historic shift from elected representatives to non-elected party caucuses.’138 Indeed, in the words of Heppell, ‘what had really driven [the SDP] to the exit door was to be the constitutional reforms’.139 This broadly correlates with Eric Shaw’s view, that any ‘lingering doubts’ amongst Labour’s defectors were ‘resolved by the left’s triumph’ in 1981.140 These arguments are both compelling. However, a further factor was also at play. By 1980, not only had Labour adopted left-wing policies and introduced controversial constitutional reforms, but the leadership of the Labour Party was also captured by a left-wing candidate. 41

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Michael Foot’s election over Denis Healey to the Labour leadership provided further justification for the Gang of Four – Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams – to leave the Labour Party in March 1981. Although Healey came top of the first ballot, he was defeated by Foot in the final run-off by 139 votes to 129 on 10 November 1980. Amongst the Gang of Four, Owen claimed that ‘the election of Michael Foot was the final straw’ for the social democrats.141 Yet, Jenkins responded that he was ‘not sure that is correct’.142 A more compelling argument is that the Labour Party Special Conference, held at Wembley in January 1981, was the final catalyst for the creation of the Social Democratic Party. This explanation is advanced by the two other members of the Gang of Four. For Williams, the decision of the 1981 Special Conference to adopt the electoral college: ‘further justified … what we were doing’.143 Likewise, Rodgers sees the Wembley 1981 Conference as crucial, with the outcome leading to: ‘the first steps towards establishing our new party’.144 Indeed, although the election of Foot came as something of a surprise to Labour’s social democratic right, it did not immediately lead to a split.145 Labour’s social democratic right went into the Wembley Conference anticipating a further defeat for their principles but determined to put their case to the Conference and the wider world. Their main tactic to halt the left’s supremacy was to introduce One Member, One Vote (OMOV). Both Branch Labour Parties (BLPs) and CLPs worked on the delegate model, whereby branches would appoint delegates to be sent to the General Management Council of the overarching CLP. Only appointed delegates were eligible to vote on constituency issues. This structure virtually ensured that constituency activists, who turned up to every meeting, would be appointed as branch delegates to the CLP. The CLPs in turn, appointed delegates to party conference to cast votes on their behalf, with local constituencies mandating their delegates to vote according to local wishes. In practice, the individual delegates held great power, particularly if composite 42

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resolutions were debated at conference which had not been discussed at their constituencies. Whilst OMOV, on the one hand, was an attempt to get more Labour members engaged with local processes, on the other, it was also used as an attempt by the right of the party to dilute the influence of constituency activists who controlled delegate positions and were assumed to be largely left-leaning. Owen and Rodgers had put the case for OMOV to the PLP on 13 November but were outvoted when Roy Hattersley introduced a compromise suggesting that the PLP should have a 55 per cent share of the college vote, with 45 per cent to others. The lack of leadership and consensus amongst Labour’s MPs during this time led to the circus of the 1981 Wembley Conference, where the outside left’s formula of 30/30/40 was victorious. At the Conference, the OMOV option was roundly defeated and an electoral college, based on a composition that, at the start of the debate, few wanted, was introduced for Labour’s leadership elections. Owen made the rejection of OMOV the point of no return for the social democrats. Although he had argued that the election of Michael Foot was the ‘final straw’, he also recorded: ‘I now knew for certain I would have to leave the Labour Party’ after the 1981 Special Conference.146 Yet, Ivor Crewe’s argument that: ‘The electoral college and the principle of OMOV became the sticking point in the autumn of 1980 largely by accident’, is particularly persuasive.147 OMOV did not have a long history within the Labour right. The Campaign for Labour Victory (CLV) first developed the idea of ‘One Man, One Vote’ in 1977, but it is no coincidence that this occurred as the left began to take control. OMOV had not been demanded from the right whilst they held the keys to power. Likewise, the electoral college largely became an issue because of a fear that it would result in the election of a left-wing leader (Benn), rather than being a right-wing problem with the principle itself. The Limehouse Declaration, announcing the creation of a Council for Social Democracy, was issued the day after 43

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Labour’s Special Conference. The text explicitly pointed towards the decisions of the Wembley Conference as the justification for the foundation of the new group (and later party): ‘The calamitous outcome of the Labour Party Wembley Conference demands a new start in British politics. A handful of trade union leaders can now dictate the choice of a future Prime Minister.’148 The Declaration also pointed toward Labour’s policy changes as a justification for the split: ‘We want Britain to play a full and constructive role within the framework of the European Community, NATO, the United Nations and the Commonwealth.’149 The Limehouse Declaration made the formal launch of the Social Democratic Party, which took place on 26 March 1981, an inevitable conclusion. The electoral significance of the foundation of the Social Democratic Party should not be forgotten. Although the party started small, with thirteen Labour MPs and one Conservative MP defecting by the party’s official launch date, fifteen further Labour members joined them over the next year, making a total of  twenty-nine SDP MPs.150 Whilst this group’s impact in the 1979–83 Parliament was limited, the influence of the SDP on the British public was not. From October 1981 to March 1982, the SDP–Liberal Alliance was consistently top of the Gallup Poll, at one stage even polling as high as 50 per cent.151 The party’s polling, however, did not directly lead to electoral success. Although the SDP won two impressive victories at by-elections, with Williams and Jenkins winning seats in Crosby and Glasgow Hillhead respectively, between 1981 and 1982, this did not translate to national success. The 1983 Darlington by-election, held three months before the 1983 general election, was successfully defended by Labour and stalled the SDPs momentum. Rodgers claimed that the SDP’s defeat in Darlington, only twelve miles away from his own constituency in Stockton, ‘severely affected our fortunes in the general election that followed’.152 Yet, Whitty regarded the victory for Labour as a double-edged sword as this meant ‘any coup against Michael [Foot] was restrained’.153 At the 1983 general election, the Alliance 44

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polled a striking 7.7 million, votes, with a 25.4 per cent share (compared with Labour’s 27.6  per  cent and the Conservative’s 42.4 per cent), but only succeeded in returning twenty-three MPs (compared with Labour’s 209 and the Conservative’s 397). Just five of the original twenty-nine SDP MPs survived, alongside seventeen Liberals and one SDP gain, Charles Kennedy. Although this election was undoubtedly a disaster for Labour, they at least held on to second party status. The St Ermins Group and the Labour Solidarity Campaign Whilst for the Gang of Four the outcome of the 1981 Wembley Conference was the final straw, for the remaining elements of the Labour right who stayed within the party, it marked the ramping up of their fightback. Before the foundation of the SDP, Labour’s right had initially tried to fight the left’s reforms from within the Labour Party. In the mid-1970s, two groups were created to counter the CLPD’s push for constitutional changes: The Manifesto Group (1974) and Campaign for Labour Victory (1977). In contrast to the CLPD, both groups were organisationally weak and often failed to achieve a consensus amongst their members to counter the left.154 The Manifesto Group, formed as a counter to the Tribune Group of MPs, lacked either a clear leader, roots in the constituencies or trade union support. They were successful in asserting their influence within Shadow Cabinet and PLP elections, but were ineffectual in securing support for Healey in 1980 and were roundly outflanked by the left’s pursuit for constitutional changes. CLV suffered from very similar issues and was neutered by the defection of many of its members to join the SDP in 1981. After the January 1981 Wembley Conference, a space emerged within the Labour Party for groups wishing to fight back against the march of the left and the desertion of the now Social Democrats. 45

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Within this space, several new organisations were born. Whilst the left became more divided after achieving most of their original aims, the right became more organised.155 On the same day as the Gang of Four’s Limehouse Declaration, Hattersley – who did not join many of his fellow members of the CLV group in the SDP – urged a fightback amongst Labour moderates. At a Fabian Society meeting, he declared: It is in the constituencies that we must start to reclaim the ground. If we win, many of the other problems of policy and constitution will be solved. Reselection will be honestly conducted. The election of a responsible leader will be assured. The manifesto will be genuinely representative of Labour opinion.156

This fightback was orchestrated by Labour’s parliamentary forces and the trade union movement. The Wembley Conference led directly to the foundation of the St Ermins Group of trade  unionists and the Labour Solidarity Campaign of MPs. Unlike the pro-European stance of the CLV, the new groups at the head of the fightback, the St Ermins Group and Labour Solidarity were policy-free zones, similar to the initial operation of the CLPD.157 Instead, these groups focused on internal party issues and the constitution. Solidarity was created to challenge the Wembley electoral college formula, expel Militant, gain a moderate majority on the NEC and to prevent further defections.158 In January 1981, 150 MPs signed a statement affirming their rejection of the electoral college composition decided at Wembley.159 The following month, 112 of these MPs formed Solidarity.160 Solidarity aimed to: ‘maintain the traditional values and ideals of a democratic Labour Party, prevent loss of support to the Social Democratic Party and counteract the activities of the undemocratic left in the party’.161 Working towards a similar aim, but independent of Solidarity, the St Ermins Group of moderate trade union General Secretaries and Presidents met in secret between February 1981 46

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and  November  1987.162 Even before this period the unions had tried to engineer a compromise during the 1980 Inquiry and even suggested the return of the three-year rule to provide some much-needed stability. However, the left-leaning NEC rejected this suggestion and instructed the 1980 Conference to oppose the return of the three-year rule. Consequently, the moderate unions, determined to restore order, voted against the NEC’s recommendations. Thus, the St Ermins Group came into being in 1981 with the explicit aim of wrestling control of the NEC – and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – away from the left. Although mandatory reselection and the electoral college made their way through the party conference between 1979–81, Minkin estimates that there was never a trade union majority for any of the constitutional changes, including manifesto control, as all three votes were finely balanced.163 Minkin’s soundings of constituency party opinion suggests that the CLPs, on the other hand, were overwhelmingly in favour of all three changes.164 Yet, it must be noted that the constituencies only held around 9 per cent of the votes at Labour conference. The St Ermins Group were cognisant that better organisation and a slight shift within the much larger union bloc away from the constitutional changes (and the infighting), would place the Labour’s traditional right back in the ascendency. By the Group’s April 1981 meeting they had created a loose St Ermins ‘slate’ for the 1981/82 NEC elections.165 A further reaction to the 1981 Wembley Conference was the announcement of Benn’s decision to challenge Healey for Labour’s deputy leader post. Immediately after Wembley, Labour’s hardleft met at Benn’s house to discuss the ramifications with a number of members suggesting that Benn should stand for deputy leader.166 This election was the first test of the electoral college apparatus and marked the high tide of the left in the 1980s. Benn was narrowly defeated on the second ballot by 50.4 per cent to 49.6 per cent. More importantly, the contest caused a fracture within the left of the Labour Party. Benn’s candidacy led to a final split between the 47

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Tribune left, who supported John Silkin, and the Bennite left.167 In addition, Benn’s defeat broke up the RMFC who disagreed about future tactics. More broadly, the 1981 contest highlighted the inadequacy of trade union ballots (leading to further calls for OMOV), and showed the newfound organisational power of the right, principally Labour Solidarity and the St Ermins Group. Five days after Healey’s victory over Benn, the composition of the NEC changed drastically. From a position in 1980 where the left held nineteen of the twenty-nine seats on the Executive, the work of the St Ermins Group ensured that there was a centre-left and moderate majority of fifteen to fourteen by 1981.168 Hayter recalls: ‘the reason that [the Group] were able to control the NEC was that they not only had the trade union seats on it but they also controlled the Treasurer-ship and the five women’s seats’.169 The right and St Ermins, however, did not have a majority for sweeping changes. Such a majority would not come into place until 1986, as detailed in Chapter 2. During Foot’s tenure, the fine balance of the NEC was demonstrated through the Labour leader’s refusal to back alterations to the NEC’s sub-committees. Consequently, left-wingers Benn (Home Policy) and Heffer (Organisation) retained their positions as chairpersons despite the left being in the minority.170 The Shadow Cabinet elections of October 1981 however, indicated a halt to the left’s advance. Although the number of Shadow Cabinet posts increased from twelve to fifteen, Benn was unsuccessful in his campaign for re-election and by June 1983, he had also lost his parliamentary seat in Bristol.171 A more lasting compromise, the Peace of Bishop’s Stortford, would be agreed at the St Ermins Hotel in January 1982, during a joint meeting of the NEC and TULV. Andrew Taylor has stated that the original aim of this meeting was to prepare for the next general election.172 Indeed, the majority of the recommendations dealt with party finances. However, the meeting also agreed to ‘go forward with a new unity and sense of direction’, with particular reference to recognising ‘the need to avoid all statements or moves 48

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that might divide the party’.173 Similarly, after the defection of twenty-eight Labour MPs to form the Social Democrats, the CLPD also suggested a truce: ‘those who fought for constitutional reform should be the ones to initiate moves that would make unity possible … this means that some of our demands for further democratic advance (e.g. the manifesto) must be set on one side for the time being’.174 The ceasefire was interpreted as an agreement that the left would not mount further mid-term leadership challenges, whilst the right would not attempt to reverse the constitutional changes of 1979–81.175 Consequently, the Peace of Bishop’s Stortford, between trade union and Labour leaders, in 1982, prevented the issue of the manifesto resurfacing following the left’s defeat on this issue in 1981. Moreover, the Peace became the bedrock upon which Kinnock built his new model party. The contributions of the Labour Solidarity Campaign and the St Ermins Group have been expertly covered by Dianne Hayter. Her argument that these groups made a ‘crucial … contribution to saving the Labour Party between 1981 to 1987’, however, only begins to scratch the surface of Labour’s modernisation, most of which took place after 1987.176 On the other hand, Philip Gould has perhaps overstated the work of the more famous modernisers in this period and criticised the slow pace of modernisation (particularly in the Kinnock era). Gould overlooks the tenuous balance of the NEC in the 1980s and presupposes that Kinnock could have done ‘more, more quickly’.177 Labour’s modernisation did not have one cause, or one effect. It was the tireless work of trade unionists, politicians and activists which allowed Labour to reform its constitution, its policies and its public image. In the early 1980s, it is clear that neither Foot, nor Kinnock could command NEC majorities on every issue. Citing the influence of the St Ermins Group in changing the composition of the NEC, Hayter claims that ‘without a majority on the NEC, Kinnock would probably not have made his 1985 Bournemouth speech’.178 Yet, this analysis significantly overlooks the role of the 49

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soft-left, who aligned with Kinnock in 1985 and gave him a crucial majority for the 1986 Militant expulsions (the story of Chapter 2). The St Ermins Group and Labour Solidarity provided the first counter-attack to the left’s hegemony immediately after the 1981 Wembley Conference. Yet, whilst these groups may have allowed the Labour Party to rally in the short term, the electoral recovery of the party – and crucially, the transformation of its policies – would take place in the period 1985–97, largely after the dissolution of the St Ermins Group. Conclusion Both the ‘outside’ and traditional left of the Labour Party made incredible advances in the late 1970s and early 1980s, fundamentally changing both the policy direction of the party and, crucially, Labour’s constitution. By 1981, Labour were committed to leave the European Economic Community, unilateral nuclear disarmament and widespread nationalisation. However, whilst fluctuations between Labour’s left and right are commonplace in the party’s history, the major development of the late 1970s and early 1980s was the capture of the citadel of power within the party: Labour’s constitution. The long-fought battles for mandatory reselection and the establishment of an electoral college profoundly changed the way in which the Labour Party operated for the next decade and beyond. Mandatory reselection, although not the panacea the left may have thought it would be, gave more power to constituency activists to make MPs accountable to their local members. The move to an electoral college system transferred power in leadership elections away from the PLP and to the constituencies and trade union movement. The controversy provoked by both Labour’s swing to the left in policy terms, but critically the changes to the party constitution, led directly to the foundation of the Social Democratic 50

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Halting the advance of the left, 1979–83

Party and the defection of twenty-eight Labour MPs. The significance of the constitutional changes was that, for the those who departed to become the Social Democrats, it seemed far less likely that they would ever be able to reverse the left’s policy changes because of  the transfer of power away from the PLP. The election of Michael Foot, from the left of the party, pushed the SDP closer to the exit door, the decision of the 1981 Special Wembley Conference made them walk through it. The beginnings of a fightback were launched immediately after the Wembley Conference. Organisations such as Solidarity and the St Ermins Group were set up to counter the Wembley decision and to respond to the creation of the SDP. Whilst these groups served as a bulwark against further left-wing advances, they played little part in making Labour electable, or in changing party policy. In this period, the trade unions were crucial in establishing peace within the Labour Party. The Peace of Bishop’s Stortford, which drew a halt to further constitutional change and the St Ermins Group which began to shift the balance of the party’s NEC back towards the centre-right, were the work of the moderate unions. By 1983, these efforts had begun to bear fruit with the defeat of Benn in the 1981 deputy leadership contest and the expulsion of the Militant editorial board. Yet, Labour still entered the 1983 general election with a left-wing manifesto and with the control of the NEC on a knife-edge. Whilst 1981–83 saw the beginnings of the centre and right’s fightback, it was during the fourteen years after 1983 that Labour managed to modernise its policies, its structures and the party machine. The story of these years of modernisation and the circuitous path to Labour’s 1997 general election victory spans the next five chapters.

51

2

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The realignment of the left, 1983–87

This chapter examines Labour’s first steps towards modernisation by emphasising the realignment of the party’s left wing on the NEC in the mid-1980s due to several factors, particularly the miners’ strike and the internal investigation into the Militant Tendency in Liverpool. Labour struggled for direction after their defeat at the 1983 general election and the subsequent resignation of Michael Foot. The party’s right saw the defeat as an opportunity to discredit Labour’s shift to the left. Yet, in the first two years of his leadership, Neil Kinnock struggled to reverse the left’s 1979–83 constitutional and policy victories owing to the party’s NEC being divided almost equally between left and right.1 Kinnock recalls: In 1983 there was no certain majority for the leader’s view on crucial issues. By 1985, I could – with a certain amount of pressuring of various kinds – get a majority of one … In 1986 I began to get a steady majority, provided that I undertook necessary consultations before important NEC votes, and by 1989 that had become a substantial majority which enabled me to secure the passage of the Policy Reviews.2

From 1983 to 1986, Kinnock began a quest to establish a firm majority against the left on Labour’s Executive. This was achieved through the realignment of Labour’s left into ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ factions in 1986, allowing Kinnock, in the period after the 1987 general election, to make substantial changes to party policy. 52

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The term soft-left was first used to describe Kinnock’s refusal to vote for Tony Benn during the deputy leadership election of 1981 but resurfaced in the mid-1980s to describe a distinct group on the NEC built around Tom Sawyer. Between 1984 and 1986, Sawyer, the Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE); David Blunkett, the Leader of Sheffield City Council; Michael Meacher, the MP for Oldham West; and Eddie Haigh, Assistant General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), moved away from the hard-left politics of Benn and Skinner, and formed a new soft-left group on the NEC. Former Labour General Secretary, Larry Whitty argues: ‘Tom, Eddie Haigh, David Blunkett, they were the key ones. Michael Meacher was in it and out of it. Even people like Eric Clarke were in it and out of it.’3 Yet, despite an understanding of the group’s membership, there is no agreement on the date at which the split between soft and hard left took place in the general histories of this period. James Cronin, Colin Hughes and Patrick Wintour, and Bob Fryer and Stephen Williams have argued  that the realignment of the left took place as early as 1984, whilst  Richard Heffernan and Mike Marqusee, and Andy McSmith date the split to the following year.4 This chapter, however, argues that the final break actually took place in February 1986, after Labour’s Inquiry into the Militant Tendency in Liverpool was completed. The beginnings of the split in the left wing of the party can be seen in the internal arguments over the party’s future such as the 1983 leadership election and the direction of party policy, and particularly through the hard-left’s response to the miners’ strike in 1984–85. During these debates, the conduct of some members of the left-wing group began to create fissures in the formerly united faction. However, it was not until after Labour’s Inquiry into the Militant Tendency in Liverpool that the split between Labour’s hard left and soft-left was finalised. Yet, despite the history of Militant being covered in some depth by Michael Crick, Peter Shipley and Peter Taaffe; and Liverpool Council’s 1984–86 53

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campaign to ‘protect jobs and services’ being analysed by Diane Frost and Peter North, Derek Hatton, Peter Kilfoyle, Michael Parkinson, Neil Pye, Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn, very little attention has been devoted to Labour’s Inquiry of 1985–86.5 The Inquiry marked the divorce of Labour’s hard-left and soft-left. The evidence collated by the Inquiry team moved Sawyer and Haigh away from their long-held opposition to expulsion towards recommending charges against ten individuals, in complete contrast to the hard left, whilst Meacher and Blunkett played active roles during the NEC’s expulsion hearings alongside the party leadership. In short, the realignment of Labour’s left, beginning in 1984 but not complete until February 1986, was crucial in establishing a firm majority for Kinnock on Labour’s NEC. The adventures of Tom Sawyer The principal architect of the soft-left was Tom Sawyer and this chapter highlights his position as a barometer for the soft-left in this period. Following Sawyer’s lead, Blunkett, Meacher and Haigh broke away from the hard-left in February 1986. From his appointment to the NEC in September 1982 until the Militant Inquiry of December 1985 to February 1986, Sawyer was firmly allied with the hard-left on the vast majority of issues, even describing himself as a Bennite.6 Sawyer was also categorised as on the left of his union, NUPE.7 Similarly, Blunkett and Meacher, elected to the NEC in 1983, were also former Bennites who made the journey towards an independent soft-left grouping alongside Sawyer.8 Sawyer has been widely credited, alongside Blunkett, Meacher, and to a lesser extent Haigh, in forming the soft-left grouping on Labour’s NEC in the mid-1980s.9 Yet, despite being described as the ‘midwife’10 and ‘shepherd’11 of the soft-left, no academic analysis has described the full contribution of Sawyer in the formation and direction of this group, with each work crediting the group’s members equally, rather than bringing to light Sawyer’s key role.12 54

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This runs contrary to the reflections of both Kinnock and his Chief-of-Staff, Charles Clarke. Clarke firmly argued: ‘Tom was pre-eminent’ among those on the soft-left,13 whilst Kinnock stated: My eternal gratitude goes to Tom, because he really took a grip on all this, he started doing it with considerable courage in the procedures against the Liverpool Militants and he showed his mettle then, and I knew that if anybody was going to turn this group around, then it was going to be Tom. He managed to get David from Sheffield, and others to start to either abstain, or put their votes where their thinking was. None of them were as dependable as Tom.14

Consequently, this chapter reclaims Tom Sawyer’s place in the history of Labour’s modernisation by emphasising the journey he, and others, made away from the hard-left and towards Kinnock between 1984 and 1986. Through Sawyer’s marshalling of the soft-left behind the leadership, Kinnock was able to rely upon a new soft-left, centre-right alliance on the party’s NEC for policy changes from 1986 until the end of his tenure. The realignment of Labour’s NEC 1983–86 During the first two years of his leadership Kinnock commanded a very slim majority on Labour’s NEC, relying on the party’s centre and right, but this precarious balance stymied early attempts at modernisation. By the beginning of 1986, Kinnock had established a firm majority on the NEC owing to the votes of the newly formed soft-left faction. This majority enabled the Labour leader to pursue fundamental organisational and policy reform in the period after the 1987 general election, as detailed in Chapter  3. Using commentary from the Journal of Tom Sawyer, alongside Labour’s NEC minutes between October 1983 and October 1986, reports from the Tribune newspaper, the academic analyses of Hayter and Shaw, and interviews with key protagonists, the realignment of Labour’s NEC between 1983 and 1986 is evidenced 55

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in the changing composition of the leadership’s bloc highlighted in Table 1.15 In the 1983/84 session, the twenty-nine-member NEC was divided almost evenly between the left and the centre-right. In October 1983, Tribune reported that the Executive was split 12:12 with five floating voters.16 At the beginning of this session, on most occasions the divide was roughly 15:14, in favour of Kinnock. But by December 1983 Eric Varley, the party’s Treasurer, had resigned from the NEC, to be replaced by Albert Booth  – the runnerup in 1983 – who consistently voted with the left. Consequently, between January and October 1984, Kinnock operated without a clear majority, only maintaining his tentative grip on power through the possession of key chairs.17 Following the October 1984 NEC elections, the centre and right re-established loose control on the Executive, taking fifteen seats to the left’s fourteen. In addition, on a number of issues, Alex Kitson, despite left-wing credentials, voted with the leadership, giving Kinnock a 16:13 majority.18 These narrow margins, in the first two years of his leadership, pushed Kinnock to look for a more reliable alliance to secure the far-reaching changes to party policy and organisation he felt were required. Compounding the issue between October 1983 and late 1985, Kinnock also struggled to establish a reliable majority at the party’s annual conference. Labour’s constituency voting bloc, and, to a lesser extent, the trade unions, were far from reliable allies before 1985. This precarious balance caused Kinnock’s first attempt at major organisational reform, the pursuit of One Member, One Vote in candidate selection, to fall at the 1984 party Conference.19 The October 1985 NEC results, on paper, did not afford Kinnock any further breathing space. The St Ermins Group of trade unionists analysed these results as 15:14, in Kinnock’s favour.20 By February 1986, after the Liverpool Inquiry, Kinnock’s alliance with the soft-left of the party gave him a substantial majority, 20:9, for policy and organisational change. This can be seen at the first Militant expulsion hearing 56

Table 1

The ideological composition of Labour’s NEC between 1983/84 and 1985/86

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1983/84

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

1984/85

1985/86 (composition as of February 1986)

Centre & right

Left

Centre & right

Left

Centre, right & soft-left

hard-left

Cyril Ambler Betty Boothroyd Tony Clarke Ken Cure Gwyneth Dunwoody John Evans Roy Evans Alan Hadden Roy Hattersley Neville Hough Neil Kinnock Sam McCluskie Syd Tierney Charles Turnock Eric Varley

Tony Benn David Blunkett Ann Clwyd Eric Heffer Doug Hoyle Alex Kitson Joan Maynard Michael Meacher Steve Morgan Jo Richardson Tom Sawyer Renee Short Dennis Skinner Audrey Wise

Cyril Ambler Betty Boothroyd Tony Clarke Ken Cure Anne Davis Gwyneth Dunwoody John Evans Alan Hadden Roy Hattersley Neville Hough Neil Kinnock Sam McCluskie Renee Short Syd Tierney Charles Turnock

Tony Benn David Blunkett Eric Clarke Frances Curran Eddie Haigh Eric Heffer Doug Hoyle Alex Kitson Joan Maynard Michael Meacher Jo Richardson Tom Sawyer Dennis Skinner Audrey Wise

Cyril Ambler Betty Boothroyd David Blunkett Tony Clarke Gordon Colling Ken Cure Gwyneth Dunwoody John Evans Eddie Haigh Roy Hattersley Neville Hough Neil Kinnock Alex Kitson Sam McCluskie Michael Meacher Edward O’Brien Tom Sawyer Renee Short Syd Tierney Charles Turnock

Tony Benn Margaret Beckett Eric Clarke Frances Curran Eric Heffer Joan Maynard Jo Richardson Dennis Skinner Audrey Wise

Note: Clwyd was elected on the right slate in 1983 but voted consistently with the left and was dropped in 1984 (Hayter, Fightback, p. 119). Kitson gravitated towards Kinnock as early as 1983 (Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 254), but was still on the left-wing slate for the 1984 NEC elections (Tribune, 6 July 1984), only firmly moving into Kinnock’s camp by the beginning of the 1985 session. Renee Short moved from the left’s slate in 1983 to the right’s in 1984 (Hayter, Fightback, p. 119). Eric Varley was replaced by Albert Booth in January 1984.

Modernisation of the Labour Party

on 26 March 1986 where the full NEC divided by this margin on a motion deciding whether or not to proceed with the hearings.21

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Arguments between the left Long before the final break-up of the left in the mid-1980s, heated battles involving the supposedly unified faction took take place at the party’s NEC. The lack of camaraderie within the leftwing group can be seen through Sawyer’s reflections on his first NEC  meeting in September 1982: ‘Benn saved me a seat at my first NEC meeting. I had organised this big rally for his Deputy Leadership campaign in Newcastle. So he kind of knew me and he knew my reputation. Yet the left – Eric Heffer and Frank Allaun never spoke to me – weren’t very welcoming.’22 Thus, even at this early stage, the left-wing were not a completely homogenous group. Sawyer was also alarmed at the left’s conclaves before NEC meetings: ‘there were left caucuses forming at the NEC and Dennis Skinner told everybody what to do and I didn’t find that very comfortable’.23 One of the first issues to cause consternation amongst the left was the leadership election of 1983. After Michael Foot resigned from the Labour leadership, the left struggled to agree on a candidate for either leader or deputy leader. These debates are evident in both Sawyer’s Journal and Benn’s diary entries from a left caucus meeting on 12 June 1983. Sawyer noted: Some people there, notably Audrey Wise, were against Neil Kinnock from the start and wanted Eric Heffer to run … It was left for me to say Kinnock would walk the leadership race and Meacher was the only candidate in that gathering with a chance for the deputy … In the end, it was all sorted out and agreed that Kinnock/Meacher was the left ticket but what a meeting and what disgraceful, opportunist behaviour by Ken Livingstone and Reg Race.24

Benn also recorded that Sawyer challenged the views of the rest of the caucus: 58

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Tom Sawyer said, ‘The unions will want unity, and we should not demand policy changes. Neil Kinnock will be the Leader, Hattersley will go for the Deputy Leadership. We need new faces on the NEC. Frank Allaun should not stand. We need to bring on new leaders, and Tony may now not be available for that purpose.’25

Following Benn’s loss in Bristol East at the 1983 election, there was no obvious left-wing candidate that the left’s NEC group, or the Campaign Group, could agree upon. In the event, against Sawyer’s advice, Heffer unsuccessfully fought the leadership election, claiming a mere 6.3 per cent of the vote, compared to 71.2 per cent for Kinnock; Michael Meacher was also defeated in the deputy leadership contest, claiming 27.6 per cent of the vote, with Roy Hattersley polling 62.7 per cent. Although the left worked in partnership on the NEC in the years before 1986, a distinct soft-left grouping began to be identified as early as 1983. The soft-left maintained a loose alliance with their hard-left colleagues until the Militant Inquiry in December 1985. After this event the soft-left switched allegiance. In December 1983, Sawyer recorded his view on the ideological divide of the 1983/84 NEC in his Journal: The Right – Boothroyd, Cure, Dunwoody, Roy Evans, Hadden, Hattersley, Hough, Short, Tierney, Varley The Centre – Kinnock, Kitson, McCluskie, Clwyd, Tony Clarke The Left – Blunkett, Meacher, Sawyer, Hoyle, (Booth) The ‘hard’ Left – Benn, Skinner, Heffer, Maynard, Richardson, Wise, and the LPYS representative [Morgan].26

Even at this early stage, Sawyer separates himself, Blunkett, Meacher, Hoyle and Booth – who temporarily sat on the NEC as Treasurer, following Varley’s resignation – from the hard-left. Between October 1983 and September 1984, however, despite differences, the hard-left and left (or soft-left) groups voted in harmony on Labour’s NEC. A major influence in Sawyer’s move away from the hard-left of the party was the conduct of Dennis Skinner. Sawyer regarded 59

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Skinner, and not Benn, as the leader of the hard-left in this period, stating in 1984: The real leader of the Bennites on the NEC and probably in the Campaign Group, is Dennis Skinner … Skinner’s problem and consequently the Bennite problem is that: 1 He pushes every issue without strategic or tactical sense and consequently we are on the ropes all the time. 2 He will not compromise on any single issue. This is fair enough, except that Benn and his followers are taking on all the unwinnable jaunts in the book, never getting anywhere. It is acceptable for Skinner to do as he does providing the leaders do not always blindly follow but Benn does. I would like to work with Benn, but I am not taking Skinner’s line which is normally Joan Maynard’s and often Audrey Wise’s. Heffer’s all over and Jo Richardson just seems to fall in line.27

This extract highlights how Sawyer, at this stage of his development, had an affinity towards Benn’s views, but not towards Skinner’s, emphasising a lack of unanimity amongst the left. In contrast, Skinner recalls his disappointment with Sawyer’s commitment to the left: We had a very tiny majority at one point, very small. We thought it would be even better because Tom Sawyer got on, but that wasn’t the case. And some of the so-called left didn’t turn out to be as leftwing as we thought … Although for a short period we did have a majority, it was only a very short period.28

Skinner believed that the split in the left came about due to a lack of commitment of the ‘so-called left’ to the socialist cause; however, this overlooks the two major issues that fundamentally divided the group: the miners’ strike and the Militant Tendency investigation. Whilst Skinner, Benn, Heffer, Maynard, Richardson and Wise consistently voted together on issues relating to both of these events, Sawyer, Blunkett, Haigh and Meacher broke ranks and by 1986, had formed a distinct soft-left grouping on Labour’s NEC. 60

The realignment of the left, 1983–87

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The miners’ strike The first major factor which contributed towards the break-up of Labour’s left in this period was the miners’ strike. A series of unofficial strikes, pay restraint and pit closures in the early 1980s ultimately led to the 1984–85 strike which resulted, at its height, in 142,000 miners walking out. Internally, the Labour Party was divided on how to respond to the miners’ actions. Michael Crick has asserted that the strike greatly influenced the break-up of the broad left coalition of the Labour Party into ‘soft-left’ and ‘hardleft’ factions.29 Indeed, on the miners’ issue, Benn’s diary records that: ‘One of the things that apparently converted [Sawyer] from being a left-winger to a right-winger was when Eric Heffer and I tried to get the NEC to back a general strike in support of the miners.’30 Whitty also reflected that the strike ‘was a bigger concern in the party than the fact we were sorting out a few Trotskyists’.31 The miners’ strike posed very real difficulties for the Labour Party. If Labour criticised the miners, they risked being abandoned by the trade union support which had been the hallmark of the party since its creation. On the other hand, if Labour outwardly professed unconditional support for the miners, they risked being attacked by the Conservatives for being in favour of an ‘illegal’ strike and for supporting violence against the state. In particular, the party’s discussions about whether the party should accede to the hard-left’s demands for a general strike and also, about the slightly more realistic question of whether a future Labour government would reimburse the striking miners, were incredibly contentious. The left’s ideological rigidity in this period began a shift in Sawyer’s position from Benn’s camp towards establishing a softleft grouping on the NEC. At Labour’s NEC on 28 November 1984 the impact of the miners’ strike and the very beginnings of a divide in the party’s left can be seen. Sawyer’s Journal provides a fascinating insight into the conduct of the meeting. He records that he ‘took an 61

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independent line’ at the Executive, meaning that he voted against the hard-left on five occasions.32 His use of the term ‘independent’ indicates that, at this stage, Sawyer did not want to be identified with the leadership’s position, or particularly the Labour right. Moreover, in his Journal, Sawyer expressed regret that he  was unable to attend a Finance Sub-Committee meeting to vote for the hard-left’s Wise as the chair.33 At the November NEC, alongside Blunkett, Haigh and Meacher, he also voted with the left against a Militant member’s expulsion in Rhondda.34 This confirms that in late 1984 Sawyer still regarded himself as firmly within the left camp on Labour’s Executive, although he began to develop independent positions on some issues. On the miners’ strike Sawyer managed ‘to persuade the NEC to take the initiative and hold a meeting with the NUM leaders to work out the planned involvement of the [party] leadership in the dispute to avoid any more cock-ups’.35 However, this did not quell the anger of the left which pushed for more open support of the miners. A week later, a further dispute took place at the Home Policy Committee. At this meeting Benn and Skinner called for a general strike in support of the miners. Sawyer loudly rejected this move describing it later as ‘the worst kind of gesture politics’.36 At the meeting, Sawyer moved an amendment to Skinner’s position in order to again promote an alternative, ‘independent’ left-wing line: Here we go again. Home Policy Committee tonight and Eric Heffer moves a motion of support for the miners and because of the seizure of their funds, it includes a call for a special TUC/Labour Party Liaison Committee. Dennis Skinner isn’t satisfied with this and he moves an amendment which calls for an individual membership levy and a General Strike … I moved a further amendment which called for discussions on how we can build more financial, political and industrial support for the miners. Eric Heffer accepted this. I explained that the task wasn’t to win support for a General Strike but to get unions to stop crossing picket lines and give improved support. Tony Benn said if we make a call for a General 62

The realignment of the left, 1983–87

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Strike we might get more action. In the end, after a plea from Jim Mortimer, only Dennis and Tony voted for the amendment [calling for a General Strike]. Eric and Joan abstained. The move by Dennis was totally destructive, even if the party had carried it, the TUC would have turned it down. It’s important to put a left position as an alternative to Dennis so we are not seen to vote always with the right.37

The battle was revisited at the full NEC on 12 December, with Skinner proposing that the Labour Party ‘call on all sections of the Labour and Trade Union movement to respond with all-out industrial action’.38 This was defeated by eighteen votes to nine, with Sawyer taking the lead amongst an embryonic softleft by voting against. Blunkett, who was ‘anxious’, abstained, although he regretted this move in retrospect.39 Skinner’s call for an all-out general strike provoked the first public break of the left faction of the Labour Party, causing a ‘furious row’ between the Bolsover MP and Sawyer.40 Indeed, Benn and Skinner’s support for a general strike provoked not only the active opposition of Sawyer, but also the abstention of hard-left colleagues, Heffer and Maynard. Sawyer recalls these events as one of the first things that changed his relationship with the hard-left: ‘Benn and Skinner moved the same motion at the NEC, demanding the Labour Party Executive to call for a General Strike. I mean, how on earth  could the Labour Party call for a General Strike? That was grim for me, the realisation that these people weren’t serious really.’41 A second major debate at the 12 December NEC revolved around reimbursement for trade unions who had been fined for striking under new Conservative laws. Frances Curran, the Labour Party Young Socialist (LPYS) representative on the NEC, moved a motion demanding that ‘a future Labour Government … reimburse in full trade unions fined’ during strikes.42 According to Benn’s diary, Kinnock responded: ‘We can’t pass this because we mustn’t forget that we lost the 1983 election and if we do this, it 63

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would be to raise questions about our defeat.’43 Charles Turnock then moved an amendment, seconded by Meacher for the matter to be referred to the Home Policy Committee before endorsement, which was victorious by fifteen votes to thirteen. Despite the controversy aroused by Skinner’s general strike motion earlier in the meeting, the left – except for Meacher – stayed united during the reimbursement debate with Sawyer, Blunkett and Haigh voting against. Sawyer noted: Poor Meacher was hooked because he seconded the motion. And he had to vote for it. I voted against. It was carried 15/13 and Meacher got a right telling-off from Wise, Skinner and Richardson. In these circumstances he ought to watch the votes very carefully to measure the extent of his isolation. There isn’t much point in trying to build new alliances if you are going to be completely isolated.44

Sawyer’s Journal entry underlines that the soft-left had not entirely  split from the hard-left by late 1984. Yet, despite voting with the left on roughly half of the issues between October 1984 and September 1985, the conduct of the left during the miners’ strike pushed Sawyer, Meacher, Blunkett and Haigh to identify themselves as a separate grouping from their colleagues on the hard-left. In December 1984, Sawyer updated his chart detailing the composition of the NEC: The Right – Boothroyd, Cure, Davis, Dunwoody, Hadden, Hattersley, Hough, Short, Tierney The Centre – Kinnock, Kitson, McCluskie, Tony Clarke The Left – Blunkett, Meacher, Sawyer, Haigh, Hoyle The ‘hard’ Left – Benn, Skinner, Eric Clarke, Heffer, Maynard, Richardson, Wise, and the LPYS representative [Curran].45

Again, Sawyer distances himself from the hard-left, but crucially does not place himself in the centre alongside Kinnock. In the 1984/85 session of the NEC, the soft-left maintained links with the hard-left, but cracks began to show in this alliance during the 64

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miners’ strike. Kinnock was acutely aware of this fissure and strove to establish his own alliance with the soft-left. On 17 December 1984, Sawyer’s Journal records: ‘Attended a meeting in Kinnock’s office with Meacher and Blunkett to discuss things in general. Kinnock said there was a group on the NEC which could call the tune. It comprised of himself, Evans, McCluskie, Kitson, Haigh, Tierney, probably Hoyle; but certainly Meacher, Blunkett and myself.’46 This shows Kinnock’s attempts to persuade some leftwing members to move away from the hard-left. Yet, at this stage Sawyer remains committed to a unified left-wing strategy, writing in his Journal: ‘What we need is a left strategy on policy and priorities between now and the next General Election with some framework for tactics. Can Benn enter into this debate with a free hand or the minute the Bennites shout “stop”, will he obey?’47 Thus, even at this early juncture it can be seen that whilst Sawyer continued to have some affinity with Benn, the NUPE Deputy General Secretary had reservations about the ability of the left to promote and coordinate a joint strategy. The attitude of the hard-left during the miners’ strike also turned two key left-wing publications against their position and towards an emerging soft-left. In January 1985, Tribune published an influential editorial calling for unity which suggested that there should not be a leadership challenge against Kinnock. The article argued that ‘ultra-leftism, which is only interested in using the miners’ strike to attack Neil Kinnock, must receive just as short shrift as the antics of right-wingers who cannot wait for … the left to come a cropper’.48 As such, the editorial claimed that the hardleft’s call for a general strike during the miners’ dispute was ‘a distraction’, if not ‘irresponsible’.49 Most importantly, recognising Kinnock’s previous credentials on the left, Tribune noted that whilst it was ‘depressing to see him siding with the right … a majority centre-left coalition’ could be built around the party leader.50 Sawyer recorded his part in this change, and the move towards establishing a centre-left coalition, in his Journal: 65

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This editorial was written because of a discussion at a Tribune board meeting where I said it was time Tribune made its mind up where it stands. Michael Meacher was in the chair. I told him what I intended to do. He had no part in the initiative although he, Nigel Williamson and Chris Mullin agreed with me … Consequently, the press are having a field day portraying it as a Benn split, which it is only if Benn continues to follow Skinner’s impossible line.51

This Journal entry provides further evidence that, at the beginning of 1985, Sawyer – and the soft-left – were not looking for a complete break with the left but were increasingly distancing themselves from fundamental hard-left politics in the search of realism. Sawyer hoped Benn would also make this journey, but by May 1985, another left-wing publication, the New Socialist, called for ‘Bennism, if necessary, without Benn’.52 In this article, Patrick Seyd suggested the creation of a ‘new left’ as a ‘third force independent alike from the right and ultra-left’53 However, the new, or soft, left on Labour’s NEC, remained in gestation until the Militant Inquiry catalysed its members into a final split at the beginning of 1986. The miners’ strike ended on 3 March 1985, but internal debates within the Labour Party continued to rage. Despite universal criticism of Conservative tactics in the labour movement, the issues of compensation for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the reinstatement of sacked miners rumbled on within the Labour Party throughout 1985. These issues were brought to Labour’s pre-conference NEC in September 1985 which debated an NUM resolution calling for the next Labour government to reinstate sacked miners and reimburse the union for all losses during the strike. Sawyer, Blunkett and Haigh all supported the motion alongside the hard-left, with Kinnock opposing. The motion fell by a single vote, 15:14, with Meacher, who had fought for compromise throughout the entire process, voting against.54 Heffer claimed this caused a ‘furore’ amongst the left and Benn commented in his diary that: ‘any residual links I had with [Meacher] 66

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are finished and done with’.55 Following the vote, Sawyer recorded that Hattersley said to Meacher: ‘that’s the stuff Cabinet Ministers are made of ’.56 Whilst Skinner also clearly recalls this meeting, stating: ‘Tony Benn said to me “we’re going to win one, Dennis!” I said “Michael’s not supporting” … and we lost it by one vote’.57 Despite this defeat, Sawyer, Blunkett and Haigh’s support for the hard-left position on this issue highlights that a final decision to split had not been made by September 1985. The miners’ conflict demonstrated that the state’s relationship with the trade unions had changed forever. The government’s response to the strike was a visible challenge to trade union authority which went alongside successive Conservative administrations’ attacks on union power through the 1980 and 1982 Employment Acts and the 1984 Trade Union Act. Within the Labour Party, the strike, and the ‘gesture politics’ of the hard-left, began the soft-left’s journey away from Benn and Skinner, and towards the  leadership and modernisation. However, this divorce from the hardleft would not be complete until after the soft-left witnessed the horrors of extreme left-wing politics in Liverpool. The Militant Tendency The major catalyst for the final break-up of the Labour left in the 1980s was the group’s conflicting reactions to the Trotskyite entrist faction: The Militant Tendency. Based around the Militant newspaper founded in 1964, the Tendency had long been a divisive group within the Labour Party. Their tactics of entrism, whereby Militant members would join the Labour Party in order to influence future policies and appointments, coupled with the group’s far left-agenda, brought the Tendency into constant conflict with Labour’s NEC.58 The issue of local government finance from 1984  – principally in Liverpool – would bring Militant to national attention and set them on a collision course with the Labour leadership. 67

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The Militant Tendency had a controversial history within the Labour Party. As detailed in Chapter 1, between 1975 and 1980, Labour’s national agents produced a number of reports in an effort to expel Militant members, but their attempts were frustrated by a left-leaning NEC. The first major attempts at dealing with the group were made in 1983 with the expulsion of the Militant newspaper’s editorial board, despite the opposition of a unified left on the NEC. At the February 1983 NEC meeting, which heard the cases of the five Militant board members, Heffer proposed a motion to oppose the expulsions, seconded by Skinner and backed by Sawyer, leading Benn to comment that: ‘Tom Sawyer from NUPE is a first rate member of the Executive.’59 This unity, however, was unsuccessful in preventing the expulsions with Heffer’s motion falling by nineteen votes to nine.60 A motion by the selfproclaimed ‘hammer of the left’ John Golding, Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, confirming the expulsions of five editorial board members was then carried by nineteen votes to nine.61 In his memoirs, Golding commented that Sawyer ‘did everything he could with the hard left to make it impossible for us to take action’.62 Indeed, Sawyer, writing in 1983, believed that ‘the whole affair [was] nothing more than a witch-hunt against the Militant Tendency based not on facts, reports, figures, or any documentation, but simply based on the fact that these people are in Militant and therefore must be expelled from the Labour Party’.63 Due to Sawyer’s attempts to prevent the expulsions in 1983, Golding criticises recent assessments of Sawyer, stating that ‘great buckets of whitewash have since been used on Tom’.64 Yet, this statement greatly overlooks Sawyer’s later impact in modernising the Labour Party, beginning with his role in the Militant Inquiry of 1985–86. Following the 1983 municipal elections, the Liverpool District Labour Party (DLP) took control of Liverpool City Council from a Conservative–Liberal Coalition (1979–83). Although Militant councillors never actually held a majority within the Liverpool Labour Group (the Labour Party’s councillors on Liverpool City 68

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Council), their policies and anti-cuts rhetoric resonated strongly with the rest of the group, the DLP, and even to some extent, the public. Between eleven65 and sixteen66 Liverpool councillors were members of the Militant Tendency. Labour’s former fulltime organiser in Liverpool, Peter Kilfoyle, described this composition, stating: ‘it was never a Militant council but it was heavily influenced by Militant’.67 The Council’s deputy leader and chair of the Personnel Committee, Derek Hatton, was a leading Militant, whilst within Liverpool DLP, the President, Vice-President and Secretary were all members of the Tendency. Nationally, Militant also continued to build up grassroots-level support and by 1986, the group claimed to have more than 8,100 members.68 At this stage, Crick describes the group as, in effect, Britain’s fifth most important political party.69 After their 1983 general election victory, the Conservatives began to restrict the spending power of local authorities. This returned the issue of the Militant Tendency, principally around the conduct of Liverpool Council, to the top of Labour’s NEC agenda in 1984–85. In response to Conservative cuts, a handful of councils rebelled against the government’s decision and refused to set future budgets. Such ‘rate-capped’ councils asserted that the only possible way of funding the shortfall in the government grants would be to increase the rates paid by local residents and declared that they were unwilling to pass government cuts on to their constituents. Thus, a number of councils refused to set a legal rate, bringing them into conflict with the Conservative Government. In Liverpool, this tactic was initially successful in 1984, with the Conservative Environment Secretary, Patrick Jenkin, providing an extra £20 million, through various methods, to Liverpool Council.70 By March 1985, with the competing pressure of the miners’ strike now off the government’s agenda, the Conservatives were not going to compromise again. Blunkett, who also delayed setting a rate in Sheffield, recalls: ‘having smashed the miners, it was then self-evident that local government couldn’t take on 69

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the government’.71 Thus, when the Militant-tinged council in Liverpool tried to repeat the trick in 1985, they encountered much sterner resistance from the Conservatives. By 1985, both the constant arguing within the left faction of Labour’s NEC and the impact of the miners’ strike, had begun to move Sawyer, Haigh, Meacher and Blunkett away from the hardleft of the party, towards an alliance with Kinnock. Consequently, when the Militant Tendency hit the headlines again, the soft-left were keen to listen to both sides of the argument. However, no alliance with Kinnock was firmly in place before the Labour Party’s Liverpool Inquiry and the soft-left continued to back hard-left positions on Militant at the March and September 1985 NEC meetings. The March NEC demonstrated a lack of unanimity amongst the emerging soft-left. Blunkett tabled a letter asking the party to set up a fund to assist councillors in rate-capped authorities.72 But Sawyer argued against this motion and voted for an amendment – moved by Hattersley – that the matter should be referred to the party’s Local Government Committee. This was met with a furious response from Skinner, further highlighting the broader fractures within the left. Sawyer recorded this contentious meeting in his Journal: I said during a debate where left and right were divided that it was ridiculous to make this a virility test on where people stand on ratecapping. It was simply a question of the best way to help … I therefore voted for it to be referred to the Local Government Committee for further consideration. At this Dennis Skinner shouted down the table, ‘Sawyer, you’ve sold your members out.’ I was furious and said, ‘Don’t you accuse me of selling my members out. I never have and never will. I’ve heard you do this to others in your bullying, intimidating way but don’t do it to me!’73

Sawyer’s response to Skinner’s accusations typified the kind of political infighting which had begun to move the NUPE Deputy  General Secretary away from the hard-left grouping on the NEC. 70

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The divided loyalties of the soft-left can be further seen during the NEC meeting of September 1985. On the Militant issue, Kinnock moved an emergency resolution distancing the Executive from the actions of Liverpool and Lambeth councillors. Heffer, backed by Skinner, proposed an amendment stating that: ‘The NEC supports the demonstration which today is being held in Liverpool … and encourages the courage and determination of Liverpool Labour Council.’74 Strikingly, Heffer’s amendment was carried by fourteen to thirteen, with Blunkett, Haigh and Sawyer voting with the hardleft. When the amendment became the substantive motion and was put back to the vote, Benn claims that Sawyer immediately exited the room, and the left’s proposal consequently fell on Alan Hadden’s casting vote as chair after a 13:13 tie.75 At the October 1985 Labour Party Conference, Kinnock, increasingly confident but still not certain of soft-left support, made the decision to launch a public attack on Militant. Kinnock had wanted to deal with the Militant issue at the 1984 Conference but made the decision to delay action in order to build a broad base of support: It was going to happen in 1984, but it was obvious to me that despite the conduct of affairs in Liverpool, with the newly-elected Militant dominated council, there was no possibility of getting the attention, let alone the support, of the broad labour movement, in the middle of the miners’ strike. So, I had to postpone it for a year.76

The pause allowed Kinnock to navigate the party through the miners’ strike in 1984 and then to turn its attention to Militant in 1985. Moreover, the delay allowed the beginnings of a soft-left current to develop within the party which would be crucial, within the NEC, to tackle the problems in Liverpool. Consequently, one month after Liverpool Council’s decision to issue its whole workforce with redundancy notices, Kinnock launched a fullthroated attack on the Militant Tendency at the October 1985 Labour Party Conference lamenting the ‘grotesque chaos of 71

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a Labour council hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers’.77 Sawyer recorded that the speech was ‘first class’, but according to Shaw, Blunkett was left ‘shaking with sadness’.78 Blunkett disputes this stating: ‘I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I went for a swim to try and clear my head, and to make of it what I could. I came out of the sea, rubbed myself down, and decided yes, he’s right that we have to take on Militant. How am I going to get the softleft on board with this?’79 The conference, despite jeers from Hatton and an abrupt exit from  Heffer, welcomed Kinnock’s comments with rapturous applause. Heffer claimed the attack was ‘grossly unfair and cruel’.80 Kinnock was delighted with the reaction: ‘I could only have prayed for, if I believed in prayer, the reaction I got from Hatton and Heffer. I mean it would have taken the most accomplished film director, not just to produce the script, but to produce the reactions. They were a dream, it was beautiful.’81 One final attempt at compromise was brokered by the soft-left at the 1985 conference. Blunkett attempted to provide a ‘bridge between the non-Militant left and the leadership’ by challenging Liverpool City Council to open up their books to an independent inquiry.82 This suggestion was readily agreed to by Hatton, the Council’s deputy leader, who was in attendance.83 The Conservative Environment Secretary, Kenneth Baker, stated: ‘Liverpool Council had succeeded in sucking in the Labour Party as they had sucked in Patrick Jenkin.’84 Similarly, Kinnock remarked that Blunkett was ‘skating on thin ice’ by offering Militant an olive branch.85 Militant’s conduct during the independent inquiry, chaired by Maurice Stonefrost, led to a galvanisation of opposition to the group. Blunkett and the trade unions ultimately felt duped as Liverpool Council refused to accept the settlement brokered by the unions and, instead, pushed forward with a deal to borrow £60 million from Swiss banks over two years.86 The Council’s conduct 72

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during these talks, particularly by withholding knowledge of the loan agreement from the Stonefrost team, turned both Blunkett and the unions firmly against Militant’s actions in Liverpool. On 26 November the General Secretaries of the TGWU and General, Municipal, Boiler-makers and Allied Trades Union (GMBATU) – the two unions to which Militant in Liverpool had the strongest links – wrote to the Labour Party asking for an investigation into the Council.87 The following day, Blunkett moved at the NEC that Larry Whitty should undertake an assessment of events in Liverpool, signalling the beginning of the soft-left’s final break from the hard-left. The Liverpool Inquiry Following the 1985 party Conference Labour’s NEC launched an Inquiry into Liverpool DLP which ran between December 1985 and February 1986. The Inquiry marked the final break between Labour’s hard-left and soft-left with Sawyer describing it as his ‘Damascus’ moment and Blunkett stating that events in Liverpool were a ‘really big, rude awakening’.88 Although Sawyer’s contributions to the Labour Party have often been undersold in this period, he has been widely credited by historians with proposing the Inquiry to the NEC.89 At the November NEC, Blunkett proposed a carefully worded motion calling for Labour’s General Secretary ‘to initiate an assessment of recent events and activities’ in Liverpool.90 The wording of Blunkett’s motion did not go far enough for Sawyer or Kinnock. Sawyer proposed an amendment, seconded by Kinnock, calling for ‘an urgent examination [to] be carried out by the General Secretary and eight members of the NEC into the procedures and practices of Liverpool DLP.91 The soft-left discussed the matter internally, alongside the hardleft’s Margaret Beckett and Eric Clarke. The amendment was carried by twenty-one votes to five, the five being Blunkett and Sawyer’s former allies on the hard-left: Benn, Heffer, Skinner, 73

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Curran and Beckett. Indeed, Kinnock was made aware of Sawyer’s willingness to take part in an investigation into Liverpool DLP shortly before the NEC meeting, recalling, ‘I knew that a page of history had been changed in the Labour Party.’92 Kinnock and Larry Whitty, the party’s General Secretary, then set about determining the composition of the Inquiry team which would visit Liverpool to analyse the proceedings of the DLP and Liverpool Council. Kinnock’s majority on the NEC, however, was precarious, with the St Ermins Group describing the October 1985 results as 15:14, in Kinnock’s favour.93 Thus the votes of the emerging soft-left: Sawyer, Blunkett, Haigh and Meacher were crucial throughout the Inquiry and the expulsion hearings. Sawyer recorded that Kinnock asked him to take up a place on the Inquiry in his Journal, which he agreed to after securing places for Haigh and the hard-left’s Audrey Wise.94 Whitty ensured that the Inquiry team itself was, ‘deliberately balanced between left and right so that nobody could seriously object to it’.95 Sawyer shared this view, stating it was ‘evenly balanced – four left and four right – with the four left representatives being myself, Haigh, Wise and Beckett’.96 This clearly shows that even as late as November 1985, Sawyer placed himself in the left bloc. Sawyer may have understated his own power regarding the balance of the committee. Crick convincingly argues that: ‘the initiative effectively lay with two soft-left unionists – Eddie Haigh of the Dyers and Bleachers section of the TGWU, and Tom Sawyer of NUPE’.97 Tony Mulhearn, the President of Liverpool DLP, however, questions the credentials of Sawyer and Haigh: ‘To describe Tom Sawyer and Eddie Haigh as left is just ludicrous. Like a lot of people, they started off on the left and then moved to the right with the speed of light.’98 Yet, Sawyer and Haigh’s position on the expulsions was unclear before the Liverpool Inquiry; Sawyer had previously voted against the expulsion of Militant’s editorial board in 1983, but both men had backed the Inquiry’s creation. As late as May 1985, at NUPE’s Annual Conference, Sawyer asserted: 74

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Militant is a party, with its own organisation, its own funds. But the Executive Council believe the way to deal with Militant is through debate and argument, and they are opposed to witch-hunts and expulsions. We believe that only by arguing for the values of democratic socialism can you defeat the arguments of Militant.99

In contrast, the hard-left members of the committee, Wise and Beckett, were strongly expected to oppose any expulsions. Both opposed the Inquiry’s formation and Wise had voted against the expulsion of the editorial board in 1983.100 In contrast, the centreright members of the Inquiry (Betty Boothroyd, Tony Clarke, Neville Hough and Charlie Turnock) largely went to Liverpool looking to expel the Militants. Boothroyd and Turnock had voted to expel the Editorial Board in 1983, and all four centre-right members had supported the Inquiry’s formation and voted against a September 1985 NEC motion from Heffer supporting Liverpool Council.101 Thus, the real swing votes of the eight-member group were those of the soft-left: Haigh and Sawyer. Across fourteen days between December 1985 and February 1986 the Inquiry team heard reports of the abuses of the Militanttinged Labour Party in Liverpool: the intimidation of opponents, the use of a Static Security Force to police DLP meetings, reports of physical violence, and unacceptable employment practices.102 McSmith has argued that such tales, often from NUPE members, ‘set Sawyer on a political course which would culminate in him taking Larry Whitty’s place as General Secretary of the Labour Party nine years later’.103 This is undoubtedly true. Sawyer has described how the scenes he witnessed in Liverpool led him to change his position, noting how he was particularly influenced by Jane Kennedy, NUPE’s branch secretary in Liverpool and the future MP for Liverpool Broadgreen: Jane had a room full of trade union members who told me basically they were being carved out of jobs, looked over for promotions, due to this branch in Liverpool controlled by Militant. You couldn’t get a job as a school caretaker. If you went to the Council and 75

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Modernisation of the Labour Party said, ‘can I have a job as a caretaker?’ they would say, ‘go and see GMBATU’, if you said, ‘but excuse me I want an application form’, they would say, ‘we can’t give you one, Mr Hatton, the personnel chairman, has passed a motion that all personnel application forms have to go through the union.’ So you would have had to go to the union and say, ‘can I have a job?’ and if you were not a member of Militant, they wouldn’t have given you a job. It was outrageous. Well, I felt terribly naïve actually and stupid, I had never seen this in my lifetime.104

The former Chair of Liverpool’s Joint Shop Stewards’ Committee, Ian Lowes, strongly refutes Sawyer’s claims: ‘It’s an absolute fallacy to say if you weren’t in GMB you wouldn’t get a job at the council.’105 In contrast, the former DLP President, Mulhearn, on reflection accepts Sawyer’s assessment stating ‘that’s broadly accurate. Looking back maybe I’d have handled that differently’.106 Sawyer recalls that during the Inquiry he met with Kennedy to state that her role as a branch secretary was to work with the Labour-controlled council, not to oppose it. Kennedy recalled: Tom told me afterwards at the Inquiry that he had been sent up to find out who this Tory cow was who was running the union in Liverpool. But when he came up he met these people who had been longstanding NUPE members who really were quite thoughtful about their politics and really understood what was happening on the ground.107

Consequently, Kennedy’s reports of NUPE members being restricted from job opportunity and promotions led directly to Sawyer’s volte-face.108 As the Inquiry continued, the eight members began to be divided along ideological lines with Sawyer, in a Journal entry of January 1986, expressing his growing disdain for Liverpool’s Militants: ‘As the inquiry into Liverpool moves on I am increasingly convinced about the corruption of the Militant Tendency. There will be an explosion. I will detonate the bomb. And others will have to help pick up the pieces … The reality of this is clear. I have to be 76

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resigned to it.’109 Joyce Gould, Labour’s Director of Organisation, cautions against the view that Sawyer was always likely to support disciplinary action, stating: ‘Tom was on the left [and] sometimes it took a lot of persuading for Tom to move over … It came to a point with Tom where he realised something had to be done for the sake of the party.’110 Sawyer’s position was in stark contrast to his former allies on the hard-left who maintained their steadfast opposition to any expulsions.111 The hard-left’s rejection of disciplinary action on principle also struck another member of the soft-left, Blunkett, as a complete abdication of their duty to safeguard the rules.112 The evidence collected during the Inquiry had a profound impact on the soft-left who gradually moved towards supporting the leadership’s line on expulsions. At the conclusion of the Inquiry, no unanimous report could be agreed between the eight members. Thus, both a Minority Report, endorsed by the left-wingers Wise and Beckett, and a Majority Report, endorsed by Sawyer, Haigh, Boothroyd, Clarke, Hough and Turnock, were produced. The Minority Report concluded that Liverpool DLP was in need of reform, particularly regarding the running of its delegate meetings (to which non-delegates were often invited and occasionally seemed to vote).113 Wise and Beckett dismissed concerns about intimidating behaviour at DLP events and the close relationship between the DLP and Labour Group and, crucially, dissociated ‘from any suggestion that expulsion of members of the Liverpool District Labour Party should be recommended’.114 Beckett recalls that she was unhappy at the Majority recommendations as: ‘there were people on that Militant Inquiry who just wanted to expel all of them, like fifty or sixty people, nearly the whole of the Liverpool Labour Party’.115 Similarly, in an interview with the New Socialist, Wise argued: ‘Nothing that’s happened in Liverpool justified expulsions.’116 The Majority Report drew very different conclusions on two issues: the conduct of the Liverpool DLP Executive Committee and the Council’s Labour Group; and the activities of the Militant 77

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Tendency. On the first issue, the Majority Report asserted that: ‘the investigation team are convinced that certain key members on the DLP Executive who dominate the key decision-making groups in the city are beyond reasonable doubt heavily involved in the Militant organisation’.117 Consequently, the Report recommended the suspension of the DLP’s Executive Committee and the appointment of two full-time Labour Party organisers in Liverpool. The second part of the Majority Report’s conclusions related explicitly to Militant: It is beyond reasonable doubt that the Militant Tendency is an organisation with its ‘own programme, principles, and policy for distinctive and separate propaganda, possessing branches in the constituencies’. Members of Militant Tendency would therefore be ineligible for membership under Clause II(4)b of the Constitution of the Labour Party.118

Due to this conclusion, the Report’s final recommendation was ‘that the General Secretary be instructed to consider the evidence relating to possible membership of Militant Tendency against the persons named below and where applicable to formulate charges against them to be heard at the NEC’.119 Despite Sawyer and Haigh’s willingness to sign the Majority Report, the soft-left maintained a degree of independence. Boothroyd claimed in her autobiography that: ‘Charles Turnock told us that he had corroborated evidence against forty-seven Militants in the district party and twenty-seven members of the city council’ and that ‘Eddie Haigh and Tom Sawyer wanted fewer names on the list of suspects’.120 Consequently, a slight indication of dissent can be seen regarding the sixteen names put forward in the Majority Report for possible suspension. Only ten of the sixteen names were agreed by all six signatories, with the remaining six being ‘agreed by four members of the team only’.121 The dissenting members were the soft-left signatories, Sawyer and Haigh.122 This shows that whilst these two men had been convinced to back the expulsions due to the exceptional circumstances presented by 78

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the Liverpool Inquiry, they retained an element of independence from the party’s right wing as the now clearly identifiable soft-left. The full NEC endorsed the Majority Report on 26 February 1986 by nineteen votes to ten, signalling the divorce of Labour’s hard-left and soft-left and firmly establishing Kinnock’s authority on the NEC. Blunkett, Sawyer and Haigh voted for the report, whilst Meacher voted with the hard-left against.123 Following the meeting, Sawyer recorded his conclusions in a Journal entry dated 28 February 1986, highlighting the completion of his journey from the hard-left to the soft-left: The most fundamental lesson for me is that Liverpool has shown the Militant Tendency in power and all that meant for the workforce and the unions in Liverpool. I had to go back and think about Militant Tendency in more basic terms and I was forcefully reminded that their existence is based on a lie: the decision to enter the Labour Party. The first lie is followed by a second – to have full time organisers. A third to have its own funds and so on until we have a mountain of lies one after the other … I don’t like what I saw in Liverpool. I wouldn’t live under it – I would rather sweep the streets.124

Thus, the impact of the Militant-left in power broke any residual links Sawyer had with hard-left colleagues on Labour’s NEC. Similarly, Blunkett states: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. It was Militant that did me.’125 The Liverpool expulsion hearings Aside from Sawyer and Haigh on the Inquiry team, the remaining members of the NEC’s soft-left, Blunkett and Meacher, also played a key role during the Militant expulsion hearings which emphasised not only their independence from the hard-left, but also from the party’s centre-right. Following a court case brought by the Liverpool members faced with expulsion, the eight members of the Inquiry team were not allowed to participate in the individual NEC hearings.126 The precarious balance of the Executive 79

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without these individuals was highlighted at the 26 March 1986 NEC where the hard-left staged a walk-out, rendering the meeting inquorate.127 Consequently, the votes of the remaining eligible soft-left members, Blunkett and Meacher, were crucial throughout the expulsion process. The April NEC reduced the quorum from fifteen members to 50 per cent of eligible members to avoid any further problems.128 During the expulsion hearings held between May and October 1986, Blunkett held firm whilst Meacher wavered. Yet, by this stage the soft-left had clearly abandoned their hard-left colleagues. The Majority Report had initially suggested sixteen individuals should face charges that they were members of the Militant Tendency and/or had breached the Labour Party constitution. Before the hearings, charges against five individuals – three of whom were not signed off by Sawyer and Haigh on the Majority Report – were dropped. In total nine members were expelled between May and October 1986: Tony Aitman, Roger Bannister, Felicity Dowling (the DLP Secretary), Terry Harrison (the DLP Vice Chair), Derek Hatton (the Council’s deputy leader), Ian Lowes (GMBATU Branch 5 Secretary), Tony Mulhearn (the DLP chair), Cheryl Varley and Richard Venton (editor of Merseyside Militant). Two members were acquitted by the hearings. Harry Smith, whose name had been included in the Majority Report despite the opposition of Sawyer and Haigh, had his charges dropped unanimously.129 Blunkett also ensured that Carol Darby-Darton was acquitted by moving an amendment to drop all charges which passed by eleven votes to nine.130 In the nine cases which led to members being thrown out of the party, however, Blunkett voted with the leadership and for expulsion on six occasions, whilst Meacher voted for expulsion in only four cases.131 By voting for the majority of expulsions Blunkett, and to a lesser extent, Meacher, provided a clear signal that the divorce between the hard-left and soft-left had been finalised. The hard-left CLPD, who had supported Blunkett in the 1984 and 1985 NEC elections, 80

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responded by refusing to endorse him in 1986 (the Campaign Group had dropped him from their slate a year earlier).132 Yet, at the 1986 NEC elections Blunkett’s popularity soared, topping the poll in the constituency section and marking the first time Benn had not been in first place for twelve years.133 The October 1986 NEC elections also solidified Kinnock’s loyalist majority with the defeat of two hard-left incumbents, Heffer and Beckett, and their replacement by Diana Jeuda and Jack Rogers. On most issues, this amounted to a soft-left, centre and right majority of 22:7, giving Kinnock the authority to tackle policy changes after the 1987 election defeat. Outside the NEC, the impact of the Liverpool Inquiry and the leadership’s fightback against the hard-left can also be seen through the waning opposition to expulsion at party conference. In 1983, the five votes expelling the Militant editorial board were each opposed by over 1.6 million, whereas in 1986, only 325,000 voted against the Liverpool expulsions.134 The 1986 expulsions completed the journey of Sawyer, Blunkett, Haigh and Meacher from the hard-left to their alliance with Kinnock. These four men had consistently supported hard-left positions between 1983 and 1984, but the impact of the miners’ strike divided their loyalties between hard and soft positions across 1985. With the hard-left fractured from this incident, the Militant Inquiry, culminating in February 1986, led to a final break between Labour’s once unified left. The road to Damascus The divorce of Labour’s hard-left and soft-left took place in February 1986 due to an accumulation of crises between the once united left, typified by the group’s response to the miners’ strike and the Militant Tendency in Liverpool. Although Williams and Fryer, Hughes and Wintour, and Cronin have dated the split to 1984, whilst Heffernan and Marqusee and McSmith have suggested it took place in 1985, in reality, the break occurred some time after these dates.135 Before 1984, Labour’s left was relatively 81

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united but by 1986, two independent left-wing groups could clearly be identified on Labour’s NEC. Yet, the divorce of the hard-left and soft-left was gradual. Whilst it is clear in the 1983/84 NEC session that Sawyer, Meacher and Blunkett all firmly backed the policies of the hard-left, by 1984/85 the loyalties of the soft-left group were divided almost equally between the hard-left and the leadership. By the middle of the 1985/86 session, crucially after the Militant Inquiry had taken place, Sawyer, Meacher, Blunkett and Haigh had all firmly moved away from the hard-left. In this author’s view, four factors clearly indicate that the final split of Labour’s left, chiefly on the NEC, actually took place in 1986: the voting records of the soft-left between 1983 and 1986; Sawyer’s conversations with Benn in mid-1985; Sawyer’s ‘Damascene conversion’ during the Militant Inquiry; and the soft-left’s attitude towards expulsions in Sheffield on 18 December 1985. First, the voting record of the soft-left between 1983 and 1986 shows a fundamental change in their allegiances in the 1985/86 NEC session. From October 1983 to September 1984, the party’s left stayed firmly united during fifteen NEC recorded votes. In this period, Blunkett voted with the hard-left on every occasion, Meacher broke rank only once, and Sawyer voted against the hardleft twice, with one abstention.136 In the period between October 1984 and September 1985, the opposition of the soft-left increased, highlighting the beginnings of a split, with Sawyer breaking ranks with the hard-left sixteen times out of thirty-six recorded votes, Blunkett on thirteen occasions, Meacher on ten, and Haigh on seventeen.137 These figures reveal that the soft-left’s loyalties were divided in the 1984/85 session. However, their individual support for hard-left positions on between thirteen and fifteen occasions, highlights that these four men had not yet placed two feet in the leadership’s camp. In particular, Blunkett, Haigh and Sawyer supported the hard-left on issues relating to Liverpool council and industrial relations at two NEC meetings in September  1985.138 Following Sawyer and Haigh’s involvement in the Militant Inquiry, 82

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Table 2

The recorded votes of the soft-left at Labour’s NEC: September 1984 to October 1986 Tom Sawyer

David Blunkett

Michael Meacher

Eddie Haigh

Votes with Votes against Votes with Votes against Votes with Votes against Votes with Votes against the hard-left the hard-left the hard-left the hard-left the hard-left the hard-left the hard-left the hard-left Oct 1983 to Sept 1984

12

2

15

0

14

1

NA

NA

Oct 1984 to Sept 1985

13

16

13

13

13

10

15

17

Oct 1985 to Sept 1986

3

25

6

36

11

35

2

27

Source: Labour Party, NEC Minutes, September 1983 to October 1986.

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

the direction of the soft-left changed. After the Inquiry, Sawyer and Haigh voted for hard-left positions on only two and one occasions, respectively, across the fifteen remaining NEC meetings of the 1986 session.139 Meacher and Blunkett made a similar journey, voting for hard-left positions on only four and nine occasions, respectively, but crucially supporting several expulsions at the NEC’s Liverpool hearings which Sawyer and Haigh were ineligible to attend. Ultimately, the hard-left’s response to both the miners’ strike and the conduct of the Militant Tendency pushed Sawyer, Blunkett, Meacher and Haigh to establish a new soft-left current. By the October 1986 NEC elections Kinnock could rely on a three-to-one majority within Labour’s NEC, made possible by the journey of these four individuals, alongside the election victories of further centre-right candidates at the expense of the hard-left.140 Second, the soft-left continued to work alongside the hardleft throughout the 1984/85 NEC session, contrary to the opinions of Fryer and Williams, Hughes and Wintour, and Cronin who suggest that the break occurred in 1984.141 Each soft-left member voted with the hard-left on at least thirteen occasions across 1984/85. Moreover, despite talks of a split emerging in the media,142 Sawyer clearly distances himself from such coverage in a letter to Benn, stating that he ‘is in no way responsible for this sort of story’.143 Consequently, in June 1985, long after the fall-out from the miners’ strike, Sawyer was still keen to work with Benn on some issues, recording in his Journal: Frances Morrell, Nigel Williamson and I met Tony Benn for lunch. The purpose of the meeting was to try and persuade Tony that we wanted to work with him. But there had to be some agreement on the basis for co-operation … Benn didn’t want to know. He lives in a world of articles and platform speeches for the converted left. They  want to move on in the belief that support from ordinary people will just follow. We said we might meet again.144

Benn also records this meeting in his diaries, concluding with the statement that: ‘Sawyer is drifting to the right (like a lot of union 84

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The realignment of the left, 1983–87

leaders). I’m sorry I went.’145 It is clear that by June 1985 the soft-left had begun to move towards a break with their hard-left colleagues, but the divorce was by no means finalised. Third, and most fundamentally, Sawyer’s apostasy clearly did not occur until after he first visited Liverpool as part of the Inquiry team in December 1985 and February 1986. Sawyer had a history of opposing expulsions at the NEC and as late as September 1985 had voted for an amendment encouraging the determination of Liverpool City Council.146 This meeting occurred only two days before the Council’s plans to issue redundancy notices became public. Yet, even after the formation of the Inquiry, Sawyer regarded himself, Haigh, Beckett and Wise as the ‘four left representatives’ of the team and doubted, in his Journal, if a ‘majority recommendation’ could be made.147 Indeed, Sawyer entered Liverpool in December 1985 with the intention of giving Jane Kennedy a firm order to work with the Militant-tinged council.148 Sawyer’s position changed as he became aware of serious issues within Liverpool Labour Group and Liverpool DLP after speaking with Kennedy. Despite Sawyer’s willingness to take part in the Inquiry and his support for leadership positions on a number of items in 1985, on New Year’s Day 1986, Sawyer wrote in his Journal: ‘I can’t and wouldn’t want to give the ultimate loyalty owed to Neil Kinnock.’149 These events prove that the shepherd of the soft-left did not make a final break with the hard-left until the conclusion of the Militant Inquiry in February 1986. The final factor which suggests that the split took place after 1985 was the soft-left’s opposition to the expulsion of Sheffield councillor Paul Green in late December 1985. This highlights that Sawyer had not moved all the way into Kinnock’s camp, and that the other members of the soft-left had not yet made that journey either. In December 1985 the fate of Councillor Green, a Militant supporter, was brought to the NEC.150 Green had been suspended by his own CLP in Attercliffe in September 1985, a decision which was ratified at the NEC’s Appeals and Mediation 85

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Committee in December, with the only soft-left member present, Haigh, supporting.151 Yet, when the Appeals Committee’s report was presented later the same day to the full NEC, Blunkett – the Leader of Sheffield Council – spoke out strongly against Green’s expulsion. Blunkett recalls: ‘everybody knew him, and they just thought he was a perfectly harmless guy’.152 This case tested the loyalty of the soft-left, both to each other and to the leadership. On this occasion the soft-left deserted Kinnock with Sawyer, Blunkett, Meacher, and oddly Haigh – who had voted for expulsion earlier in the day – all supporting Skinner’s motion to refer back the Appeals Committee’s report.153 This motion fell by a single vote fourteen to thirteen, confirming Green’s expulsion.154 This highlighted Kinnock’s tenuous grip on the NEC without softleft support. Moreover, the December 1985 vote demonstrates that it was not until after the Liverpool Inquiry that the soft-left came on board with recommending expulsions of key members of the Militant Tendency. However, even after their break with the hard-left, the soft-left refused to sanction a mass purge of Militant from the party. On 2 January 1986, Blunkett argued in Tribune that ‘we must cease the purge mentality which is currently sweeping through the party’.155 Despite the realignment of Labour’s left in early 1986, the soft-left’s refusal to sanction widespread action is evident through: Haigh and Sawyer’s refusal to agree six of the sixteen names put forward for expulsion in the Inquiry’s Majority Report; Blunkett and Meacher’s votes for expulsion on only six and four occasions, respectively, out of the eleven Liverpool NEC hearings; and finally, all four soft-left members’ refusal to support Councillor Green’s expulsion. Conclusion Due to a combination of constant infighting and conflicting attitudes towards both the miners’ strike and the actions of Militant Tendency, the once dominant left-wing of the Labour Party 86

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The realignment of the left, 1983–87

separated into two distinct factions on the NEC after the conclusion of the Militant Inquiry in February 1986. This divorce was a gradual process with no public announcement of the soft-left’s final decision to break away from their former allies. The ‘decree absolute’ between the soft- and hard-left did not come into effect until after the Inquiry into the activities of the Militant Tendency in Liverpool, culminating in February 1986. As discussed previously, Sawyer and Haigh went into the investigation with an open mind and a history of opposing expulsions on the NEC. However, the horrors they witnessed first-hand, particularly to members of their trade unions due to Militant’s actions in power, caused a radical reassessment of their views. The Inquiry’s evidence, presented to the NEC in February 1986, also completed Blunkett and Meacher’s journey from hard-left to soft, with both individuals then taking an active part in the expulsion hearings of Militant members between May and October. The soft-left’s move towards Kinnock allowed the Labour leader to establish a firm majority on the NEC in order to make far-reaching changes to party organisation and policy. Sawyer recalls: ‘We became the first Kinnockites.’156 Kinnock was acutely aware of the significance of the soft-left’s conversion, remarking to his staff when he learned of Sawyer’s readiness to be part of the Liverpool Inquiry: ‘From now on … majority is spelt S.A.W.Y.E.R.’157 Whilst the right-wing of the Shadow Cabinet was unhappy with Kinnock’s alliance with the soft-left, the party leader became increasingly convinced that this modus vivendi formed the only basis around which the party could unite.158 Between 1985 and 1987, Kinnock rarely attempted anything controversial on the NEC without first ensuring himself of the soft-left’s agreement, usually by speaking with Sawyer and others in private before meetings.159 In return, the soft-left expected positions of influence,160 as evidenced by Sawyer’s election as chair of the NEC’s Home Policy Committee in 1986, Haigh’s election as chair of the Finance and General Purposes Committee in the same year, and Blunkett’s 87

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continuing leadership of the Local Government Committee from 1984. The loose alliance of Labour’s soft-left, centre and right from 1986 provided the leadership with a firm base of support in all areas and all organs of the party for the first time since 1960.161 This alliance, coupled with Labour’s 1987 defeat, afforded Kinnock the opportunity to radically modernise the Labour Party. The main tool for this process, the Policy Review, was provided by the shepherd of the soft-left, Tom Sawyer.

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3

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The Policy Review, 1987–92

Labour’s defeat in the 1987 general election catalysed the party’s modernisation. Whilst the period before the election was marked by the creation of a soft-left alliance around Neil Kinnock, the 1987 defeat paved the way for fundamental reform of party policy. In the period between the 1987 and 1992 general elections, the Labour Party attempted to rebrand and renew itself in an effort to move closer to the electorate. During these years, at the behest of Sawyer, Labour launched both a wide-ranging policy review and a comprehensive consultation exercise, Labour Listens. Until Sawyer’s intervention, no process existed for wide-reaching policy changes. Kinnock recalls: ‘Tom had sketched out a procedure for doing it with much the same purpose as I’d sketched out what had needed to be done … he came with a toolbox and that was terrific.’1 One month after Labour’s 1987 general election defeat, Sawyer submitted a memo to Kinnock entitled ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, which provided the internal scaffolding for widespread policy reform within the Labour Party. This paper suggested a ‘re-evaluation and review’ of policy, using Policy Review Groups drawn from the NEC, trade unions and the Shadow Cabinet, across four year-long phases.2 In September 1987, ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ was approved by the party’s Home Policy Committee, beginning Labour’s Policy Review.3 Between 1987 and 1992, the Review, chaired by Sawyer, fundamentally altered 89

Modernisation of the Labour Party

Labour’s positions on Europe, nuclear disarmament, trade union legislation and the market.

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Accommodating with Thatcher or recasting social democracy? The extent to which the Policy Review distanced Labour’s policies from the party’s roots, or, even as some commentators have alleged,  narrowed the ideological gap between the Conservative Party and Labour, remains an area of debate. This chapter firmly argues that, rather than playing ‘catch-up’ with the successes of the Conservative Party’s 1983 and 1987 victories, the Policy Review renewed Labour’s policies and put the party back on the path towards electoral victory. Although this did not mark a universal return to previously held Labour policy positions, the changes enacted during the Policy Review were broadly within the parameters of the party’s history. Whilst the Review did not succeed in its ultimate objective of preparing the party for victory at the next election (held in 1992), the consultation, engagement and publicity surrounding the Policy Review re-established, re-invigorated and redefined the Labour Party for the 1990s. In essence, the Review provided the foundations from which New Labour could be built. The major historiographical debate surrounding Labour’s Policy Review and the major changes instituted during 1987–92, centres on the extent to which Labour’s transformation sought to accommodate the party with a Thatcherite consensus, or whether Labour’s modernisation was a modern socialist response to ascendant capitalism. In the immediate aftermath of Labour’s 1992  defeat, a distinct ‘modernisation thesis’ developed amongst academics and journalists. Such authors hypothesise that the Policy Review should not be seen as a concession to Thatcherism, but an overdue reaction to the changed environment of the 1980s which had, until 1986, been thwarted internally by the hard-left. In this regard, Kinnock’s policy changes in 1987–92 are seen as 90

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either an attempt to realign the Labour Party with continental social democratic parties, or in some cases, to Labour’s revisionist past. David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, and Colin Hughes and Patrick Wintour all argue that the Policy Review was not an attempt to accommodate with Thatcherism but aimed to convert Labour into a European-style social democratic party.4 In contrast, whilst Ivor Crewe and Martin Smith agree that Labour’s Policy Review was independent of Thatcherism, they argue that  the Review’s changes were an attempt to return Labour policy to positions held before the left’s ascendancy in the late 1970s.5 Indeed, there is some evidence to support such claims with two of the main changes of the Policy Review: the abandonment of unilateralism and the dilution of the party’s commitment to widespread public ownership, clearly marking a return to previous Labour policies. In 1994, Colin Hay marked a significant break from the modernisation thesis, by claiming that Labour’s Policy Review resulted in the party accepting ‘the basic parameters of the Thatcher Settlement’.6 His argument built on Perry Anderson’s almost identical point that Labour accepted such a settlement.7 These views also linked strongly with Benn’s belief that the Policy Review represented ‘the Thatcherisation of the Labour Party’.8 To Hay, Labour’s abandonment of widespread public ownership, high levels of taxation and unilateralism during the Policy Review meant that, by 1992, the party had accommodated, or played ‘catch-up’ with Thatcherism.9 Similarly, Gregory Elliott argues that Labour ‘never espoused’ socialism and Kinnock’s ‘ersatz Thatcherism’, through his acceptance of market capitalism, faded the party’s red flag to a ‘pinker shade of pale’.10 These analyses are somewhat wide of the mark. Labour’s policy changes, particularly around defence and public ownership, were clearly within the parameters of the party’s long history and were not an attempt to ape the Conservatives. Moreover, whilst the Policy Review moved towards a macro-economic orthodoxy, in other 91

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areas, Labour continued to remain distinct from the Conservative Party, specifically Labour’s plans for state intervention in the economy on the supply side, highlighted by increased spending on pensions and child allowances. After Hay’s intervention, the modernisation thesis developed a separate arm which saw Labour’s changes as neither an attempt to accommodate with the Thatcherite consensus, nor a return to Labour’s past, but as a new form of British democratic socialism for the late twentieth century and beyond. In this regard, Mark Wickham-Jones, Donald Sassoon and Steven Fielding all see the Policy Review as an attempt to renew social democracy for the circumstances of the 1980s and beyond.11 This is especially relevant because despite the similarities between the Policy Review and Crosland’s revisionism of the late 1950s, which favoured a pragmatic approach to public ownership and selective intervention within a market-led mixed economy to promote sustained growth, there were also significant differences. Kinnock’s Policy Review had neither the aim, nor the effect of ‘accommodating’ with the Conservatives, nor was it an attempt to turn back Labour’s clock. Despite changes to Labour’s policies between 1987 and 1992, the party remained utterly distinct from Thatcher’s government. Labour advocated trade union rights, supply-side socialism and nuclear disarmament – as seen across this chapter – alongside their opposition to widespread privatisation and the extension of Trident. This created a clear divide between Britain’s two major parties. Yet, the Policy Review did not mark a universal return to Labour’s revisionist past. Whilst a number of the changes during the Policy Review, principally the change from unilateralism to multilateralism, and to some extent the watering down of its public ownership commitments, had clear parallels with the party’s history, the economic circumstances inherited from the mid-1980s boom and the disastrous election results of 1983 and 1987 forced the Labour Party to think differently. The Review’s focus on supply-side socialism in the macro-economy, as 92

The Policy Review, 1987–92

opposed to either monetarism or Keynesianism, provided Labour with an entirely new economic outlook.

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From the 1983 general election to the 1987 general election Kinnock wanted to modernise the party’s policies at the earliest possible opportunity under his leadership, however an accumulation of crises in the first years of his tenure led to a substantial delay in policy reform. He reflects: ‘My preference would have been, as the Policy Review demonstrates, to have had the thorough reassessment of policy and modernisation of our proposals [earlier, but] the miners’ strike intervened.’12 As detailed in Chapter 2, Kinnock used the period between the miners’ strike and the 1987 election to establish a broad base of support on Labour’s NEC to ensure the safe passage of his policy reforms. Yet, with the realignment of Labour’s left incomplete until 1986, the fundamental changes to the party’s policy outlook did not occur until after the 1987 general election. Few substantial revisions to Labour’s policy occurred between 1983 and 1987. In these years, the lack of both a consensus for change on the party’s NEC, and crucially, the absence of any mechanism through which such alterations could be made, stymied any substantial policy reforms within the Labour Party. Kinnock recognised the problems which the policies he inherited gave the early years of his leadership: I knew that within policy terms, no matter what the individual merits of policy were, they were completely unacceptable to the majority of the British people and the list was quite long. From being opposed to council house sales, through to unilateral nuclear disarmament and rejection of the European Community, through to the posture that we took, and it was a bloody posture, on public ownership.13

The Labour leader could not count on an internal consensus for such changes within the party’s structures, however, before 1986. 93

Modernisation of the Labour Party

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More widely, whilst Labour members overwhelmingly wanted an extension of nationalisation and the divestment of Britain’s nuclear weapons, Labour voters, and particularly the national electorate, did not.14 Consequently, the leadership set out to align the party’s position with the mean voter. Kinnock separated the changes required into three categories: [First] those that could be changed without great resistance – for example, the policy on council house sales and the policy of hostility towards the European Community; Second … policies that could be changed with a greater effort and with the right timing – for example, the antagonism towards trade union ballots and the general policy on nationalisation; Third … policies with particularly deep roots … the whole issue of Defence and Nuclear Weapons.15

Labour’s 1987 manifesto removed some of the more radical elements of 1983’s ‘longest suicide note in history’, such as withdrawal from the European Economic Community, opposition to council house sales, the abolition of the House of Lords and the radical extension of public ownership.16 However, the majority of Labour’s changes before 1987 clearly fell into Kinnock’s first category. Tudor Jones has argued that ‘between 1983 and 1987 Labour’s policy changes had been tentative and piecemeal’.17 Bar the above alterations, the party’s main policies in 1987 were broadly similar to those in the 1983 manifesto. Labour continued to support the renationalisation of some industries, the repeal of the Conservative Party’s trade union legislation and unilateral nuclear disarmament.18 Each of these policies sat within Kinnock’s latter categories and required both a broad base of support and an overarching policy review mechanism to change. The 1987 general election result represented Labour’s second worst performance, in terms of voting share, since their 1931 split and provided further ammunition for Kinnock that the party needed to change. Labour went into the election with a huge polling deficit to the Conservative Party and in the face of continued 94

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challenge from the SDP to be the principal opposition. Whilst Labour managed to hold on to second place ahead of the SDP– Liberal Alliance, Kinnock’s party received only 27 per cent of the vote, to the Alliance’s 23 per cent and the Tories’ 42 per cent. Furthermore, although Labour reduced the Conservative’s majority from 144 in 1983, it remained in triple figures at 102. Kinnock recalled that Labour made only half of the forty-two gains he targeted.19 Similarly, Kinnock’s Chief-of-Staff, Clarke, recalls that he viewed the election as a failure in 1987, but now regards Labour’s result as a success.20 Indeed, the margin of Labour’s 1987 defeat greatly accelerated the party’s modernisation into more contentious areas. ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ to the Policy Review Following the 1987 defeat, both Sawyer’s and Kinnock’s thoughts turned to renewing the Labour Party’s policies and infrastructure, marking the genesis of the Policy Review. The Labour leader recalls: ‘During the campaign I became even more completely convinced that we had to really mount a severe campaign to change policy and happily, Tom, was forming the same view in the middle of that election.’21 These men were acutely aware of the requirement for Labour to update its policies on the one hand, and the need for the party to be more attune with the public and its grassroots on the other. Although there was a consensus that Labour needed some form of review into its policies and practices, there was no agreement or concrete suggestion as to how a review of Labour Party policy would be carried out, until Sawyer came forward with his proposals.22 Owing to his frontline role in leading the Policy Review, Sawyer has been widely credited by historians for being a major figure in this period of Labour’s modernisation.23 Despite being described as ‘pivotal’ by Andy McSmith, a ‘key figure’ by both Meg Russell and Philip Gould, and ‘the prime mover behind the Policy Review’ by 95

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

Eric Shaw, very little has been written about his role in directing the Policy Review process itself.24 Alongside these academic analyses, Beckett, Clarke, Kinnock, Mandelson and Whitty have also spoken of Sawyer’s significance in this process.25 Even detractors, such as John Prescott, recognised the significance of Sawyer’s scheme: ‘I think Tom saw himself as a kind of trade union intellectual, but he judged it on what he thought was right, now I can’t condemn him on that.’26 On 6 July 1987, Labour’s Home Policy Committee met to discuss the fall-out of the general election and at this meeting Geoff Bish, the party’s policy director, tabled a paper headed ‘Policy Development for the 1990s’ which proposed the preparation of a ‘major policy document’ to be agreed by the NEC and the Shadow Cabinet.27 Kinnock, however, vigorously dismissed Bish’s paper believing it to be more exhortatory than effective, stating: ‘we don’t want a fundamental and radical review that jettisons everything on the one hand, or does nothing on the other  hand. We have to find out what people think’.28 Yet, to Kinnock’s annoyance, at this stage no acceptable scheme for how such a review would be carried out had been tabled by the party’s staff. Following the July Home Policy meeting, Sawyer – the Chair of the Committee – met with his union’s Senior Research Officer, Adam Sharples, to discuss a framework for how Labour would review its policy: We sat down together and thought, what can we do, how can we change policy to make us more electable and connected to the voters? That’s where the Policy Review came from. The idea was we would look at everything we did and try and make it more voter friendly, and try and connect with people.29

There were two key drivers behind Sawyer’s proposals, first, he recognised the need for Labour to move closer to the electorate after the 1987 defeat and second, he wanted to develop a process which 96

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would avoid further post-election recriminations.30 Following consultation with Sharples, Sawyer submitted his report, entitled ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, to Kinnock on 23 July.31 Four days later, he met with Kinnock and Clarke to discuss his paper and the direction of Labour’s post-1987 review.32 Not only did Sawyer draw up the outline of the Policy Review for Kinnock, he also offered to chair the whole process. Clarke recalls: [Tom] was ready not only to propose it, but to lead it. And because of his position within the trade union movement, that meant as opposed to other forms of policy reviews, which looked like, or might have looked like, an imposition by the parliamentary leadership on the rest of the party, it was possible to see how we could really get something that came from the party itself and Tom was the personal embodiment of that approach.33

Thus, Sawyer’s document ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ became the manual for Labour’s Policy Review. ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ opened with the clear statement that: ‘Labour’s defeat demands a re-evaluation and review of our policy’.34 The document contained three key proposals, each of which would be enshrined in Labour’s official Policy Review after the 1987 Conference: the use of Policy Review Groups, the establishment of yearly phases in the review process, and widespread consultation. First, Policy Review Groups were to be created in specific areas to redraw policy: A number of ‘Policy Review Groups’ – with a fixed life and small membership – should be established. The aim of these groups would not be to embark on wholesale revision of policy but rather to review some of the key themes and issues … They would report to the Home Policy Committee and would be expected to complete their work in time for an initial programmatic statement to be circulated to constituencies before presentation to Conference in 1988.35

Sawyer recommended six Policy Review Groups: ‘Understanding the Changes in the Electorate’, ‘Public Services for the 1990s’, 97

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

‘Industry and Enterprise’, ‘Fairness at Work’, ‘Economic and Social Equality’ and a ‘Review of Policy Making’. The preliminary plan was for these review groups to report to the 1988 Conference. Second, in the document, Sawyer suggested four year-long phases to the Review to put the party on a solid footing by the time  of the next general election, ‘Listening’ (1988), ‘New Policy’ (1989), ‘Finalising Outstanding Policy Issues’ (1990) and ‘Projection’ (1990–91).36 These phases aimed to establish Labour’s new policy direction in the first two years, so that the party would then have a further two years to campaign on their new initiatives ahead of an anticipated general election in 1991–92. The final major element of ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ suggested using consultation to inform Labour’s policies. Sawyer’s report was clear that Labour’s policy development should be based on opinion research, party member views and overseas experience.37 Much of this consultation was to take place during phase one of the suggested Review, ‘Listening’, and linked closely with existing work under Labour’s Director of Communications, Peter Mandelson. Along these lines, Sawyer suggested that Labour Listens events should target not only party members but also affiliated members and supporters, alongside specific groups of voters.38 After the August recess, ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ made its way through the Labour Party’s committee process, with Kinnock’s explicit backing.39 On 14 September, Sawyer received approval for his project by the Home Policy Committee: Presented my paper on looking at ‘An Approach to Policy Making’  to the Home Policy Committee tonight. Despite all the pre-meeting publicity, which was very damaging, the paper was well received. Only Dennis Skinner voted against it. Tony Benn had circulated an alternative paper and he opened up by saying as usual – ‘I don’t expect you to discuss it or agree it, but I hope you’ll read it.’ In the press the next day, it had the full publicity as Benn firing a broadside against Kinnock. The truth was he introduced 98

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it like a whimper and nobody at all at the meeting commented on it.40

Benn’s ‘Aims and Objectives’ document re-emphasised many of Labour’s 1983 policies, calling for the common ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, the removal of all nuclear weapons, withdrawal from NATO and the abolition of the House of Lords.41 Both The Times’ and the Guardian’s coverage of the meeting concentrated more on Benn’s unsuccessful proposal than Sawyer’s successful one.42 On 23 September ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ was approved by Labour’s pre-conference NEC without the need for a vote, though Skinner spoke against the idea.43 Skinner saw the entire Review as Kinnock’s ‘drift towards the middle’.44 ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ was then taken as part of a general document, entitled Moving Ahead, to the 1987 Conference in Brighton. Introducing the NEC document, Sawyer clearly indicated the need for the party to reform and re-establish itself for the next general election: We need to review and build our membership … and strengthen the party’s organisation particularly at the regions and the marginal seats. We need to sharpen our campaigns at every level, building on the advances of the election campaign. Yes, we need to review our policy, listening to and learning from those whose votes we need to win.45

At the Conference, however, a number of speakers expressed reservations about the direction of the project. Sawyer’s union General Secretary, Rodney Bickerstaffe, declared: ‘We do not want to hand Labour over to the marketing men to be packaged like breakfast cereal … any policy review must be rooted in our traditional values and our collective approach.’46 In addition, Heffer warned against the Policy Review rushing ‘into suggestions that we have to change the basis of our party’.47 Despite these comments the NEC statement Moving Ahead passed on a show 99

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of hands by a large majority and began the process of Labour’s Policy Review. Alongside Sawyer and Kinnock’s organisational and policy modernisations, a Shadow Communications Agency (SCA) began a detailed investigation into the reasons for Labour’s 1987 defeat. This group included academics, economists and market researchers, headed by Philip Gould and Deborah Mattinson under the stewardship of Mandelson.48 The initial findings of the SCA were delivered to a joint meeting of Labour’s NEC and Shadow Cabinet on 20 November 1987 in a presentation entitled ‘Labour and Britain in the 1990s’.49 This revealed that Labour’s share of the vote had dropped by 17 per cent in twenty years and how the party was overwhelmingly seen as divided.50 Mandelson had worked tirelessly since his appointment in 1985 to modernise the image of the Labour Party, including the symbolic change of the party’s logo to a red rose. ‘Labour and Britain in the 1990s’ gave him the ammunition for further modernisation: ‘it was created as a political instrument, not as an academic exercise, to get the NEC and members of the Shadow Cabinet to confront reality’.51 Consequently, the report permeated through the entire Policy Review process as the party’s policy changes began to be influenced by public attitudes garnered from qualitative research. Great significance has been attached to this report. Philip Gould described its influence as ‘enormous’ and Mandelson claimed the report was a ‘landmark’ moment.52 Yet, whilst ‘Labour and Britain in the 1990s’ provided the ‘polling foundation on which the party’s modernisation was built’,53 it was not the first step in that process. Indeed, Kinnock’s office, in a briefing note for the Labour leader on ‘Labour and Britain in the 1990s’, asserted that: ‘none of this material dictates what we do’.54 Kinnock literally underlined this point in red on his personal copy. ‘Labour and Britain in the 1990s’ helped to provide the evidence to assist with Labour’s policy reform, but the mechanism for the changes was provided by Sawyer’s ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, which predated the SCA’s report by over four months. 100

The Policy Review, 1987–92

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The Policy Review: Outline The Policy Review, when fully established, closely followed Sawyer’s ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ draft. The final form of the Review, presented to the NEC in October 1987, consisted of seven Review Groups, each with two convenors: one from the Shadow Cabinet, and one from the Executive itself.55 The Policy Review Groups covered the areas: ‘A Productive and Competitive Economy’, ‘People at Work’, ‘Economic Equality’, ‘Consumers and the Community’, ‘Democracy for the Individual and the Community’, ‘Physical and Social Environment’ and ‘Britain in the World’.56 Each of Sawyer’s original six areas, identified in ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, were covered by one of the newly created seven Policy Review Groups, with some amalgamations and the addition of ‘Britain in the World’ to investigate defence policy. The work of the Review Groups was supervised by the Campaign Management Team chaired by Sawyer. In this role, he was charged with overseeing the ideological and policy coherence of the review.57 The body included senior staff from both Kinnock’s office and the party’s head office at Walworth Road, with major roles played by Clarke, Mandelson and Patricia Hewitt.58 The team largely did not deal directly with the operation of the Review Groups. Hughes and Wintour state that: ‘Kinnock kept his eye on the groups but kept his own hands off, leaving the convenors to organise themselves.’59 However, Kinnock made one major change to Sawyer’s initial draft to ensure central control: The only real addition … that I made was to ensure that the secretariat of every single Policy Review Group was from my office, because that didn’t appear, I don’t think, in Tom’s original document. But, it turned out to be crucial. First of all because it meant we could monitor every single meeting, every word of every proposal and every amendment, and also so I was at the centre of it and approved every last phrase in those documents. It also 101

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An Approach to Policy-Making

Understanding changes in the electorate

Meet the Challenge, Make the Change

Democracy and individual rights

Fairness at work

Industry and enterprise

People at work

Productive and competitive economy

Public services for the 1990s

Consumers and the community

Economic and social equality

Economic equality Physical & social environment

A review of policy-making

Britain in the world

Figure 1 A comparison between Tom Sawyer’s ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ (1987) and the Labour Party’s Meet the Challenge, Make the Change (1989)

The Policy Review, 1987–92

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meant that I could work with individuals, Tom included, Gerald Kaufman, Bryan Gould, the others involved, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, all of them, to ensure that we had coherence in the policy development.60

Not only did Kinnock control the Review’s secretariat, his office, through Clarke, also arranged and appointed the convenors and Review Group members.61 Thus, Kinnock’s direct involvement was not required in the Groups as the Review was, for the most part, populated by members friendly to the party leadership.62 Among those on the NEC, only Benn and Skinner resolutely refused to take part in the Review Groups. In ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ Sawyer had identified four year-long phases for the review of Labour’s policies. This formula was largely adhered to in the official Review. The first year, initially described by Sawyer as ‘Listening’, resulted in the publication of Democratic Socialist Aims and Values in 1988, and the implementation of the Labour Listens consultation exercise. The second phase produced the more policy driven Meet the Challenge, Make the Change in 1989. This 88-page document contained detailed reports from the seven Policy Review Groups. The third and fourth years, as Sawyer had suggested, built on the first two years in the 1990 document, Looking to the Future, and the 1991 statement, Opportunity Britain. The first phase 1987/88 Democratic Socialist Aims and Values The first phase of Labour’s Policy Review, from the adoption of Moving Ahead at the September 1987 Conference to the September 1988 Conference, resulted in three major exercises. First, the party published a refreshed set of purposes and principles in the statement Democratic Socialist Aims and Values; second, Labour embarked upon an ambitious, but occasionally misunderstood, consultation 103

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An Approach to Policy-Making

1988

1989

1990

1991

Listening

New policy

Finalising outstanding policy issues

Projection

Meet the Challenge, Make the Change

Looking to the future

Opportunity Britain

Labour listens The Policy Review

Democratic socialist aims & values Social justice & economic efficiency

Figure 2 A comparison between Tom Sawyer’s ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ (1987) and the Labour Party’s Policy Review (1987–92)

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exercise entitled, Labour Listens, and finally, the party published Social Justice and Economic Efficiency, which provided the preliminary reports of the Policy Review Groups. Democratic Socialist Aims and Values gave the Policy Review a philosophical basis on which to proceed.63 The 1988 document was written largely by Hattersley and was somewhat of a rehash of his own book Choose Freedom, published a year earlier.64 By 1988 there was a clear need for the Labour leadership to spell out its ideals in order to assuage fears that the Policy Review would involve an abandonment of Labour’s socialist principles.65 Aims and Values aimed to provide a clear ideological statement to both unite the party and to provide the foundations on which the Policy Review could be built. Taylor argues that the document failed on both counts.66 Benn also claimed that Aims and Values ‘dilutes to the point of harmlessness the basic socialist critique of capitalism’.67 Subsequently, the Campaign Group introduced their own ‘Aims and Objectives’ paper, through Benn, at the NEC in February 1988.68 Beyond merely raising the expected furore from the hard-left, Aims and Values provoked a reaction from within Kinnock’s inner circle. Blunkett, Robin Cook, Jack Cunningham, Bryan Gould and John Smith all – both privately and publicly – criticised the draft of the document presented to the NEC and Shadow Cabinet on 5 February 1988.69 Bryan Gould was concerned about the document being ‘too fulsome in its praise of the markets’, Smith and Cook argued for a stronger commitment to regional intervention, and Cunningham called for a pledge encouraging science and technology to be included.70 Blunkett even went as far as to publish an alternative document, co-authored with the academic Bernard Crick, entitled The Labour Party’s Aims and Values: An Unofficial Statement. This pamphlet argued that socialism and democracy were actually about fraternity, community and civic participation, thus moving the focus away from Hattersley’s equation of individual liberty as the primary goal of the socialist 105

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project.71 Blunkett asserts that this was required due to Hattersley’s ‘old right’ authorship of the official document.72 Yet, Hattersley claimed that Kinnock’s awareness of Blunkett and Crick’s competing project forced him to decide that an official statement of aims and values was needed at the start of the Policy Review.73 Following the February NEC and Shadow Cabinet meeting, the final draft of Aims and Values was taken to the NEC for decision on 23 March 1988. The amended document was passed by twentytwo votes to four, with the hard-left: Benn, Livingstone, Skinner and the Labour Party Young Socialist Member, Linda Douglas, voting against.74 The document was then passed by Labour’s Annual Conference in September by 5.086 million to 1.072 million votes,75 although the debate has been described as ‘ill-attended and desultory’.76 Shaw has described Aims and Values as typifying the neorevisionist position, meaning that the document attempted to adapt Anthony Crosland’s theory to fit the 1990s.77 Along these lines, the document played down Labour’s pursuit of nationalisation stating: ‘We are not, and never have been, committed to any one form of public ownership’, although the publication highlighted the need for the public utilities to ‘remain in public ownership – nationalised, in the original sense of the word’.78 The document also crucially declared the supremacy of the market, stating that with the exception of health, education and social services where it would be ‘irrational and immoral’ to rely simply on the market, ‘there are many areas of the economy where market allocation and competition … is essential’.79 Finally, Aims and Values clearly stressed that the ‘true purpose of the Labour Party is the creation of a genuinely free society in which the fundamental objective of government is the protection and extension of individual liberty’.80 This aim clearly indicated a departure from not only the party’s prior commitment to widespread nationalisation, but also from identifying Labour’s purpose as being engaged with community and fellowship.81 106

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Aims and Values was originally intended to both refresh Labour’s ideological framework and to provide the backbone for the Policy Review. Opposition from both the hard-left, but more importantly from senior figures close to Kinnock, relegated the document to the back burner. Moreover, Aims and Values was never accepted by the Policy Review convenors as the blueprint from which the Review Groups should operate.82 Whilst debates swirled around the direction of the document, the most important contribution of Aims and Values was to clearly distance Labour from nationalisation and towards the market. This provided the backdrop for the more fundamental policy changes of the Review itself. Labour Listens Running parallel with the publication of Aims and Values, a Labour Listens consultation exercise was launched in January 1988. The idea behind this consultation, and even the exercise’s branding, came directly from ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ where Sawyer suggested that the party should undertake a number of seminars, entitled ‘Labour Listens’, in an attempt to shape Labour’s policies following a canvass of public opinion after the 1987 defeat.83 Labour’s General Secretary, Larry Whitty, reflects that before 1987 ‘one of the problems was we hadn’t listened to what our voters were saying’.84 Thus, Labour Listens open meetings were held across the country to provide a forum for discussions between members of the public and front-bench Labour politicians.85 ‘Labour’s Campaign for the 1990s’ was launched on 18 January 1988 and the first Labour Listens public meeting was held a week later in Brighton, chaired by the party’s deputy leader, Roy Hattersley.86 Kinnock labelled the campaign at its launch as ‘the biggest consultation exercise with the British public a political party has ever taken’.87 A similar claim would later be made by Tony Blair about the changes to Clause IV in 1995, discussed in Chapter 5. The results of the Brighton meeting and the 107

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following ten regional events were somewhat mixed. The Guardian stated that ‘Labour Listens and bores take full advantage’, whilst The  Times reported that Labour ‘talk[ed] a lot and listen[ed] a little’.88 The Labour Listens consultation faced strong opposition from the left of the party. Benn criticised the events by claiming ‘many members … fear the “Labour listens” exercise itself may lead to the abandonment of some of our basic values’.89 Likewise, the Tribune newspaper in December 1987 argued that Labour Listens and the Policy Review were ‘set up to insulate [the Labour leadership] from organised pressure within the party and the unions’.90 These failures were not lost on the exercise’s instigator, Sawyer, who commented at the 1988 Annual Conference: Perhaps we had unrealistic expectations from phase one, I certainly did. I thought that the letters from the General Secretary that went to you all in your CLPs and your trade unions inviting you to submit evidence would produce more of a response. I thought that the special issues of Labour Party News and advice to branches on how to take part would result in increased involvement. But I failed to realise how difficult it would be to mobilise the party for the policy review.91

Moreover, Sawyer recognised that Labour Listens ‘was not completely successful’, but hoped if the party used the mechanisms of the Policy Review that: ‘One day “Labour Listens” will be “Labour Learns”, and if we put the things we learn into practice in our policy making, then “Labour Listens and Persuades” will become “Labour Leads”’.92 In the second phase of the Policy Review of 1988/89, Sawyer tried to learn from some of the failings of the initial consultation by turning Labour Listens into an internal political education exercise.93 Labour Listens was widely seen as a failure. Although initially the exercise was given a significance almost equal to the Policy Review itself, in reality, Labour could not, in the words of Shaw, ‘decide whether it was primarily a public relations ploy or 108

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a serious consultative exercise’.94 Shaw’s assessment of the review as an ‘embarrassing flop’ is shared by numerous authors: Andy McSmith has called the consultation ‘a slightly absurd exercise’, whilst Thomas Quinn regarded the events as ‘ill-conceived’.95 Mandelson recalls that the events were ‘absolutely awful because Labour spoke more than listened and few genuine members of the public turned up’.96 Whilst Kinnock recognised that the events were not hugely popular with the British public, he stated that the use of focus group research was incredibly useful: ‘the real value  came from the extra interest groups that we met up and down the country, much more than the meetings with the general public, some of which were very badly attended’.97 Within the Policy Review, however, the Review Groups simply took the consultation responses as confirmation that the party was heading in the right direction, as opposed to using the results to shape or form policy. The failure of Labour Listens convinced Sawyer and the Labour leadership that further reform would be needed in order to engage the party’s wider membership. Such mechanisms were not in place until the first meeting of a new National Policy Forum in 1993, as detailed in Chapter 6. Social Justice and Economic Efficiency The major policy report of the first phase of the Policy Review was Social Justice and Economic Efficiency. In practice, however, it was the least influential of the Review’s policy documents as the Review Groups had not yet begun to formulate new policies (or abandon old ones). Thus, the object of Social Justice was to produce a statement of values, goals and themes, rather than providing specific policy.98 The foreword to the document recognised its own limitations: ‘The view so far is not exhaustive and should not be expected to answer every question.’99 Social Justice and Economic Efficiency provided a preliminary collection of reports from each of the Review Groups, shaped by both the Labour Listens 109

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consultation responses and the qualitative data received from the Shadow Communications Agency. Moving into the second phase of the Policy Review, the Review Groups were given both Aims and Values and Social Justice and Economic Efficiency from which to build their group’s policy formation. In practice, the latter had more influence than the former. Social Justice and Economic Efficiency still provided more questions than answers at this stage of the Review. Around contentious policy issues such as: Labour’s relationship with the market, the party’s attitude towards Europe, trade unions and defence policy, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency was – perhaps intentionally at this stage – rather equivocal. Although the Policy Review at its inception, and particularly Aims and Values, had been criticised for being too market-friendly, Social Justice claimed: ‘It is in the nature of markets to undervalue the long-term investment necessary to produce high-quality education and training, or to carry out pure research and apply it … Consequently, in these areas the market fails.’100 In the controversial areas of foreign affairs and defence, covered by the Britain in the World Review Group, Social Justice was light on detail. Finally, on trade union rights the Review Group, ‘People at Work’, stuck far more closely to past Labour policy than the leadership wanted.101 The report, however, did accept the regulation of trade unions and, much to Skinner’s chagrin, distanced Labour from the 1987 commitment to replace Tory trade union legislation.102 The 1988 leadership election The first year and phase of the Policy Review proved more challenging than first envisioned; Labour Listens struggled to engage lay members, Aims and Values provoked a reaction from both supporters and detractors of the Kinnock project, and Social Justice and Economic Efficiency provided only vague conclusions. Whilst phase one of the Policy Review was endorsed by the 1988 Party 110

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Conference, the increasingly loud opposition to the Review from the remaining hard-left members of the party came to a head in Benn’s formal challenge to Kinnock’s leadership. In addition, Ron Todd, the General Secretary of the TGWU, launched a vociferous attack on the direction of the Policy Review and Kinnock’s leadership at a Tribune fringe event during the 1988 Conference.103 Sawyer described Todd’s attack at the conference as ‘the biggest crisis since Eric Heffer walked off the platform in 1986’.104 The Campaign Group began to discuss a challenge to Kinnock towards the end of 1987, but did not declare a candidate until March 1988, with the election being held in the October.105 The real issue which provoked a formal leadership bid from the Campaign Group was the Aims and Values document.106 Benn reluctantly accepted the leadership nomination at a meeting of the Campaign Group on 23 March, stating ‘the case for standing is that the leadership is killing the party, diluting policy, centralising power, capitulating’.107 Despite this aim, there was no unanimous agreement of his candidacy at the Group, or indeed an agreement over whether the hard-left should field a candidate at all. Having decided to fight a leadership election, Clare Short, Margaret Beckett and Jo Richardson all withdrew from the Campaign Group of MPs, whilst Allan Roberts and Joan Ruddock suspended their membership during the leadership campaign.108 Beckett recalled: ‘When the Campaign Group decided to challenge Neil we thought that was a big mistake and we didn’t want to support that.’109 Short also used this opportunity to gravitate towards the soft-left and the leadership. The 1988 leadership contest gave a resounding vote of confidence to Kinnock, Hattersley, and the direction of the Policy Review. Benn, who had nearly been elected deputy leader in 1981, was trounced with Kinnock winning an astounding 88.6 per cent of the vote, compared to 11.4 per cent for Benn.110 More strikingly, Kinnock won every section of the vote convincingly: trade union, PLP and constituency parties.111 He described this as a 111

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‘devastating victory’ against the hard-left.112 Hattersley’s result was almost as impressive, gaining 66.8 per cent of the vote compared to 23.7 per cent for Prescott and 9.5 per cent for Heffer.113 Rather than halting the Policy Review, the leadership challenge gave a renewed mandate for Kinnock’s organisational modernisation.114 With the distinct possibility that, despite such a poor performance, those from the hard-left would continue to field annual challenges against Kinnock, the party leadership looked to change the criteria by which MPs could run for the leadership. The Campaign Group had around thirty-six members after the resignation of Short, Beckett and Richardson in the summer of 1988, but eventually forty-one separate MPs voted for either Benn or Heffer. Whilst Kinnock was reluctant to introduce a rule change stipulating that any challenger must receive a certain threshold of PLP support, John Evans – MP for St Helens North and a Kinnock loyalist – was not. This rule was eventually rewritten, requiring prospective leadership candidates to have the support of at least 20 per cent of the parliamentary party, which in 1988 meant forty-six MPs, just high enough to prevent a further leadership challenge from the hard-left.115 This rule change passed through party conference five days after the leadership election result was announced.116 In the wake of Benn’s challenge, the 1988 Conference also supported a resolution for One Member, One Vote in the constituency section of Labour’s electoral college for leadership elections.117 The second phase 1988/89 The second phase of the Policy Review, which Sawyer had described as ‘Policy Making’ in ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, took place between the 1988 and 1989 conferences. This phase resulted in the publication of Meet the Challenge, Make the Change in 1989, the key document in the entire Policy Review process. Although the Review continued for two years after the publication 112

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of this report, Labour’s major policy changes were finalised by 1989. After this period, Looking to the Future (1990) and Opportunity Britain (1991) largely reaffirmed the conclusions of Meet the Challenge, Make the Change. Meet the Challenge, Make the Change was the bible of the Policy Review and made the largest alterations to Labour’s policy direction during their entire period of modernisation from 1979 to 1997. This 88-page document spelled out Labour’s new direction through the final reports of the seven Policy Review Groups which had begun work in 1987. Gone was the ambiguity of Social Justice and Economic Efficiency and in its place were unequivocal conclusions on some of Labour’s long-standing policy issues: trade union legislation, unilateralism and public ownership. These areas were within Kinnock’s second and third categories of difficulty, either being deemed as requiring ‘greater effort’ in the cases of trade union ballots and nationalisation, or as having ‘particularly deep roots’ in the example of unilateralism.118 Trade union legislation Labour’s policy before 1987 had been abundantly clear on the  issue of countering the trade union legislation introduced by the Conservative Party in the 1980s. Labour’s 1983 manifesto promised to ‘repeal the divisive Tory “employment” laws’, whilst the 1987 manifesto vowed to ‘replace’ such legislation.119 The Policy Review tried to negotiate a difficult balance between appeasing the trade unions, which had seen their rights whittled away by Conservative governments since 1979, and reassuring the wider public that Labour was not in the pocket of the unions.120 The ‘People at Work’ Review Group which dealt with workers’ rights and representation issues was one of only two Review Groups (along with ‘Physical and Social Environment’) to have a majority of trade unionists amongst its members. Despite its composition, during the Policy Review a consensus to move away from 113

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demanding a complete reversal of Conservative policies began to emerge within the labour movement. Although the ‘People at Work’ Review Group delivered substantial reform to Labour’s trade union policy, the Group was arguably the only one of the seven groups that did not deliver the report Kinnock wanted.121 The trade unions had played a large role in the changing of Labour Party policy towards their movement. By 1989 there was virtually complete agreement among TUC officials and a large number of union leaders that the Conservative Government’s policies on industrial action actually had the support of the public and a good deal of their members.122 Moreover, both the TUC and the Labour leadership were at pains to stifle Conservative accusations that the union movement would be able dictate terms to a future Labour government.123 Along these lines, a private compromise was reached between the TUC and Kinnock’s office, through a secret Contact Group, that reforms to collective labour law would be restricted to a handful of issues to redress the most blatant imbalances relating to employers.124 The compromise also recognised that not all the union immunities in place before 1979 would return. Thus, whilst the ‘People at Work’ Review Group in their submission for Social Justice and Economic Efficiency made clear that the ‘trade unions [had] an essential part to play in the 1990s’, there was no commitment to restore and maintain collective rights for trade unions.125 Instead, the focus was steered towards guaranteeing both individual rights at work and protection from discrimination. This narrative also found its way into the 1989 statement, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change which accepted that workers had ‘far fewer rights than they had ten years ago’, but again stressed the need to increase individual rights through a ‘Charter for employees’, rather than advocating the repeal of Conservative legislation.126 Whilst during the Policy Review there was little disagreement with the general steer away from total repeal of Tory union legislation, within the ‘People at Work’ Review Group itself, Michael 114

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Meacher – the co-convenor of the group and Shadow Spokesperson for Employment – established somewhat of an independent line from the party leadership. At a meeting of the Contact Group in March 1989, Meacher deviated from the compromise agreement by saying he wanted to commit Labour to repealing Tory trade union legislation. He also supported a substantial widening of the law regarding secondary strike action and wanted protection for trade unions against prosecution and fines in civil lawsuits.127 He was roundly criticised by not only Shadow Cabinet colleagues, but also many of the trade union general secretaries present, despite some of their own unions’ individual positions.128 Yet some trade union general secretaries, particularly Todd of the TGWU and Ken Gill from the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union (MSF), agreed with Meacher’s position and consequently channelled their views on the Policy Review’s potential changes through the TUC apparatus. The ‘People at Work’ section of Meet the Challenge, Make the Change followed Meacher’s line far more closely than Kinnock wished. The report recommended that the trade unions should maintain some rights, particularly regarding secondary picketing, in addition to what had been initially proposed in the compromise talks with the TUC and Labour leadership. Meet the Challenge, Make the Change stated, against the wishes of the leadership, that: ‘we do not think that it is fair that all forms of sympathetic action by other employees, following a majority vote, should be unlawful’.129 These statements emboldened the TGWU at the TUC Congress to pass a resolution in 1989 calling for ‘immunity from tort for trade unions’.130 This caused great consternation within the Labour leadership and led to meetings between Kinnock’s office and the union general secretaries to find a new compromise before the Labour Conference in October. The issues surrounding lawful industrial action were partly solved by a ‘clarification statement’, thrashed out by Clarke and trade union leaders, but issued in Meacher’s name, which was released a week before the 1989 115

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Labour Party Conference. The statement elucidated Labour’s position: ‘We will not provide blanket immunity in tort. Industrial action outside the ambit of a lawful trade dispute will not enjoy immunity in tort or protection from damages.’131 Despite the internal debates within the ‘People at Work’ Review Group, the labour movement’s attitude towards a blanket reversal of Conservative trade union policies had softened by 1989. At the October Labour Conference, a call for the total repeal of Conservative anti-trade union policies within the first two years of a Labour government was defeated by 3.8 million votes to 2.2 million.132 The infighting over Labour’s new trade union strategy, however, blunted the main innovation of the ‘People at Work’ Review Group: moving Labour’s industrial relations policy from focusing on the top, towards the individual at work. Instead of a Labour government fiercely protecting and re-enacting all historic trade union rights in law, the Review Group sought to protect and enshrine rights for the individual. Meacher’s very public spat with the Labour leadership in this period diminished greatly the good work of his Review Group. Meacher’s opposition ultimately led to his replacement as Employment spokesperson and as co-convenor of the People at Work Review Group, by Tony Blair, immediately following the 1989 Labour Conference.133 The economy, Europe and nationalisation Whilst Labour’s defence review was the symbolic policy change during Kinnock’s post-1987 modernisation, confidence in the party’s handling of the economy was seen as the other major prerequisite for electoral success.134 Although internal polling showed that Labour enjoyed popular support for their policies surrounding employment and wealth redistribution, the public remained concerned that the party would pursue high levels of taxation and interest rates.135 Three particular areas of controversy arose in the economic field during the Policy Review: public ownership, 116

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Europe, and Labour’s overall economic strategy. These three areas, linked as the dilution of Labour’s commitment to nationalisation, alongside the shift away from an emphasis on full employment and towards the world markets, gradually moved the party away from its commitment to Keynesian demand management. Mark Bevir has argued that the shift in Labour’s economic policy was ‘arguably the main debate in the Policy Review’.136 This debate was fought between neo-Keynesian thinkers such as the Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary, Bryan Gould, and supplyside economists such as Kinnock and the Shadow Chancellor, John Smith. Supply-side socialism holds that the supply of goods and services is the most important factor for economic growth and hence focuses on the producer. This is in contrast to Keynesian economics which concentrates more on the consumer and supports government intervention in the event of supply/demand faltering, alongside full employment. Supply-siders argue that such interventions run the risk of increasing inflation and recommend leaving investment to the private sector. Despite the internal controversies surrounding Labour’s future economic strategy, both economic approaches sought to distance Labour from its prior widespread commitment towards public ownership. The first two phases of the Policy Review carefully extolled the virtues of macro-economic policies surrounding competitive exchange rates and low inflation whilst maintaining Labour’s commitment to full employment. In 1988, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency contained the unambiguous statement that: ‘at the heart of a rational economic policy must be a commitment to full employment’.137 A year later, however, in Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, whilst referencing full employment in a modern economy, Labour were at pains to stress that: ‘it is the quality of jobs that matters and not just their total number’.138 Consequently, low inflation began to replace full employment as Labour’s policy for securing economic growth. Yet, Labour’s advocacy of supplyside economics was piecemeal before 1989, largely due to Bryan 117

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Gould’s continued commitment to Keynesian thinking. Gould’s removal as Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary, however, after the 1989 Conference, led to the abandonment of demand-side economic policies.139 In 1990, the phase three report Looking to the Future, ceased to advocate full employment and growth and instead put forward ‘a monetary framework [to] provide longterm exchange rate and interest rate stability’.140 A further argument between Bryan Gould and his Shadow Cabinet colleagues focused on Labour’s attitude towards European integration. Labour had accepted Britain’s position within the European Community before the 1987 general election, whilst the TUC gradually moved towards closer integration with Europe following Jacques Delors speech to the Congress in 1988. Yet, Labour continued to express reservations about entry into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) across the first phase of the Policy Review. The supply-side economists within Labour’s Cabinet believed that entry into the ERM would promote stability and monetary discipline, leading to lower inflation.141 Yet, during the first two phases of the Policy Review, Bryan Gould, who believed that membership of the ERM would leave Britain in ‘handcuffs’ and lead to deflation, triumphed.142 In Social Justice and Economic Efficiency both the ‘Productive and Competitive Economy’ and the ‘Britain in the World’ Review Groups in 1988, detailed their concerns about the ‘uncontrolled’ European Community free market, due for creation in 1992.143 A year later, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change went further, explicitly opposing the European Monetary System and listing conditions for Britain’s entry into the ERM.144 In contrast, Kinnock had privately signalled his wish to attach Labour to ERM membership in 1988.145 In October 1989, owing to Bryan Gould’s continued opposition, Kinnock effectively demoted him to the Environment portfolio and promoted the proERM, Gordon Brown to Shadow Industry Secretary. Looking to the Future reflected this change, asserting that the ERM would provide a ‘stable framework for long-term investment and steady growth’ 118

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and that ‘a Labour government will negotiate Britain’s entry at the earliest opportunity’.146 Britain joined the ERM in October 1990, which was welcomed by the phase four report Opportunity Britain.147 Perhaps the most symbolic debate within the economic spheres of the Policy Review surrounded Labour’s attitude towards public ownership. Labour had entered the 1983 general election with a strong commitment to ‘return to public ownership the public assets and rights hived off by the Tories’.148 But by 1987, Labour’s electoral pledge focused only on ‘extend[ing] social ownership by a variety of means’, particularly in basic utilities such as water and gas.149 During the first phase of the Policy Review, Aims and Values also proposed that the public utilities should ‘remain in public ownership’.150 However, Labour’s modernisation and the heavy use of market research after the 1987 defeat, began to have a stark impact on the party’s position during the Review. Gallup polling in March 1988 indicated that 57 per cent of the public believed Labour should abandon the policy.151 In 1988, the first draft of Social Justice and Economic Efficiency included a ‘commitment to public ownership of the basic utilities and industries of strategic importance to the British economy’.152 Yet, the final report, whilst recognising that the water, gas and electricity industries ‘cannot be run solely on the basis of private profit’, did not contain a clear renationalisation pledge.153 Meet the Challenge, Make the Change did contain a loose pledge ‘to assert the need for the natural monopolies – like water and electricity – to remain in social ownership and control’.154 The document also expressed a desire to take the debate beyond ‘strict dividing lines between “public and private.”’155 By 1990, only the water industry remained earmarked for public ownership in the phase three report Looking to the Future and Labour entered the 1992 election with no commitment to renationalise any industry.156 The Policy Review succeeded in fundamentally changing Labour’s economic strategy. The party’s philosophy moved from a neo-Keynesian position towards supply-side socialism, typified by 119

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the abandonment of Labour’s pursuit of public ownership and full employment. In addition, the party also moved towards explicit support for the European Community and the Exchange Rate Mechanism, bringing Labour in line with mainstream opinion. In 1989–90, 89 per cent of Labour’s members were recorded as being supportive of Britain’s membership of the EEC.157 Although these changes, particularly regarding the abandonment of nationalisation, were achieved without much blood-letting and provided symbolic victories for Kinnock’s modernisation quest, the major policy hurdle to clear in the Policy Review, nuclear disarmament, was not so simple. Defence The major debate within the ‘Britain in the World’ Review group, and arguably the issue which occupied the most attention in the Policy Review, surrounded Labour’s method of nuclear disarmament. In the 1980s, the Labour Party held a clear commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament, including the policy in both its 1983 and 1987 general election manifestos. As the Policy Review progressed into phase two, with many in the Labour leadership realising that unilateralism did not sit favourably with the electorate, the party moved towards multilateral nuclear disarmament. Although 68 per cent of Labour’s members believed Britain should have no nuclear weapons, 73 per cent of the British public were in favour of keeping the country’s independent nuclear deterrent until other nations could be persuaded to disarm.158 Until the mid-1980s, Kinnock was a staunch unilateralist and member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Reflecting back on this period, the former Labour leader highlights two reasons for his shift from unilateralism to multilateralism, the attitude of the British public and his conversations with socialist leaders:

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You could never come within twenty per cent of getting a majority of people in Britain who would accept getting rid of the bomb, no matter how many conditions you attached to it, they just wouldn’t have it, and that was an implacable reality that we couldn’t avoid. The second thing was my repeated encounters with other socialist leaders across Europe, and indeed elsewhere.159

From 1986 Kinnock described a unilateralist stance as a ‘vote loser’ yet, owing to the symbolic nature of the policy to Labour’s left, the party still went into the 1987 election supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament.160 In his pursuit to change Labour’s disarmament policy, Kinnock was greatly assisted by Sawyer, whose change of heart towards unilateralism closely mirrored the Labour leader’s. Sawyer had lauded Kinnock’s commitment to unilateralism as late as October 1985 stating that: ‘Kinnock is rock solid on nuclear disarmament, Hattersley isn’t.’161 But, in line with Sawyer’s final move away from the hard-left on Labour’s NEC in 1986, his support for unilateral nuclear disarmament began to change following the realisation that a unilateralist stance could present a barrier to the election of a future Labour government. Due to this factor, Andy McSmith has stated that ‘Sawyer made it his business to deliver what the party wanted from [the Policy Review] on defence policy as on any other issue.’162 Despite data from the Shadow Communications Agency, presented at the start of the Review Group’s work in December 1987, showing that an overwhelming percentage of the public (73 per cent) believed that Britain should keep its nuclear weapons until they could persuade others to reduce theirs, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency did not change Labour’s disarmament policy.163 Labour’s General Secretary, Whitty, recalls: ‘basically our defence policy was surrender, we had such a kicking on it that whatever my personal views we were going to have to change’.164 Whilst the ‘Britain in the World’ section of Social Justice and Economic Efficiency went into detail about Labour’s policies on aid, Southern Africa and the European Community, it was virtually silent on 121

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the party’s attitude towards nuclear weapons.165 At the 1988 Labour Party Conference, Gerald Kaufman, co-convenor of the Britain in the World Review Group, outlined the choice between unilateralism and multilateralism which his Review Group was considering: One approach, which our group will consider is simply and speedily to divest ourselves of nuclear weapons off our own bat … others may wish to be more ambitious and consider another approach of using the process of divesting Britain of nuclear weapons to participate in and hasten world nuclear disarmament.166

However, at the conference two composite resolutions, 56 and 57, re-endorsed the party’s commitment to unilateralism by significant margins. Composite 56 passed by 3.7 million votes to 2.4 million and Composite 57 by 3.3 million to 2.9 million.167 Much of the controversy centred on Composite 55, which Sawyer detailed in his Journal: Composite 55 was the controversial motion moved by the UCW calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons by ‘unilateral, bilateral and multilateral disarmament.’ This was portrayed as a multilateralist motion which it wasn’t. I had voted for it in the NEC. But I knew because of the symbolism, Bickerstaffe would be unhappy … He argued that it was against union policy and we voted against. When Kinnock came to our social function he said to me, I can’t find one member who agreed with the way NUPE voted – which is probably true. I said you’re not supposed to ask those questions to which he replied, you’ve got to be joking, I’m in politics to win.168

It is clear from this point that Kinnock held the firm belief that the removal of Labour’s commitment to unilateralism was crucial to the party’s election chances. However, NUPE had been a staunch supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament since 1960. Thus, Bickerstaffe’s opposition led to the failure of Composite 55 by 3.3 million to 2.9 million votes, with NUPE’s 600,000 votes tipping the balance against the motion.169 122

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During the second phase of the Policy Review, Kinnock pushed the change in Labour’s defence policy through the party’s internal organs. The Labour leader worked behind the scenes to ensure that the policy shift would be accepted by the more moderate elements of Labour’s left. A last-minute agreement was reached with Cook and Short who agreed to support the defence review in return for a promise from Kinnock that if multilateral negotiations collapsed, Labour would return to seeking bilateral reductions with the Soviet Union.170 Thus, at the May 1989 NEC meeting, Kinnock confidently outlined the reasons for change: Like many here, I have been on the picket lines on many, many occasions, I have been at the rallies on many occasions, I’ve made speeches on many occasions, but I’ve been somewhere where nobody else here has been, I’ve been to the Kremlin, I’ve been to the Élysée, I’ve been to the White House and our friends are baffled, those who are not our friends either detest us, or look forward to what they perceive as our weakness. I’ve also been on the doorsteps, I can’t convince people on the doorsteps, I can’t persuade people at the heads of government and I can’t persuade the British people and when you can’t do that, it’s time for a change.171

Kinnock received a rare round of applause within the NEC for this unequivocal repudiation of unilateralism.172 He experienced the usual opposition from the hard-left with Ken Livingstone moving two motions against the Policy Review report and Benn tabling an alternative draft.173 These proposals were easily defeated, and the ‘Britain in the World’ report was carried by seventeen votes to eight, with three abstentions.174 Alongside the hard-left, Blunkett, Haigh and Meacher all voted against the report. Sawyer abstained, owing to his union’s continued commitment to unilateralism, but recognising that Kinnock would win by a clear majority regardless.175 Mandelson recalls: ‘the soft-left tried to sabotage it, but again the trade union members of the NEC, including Tom, stepped in and enabled sense to prevail’.176 Although ‘Britain in the World’ achieved a comfortable majority within the NEC, 123

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the opposition of trade unions, such as NUPE, would have to be reversed by the 1989 Labour Party Conference, where the unions held 90 per cent of the bloc vote, for the change to pass. After the May NEC meeting, Kinnock and Sawyer turned their attention towards capturing the NUPE bloc vote before the 1989 Labour Party Conference. The Labour leader wrote to Sawyer on 15 May stating that: ‘between Labour with negotiated disarmament and the Tories with huge nuclear rearmament and a readiness to start a nuclear war [and] the opinion poll majorities for our position in the argument are massive’.177 However, in the words of Bob Fryer and Stephen Williams, within NUPE: ‘for the first time since they had worked together at national level since 1982, the General Secretary [Bickerstaffe] and his Deputy [Sawyer] were at odds’.178 This came to a head at the 1989 NUPE Conference. At the Union’s Executive Council two opposing motions were put to the members: one welcoming the review of Labour’s defence policy and the other re-affirming the union’s commitment to unilateral disarmament. Sawyer recalled in his Journal: The debate at the Executive was very mature. About eleven members chose to speak. Nine in favour of change and two against. The following morning [Bickerstaffe] and I met again to discuss the situation. I said the Executive Council debate was conclusive and we would have to change. He didn’t like this. He said he hadn’t spoken yet – which was true – but he did say he wasn’t in favour of change. He said it had been fixed. The machine had moved without him. The truth is we, or I, couldn’t stop all the union’s senior officers and the best of our lay members from Scotland and Northern England going for change.179

NUPE’s endorsement of Labour’s multilateral position was passed in their Executive by a vote of fourteen to seven and by a four-toone margin at the union’s conference.180 Maggie Jones, a Regional Organiser for NUPE in 1989, reflects: ‘we were trying to persuade anybody we could that the delegates should get behind Tom. It was a very brave thing to do, but it was actually brave of Rodney 124

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to allow Tom to take a different line.’181 NUPE’s ultimate backing of ‘Britain in the World’ swung their 600,000 bloc votes behind the leadership for the 1989 Labour Party Conference. The 1989 Labour Party Conference brought the issue over a future Labour government’s stated method of nuclear disarmament to a conclusion. Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, concluded, ‘We will play an active part in the process of world disarmament. Britain will join the disarmament negotiations with the intention of eliminating Britain’s nuclear weapons in concert with the superpowers.’182 Whilst the Review Group promised to adopt a policy of ‘no first use’ and to cancel the fourth Trident submarine, no commitment to unilaterally decommission Britain’s nuclear weapons or to ensure that the United States removed their nuclear missiles from bases in Britain was included in the document, despite their presence in the 1983 and 1987 Labour manifestos.183 ‘Britain in the World’ was approved by the 1989 Conference by a comfortable majority on a show of hands. Crucially, Composite 48, which called for the ‘unconditional removal of all nuclear weapons  … within the first parliament of the next Labour government’, also fell by 3.6 million to 2.4 million votes, showing that without NUPE’s switch, a majority for change was far from guaranteed.184 Sawyer’s role in securing the change to Labour’s defence policy in the Policy Review cannot be overstated. In fighting for a new defence policy within NUPE, Sawyer succeeded in swaying his union’s 600,000 votes behind Kinnock’s change. Quite simply, NUPE’s opposition had led to the defeat of a multilateral motion at the 1988 Labour Conference, but their support in 1989 secured the change to multilateralism. This major shift would not have passed through Labour Conference without Sawyer’s work to first change NUPE policy. Hughes and Wintour have described Sawyer’s role in delivering the NUPE vote on Labour’s new defence policy as ‘probably his greatest service to Kinnock’.185 At this point, Sawyer’s relationship with Kinnock became so close that one rival trade union representative on the NEC uttered 125

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that: ‘He would have sold his granny for Kinnock.’186 Sawyer’s assistance in the change to Labour’s nuclear disarmament policy, however, was borne out of his experiences in the Policy Review and his knowledge of public support for the switch. Indeed, the unilateralist position expressed in Labour’s 1983 and 1987 manifestos was only a temporary aberration from the party’s previously orthodox defence record. Thus, in line with public opinion, the proposal to retain Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent until multilateral negotiations took place marked a return to the party’s history and did not signify a move towards Thatcherism, or an abandonment of Labour’s past.187 Conclusion By 1992 Neil Kinnock’s Policy Review had succeeded in revitalising and remaking the Labour Party. The Review’s first two phases, which took place between 1987 and 1989, brought both substantial policy changes and renewed electoral relevance. Even critical commentators of the Kinnock era, Richard Heffernan and Mike Marqusee recognise that the first two years of the Policy Review represented a ‘temporary triumph’ for the leadership.188 The results of the local and European elections held in the 1987–92 Parliament, coupled with the party’s improved polling in this period, were evidence of the Policy Review’s impact on Labour’s electability. During the first phases of the Review, Labour’s polling rose from 35 per cent after the 1987 general election to a high of 51 per cent at the beginning of 1990.189 After the disastrous 1987 Greenwich by-election, which Labour lost to the SDP, the renewed fortunes of Kinnock’s Labour after the launch of the Policy Review led the party to four by-election gains from the Conservatives between 1988 and 1991.190 Moreover, Labour’s position at local elections also markedly improved, from a projected 32 per cent of the vote in 1987, to a high of 44 per cent in 1990.191 126

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Sawyer’s crucial role in the creation of the Policy Review, although touched upon by historians, has not been fully elaborated. Before Sawyer’s intervention, the Labour Party’s Policy Department and the Policy Director, Geoff Bish, had failed to draw up a scheme to both analyse the 1987 election result and to build for the future. Sawyer’s ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ provided the scaffolding for the Policy Review. The four-year process strictly followed Sawyer’s blueprint and the seven Policy Review Groups closely resembled his initial outline. He also played a vital coordinating role as the Chair of the Campaign Management Team which oversaw the work of these Review Groups. Highlighting Sawyer’s key role in creating and marshalling the Policy Review, Kinnock signed a copy of Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, with the words: ‘Simply not possible without you, Tom. There has never been a better comrade.’192 Whilst the Policy Review was a crucial reason, alongside the Conservatives’ own mistakes, for the rejuvenation of Labour’s electoral fortunes, the timing of the Review’s peak, in 1989–90, led to voter fatigue for Kinnock’s modernisation process. By the 1992 election, the pace of Labour’s changes and the gloss which had coated the Policy Review in its first two years had largely worn off. Moreover, the coup in November 1990 against Thatcher as Conservative leader galvanised the Tories behind John Major and greatly improved their electoral standing. The Conservatives recovered from a 36 per cent vote share in the third quarter of 1990, to 40 per cent on the eve of the 1992 election whilst, in contrast, Labour’s fortunes in the same period fell from 48 per cent to 40 per cent.193 When the timetable for the Policy Review was initially drawn up by Sawyer, there was obviously – after the scale of Labour’s 1987 defeat – a need for urgency, so that the party could begin the uphill climb to challenge the Conservatives at the next general election. In this regard, the Policy Review was clearly a success, but the changes enacted between 1987 and 1989 were not built 127

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upon in the years between 1989 and 1992. This gave rise not only to public fatigue towards Labour’s constant policy pronouncements, but also led to the party’s policies – essentially established in 1989  – being somewhat out of touch with the recession-hit Britain of the early 1990s. After the publication of Meet the Challenge, Make the Change a new political agenda had taken shape which demanded the intersecting and overlapping approach envisioned by Sawyer at the start of the Policy Review, but abandoned by others during the Review’s course.194 By the time Opportunity Britain was published in 1991, the media interest surrounding the Policy Review had greatly diminished. Whilst the first two phases of the  Review had provided the press with headlines relating to Labour’s abandonment of their traditional tenets: trade union legislation, public ownership and unilateralism, the final phases provided no such soundbites. Both Looking to the Future and Opportunity Britain failed to build on, and added little to, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change. Thus, although Labour’s policies at the 1992 General Election had undoubtedly evolved from the catastrophe of 1983 and the disappointment of 1987, Kinnock’s modernisation in these years largely halted in 1989–90. The Policy Review and Kinnock’s modernisation of the Labour machine took Labour from the 209 seats won by Michael Foot in 1983, to 271 seats by 1992. Labour also increased their share of the vote from 27.6 per cent to 34.4 per cent across the same period. Most frustratingly for the party, the opinion polls, on the day of the election, suggested a 1.4 per cent Labour lead, yet the Conservatives won a small overall majority, achieving 336 seats to Labour’s 271.195 The early polls had underestimated the Conservative vote by 4.5 per cent, and overestimated Labour’s by 4 per cent.196 Even as Labour’s expectations lowered on polling day, the ITN exit poll still had the Conservatives short of an overall majority by forty-one seats.197 Yet, Labour came up substantially short of the Conservatives who achieved a ten seat majority. 128

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Neil Kinnock took the Labour Party from fear of losing its second party status to the SDP in 1983, through to a very real challenge for government in 1992. Blair recognises his predecessor’s huge contribution, stating that the modernisation of the Labour Party ‘truthfully … got underway under Neil Kinnock’.198 But, although the Policy Review succeeded in making Labour electable, it failed in getting the party elected. The Review undoubtedly succeeded in rehabilitating Labour’s electoral fortunes as evidenced by the party’s improved polling position from 1987 to 1990, and by the increase in both Labour’s share of the vote and number of MPs between the 1987 and 1992 elections. In its ultimate goal of securing a Labour Government in 1992, the Review came up short. Yet, by 1992, Labour had made substantial policy shifts, abandoning its commitments to electorally unpopular policies such as unilateralism, widespread public ownership and full trade union law repeal. Thus, Kinnock’s organisational and policy changes between 1983 and 1992 provided the bedrock from which a new Labour Party could be built.

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One Member, One Vote, 1992–94

Before 1993, the Labour Party used a voting system that gave great influence to the bloc votes of the trade unions, and some influence to the Constituency Labour Party (CLP) General Committees, but  this system in effect disenfranchised the ordinary members of the party. Labour used the bloc voting procedure for all major decisions, including the selection of parliamentary candidates, conference resolutions, and for NEC appointments. Until 1993, the trade unions had 90 per cent of the vote at Labour Party conference, 40 per cent of the electoral college vote for the election of the party’s leader and deputy leader, and up to 40 per cent of the vote in candidate selection at a local level. The unions also accounted for 55 per cent of the party’s income and 70 per cent of the general election fund.1 Strikingly, at a time when the party leadership was looking to dilute the internal influence of the trade unions, Labour also wanted to increase the affiliation fee collected per union member from £1.60 to £1.90 by 1994.2 In contrast, the constituency side of the Labour’s voting formula held little weight. Before 1993, the CLP General Committees accounted for a mere 9 per cent of the conference vote, with 1 per cent reserved for socialist societies. Even within this structure, the General Committees voted through a delegate system which allowed, in practice, a small group of democratically elected individuals to make decisions on the wider local party’s behalf. 130

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The major constitutional changes in the 1979–81 period, as covered in Chapter 1, mandatory reselection and the electoral college, did not change the composition, or affect the power, of the bloc vote at Labour Party conference. Nor did the changes in this earlier period dilute the influence of trade unions in local candidate selection. A proposal for One Member, One Vote for candidate selection was first introduced under Neil Kinnock’s leadership in 1984 but led to an embarrassing defeat. The issue then floundered until picked up by John Smith and Bryan Gould during their 1992 campaigns to become the party’s leader. Intriguingly, due to deaths, loss of seats, expulsions and deselection, the left did not run a candidate in the 1992 leadership election.3 Following a landslide victory, Smith’s brief leadership would be marked by his quest for, and near defeat on, OMOV at the 1993 Labour Party Conference. Labour entered the Kinnock and Smith years with a complicated internal election procedure, weighted in favour of the trade unions in two out of the three major voting areas. For leadership elections, an electoral college with a composition of 40/33/33, split between the trade unions, CLPs and the PLP respectively, had been in place since 1981. The largest percentage, the trade unions’ 40 per cent, was cast by union executives and was not necessarily reflective of a union’s membership. Although the principle of OMOV within the constituency section during leadership elections was agreed by the 1987 Conference, this did not extend to the trade union section, which continued to wield the bloc vote. The trade unions held their greatest power at the Labour Party Conference with the bloc vote of the union movement, again decided upon by union executives and usually cast directly by union general secretaries, standing at 90 per cent. Finally, in candidate selection at constituency level from 1987, the trade unions were guaranteed up to 40 per cent of the vote, depending on the size of local union affiliation. In practice, at constituency level the trade unions also held great power in determining shortlists, with many union members being part of the delegate structure. 131

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Smith’s 1993 proposals to remove any trade union influence from local candidate selection was the most controversial element of his organisational reforms and the biggest challenge of his leadership. Historians and journalists have looked favourably on Smith’s reform of Labour’s internal election procedures in 1993, commenting that it represented a change in the internal power structure of the Labour Party, although the extent to which power shifted is debated. In separate analyses, Fielding, Naughtie, Quinn and Stuart have all commented on OMOV’s impact in transferring power away from the unions.4 In contrast, Russell and Wickham-Jones have argued that the 1993 change to OMOV did not reduce the role of the trade unions in Labour’s internal affairs.5 Regardless of whether OMOV directly transferred power away from the unions, the symbolism of Smith’s change was incredibly significant. Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley’s survey of 5,000 Labour supporters in 1989–90 indicated that 72 per cent believed that the conference bloc vote was disreputable, whilst 81 per cent agreed that Labour’s leader should be selected under OMOV.6 Therefore, the removal of the bloc vote and the perception of trade union barons casting votes in smoked-filled rooms, behind closed doors, was crucial in Labour’s path to modernisation. Changes to the voting system under Kinnock The concept of OMOV in the Labour Party had a history which predated Smith’s leadership. As discussed previously, the issue was first aired by Labour’s right as a counter to the left’s proposals for the electoral college, but their quest was not seriously entertained at the 1981 Wembley Special Conference. OMOV later resurfaced under Kinnock who tried to introduce the scheme for parliamentary candidate selections in 1984. Until this point, the reselection of MPs had been controlled by local CLP delegates who formed a CLP General Committee and in effect, spoke (and voted) on behalf of the wider local membership of the constituency. 132

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Kinnock’s proposal was to institute, for the reselection of sitting MPs, a voluntary system of OMOV: ‘direct voting participation of individual members of the Constituency Labour Party having at least twelve months’ membership’, where CLPs chose to introduce it.7 Kinnock’s proposal, on the face of it, was remarkably moderate, yet was rejected by the party conference in 1984 by 3.992 million to 3.041 million, as was a further composite asking for OMOV to be investigated further over the next year by the greater margin of 4.359 million to 2.158 million.8 The OMOV result was Kinnock’s first serious defeat as leader and halted his quest for the modernisation of the party’s internal organs.9 Reflecting on the 1984 defeat, Kinnock states: ‘The one significance of that was I determined that I would never again take any significant proposal to conference without being sure beforehand we were going to win.’10 His Chief-of-Staff, Clarke, concurs: ‘it led him to be more cautious than he otherwise would be’.11 Thus, after the defeat in 1984, he steered away from major constitutional change and concentrated on building alliances on the party’s NEC as highlighted in Chapter 2. Despite the disappointment of his 1984 Conference defeat, Kinnock took small steps towards internal party reform before the end of his tenure. At the 1985 Conference, a CLPD motion asking for the party to ‘respect the status quo in relation to reselection’ was defeated on a show of hands.12 In addition, two composites supporting OMOV alongside increasing the constituencies’ share of the vote at annual conference were remitted after the NEC promised to create a working party to explore such issues.13 The working party reported the results of its consultation to the 1987 Conference. In total, 372 responses were received in ‘the biggest response that the party has ever had’, 217 for change and 133 in favour of the status quo.14 Two options emerged from those wanting to alter Labour’s procedure: the introduction of OMOV, and the creation of a local electoral college, similar to the one used in leadership elections, for candidate selection. Although the 133

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constituencies preferred the former, the weight of the trade unions was behind the latter.15 Consequently, a hybrid form of OMOV in the constituency section was approved at the 1987 Conference by 4.545 million to 1.608 million.16 Under this system, party members would vote as individuals at a local level but up to 40 per cent of the college was reserved for the bloc votes of local trade union branches to safeguard union interests. At conference the following year, Labour’s voting system for leadership elections was also tweaked to include OMOV balloting within the constituency section.17 Consequently, by 1988 the principle of OMOV ballots amongst members had been established for both local selections and leadership elections.18 Three further changes to Labour’s selection and election systems were achieved in 1990. First, the February meeting of Labour’s NEC granted individual party members a vote for their NEC representatives in the constituency section.19 These positions had previously been elected by local party delegates on behalf of the wider membership. Second, the 1979 decision on mandatory reselection was reversed by the 1990 Conference which reintroduced a trigger ballot before the reselection procedure began.20 Finally, the 1990 Conference also endorsed Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s, which suggested, amongst other changes, that trade unions’ bloc vote at the Labour Party Conference should be reduced.21 The document proposed that the first conference after the next general election should utilise an ‘“electoral college” framework of 70 per cent affiliated organisations, 30 per cent CLPs’.22 Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s also endorsed the creation of a National Policy Forum (NPF) comprising 200 members drawn from all sections of the party. This would take the Policy Review on to the next stage, creating a rolling programme of policy with a two-year cycle of policy development. However, like the 1990 Annual Conference’s decision to reduce the union share of the vote at future conferences, the NPF would also spend a number of years in gestation. After the 1992 defeat, these 134

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proposals were relaunched but scaled down considerably, with the prospective Forum being reduced to 100 members, in the document Agenda for Change. This document also proposed a steering group, entitled the Joint Policy Committee (JPC) made up of eight NEC and eight Shadow Cabinet members.23 At the first meeting of the NPF in May 1993 Smith publicly launched his campaign for OMOV.24 The Forum, however, only met a handful of times during his leadership. The revival of the NPF under Blair is detailed in Chapter 6. OMOV – From Kinnock to Smith Just as the 1987 general election defeat had provided Labour with a catalyst to radically review their policies and policy-making structure, the 1992 defeat also paved the way for further reform. Smith created the Commission on Social Justice to distance Labour from their 1992 defeat. Owing to his untimely death and Blair’s succession, the Commission was ‘not as influential as it might have been’.25 Thus, the main focus of this chapter centres on Smith’s attempts to change the relationship between the party and the trade union movement. The principal change in this area was the attempt to dilute the traditional trade union bloc vote across three internal party election systems: the constituency-based selection of parliamentary candidates, the electoral college for leadership elections, and the bloc vote at annual conference. One of Kinnock’s final acts as leader was an attempt to force OMOV on to the agenda of the 1992 Conference, so that the candidates for the next elections could be selected under a reformed system as soon as possible.26 On this matter Kinnock was defeated, settling instead for the creation of a Trade Union Links Review Group. This Group was formed to look at the broader question of the Labour Party–Trade Union link at the behest of Sawyer.27 On 18 May 1992, at the NEC’s Organisation Sub-Committee, Kinnock moved a motion that: ‘the final vote to choose the parliamentary 135

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candidate shall be by one member one vote ballot of the individual members’.28 The minutes of the Organisation Sub-Committee, supporting the immediate introduction of OMOV, were overwhelmingly ratified by the full NEC a week later.29 However, this decision, according to Sawyer, was arrived at under some confusion: When it came to endorsing the minutes of the Organisation Committee the NEC were not concentrating. Eddie Haigh moved the minute quickly. Skinner moved reference back on the OMOV minute. John Evans then put the reference back quickly to the vote. Most NEC members were gathering sandwiches and tea. Two hands went up for and a dozen also against. Evans then said the reference back is lost. The minutes are carried.30

Skinner’s move would have sent the issue of OMOV back to the Organisation Sub-Committee for reconsideration, but its minutes were adopted including Kinnock’s push for the early adoption of OMOV. The 27 May NEC introduced the idea of a Trade Union Links Review Group to investigate both OMOV and the broader relationship between Labour and the trade unions. After speaking with NUPE researcher Bill Gilby and Minkin, Sawyer brought a paper to the full NEC meeting one week later, requesting a broader report on the trade union link: I decided to put a letter to the NEC requesting the General Secretary to come back to the July NEC with proposals as to how the link might be maintained. All the NEC members with the exception of Benn and Skinner, supported the initiative and it provoked a good debate.31

Sawyer’s letter, addressed to Whitty, proposed that Labour should deal with recent political events between the party and the unions in a ‘considered and constructive way’ and suggested the formation of a review group.32 Sawyer highlighted, however, that the battle for OMOV would be anything but a foregone conclusion: 136

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I said to Robin Cook, Kinnock won’t be on the platform in October and unless you square Morris, Bickerstaffe and Edmonds, you will lose it. Smith will be defeated by the unions at his first Conference. Robin said, that can’t be allowed to happen. I said, it will if you don’t sort it out and he looked startled.33

Sawyer’s proposals were accepted by the May NEC and the Trade Union Links Review Group was created the following month.34 These suggestions, however, did not immediately quell the concerns of the union leaders. Indeed, the Review Group’s remit, looking at the whole of the relationship between Labour and the trade unions, not just the voting system, led to controversy and misunderstanding. At the 1992 NUPE Conference, Sawyer used an ominous, and – since then – widely quoted, phrase ‘no say, no pay’ to describe the possible consequences of severing the party–union link. This phrase was also intended to remind Labour that, in total, over 75 per cent of the party’s income came from trade union subscriptions. The press and the Conservative Party commented widely on Sawyer’s words.35 In the words of Minkin, ‘this pull-the-plug fiction was built upon a clumsy private briefing by Sawyer related to the financial consequence of a complete divorce of the unions by the party’.36 This broadly correlates with Sawyer’s own record of the ‘no say, no pay’ press storm: My platform speech on political affairs was robust. It made it clear that the union link was here to stay and warned those who were taking away the union link to think again. The night before the speech I was talking to Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror. He asked me if it was as crude as ‘no say, no pay’. I said, well at root, it really was. The next night after the speech he asked the first question at a press Conference and said, ‘Sawyer, is it as crude as no say, no pay?’ I said, ‘no, it’s more complex than that’. Yet most journalists wrote not only the names of the people I allegedly attacked, i.e. Jordan and Edmonds which I never did, but also quoted the ‘no say, no pay’ clause I had repudiated and which they could only have got 137

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from Kevin Maguire, based on this half-hearted, half-cocked discussion the night before. Alastair Campbell devoted his column to it in the Sunday Mirror. So, I come out of it doing more than defending the union link but looking as though I am threatening the party.37

Rather than suggesting that the unions would pull their financial support away from Labour if the union link was severed, Sawyer was merely reminding Maguire, in private, of the huge contribution the union movement made towards the Labour Party. After these events Sawyer met with Smith on 11 June 1992, a month before his election, to specifically discuss the union link. The NUPE Deputy General Secretary’s advice to Smith was that the likely future leader had three options upon: ‘One – do nothing and be defeated. Two – put Kinnock’s amendment off the agenda and into the Trade Union Links Review Group, three – persuade one or two of the unions to vote with him or abstain’.38 At the final NEC of Kinnock’s leadership, held in June 1992, the decision to implement OMOV immediately, made by the May NEC and the Organisation Sub-Committee, was reversed. Smith’s campaign manager, Cook, who had been warned by Sawyer about the possible consequences for Smith if he pushed forward with OMOV early in his leadership, moved a motion that the NEC endorse its May decision on candidate selection and refer its implementation to the Review Group. This passed by thirteen votes to eight.39 Sawyer recorded the event in his Journal, ‘Robin Cook took OMOV off the agenda so that Smith wouldn’t be defeated at the Conference by the GMB, T&G, NUPE and USDAW. The press had a field day on it. None of these unions support it.’40 Kinnock was angry about the reversal, stating to Prescott and others: ‘It proves just how little you … have learned in all these years!’41 In place of the early implementation of OMOV, the Trade Union Links Review Group was formally created at the June NEC.42 The reason behind the decision to delay – and its merits – have been widely debated. The day after the NEC’s resolution 138

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to shelve OMOV until 1993, The Times reported that the NEC made the decision ‘to avoid an embarrassing defeat at the party conference for John Smith’.43 Andy McSmith claimed that the deferral was ‘a very public way of rubbing it in that Neil Kinnock was not giving the orders anymore’.44 Kinnock believed it was a huge error, stating that: ‘by the time 1993 came round, a mythology had been built about severing connections with the unions’.45 Martin Westlake’s argument correlates with Kinnock, stating that ‘Smith was to pay dearly for his hesitation’.46 Kinnock had initially proposed to push forward with OMOV in 1992 for two reasons: first, with few trade union conferences being held in 1992, agreement could potentially be reached between the general secretaries and the Labour leadership without opening the issue up to wide debate; and second, armed with a third humbling general election loss in a row, the labour movement would be more amenable to such changes immediately after the 1992 defeat. In contrast, Smith’s Chief-of-Staff, Murray Elder, recalls that: ‘the idea that you were going to get everything organised and get the unions to vote for you in the coming September/October was just not realistic’.47 The 1992 Conference itself voted, against NEC recommendations, in favour of two composite motions reaffirming the Labour Party–trade union link.48 The decision to delay the implementation of OMOV, whether it came from Smith’s team or the NEC in general, prolonged the pain across a fifteen-month period and pushed the incoming Labour leader close to an embarrassing defeat. The debate around OMOV and the union link became one of the centrepieces of Labour’s July 1992 leadership election.49 Bryan Gould, Smith’s opponent in the 1992 leadership contest, made loud calls for fundamental change in the Labour Party’s voting procedures, including full OMOV for leadership elections and candidate selections. Smith also supported OMOV in candidate selection. However, the rumblings of a dilution of the trade union link, or even a possible divorce, did not sit well with the union leaders. 139

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On 18 July 1992 John Smith was elected as the leader of the Labour Party and was immediately faced with the problem of OMOV. During his leadership campaign, Smith had made his own preferences clear. For the election of the party leader he favoured a 50/50 split between MPs and individual party members, for conference voting he supported the drive to reduce the unions’ bloc vote, and for candidate selection he preferred OMOV. Immediately after Smith’s election, his acceptance speech underlined his future outlook: ‘We must base our internal democracy on the principle of one member, one vote and not on the basis of bloc votes.’50 Yet, whilst he was flexible with his position on both the bloc vote and future leadership elections, he was steadfast in his demand for OMOV in candidate selection.51 This seemingly modest demand led Smith into the biggest crisis of his leadership. The Trade Union Links Review Group The Trade Union Links Review Group met for the first time on 20 July 1992, shortly after Smith’s election. This group initially comprised of six NEC MPs: Beckett, Cook, Evans, Bryan Gould, Prescott and Short, alongside ten trade union representatives: Tom Burlison (Party Treasurer and GMB) Tony Clarke (UCW), Gordon Colling (GMPU/NGA), John Edmonds (GMB), Nigel Harris (AEU), Diana Jeuda (USDAW), Bill Morris (TGWU), Margaret Prosser (TGWU), Richard Rosser (TSSA) and Sawyer (NUPE), and four others: Glyn Ford MEP, Whitty, Joyce Gould and Minkin. Tony Blair replaced Bryan Gould after Gould lost his place on the NEC, and Peter Coleman replaced Joyce Gould following her retirement as Labour’s Director of Organisation in 1993. The Labour Co-ordinating Committee described the complexion of the Review Group as ‘a stitch-up’.52 Indeed, the Review Group’s strong trade union majority meant that Smith’s flagship move towards OMOV would be hard fought. 140

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At their first meeting the terms of reference of the Review Group were decided. The Group’s remit was to examine and consult on ‘the relationship between the party and affiliated trade  unions’.53 Crucially, however, the terms of reference also included a desire, in particular, to determine ‘the appropriate trade union involvement in the balance of voting in the Labour Party institutions’.54 The Review Group’s work started with rubber-stamping the reduction in the trade union bloc vote, from 90 to 70 per cent of the conference share, which had been approved by the  1990 Labour Conference.55 This was strongly supported by the GMB, NUPE and TGWU.56 On 22 July 1992, at Smith’s first NEC, the  Executive approved this change and referred the final decision to the 1992 Annual Conference.57 This was, however, a much easier policy to agree than the major issue: One Member, One Vote. Broadly speaking, within the Review Group, the trade unionists were reluctant to accept the full implementation of OMOV, particularly within candidate selection, as they feared the change would disenfranchise their members whose individual levies went into the Labour Party’s coffers, but who were not party members. Sawyer, Burlison, Prosser and Jeuda worked on a compromise behind the scenes, putting forward the idea of a registered supporters’ scheme whereby levy-paying union members could be signed up as ‘supporters’ of the Labour Party.58 These ‘supporters’ would then have full membership rights for the selection of parliamentary candidates and the election of leader and deputy leader, but their votes would never be allowed to count for more than two-fifths of the total in such elections.59 On 21 October 1992, this scheme was tabled by Burlison at a Review Group meeting. The Review Group agreed that the proposals were ‘broadly acceptable’ but noted that further work would be required.60 Sawyer noted the optimism of this meeting in his Journal stating: ‘It looks as though we will find a solution.’61 Two major problems remained with the registered supporters’ scheme, however: a lack of consensus across 141

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the trade union movement and the steadfast opposition of the Review Group’s newest member, Tony Blair. Blair’s involvement has been seen as crucial by a number of historians: McSmith has claimed that the Review Group was ‘on the point of agreeing a compromise’ before Blair’s intervention.62 Anderson and Mann claim that the Review Group was forced to produce an interim report because of Blair’s ‘obstruction’.63 Furthermore, Philip Gould, Panitch and Leys, Rentoul, and Russell also highlight Blair’s influence in getting Smith to change course.64 Blair joined the Review Group midway through its deliberations, after replacing Bryan Gould in October 1992, and grew increasingly frustrated at the pace of change.65 The future Labour leader recalls: [I] came at it from a different perspective that said, look, the world is changing faster than we’re going to modernise the Labour Party and you can’t really have this relationship with the trade unions where, I think at the time, they had something like 90 per cent of the voting rights, especially as the trade unions themselves were  becoming less connected to their traditional working class base.66

Similarly, Elder remembers Blair’s opposition to Smith’s process of gradual reform: ‘Tony disagreed because he didn’t think we were going far enough, quickly enough.’67 At his first Review Group meeting in October 1992, Blair made his opposition to the registered supporters’ scheme quite clear, as seen in Sawyer’s Journal: ‘All the unions, with the exception of AEU and National Graphical Association (NGA) go with the registered supporters’ scheme. So, do Clare Short, Prescott and, for the first time today, Cook and Beckett. Tony Blair at his first meeting was unhappy and wanted one class of member.’68 This entry shows that the majority of trade unions, at this stage, were onside with the registered supporters’ scheme. Yet, Blair’s eleventh-hour intervention, according to Minkin, ‘gave both quiet waverers and critics of registered supporters a psychological boost and created a new 142

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opportunity for OMOV’.69 Cruddas, the Secretariat to the Review Group, recalls that Blair was ‘pushing forward with a wholly undeliverable series of proposals especially around taking the unions out of the leadership election as well as OMOV for candidate selections’.70 Blair’s move meant that by mid-November, according to Sawyer, ‘Smith’s office were cooling on the idea of registered supporters’.71 A second factor was also at play in the retreat from the registered supporters’ scheme: a lack of unanimity within the trade union movement. Although Sawyer recorded that most trade unions were in favour of the scheme in October 1992, Blair’s intervention also caused a rethink within the union ranks. A further consideration which came to light in this period was the implementation costs for any such registered supporters’ scheme, the financing of which – directly or indirectly – looked certain to be borne by the unions. On 6 November 1992, Whitty wrote to the trade union members of the Group asking for an approximate cost for operating a registered supporters’ scheme.72 The TGWU replied that this would amount to £237,500 for their 950,000 members, NUPE estimated £159,000 based on 30p each for its 530,000 members, and the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) stated £335,000.73 Furthermore, on 20 November 1992, a copy of the Review Group’s minutes containing the discussions over the registered supporters’ scheme was leaked to the press.74 Donald Macintyre claims that Mandelson – who received his copy of the minutes from Blair and Brown – was responsible for the leak.75 This resulted in Whitty refusing to send out copies of the Group’s documents in advance for future meetings.76 Whitty recalls that Blair ‘was not very helpful in terms of union reform’.77 Finally, on 25 November 1992, a private meeting of the NEC Trade Union group was held. At this meeting, NUPE and the GMB were forced to defend the registered supporters’ scheme against opposition from other unions, some favouring full OMOV and some favouring the status quo.78 143

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As a result of both Blair’s objections and the breakdown of consensus within the trade unions, the Review Group was only able to issue an Interim Report in February 1993, which fell far short of making any clear recommendations. The impact of Blair’s intervention and the cost of implementing a registered supporters’ scheme had a decisive impact on the outcome of the Review. This can be seen clearly from a ‘draft report’ of the Review Group, written in November 1992. This unpublished report explained that: The application of OMOV to the key decisions of the party will mean that all members of the party have the right to determine the election of the Leader and, where they take place, the selection of parliamentary candidates. The Review Group is also proposing that consideration is given to extending this right to union members, through the establishment of registered supporters of the party.79

The draft report also suggested that OMOV should operate in candidate selection through an electoral college of members and registered supporters.80 These conclusions, however, did not feature in the published Labour Party/Trade Union Links: Interim Report of the Review Group, which in February 1993 merely presented options for consultation, as opposed to consulting upon the previously accepted registered supporters’ scheme. Broadly, the Interim Report put forward five options for consideration: a register of participating supporters, a register for supporters who want to participate in the internal elections of the party, levy-plus, the involvement of affiliates through their own organisations, and equated voting.81 Specifically, on the election of Labour’s leader three options were presented: a 50/50 scheme split between the MPs and individual party members through an OMOV ballot; 33/33/33 scheme divided between MPs, CLPs and unions with the latter balloting their members; and a 33/33/33 scheme between MPs, CLPs and unions with only those union members who were also individual party members being able to participate.82 On the selection of parliamentary candidates, five schemes were proposed: pure 144

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OMOV; the registered supporters’ scheme; levy-plus; the electoral college (with OMOV ballots amongst trade union branches); and a 66/33 scheme with one-third of the votes at local selections being retained for trade unionists who were also party members.83 Clearly, the reopening of debate since Blair’s arrival at the Review Group led the Interim Report to be full of ambiguity. At the penultimate meeting of the Review Group, in February 1993, Sawyer – a proponent of the registered supporters’ scheme – wrote in his Journal that: ‘The interim report was hopeless. The whole project lacks direction’ and that it, ‘could have been put together in two minutes instead of six months’.84 The results of the Interim Report’s consultation showed limited support for Smith’s changes to Labour’s constitution. 288 CLPs and 452 BLPs responded to the constitution on parliamentary selections but only 100 (35 per cent) constituencies and 195 (43 per cent) branches backed full OMOV. For leadership elections, only thirty-five (12 per cent) of CLPs and 100 (22 per cent) of BLPs supported Smith’s preferred 50/50 option.85 More crucially, only one major trade union backed full OMOV: the AEEU, and the two largest affiliates, the T&G and GMB, were opposed to any of the schemes suggested.86 In the background of these results, the 1993 trade union conferences also began to turn against Smith’s flagship constitutional change. In April, USDAW’s Conference narrowly voted against OMOV.87 The following month, MSF followed suit.88 In June 1993 the GMB, National Communications Union (NCU) and NUPE all voted against full OMOV, although NUPE became the first union conference to commit itself to a register of supporters.89 Sawyer was crucial in securing NUPE’s backing for this scheme, although Cruddas asserts that the work ‘[Sawyer] started to get going with Tom Burlison of the GMB failed to deliver the GMB’.90 Finally, in July, Labour’s largest affiliate, the T&G, voted against any proposal for full OMOV.91 At the end of the union conference season, the deck seemed to be stacked firmly against Smith. 145

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Levy-Plus With the consultation on the Interim Report open until 10 July 1993, the Review Group was inactive until this deadline. As the Interim Report offered little in the way of a conclusion and instead opened up a variety of options, there was no opportunity for consensus around the document. Moreover, the trade union conference season had widened the chasm which now looked unlikely to be bridged. Thus, in the period between March and July 1993, key union figures such as Bickerstaffe, Sawyer, Anne Gibson and Hilary Armstrong, alongside politicians such as Prescott, worked behind the scenes to try to find a compromise to avoid an embarrassing defeat for Smith at the 1993 Labour Conference in October. This compromise took the form of ‘levy-plus’, which was an extension of the discarded registered supporters’ scheme. Rather than trade union members who paid the political levy having to be signed up as ‘registered supporters’ by their union, levy-plus required such members to pay a nominal fee in order to participate in future internal elections. The significance of levy-plus was that it gave union leaders sympathetic to Smith an opportunity to be flexible with their union bloc votes, with many mandated to vote against a registered supporters’ scheme but having no mandate on levy-plus.92 Levy-plus was, in some ways, a marked improvement on the registered supporters’ scheme. Although at this stage some unions, such as NUPE, had centralised computer systems with the details of all their levy-paying members, other unions only held uncatalogued, written records. As such, implementing a registered supporters’ scheme, would have required the details of all union members paying the political levy and clearly would have been a logistical nightmare for unions without computer-based records, hence the large costs reported to Whitty in November 1992. However, levy-plus would require those union members paying the political levy to ‘top up’ their union contributions in order to 146

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become full members of the Labour Party. This would allow the Labour Party to have a central record of all members, and was good value for union members. In 1993 the Labour Party’s individual membership fee was £18, whereas ‘levy-plus’, at this stage, proposed a total payment of around £5 a year, comprising of the levy and the membership fee.93 The actual authorship of the levy-plus idea is unclear. Gordon Brown had mooted a very similar idea in 1987 in a Tribune pamphlet, Prescott had used the term in his deputy leadership campaign of 1988, and Phil Wilson, one of Blair’s staff, had included the phrase in a report to Blair in 1992.94 In 1993, however, two figures have principally been credited with revisiting the idea of levy-plus: Prescott and Sawyer. Mark Stuart, Smith’s biographer, sees Sawyer’s role as critical, stating that he: ‘provided a way out of the stalemate’ by introducing the idea of the levy-plus scheme. Minkin also credits Sawyer’s ‘tactical skills’ in assisting Smith on this issue.95 Furthermore, Fryer and Williams, state that Sawyer proposed ‘a scheme under which levy paying trade union members could “top up” their contributions’.96 On the other hand, Alderman and Carter, and Shaw credit solely Prescott.97 The reality was that both Sawyer and Prescott, alongside other key figures – particularly Bickerstaffe – worked on the levy-plus compromise for Smith. Along these lines, Anderson and Mann, Colin Brown and McSmith credit both Sawyer and Prescott with the success of levy-plus.98 Prescott himself claims credit for the idea: ‘Tom didn’t have it, it was me. I tell you why, because I thought it was a good idea.’99 Sawyer downplays his own role in putting forward the compromise: ‘Because Prescott was up for it, then Bickerstaffe was up for it, and I got the green light to do what I could to help.’100 Elder also recalls the impact of NUPE’s General Secretary Bickerstaffe: ‘Bick was always more inclined not to make a song or dance about it, not to be noticed.’101 However, the Review Group’s secretary, Cruddas, states clearly: ‘It wasn’t John Prescott. 147

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It was actually … Tom Burlison of the GMB, Tony Mainwaring in the Head Office and Tom Sawyer.’102 The levy-plus idea had been around for a number of years and even featured as one of the options in the Interim Report, thus, regardless of who initiated the discussions, the agreement reached on levy-plus was hard fought, with the TGWU, GMB and MSF all remaining steadfastly against any change.103 Beyond the debate about who introduced the idea, the real impact of Sawyer and Bickerstaffe’s efforts were the behind-the-scenes negotiations between July 1993 and the October Labour Party Conference, whilst Prescott was instrumental at the conference itself, closing the debate on OMOV. The Final Review Group Meeting A number of historians have commented upon the master-stroke pulled by Smith in personally attending the final meeting of the Review Group on 14 July and have, rightly, pointed to the significance of this gesture.104 The two days preceding this event are also worthy of note and have not been given space in the historiography of this period. On 12 July, Sawyer and Bickerstaffe sat down with Smith to try and iron out a compromise agreement and, on their suggestion, Smith met with the major trade union leaders the following day in an attempt to secure an agreement before the final meeting of the Review Group. First, Sawyer and Bickerstaffe spoke with Smith to discuss NUPE’s position and to try and find a way forward on 12 July 1993. Sawyer recorded this meeting in his Journal: ‘Smith said if he lost on OMOV we could look for another leader, so Bickerstaffe urged him to have a quick meeting with Bill Morris and John Edmonds tomorrow night at the TUC 125th year’s anniversary celebrations.’105 Consequently, the following day Sawyer and Bickerstaffe organised a meeting with Edmonds, Morris, Burlison and Prosser of the major unions and Smith to try and hammer out a solution. Again, Sawyer recorded the meeting in his Journal: 148

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One Member, One Vote, 1992–94 I was sent to collect Smith on his arrival and to take him up to meet the union brothers. He was late and I knew things would be getting edgy. I was standing next to the two lifts. Suddenly Smith appeared and was heading towards me at that moment. The first lift opened and there stood the brothers and Margaret Prosser having left the room obviously not prepared to wait any longer. So I just pushed them back saying, get back, he’s here. The other lift opened and I put Smith in it and we all sailed back to Thompson’s meeting room together. Smith sat on the sofa next to Edmonds and it was amusing to see these two men who had spent months fighting with each other sitting together. Time was short but, in essence, Smith outlined what he wanted from the Review Group. The unions said they couldn’t agree but that if he drew the parameters wide enough they would try not to publicly disagree. Everyone was in a good mood.106

In this backdrop, the Trade Union Review Group met for the last time on 14 July 1993. At the final meeting of the Review Group, Smith arrived unannounced and drove through a compromise on OMOV which proposed levy-plus for the selection of parliamentary candidates; equal voting power, one-third each for members, MPs and unions, for the election of the leader and deputy leader; and cosmetic changes to the bloc vote at party conference.107 Most of the union leaders present had no authority to accept Smith’s proposals without first consulting their executives, however the Labour leader had made his position on the matter very clear and he was not going to compromise further. Sawyer’s Journal confirms this account of the meeting: Trade Union Review Group today. Smith asked me last night if he should attend and I said I wasn’t certain. But he arrived and shocked people. The meeting was typically long and scrappy but well-chaired by Tony Clarke. UNISON, the T&G and GMB all tried to help Smith, GPMU and USDAW were the most disaffected. Clare Short and John Prescott, as expected, both supported Smith. At the end of the day a statement was agreed, by consent and not by vote, which wasn’t too different from Smith’s position. I asked 149

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if it had to say OMOV and Smith said it must. I also made strong plans for consensus and no triumphalism after the meeting.108

In the event, Smith refused to put his proposals to the vote at the Review Group.109 Consequently, the Labour leader emerged with a compromise on OMOV, through the levy-plus scheme. The minutes of the 14 July meeting highlight Smith’s victory in securing a consensus: The method of electing the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party will be based on a reformed electoral college [33/33/33] … the votes in each section of the college will be cast individually. Trade union levy payers who declare support for the Labour Party will be eligible to become registered trade union members of the Labour Party on payment of a reduced membership fee … [and] will be entitled to participate as full members … in the selection of parliamentary candidates on the basis of OMOV.110

This agreed statement was then sent to the NEC on 19 July and passed that body by twenty votes to seven.111 The Final Report of the Review Group consequently reflected the ‘agreement’ secured at the Review Group and the decision of the NEC.112 The 1993 Labour Party Conference Securing the formal backing of the NEC and the acquiescence of the Review Group, however, was not the end of the story on Smith’s OMOV scheme. His decision still had to be ratified by the October Labour Party Conference and this was far from a foregone conclusion. To provide Smith with a fall-back position if his straight levy-plus rule change was unsuccessful, Sawyer and Bickerstaffe built a NUPE composite motion around the abandoned registered supporters’ scheme.113 This motion, Composite 56, was proposed jointly by NUPE and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT). Three further composites were also submitted: Composite 55 from the AEEU 150

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which supported OMOV but replaced the bloc vote with individual delegates’ votes; and Composites 57 (GMB) and 58 (TGWU) which rejected the OMOV change. It was clear from these composites that the TGWU and GMB blocs, amounting to 1.7 million votes, were set to vote against Smith’s proposal. Although a fairly insignificant force by 1993, the ‘outside’ left – CLPD and Labour Left Liaison – also campaigned against Smith’s changes at the conference.114 In August 1993, an unpublished, ‘strictly private and confidential’ internal party memo, sent to the leader’s office, showed the uphill task facing Smith. Of the trade union share of conference votes (70 per cent of the total), it was predicted that only 22.4 per cent would vote in favour of Smith’s position on parliamentary selections with 47.4 per cent against.115 This position assumed that, within the larger unions, the AEEU, COHSE, NUPE and the RMT would vote for, and TGWU, GMB, USDAW, UCW, NCU, GPMU, UCATT and MSF would vote against. It was highlighted that ‘at least one of the big unions has to shift to at least abstention’.116 The memo also discussed potential options in the event of defeat: 1 The NEC declares that it will bring back the rule amendments (but marginally modified) at a later point in the [Conference] week and the Leader makes it clear that this is now an issue of confidence; 2 The NEC calls a Special Conference and/or a referendum of all individual members of the Party.117

Smith’s intention to make the issue a confidence vote in his leadership should he be defeated, has been widely commented on by politicians, historians and biographers. Cronin, Philip Gould, Russell and Shaw claim that Smith would have simply resigned if he had lost the vote on parliamentary selection.118 Whereas,  Colin  Brown, McSmith, Rentoul and Stuart all state that Smith’s intention was to first make the issue a vote of 151

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confidence in his leadership, by returning to the conference and seeking to reverse its decision, and only following defeat on a second ballot would Smith resign.119 The 8 August 1993 internal memo shows that Smith’s fall-back position was to appeal again to conference before tendering his resignation. Elder, affirms this: ‘He would not have resigned … he would have had to go back to the conference the next day … and say this is a matter of confidence.’120 At the 1993 Labour Conference, five rule amendments (A–E) were moved by the NEC based on the Review Group’s Trade Unions and the Labour Party report. The first four amendments which: (A) created a new grade of registered member for affiliated  unions, (B) made minor amendments to union affiliation rules, (C) changed the electoral college for the election of leader and deputy leader to 33/33/33 on the basis of individual members, and (D) increased the share of CLP votes at conference to 30 per cent (with a further shift to 50 per cent if Labour membership exceeded 300,000) were all passed with over 62 per cent of the vote.121 The particularly contentious rule amendment was (E), which proposed a commitment to OMOV but also, crucially, a pledge to increase the number of female parliamentary candidates. During the conference, numerous figures tried to mobilise support for Smith’s rule change. First, Bickerstaffe and Sawyer set about trying to persuade the trade unions and the CLP section to vote for Smith’s position and their fall-back composite. Yet, their overtures did not persuade the seemingly swing voters of the National Communications Union delegation. By lunchtime on the day of the vote, Sawyer recorded that: ‘it looked as though we couldn’t make it’.122 The second figure to lend his support to Smith was Prescott, who agreed to wind up the conference debate. Sally Morgan123 and Beckett124 both lay claims to suggesting that Prescott should close the debate to Smith. Whereas Elder recalls the idea came from the leader’s office: 152

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I went to see John [Smith] and said look we can’t fix any votes, we’ve done the arithmetic, it requires something else to happen, we need to have some other reason to get more constituency parties to support us, they need to hear something that can make them go back to their constituencies and say ‘well if you had been there, you’d have voted the same.’ The only person we could come up with was John Prescott.125

Prescott, however, was at first reluctant to commit, suggesting that either Beckett or Whitty should wind up the debate: John Smith said to me at lunchtime, can you speak in the afternoon on this? I said what as? You’ve got a Deputy Leader, no I’m not having it … He said, no John … I want somebody to talk to this clause … [ I said] Okay, but I want to tell you something else as well, if I do it and we win, you’ll turn me into a hero, you do understand that don’t you?126

Prescott’s tour de force was crucial in ensuring that sufficient numbers of constituency parties, who in 1993 for the first time held 30 per cent of Labour’s conference vote, backed Smith’s reform. Although the syntax of his speech was ridiculed in some quarters, with The Times reporting that ‘John Prescott went twelve rounds with the English language and left it slumped and bleeding over the ropes’, Prescott played a vital role in shoring up CLP support for the changes.127 He recalls: What I had to do was try and introduce drama into the constituencies, appeal to the hearts of these people in such a way that it gets across and they go back to their constituencies and explain why they didn’t accept the mandate from the constituency. I think I did that, whether it was won by that … I don’t care, Smith won.128

This was backed up by David Hill, Smith’s press officer, who argued that Prescott’s speech was pivotal as constituency support had slipped throughout the day.129 The final contributory factor ensuring Smith’s triumph was the MSF union. The decision of their conference delegation to abstain on rule amendment (E), accepting a spurious argument 153

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that their long-standing commitment to all-women shortlists was in jeopardy if they voted against, secured victory for Smith.130 Their change of position – from opposition to abstention – only narrowly passed the MSF delegates meeting by nineteen votes to seventeen.131 Joyce Gould recalls: ‘my friend Anne Gibson really did turn that vote around in the meeting’.132 Consequently MSF’s bloc vote, worth 4.5 per cent of the overall total, abstained on Rule Amendment (E), leading Smith to victory, by a smaller margin than this amount. Whitty states that following MSF’s decision to abstain the votes were in the bag for OMOV, ‘but only by lunchtime’ on the day of the vote,133 whereas Elder recalls: ‘The fact that John Prescott spoke, the fact that MSF changed. It’s difficult to say which is the more important. They were all contributory factors.’134 Due to these two events, Smith pulled victory from the jaws of defeat and rule amendment (E) passed by 47.509 per cent to 44.388 per cent.135 A shift in either MSF’s final position – from abstention  to opposition – or within the constituency section would have resulted in an embarrassing, possibly terminal, defeat for Smith. If MSF had opposed Rule Amendment (E), Smith’s flagship OMOV reform would have fallen. Likewise, even a small switch in constituency voting would equally have resulted in defeat. As the CLP bloc vote was worth 30 per cent of the conference total and the CLP result was split 60:40 in favour of amendment (E),136 (or in terms of the whole of the conference vote was split 18:12), a small swing of 6 per cent in the constituency section, meaning a split of 54:46 instead of the actual result of 60:40, would have led to a final result of 45.7 per cent to 46.1 per cent and Smith’s defeat. Furthermore, not only was the composition of the CLP vote crucial, the increased size of the CLP bloc was also vital in securing Rule Amendment (E). Before the vote on (E), Rule Amendment (D) finally confirmed the 1990 Conference decision to change the composition of Labour’s conference ‘college’ from 90/10 between the trade unions and the CLPs, to 70/30. Without the increase in 154

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Table 3

The effect of small swings in the CLP section during the vote on Rule Amendment (E)

Actual result 5% swing to against 6% swing to against

CLPs for

CLPs against

CLPs for – as % of total Conference vote

CLPs against – as % of total Conference vote

Unions for – as % of Conference vote

Unions against – as % of total Conference vote

Total for Rule Amendment E

Total against Rule Amendment E

60 55

40 45

18 16.5

12 13.5

29.509 29.509

32.388 32.388

47.509 46.009

44.388 45.888

54

46

16.2

13.8

29.509

32.388

45.709

46.188

Modernisation of the Labour Party

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the CLP share of the vote, agreed in much less controversial circumstances at the Trade Union Review Group and passed comfortably by the 1990 and 1993 Conferences, Smith would have also been defeated on Rule Amendment (E). Conclusion The battle for OMOV was undoubtedly a step towards Labour’s modernisation and the party’s return to office. As highlighted previously, academics have been split over the extent to which Smith’s reforms transferred power from the unions.137 In reality, Smith’s change was more symbolic than revolutionary. The unions traded a small share of their conference bloc vote (from 90 to 70 per cent) and a small decrease in their vote within the electoral college (from 40 to 33 per cent), for arguably an increased role as individual trade unionists, if not as a collective movement, in candidate selection. Moreover, Wickham-Jones has persuasively argued that ‘senior trade union figures … developed strategies by which to shape internal elections within the party, even with OMOV in place’.138 Yet, in September 1993, Smith’s victory was quite widely commended: the Guardian stated he had pulled off a ‘highrisk gamble’ and the Daily Mirror claimed that ‘never again will Labour be in hock to domination by the unions’.139 In addition, Giles Radice claimed that ‘John Smith, having risked it all, wins the jackpot.’140 Although Smith’s reforms had a positive impact on the image of the party, they made only a small difference to the internal balance between Labour and the unions. Indeed, far from breaking the party–union link, Smith was successful, emphasising that his reforms were aimed at ‘strengthening the vital links between our party and the unions’.141 Despite the victory on OMOV, Smith was criticised for putting a brake on Labour’s modernisation. Throughout Smith’s leadership the modernisers had been concerned about his perceived strategy of ‘one more heave’ and this resulted in a number of 156

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One Member, One Vote, 1992–94

negative articles in the press.142 Pugh has commented that during his leadership ‘Smith’s innate caution and even complacency became obvious’.143 Furthermore, Blair had made known his displeasure about the pace of reform during the Trade Union Review Group, reflecting in his autobiography that Smith was ‘not a true radical’.144 Moreover, Blair expressed his frustrations with the Review Group’s work, reflecting: ‘I thought it needed a very clear break with the past.’145 Key figures in the future New Labour camp echo these statements. Mandelson claims that Smith ‘didn’t have a modernisation agenda at all. He had One Member, One Vote and even on that he was pretty uncertain.’146 Whilst Anji Hunter, Blair’s office manager, reflects that Smith ‘was what I’d call a gradualist, rather than a risk taker. He was a conservative moderniser’.147 In contrast, Elder argues: We did OMOV, we would have gone on with that reform … we would have moved towards genuine OMOV across the whole party … It would have been a very radical change. Tony didn’t do that, he didn’t do anything about OMOV. The only thing he did was remove Clause IV.148

However, after his narrow escape at the 1993 Conference, Smith shied away from further reform for the remaining months of his tenure. Immediately after the crucial vote, Smith declared: ‘Now we can put constitutional matters aside and get on with the major issues of getting full employment, improving social services, fighting against VAT increases and preparing for victory in the next election.’149 This highlighted that Smith had not only broken with the modernisers, but also that he had conceded ground to the  unions on full employment and workers’ rights. In his quest to win trade union support for the constitutional changes, Cronin states that Smith: ‘set aside the caution that Brown was determined to maintain over macro-economic policy and that Blair … had displayed over trade union rights’.150 Moreover, only days after the crucial OMOV vote, The Times reported that ‘Smith 157

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

has now distanced himself from the modernisers led by Gordon Brown and Tony Blair’.151 Under Smith’s leadership, Brown and Blair were afforded some space to modernise the party within their shadow briefs, the former ditching Labour’s tax and spend image, and the latter refreshing Labour’s approach on crime. Despite this, they grew frustrated with the pace of change coming from the top of the Labour Party. Compounding these frustrations was Smith’s shift away from further reforms. Due to the pause in Labour’s modernisation after the 1993 Conference, Philip Gould claimed that ‘Labour was not on course to win next time around’ under Smith.152 However, this seems a gross exaggeration; in the last year of Smith’s life, no opinion poll showed Labour with a lead less than 10 per cent over the Conservative Party.153 Smith’s tragic death on 12 May 1994 could have possibly brought a halt to Labour’s path towards electoral renewal. Although during Smith’s tenure there were accusations that he was putting a brake on modernisation, particularly in the latter months of his leadership, the symbolic move towards OMOV allowed a continuous narrative to flow out of the Kinnock years that the Labour Party was changing. Rather than bringing a halt to the modernisation process, the OMOV decision paved the way for further internal reform, but under a different leader, Tony Blair.

158

5

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Clause IV, 1994–95

The changes made during the Policy Review and through the adoption of OMOV, coupled with the impact of Black Wednesday on the Conservative Government, seemed likely to put the Labour Party on course for victory at the next general election. However, the party’s internal organisation largely emerged unreformed from the Kinnock and Smith years.1 Under Smith’s leadership, key modernisers began to express private concerns about his lack of appetite for further reform. Philip Gould, Mandelson and Blair, in particular, believed that Smith’s brake on modernisation, after his near defeat on OMOV, might jeopardise Labour’s chances at the next general election, likely to be held in 1996 or 1997.2 Tragically, on 12 May 1994, Smith’s tenure as Labour leader was cut short when he died unexpectedly from a heart attack. Following Smith’s death, the modernisers immediately began to look for opportunities to further change the party. Blair’s decisive victory in the Labour Party’s 1994 leadership election allowed him to continue the modernisation project started by Kinnock, and to reassert to the British public that Labour had changed fundamentally since 1983. Mandelson argues that Labour still required ‘root and branch’ modernisation after 1994, stating: ‘We’d only touched the surface … The whole thing needed turbo-boosting.’3 Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party in the period before Labour’s 1997 general election victory, in his own words, attempted ‘to create 159

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

a Labour Party able to adapt to the modern world’.4 The most symbolic and significant change in this period, covered in this chapter, was the change to Labour’s constitution, brought about by the rewriting of Clause IV, part 4, between 1994 and 1995. Although Smith, and particularly Kinnock, had done much to revamp party policy since 1983, Blair enshrined Labour’s modernisation in its constitution through his change to Clause IV. By tackling Labour’s key ideological tenet, Blair established a clear gap between Old Labour and New Labour and moved the party closer to the nation’s mean voter. Changing the General Secretary The first major organisational change forced through by Blair was to remove the party’s General Secretary, Larry Whitty. Blair saw the relationship between himself and the party’s, in effect, chief executive as vital to pursuing further modernisation. One of Blair’s many complaints against Smith had been that his predecessor refused to move on from Whitty as the party’s General Secretary.5 Blair’s opposition to Whitty, according to Anderson and Mann, was due to the fact that ‘Whitty had been on the other side of the argument on OMOV in 1992–3’, furthermore, Colin Brown has commented that the sitting General Secretary was seen by Blair as ‘an obstacle to further modernisation’.6 Whitty recognises these comments: ‘I think it was because of OMOV that Tony, Peter Mandelson, and others were blaming me for John Smith’s difficulties, which wasn’t accurate but was partly true.’7 Although Whitty’s successor was not appointed until 17 October 1994, Blair had made up his mind to appoint Tom Sawyer long before winning the party leadership, meeting with Sawyer nine times to discuss party strategy between Smith’s death and his election as Labour leader.8 Blair had worked with Sawyer on the Trade Union Links Review Group in 1992–93 and had invited the then NUPE 160

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Clause IV, 1994–95

Deputy General Secretary to speak at his constituency as far back as 1990.9 The idea of appointing Sawyer, now a UNISON Deputy General Secretary, into a role at the top of the Labour Party came from Mo Mowlam who was determined to see someone in Blair’s office, according to her biographer Julie Langdon, from the ‘labour movement’, or in Sawyer’s words ‘from a working class background’.10 In addition, Anji Hunter states Sawyer’s twin hats led to his appointment: ‘He was one of us, but one of them – the unions.’11 On 17 July, Blair discussed three possible job opportunities with Sawyer: running the leader’s office, the General Secretary of the party, and staying as the Chair of the National Policy Forum and the Home Policy Committee.12 By 26 July, Blair had appointed Hunter, Murray Elder and David Miliband to his office staff and telephoned Sawyer to offer him the position of General Secretary.13 Sawyer emphasised that he would only take the job if he could lead on modernisation and change within the Labour Party, a message which chimed with Blair. Sawyer highlighted three priorities he thought the General Secretary should focus upon: ‘to make sure the party united about the new aims and objectives document’, ‘to win the next general election’, and to build ‘the membership and [change] the culture’.14 One further obstacle remained to achieving this crucial appointment, gaining the agreement of the NEC. According to the 1993–94 party Rule Book, the General Secretary was recommended by the NEC, and elected by the annual conference, and would remain in office ‘so long as his/her work gives satisfaction to the National Executive Committee and party conference’.15 The new Labour leader, however, was determined to put his own stamp on the party. Blair reflects: ‘I liked Larry and I didn’t have a problem with Larry at all, but I really rated Tom and thought he would be more passionate about what I was doing.’16 In his autobiography, Blair further expanded upon his reasoning: ‘Tom Sawyer would be the ideal choice: a trade union man, but smart, loyal, modernising, and with the reach and authority to help me get things through.’17 161

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Sawyer was appointed at the first NEC meeting after the 1994 Conference on 17 October, receiving eighteen votes out of  the twenty-one cast.18 Prescott’s support for Blair’s change was also crucial. The deputy leader convinced Whitty to accept a different role, as the European Coordinator, within the party.19 Prescott recalls: ‘I said you can’t sack him, he’s the General Secretary of the fucking thing! He said, John, I want to change … He had Tom in mind … so he then asked me to talk and I negotiated [Whitty] into the Lords and into a job to deal with the European dimension.’20 Ultimately, Blair’s recognition of Sawyer’s ‘modernising’ traits was vital to his appointment.21 The Independent commented on the election: ‘Tom Sawyer, a key architect of Labour’s modernisation after the 1987 general election, was yesterday given the chance to finish the task as General Secretary of the Party.’22 Changing Clause IV The Labour Party constitution emerged largely unscathed from the modernisation projects of Kinnock and Smith. Whilst amendments to the composition and method of conference voting alongside major shifts in policy occurred, the changes in policies were not enshrined at a constitutional level. No Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell had attempted an assault on Clause IV, part 4, of the constitution which committed the party to ‘the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange’.23 From his first leader’s speech at Labour Conference, Blair signalled his intention to grasp this particular nettle, but his pursuit of constitutional change was not entirely unprecedented and had many antecedents, even amongst the party’s modernisers. Despite the large margin of victory achieved for change by the end of Blair’s campaign, the rewriting of Clause IV was neither a foregone conclusion, nor insignificant. Both Kinnock and Smith sidestepped the issue precisely because of the potential opposition change would antagonise. Indeed, the scale of disagreement to 162

Clause IV, 1994–95

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Blair’s rewrite forced the leadership to undertake a fundamental tactical shift and increased member engagement. Through the changes to Clause IV, Blair established supreme authority over the Labour Party, further marginalised the hard-left and helped to persuade the electorate that the party had changed its image and moved away from public ownership and the trade unions. Attempts at change before 1994 Following the 1959 general election defeat, Hugh Gaitskell had proposed to amend Clause IV of the constitution but was met with fierce opposition and ultimately retreated. Owing to his failure, no Labour leader seriously took up the challenge until Blair in 1994–95. Long before Blair’s leadership, Clause IV had lost its influence on Labour Party policy-making with the Policy Review (shown in Chapter 3), essentially shelving Labour’s commitment to widespread public ownership. Yet due to Clause IV’s abiding symbolic attachment with ‘Old Labour’ and the left, the party’s modernising faction under Blair began to move towards challenging Labour’s socialist citadel. Despite the retreat from nationalisation signalled by the Policy Review, Kinnock did not press for an outright change of the constitution which continued to advocate the policy in broad terms. Blair recognised this problem upon his election to the leadership, stating: ‘the gap between our stated aims and policies in government fed the constant charge of betrayal – the view that our problem was that the leadership was too timid to tread the real path to true socialism’.24 However, the implementation of Blair’s change to Labour’s constitution was anything but inevitable. In 1988, there was an attempt to underpin the Policy Review through the publication of Democratic Socialist Aims and Values. This document intended to update the party’s aims without suffering the same fate as Gaitskell’s 1959 failure.25 Aims and Values declared that in many areas ‘market allocation and competition … is essential’, 163

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and downplayed Labour’s attitude to nationalisation stating: ‘We are not and never have been, committed to any one form of public ownership.’26 The hard-left interpreted this document as an assault on Clause IV.27 Moreover, Benn regarded Aims and Values as diluting ‘the basic socialist critique of capitalism’.28 However, the impact of the document, on the Policy Review itself, on the wider public, and on the party’s constitution, was negligible. The 1992 defeat returned the issue of Labour’s constitution and particularly the party’s commitment to nationalisation – expressed through Clause IV – to the agenda. The period of soul-searching, following Labour’s fourth consecutive general election defeat, led to a further examination of Labour’s problems. In this period, Smith’s crowning achievement as Labour leader was delivering a moderate dilution of trade union influence through the passage of OMOV. Despite this symbolic change, the narrow margin of victory halted pursuit of further reform, drawing the ire of the modernisers. Smith believed that the idea of Clause IV reform was a divisive diversion, although before his death did make plans for an additional statement of aims and values to be published alongside the clause.29 Beckett recalls: ‘John thought it was a completely unnecessary exercise, he didn’t think that it was something that you needed to do to convince the British people that it was all right to re-elect a Labour government, and he wasn’t in favour of creating unnecessary trouble.’30 Smith’s Chief-of-Staff, Elder, provides further detail: John’s explanation was that Clause IV was hugely important and it was like an icon … and in the old days, the icon would have been at the centre of the church above the altar and everyone would have seen it, well of course it was still very important, but it was now in one of the side chapels, and if people wanted to go and see it, they could go and see it, but it was no longer dominating.31

Whilst Smith made it clear that he did not agree with the clause, he felt he could not take on the left – and potentially the unions – over 164

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Clause IV, 1994–95

both OMOV and the party constitution.32 Smith’s intention, according to his chief Policy Officer David Ward – quoted by John Rentoul – was to deflect any questions on Clause IV, after his additional statement had been passed by the 1995 Conference, by stating that the 1918 Clause had been superseded, rather than calling for outright revision.33 However, his strategy of sidestepping the issue allowed the space for rival propositions to form. Consequently, calls for the abandonment of Clause IV under Smith’s leadership came from outside the leader’s inner circle, with five noteworthy statements worthy between 1992 and 1994 published by: Giles Radice, Jack Straw, the Fabian Society, the New Agenda Forum and Neil Kinnock. The first to dip his toe into the water, after Labour’s fourth general election defeat, was the backbench Labour MP Giles Radice who authored Southern Discomfort, in September 1992, as the first in a series of three pamphlets, published by the Fabian Society. The study utilised GMA Monitor polling data across five marginal constituencies in South East England. The findings of this qualitative survey, indicated Labour’s loss of support amongst C1s and C2s: the lower-middle and skilled working class groups who made up over 50 per cent of the electorate.34 Thus, Radice strongly claimed that the strategy of ‘one last heave’ would not get Smith to Downing Street.35 Instead, Radice crucially argued that the ‘symbolic act of rewriting the outdated Clause IV(iv) of the party constitution should assist the party to criticise more effectively the market economy’s many shortcomings and to develop a credible economic alternative’.36 The pamphlet made little immediate impact, with newspaper articles concentrating on Labour’s lost support, rather than Radice’s prescription for arresting the decline through a change to Clause IV.37 The next to pick up Labour’s constitutional baton was Straw, then Shadow Environment Secretary, who along with Blackburn CLP published the pamphlet Policy and Ideology in March 1993. Straw touched on many reasons why Labour lost the election but came to the clear conclusion that the party ‘could not win without 165

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

much greater clarity about our ideology’.38 Straw argued in his pamphlet that changes to Labour’s constitution were needed ‘in order to ensure that [the party objects] relate directly to the circumstances, the challenges and realities of life in the late 20th and early 21st century’.39 Moreover, he articulated that Labour needed a complete rewrite of Clause IV, and not, as John Smith was proposing, a supplementary statement of values: ‘Subtle “positioning” is not enough. For Labour has a written constitution.’40 This was a direct criticism of Smith. Straw privately approached the Labour leader in September 1992 about his pamphlet. Smith, despite disagreeing with the notion of Clause IV, told Straw that it should be ‘allowed to wither on the vine’ and that it was ‘a sentimental souvenir, best ignored’ whilst allegedly throwing Straw’s pamphlet at him as he left the room.41 Both of these attitudes, although not directly attributed to Smith, were strongly criticised in the final draft of Policy and Ideology.42 Benn was also scathing about Straw’s suggestions, describing him in his diaries as ‘a little sort of weathercock blowing with every wind’.43 Yet these comments are revealing, because they imply that a prevailing wind was beginning to blow in the direction of Clause IV reform, as later evidenced by the support Straw received privately44 and in the media.45 Two further calls for constitutional change came from the Fabian Society and the New Agenda Forum in 1993. The Fabians, through the ‘Archer Committee’, concluded in June along similar lines to Straw’s pamphlet that Clause IV ‘confuses means with ends’ and ‘should be replaced, both to separate principles from policies and to reflect contemporary thinking’.46 The New Agenda Forum, a group of newly elected backbench Labour MPs, argued in September that Labour’s failure to modernise Clause IV had ‘not merely blurred its identity but actively prevented a modern and positive statement of its core beliefs’.47 A final call for reform came from Labour’s former leader, Kinnock, in 1994, as part of the BBC Two series Tomorrow’s Socialism. Clause IV, he lamented, had established the status of 166

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Clause IV, 1994–95

a ‘political holy writ’ and was no longer ‘an adequate definition of modern socialism’.48 Kinnock recorded the programme in the summer of 1993 and arrived at similar conclusions to Straw, despite the independence of the projects. The growing calls for Clause IV reform continued to bring the issue to national attention. Kinnock recalled: ‘I was very happy to have contributed in some way, as indeed was Jack’.49 Despite five separate calls for change between 1992 and 1994 from within the Labour Party both Smith and the party as a whole remained unmoved. The Labour leader believed the issue was too divisive to take on alongside, or immediately after, OMOV. As for the party, with the leader unwilling to lead the charge, a resolution committing Labour to retain Clause IV passed at the 1993 Conference without the need for a card vote.50 Thus, beyond a supplementary statement of aims and values to be bolted onto Labour’s constitution, it seemed likely that the party would fight the next general election with Clause IV, part 4, remaining both within its constitution and on its membership cards. The ‘electric shock treatment’: Blair’s battle to change Clause IV The first modernising act of Tony Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party was his assault on Clause IV, part 4, of the Labour constitution. Blair recalls that he found it difficult to support a clause which had no realistic prospect of implementation: It was obvious that we didn’t really believe in Clause IV in its literal sense and it was a continual reference point that was very much about a policy that at one time, the early twentieth-century, that was going to be completely misguided for the end of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Because the ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange A) it wasn’t our policy and B) it shouldn’t be our policy, because that wouldn’t have been a very sensible way to run the economy.51 167

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Privately, Blair had been in favour of changing Clause IV since 1992 and had expressed support for Straw’s pamphlet, but his public campaign only began at the 1994 Annual Conference.52 During his first conference speech as leader, Blair announced that  the Labour Party: ‘requires a modern constitution that says what we are in terms the public cannot misunderstand and the Tories cannot misrepresent’.53 Yet, few in the hall immediately realised the meaning behind Blair’s words, whilst few in Blair’s camp realised the scale of the battle that was about to begin. The death of John Smith changed the trajectory and the pace of the Labour Party’s modernisation. Although Smith had clearly taken steps to change the image of the party, what Labour needed after his death was, in the eyes of Philip Gould, the ‘electric shock treatment’.54 The jolt given to the party was provided by the rewriting of Clause IV. However, during Blair’s campaign for the party leadership, across the summer of 1994, he had downplayed the issue. During an interview on 12 June 1994 on Breakfast with Frost, Blair denied that Labour would scrap Clause IV under his leadership: ‘I don’t think that anyone actually wants the abolition of Clause Four to be the priority of the Labour Party at the moment’.55 Within three months Blair would undertake a remarkable, public, volte-face. Blair had kept his intention to signal an attack on Clause IV from all but a few close allies. Hunter was aware months in advance, whilst Campbell was brought on board in August 1994 and Gould, Mandelson and Brown were all informed by early September.56 Sawyer, the likely candidate to replace Whitty as General Secretary, was also kept in the loop.57 Prescott, who was initially excluded from deliberations, was later brought on board at Brown’s insistence.58 Prescott’s support, although reluctant at first, has been widely credited as vital in winning over the more moderate elements of the party’s left and trade union movement.59 Prescott recalls: 168

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Clause IV, 1994–95 After [Blair’s] election in June … he rings me up … John I want to make a change, but I can’t make it without you. I said, you’re not on about Clause IV, are you? He said yeah, we really do need to make this change. I said why? It’s like the fucking Bible, nobody observes it, nobody fucking follows it through, but it’s the soul of the party, why do you want a war on that just as you’re coming in? … I said I’ll do it under certain conditions. One, you launch it and announce to consult the party … and if it comes against it, I’m with them … secondly, you and I go round together and argue the case for it, and if you get it wrong, I’m out.60

Furthermore, Prescott also demanded a role in the drafting of the new clause and an assurance that no further changes to the party’s organisation would take place before the next general election.61 Outside this inner circle the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs were completely unaware of Blair’s plans. Blair met with members of the Shadow Cabinet and senior trade union leaders on the morning of his conference speech and received a mixed reception, with particular opposition coming from Robin Cook.62 The bulk of Labour MPs and delegates to the 1994 Conference were initially unaware of the significance of Blair’s speech, or the meaning of his phrase: ‘it is time that we had an up-to-date statement of the objects and objectives of our party.’63 Hunter recalled: ‘I knew that speech as well as he did … I remember feeling, my God he’s done it.’64 However, the final pages of the speech were held back from the press and the ordinary delegates in the hall, until after delivery. Although Blair’s words were purposely vague, Campbell – Blair’s press secretary – and others, lost no time informing the press that the leader’s intention was to rewrite Clause IV. Blair’s tactics to limit the number of individuals with prior knowledge of his scheme to rewrite Clause IV served up a moment of extraordinary political theatre and gave party traditionalists little space to make an immediate signal of their discontent. Yet, one negative to come from this secrecy would follow two days later when the conference passed a resolution reaffirming the 169

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original Clause IV. Minkin has convincingly described this as an ‘extraordinary lack of foresight’ from the leadership.65 The failure to inform any staff within the party’s conference management team, or to bring Cook, the party’s chair in 1994, on board sooner, led to the issue of Clause IV being debated only two days after the leader’s announcement. The Guardian reported that the defeat: ‘raises question over Blair team’s conference management’.66 The party’s retiring General Secretary Larry Whitty and his staff had been kept in the dark about Blair’s plans and although his (yet to be appointed) successor, Sawyer, was involved in the deliberations, he had no direct influence on the organisation of the 1994 Conference. Jon Cruddas, a policy officer in 1994 with responsibility for managing conference, recalls: It caused a massive problem … We’d obviously spent months working out the agenda of the conference and then to be told that a resolution two days away which had no significance whatsoever, [about] the reformation of our internal constitution, is at odds with what the Leader had announced without telling anyone two days before.67

There was strong suspicion in the leader’s camp that Cook’s chairmanship of the debate on Clause IV was anything but impartial.68 Not including the mover and seconder of the pro-Clause IV Composite (57), Cook called five speakers in defence of the Clause and three who advocated either opposing, or remitting the Composite.69 After four recounts, Composite 57 passed on a card vote by 50.9 per cent to 49.1.70 In front page reports the following day, the Guardian described the vote as a ‘setback’, whilst The Times labelled it ‘an embarrassing defeat’.71 Cruddas, states more optimistically: ‘in the end it was almost a dead heat, I think the interpretation of it when we lost by a tiny bit was well, that’s a score draw, which is good from a standing start. It sets up the debate’.72 More intriguingly, the unions actually voted with the leadership against the Composite, 36.6 per cent to 33.4, within their 70 per cent share of the conference vote, with the constituencies voting in 170

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Clause IV, 1994–95

favour 17.5 per cent to 12.5.73 This underlined the importance of the constituency delegates in Blair’s crusade. The defeat was also a catalyst for Blair’s modernisation of the party’s internal organs from 1995 to 1997, as detailed in Chapter 6. Peter Riddell has claimed that Clause IV was ‘a paper fortress which collapsed when it was seriously attacked’.74 However, Clause IV was defended heavily. Both the 1993 and 1994 Labour conferences made strong statements in support of Clause IV.75 The left flexed their muscles further at the 1994 Conference by  passing a motion to scrap the Trident nuclear programme, against the NEC’s advice.76 Moreover, the 1994 NEC results showed that the modernisers were not in complete control of the party. After being wiped from the Executive in 1993, the left returned with the surprise election of Diane Abbott and re-election of Skinner in 1994.77 Thus, the battle over Clause IV would be anything but a foregone conclusion. The campaign The campaign to rewrite Clause IV of the party constitution was somewhat impromptu and emerged as a reaction to left-wing attacks. Rentoul has described Blair’s assault on Clause IV as ‘well planned’.78 Although this statement might describe the leadership’s campaign by the end of the process, it overlooks Blair’s lack of preparation at the outset and understates the level of opposition encountered in the early stages. The leadership was cognisant that some opposition would be aroused by seeking to rewrite Clause IV, but the force of these counter-attacks, in the period between the October 1994 Conference and early 1995, surprised Blair’s team. Highlighting the need to insulate themselves against such attacks, the leadership aimed to stage the final battle over Clause IV at a special party conference in the spring, rather than at the annual conference held in the autumn, of 1995. Their aim was to prevent the summer trade union conferences from being able to mandate 171

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their delegates against change. Due to the proposed alteration in procedure, even the NEC showed some reluctance in accepting Blair’s proposal. The November meeting of the Executive could not agree on a process for calling a special conference and the matter was deferred until December, when the date of 29 April 1995 was set.79 Despite agreeing this date, the road to the Labour Party Special Conference of 1995 was anything but smooth. Three major warning shots were fired against the leadership at the very beginning of Blair’s drive to secure change. First, in November 1994 a Defend Clause IV Campaign was initiated with supporters amongst the hard-left and within Labour’s MEPs.80 Over 200 party activists attended the launch event, where Arthur Scargill asserted: ‘We are fighting for the very soul of our party’.81 Second, on 16 December 1994, Tribune published a survey of constituencies which showcased that fifty-nine out sixty-one surveyed had voted to defend Clause IV.82 Finally, on 10 January 1995, thirty-two of Labour’s sixty-two Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) took out a front-page advertisement in the Guardian against Blair’s change.83 Although the MEPs’ announcement had already featured in Tribune and the Morning Star in late 1994, it courted little publicity at the time.84 In a major accident of timing, the Guardian advert was published one day before Blair was due to visit Brussels for a keynote speech on European policy. At his meeting with Labour’s MEPs, Blair spoke of his regret and the ‘discourtesy which had been shown towards him’.85 The press were also briefed that Blair had accused them of ‘infantile incompetence’ and ‘gesture politics’.86 Dianne Hayter, the Chief Executive of the European PLP recalls: ‘it was not their finest hour’.87 In response to Blair’s speech, thirty-six Labour MEPs then signed a letter of support for Blair’s proposals for Clause IV in the Guardian on 12 January, including seven who had changed their mind in the two days since the original advertisement.88 In the background to these constitutional issues, Labour was also suffering increasingly negative press coverage over Blair’s 172

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decision to send his son, Euan, to a grant-maintained school, rather than a local comprehensive.89 Moreover, Blair’s choice seemed to force a general rethink of Labour’s education policies to retain such grant-maintained schools but restore their links to local education authorities.90 Ken Livingstone has claimed that had both Blair’s intention to attract former SDP voters and his decision to send his son to the London Oratory ‘been known in advance, Blair would have lost’ on Clause IV.91 However, this argument does not hold water, as Blair’s decision to send his son to the London Oratory School was widely publicised in December 1994, over a month before Labour’s Clause IV consultation exercise began and nearly five months before the April 1995 Special Conference.92 David Osler has claimed that the rewrite of Clause IV was ‘an internal contest Blair never looked like losing’.93 Yet this statement grossly underestimates the opposition encountered in the early stages of the battle. Indeed, by the end of 1994 the Guardian reported ‘a growing fear that Tony Blair could lose his gamble to rewrite … Clause IV’.94 In addition, Anderson and Mann have convincingly argued that by the middle of January 1995, after the Tribune survey and the MEPs’ advertisement, there ‘seemed a very real chance that Blair was headed for defeat’.95 Blair returned from Brussels in January 1995, determined to launch a fightback. He immediately summoned key members of his staff and the new General Secretary together to lead the charge.96 Since the October 1994 Conference, little activity in support of Clause IV had been mobilised by the party. The Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC) claimed that: ‘For four months after Tony Blair had proposed replacing Clause 4, the LCC provided the only organisation on the ground in favour of a rewrite’.97 Margaret McDonagh, who headed the Clause IV campaign, recalls: ‘nothing [was] done from October until Christmas, then  … January to April [was] all about talking about why you don’t want the current Clause IV’.98 Sally Morgan, who was on 173

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maternity leave until January 1995 before returning to take up a place in the leader’s office, concurs, stating: I don’t think they’d done the work, they didn’t have anything working on the operation that understood the party. They’d sort of made this speech talking to the country, and I remember … saying you’re doing really well in the country, but actually you’re doing disastrously with the party because you’re not communicating with them, and they don’t know what you’re on about.99

Consequently, due to the lack of internal preparation, coupled with the presence of the Defend Clause Four campaign, the results of the Tribune December 1994 survey and the MEPs’ advertisement, Blair demanded action from his team upon his return from Brussels. The leadership’s counter-attack on Clause IV had three specific prongs: a ballot of all members, a nationwide tour, and a CLP consultation exercise. Blair recalls: ‘I do remember that MEPs’ meeting and thinking, we’ve still got a long way to go on this thing. So, we did have a crisis meeting.’100 An element of consultation had already been approved by the NEC on 30 November 1994, this included ‘a questionnaire, a programme of meetings throughout the regions, a tour by the Deputy Leader … and an edition of Labour Party News devoted to the issues’.101 The consultation now planned by the leadership went much further and included an all-member ballot. Despite wishing to kick-start the campaign to rewrite Clause IV, Blair was a little reluctant about the consultation exercise, following the platform’s defeat over Clause IV in 1994. Sawyer details Blair’s reservations in a Journal entry from 21 January 1995: The idea to have a consultation on Clause 4 was mine and I dare say in his private moments Blair now regrets backing this. He is wrong. We would be in a worse state if we had bounced the party. But the consultation is proving messy. Why? Because Blair’s decision in Education, both policy and his son’s school, and his decision on rail privatisation, we won’t take it back. His now famous stuff with the unions and the general view that he is an Islington 174

Clause IV, 1994–95

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upper-class person with no feel for the party all focus on Clause IV and the party feels they can ‘give him one back’ by opposing him on this issue.102

This correlates with Minkin’s recollection of events that ‘at one stage in headquarters the word was that [Blair] was hesitating’ over the consultation.103 Yet, Blair was persuaded to take the battle to the constituencies by Sawyer, McDonagh and Cruddas for a number of reasons. First, the 1994 Conference defeat on Clause IV had been brought about not by the unions’ votes, but by the constituency delegates, and the December Tribune survey had further caused concern in the leader’s office about the attitude of CLPs. Second, a victory within the constituency section would avoid Conservative accusations that the unions continued to direct the party. Indeed, by February 1995, John Major was predicting a victory for Blair on Clause IV due to ‘the support of the unreconstructed trade unions’.104 The major public element of Labour consultation involved a tour of Labour constituencies by Blair. This nationwide tour took the Labour leader to thirty-five local Labour Party meetings between January and April 1995 and directly took his case for change to over 30,000 members.105 These visits also allowed him to present his arguments more widely, to not only the members in attendance, but also to local and national media. Before undertaking this tour, a letter from the leader was sent to every Labour branch stating: ‘I want to talk directly to every party member, to say why I think we need a statement of aims and values that accurately reflects what members and voters expect from a modern Labour Party.’106 McDonagh recalls: We organised this huge tour where Tony would get up, he’d speak for 3 minutes [or] 5 minutes on why he wanted to change Clause IV and then everybody would get up and have their say … He was going round the country … thousands were turning up, I mean theatres were packed, I don’t mean church halls, [but] theatres and museums, we just couldn’t get everyone in.107 175

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Likewise, recalling these events, Blair reflects: ‘I enjoyed the debate and always enjoyed the interaction with party members.’108 Alongside Blair’s personal tour, every Labour member also received a copy of Labour Party News, which, in January 1995, devoted a whole issue to Clause IV. A special issue of the magazine was approved at the November 1994 NEC, but the drafting process showcases the change in direction which occurred following Blair’s return from Brussels. As late as 9 January 1995, the draft issue of the special edition had a picture of Labour’s 1918 constitution on its front cover with the words ‘Clause IV special issue’ in the very centre of the page, running across the image.109 By the time the magazine was distributed one week later, this was changed to a large picture of Tony Blair with the headline ‘Clause IV special issue’ now placed at the bottom of the page, away from Blair’s face. This magazine highlighted the leader’s return to the frontline of the campaign. The January edition of Labour Party News featured twelve contributions from across the labour movement, on the proposed change to Clause IV. The composition of these articles was heavily weighted in the leadership’s favour, with nine of the twelve pieces supporting a change to Labour’s constitution. The magazine also included the full text of Labour’s Objects: Socialist Values in the Modern World and a blank consultation response sheet. Published in late 1994, Labour’s Objects investigated the history of Clause IV, made comparisons with continental socialist parties and restated Labour’s basic values.110 Labour’s Objects was sent to every branch, alongside a video from head office, in order for the consultation responses to be filled in. The questions posed were somewhat leading, for instance: ‘Do you agree with the argument in the consultation document that the current Clause IV does not set out Labour’s actual values in a clear and concise manner?’111 But internal estimates suggested that the consultation attracted a number of Labour members. In addition to the 30,000 members who attended Clause IV events with Blair and Prescott, over 176

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23,500 took part in constituency meetings to discuss the consultation document.112 Whilst only 8,000 individual submissions were received, accounting for a mere 2.6 per cent of Labour’s total membership, over 69 per cent of these respondents believed the current Clause IV was ‘not a clear and concise statement of Labour’s values’.113 In January 1995, neither the special edition of Labour Party News, nor the publication of Labour’s Objects included text from the new Clause IV because Blair’s team had yet to agree on a new draft. McDonagh states: After Christmas I went in to see Tony and said, we’re going to try and get your Clause IV [approved] instead of this one, can I see it? And he said, what do you mean? And I said, we’re agreed we don’t like this Marxist–Leninist Clause IV and we want to move the Labour Party from the hard-left to the centre-left … where’s the new one? Because if you’re going to ask people to be in favour of something else, you’re going to have to tell them what it is, and he looked at me blankly again. I’m just thinking … this sort of conversation is going on, until I say to him, you haven’t written it have you?114

Blair recalls that, rather than focusing on the exact phrasing, he intended his new clause to be a reference point for the new direction of the party: ‘I wanted to replace it therefore [with] a very strong sense of values as opposed to what was really a notion of the political economy relative to that time, but not to this time.’115 In reality, the rewriting of Clause IV was, in Sawyer’s words, ‘a muddled, ad hoc exercise with the final draft only appearing minutes before the NEC’.116 Campbell’s recollection of events broadly correlates with this view, highlighting that the new Clause was written whilst Blair was ‘lying on a bed with his acolytes on the floor [with] a racket from a children’s party’ downstairs.117 The consultation on Labour’s ‘aims and values’ had little impact on the composition of the new Clause as the majority of answers received, the 69 per cent in favour of change, were predictably guided by the eleven questions posed. The new Clause tellingly 177

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omitted any reference to public ownership, stating only ‘that undertakings essential to   the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’.118 The Clause did, for the first time, include a firm statement that, ‘The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party.’119 This line was included at the behest of Prescott, who recalled: ‘we made him put the Labour Party is a socialist party … [in] the first line … that was the condition’.120 The new Clause also stressed the party’s commitment to work with the trade union movement and other affiliated organisations.121 Although this pledge was somewhat diluted by also including voluntary organisations, consumer groups and other representative bodies, it did not include the controversial commitment to work with employers’ organisations, which had featured in an earlier draft.122 The words agreed in 1995 continue, as of 2019, to be part of the Labour Party constitution: The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few; where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe and where we live together freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.123

Each line of the new Clause was hard-fought with Blair even having to placate trade unionists thirty minutes before the special NEC meeting.124 The new Clause was presented to Labour’s Executive on 13 March 1995. Dan Duffy, of the TGWU, alongside Skinner, moved a proposal at the start of the meeting not to proceed with the new draft, but this was defeated by twentytwo votes to four.125 Thereafter, the new statement of Labour’s aims and values passed by twenty-one votes to three, with five abstentions.126 The NEC’s decision would now be put to members and trade unionists at the January 1995 Special Labour Party Conference. 178

Clause IV, 1994–95

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The ballot Alongside Blair’s personal campaign and the previously agreed consultation undertaken through Labour Party News and Labour’s Objects, the party also gave CLPs the option of balloting their members on the change. The leadership feared that constituency delegates and General Management Committees were more likely to be left-leaning and opposed to change and suggested undertaking a ballot of all party members. McDonagh recalls: ‘There was a difference in the opinion of small general committees as opposed to the broader membership, so I thought it was right for such a momentous change that we should also ask members.’127 Unfortunately for the leadership, Labour’s constitution did not allow the NEC to mandate constituency parties to conduct such a poll. Instead, the Executive agreed in January 1995 that ‘to encourage the maximum involvement of party members, membership ballots should be held in every constituency’.128 The NEC’s ‘encouragement’ to constituencies to ballot their members resulted in an overwhelming response. Out of Labour’s 639 constituency parties, 470 (74 per cent) held ballots of their members with only three CLPs voting against change.129 In total, 85 per cent of Labour members who returned their ballot paper agreed with the new Clause IV. Both Fielding and Seyd, separately, claim that only 27 per cent of Labour members voted in the contest.130 However, their figure assumes that all of Labour’s 320,000 members were sent a ballot paper, which they were not; 216,716 ballot papers were issued in the contest,131 due to Labour’s constitution only permitting individuals who had been members for at least one year the right to vote. This rule discounted the 100,000 members who had joined the party following Blair’s election.132 Based on the number of ballots distributed and the number returned, the turnout was 46 per cent. The overwhelming response to Blair’s personal appeal to the membership gave cause for much greater optimism before the 179

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1995 Special Conference. Despite this, Blair continued to push for a substantial majority for his changes. Hunter reflects: ‘We went to every nook and cranny in the land, we talked to everybody that could possibly help us … we forged alliances everywhere … we talked to the unions, we talked to the union membership, we talked to our own members, we were military about our tactics.’133 Although the overwhelming result in the constituency ballot bode well for delegate support for the new Clause, the trade unions continued to hold a 70 per cent share of the conference vote. Moreover, the unions had only narrowly voted to support the leadership in opposing to uphold the 1918 Clause IV at the 1994 Conference (36.6 per cent to 33.4 per cent). In the run-up to the 1995 Special Conference, it became clear that two of Labour’s largest affiliates, UNISON and the TGWU, would be casting a combined 25 per cent of the bloc vote against the new Clause.134 Both unions were roundly criticised for not balloting their members. In fact, only one major union, the CWU, balloted its members, returning a nine-to-one majority backing Blair’s rewrite.135 A potent symbol of Labour’s shift from Old to New was provided during Scargill’s Special Conference speech. During his contribution Scargill argued that only the annual conference, and not a special conference, could change the party’s constitution. Ironically, owing to his later legal challenge, the decisions made in April 1995 had to be re-endorsed at the main conference in October. Of more symbolic significance, however, was how Scargill was treated on the rostrum, as the NUM leader was jeered  and slow-hand clapped during his speech. The opposition of Old Labour figures such as Scargill and the Campaign Group has been seen by Fielding as ‘necessary to the drama the leadership hoped to choreograph [as] without it the sense of transformation would have been substantially diminished’.136 Labour’s leadership were delighted to have Scargill, Skinner and Benn leading the fight for the old Clause IV against Blair’s new brand of politics. 180

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At the 1995 Special Conference the new Clause passed by a majority of 65.23 per cent to 34.77 per cent, with 90 per cent of constituencies and 54.6 per cent of trade unions voting for the change.137 The press heralded the result as a major coup for Blair and, significantly, saw the vote as a major dividing line between Blair’s New Labour project and the past. The Observer stated: ‘Blair triumph buries the past’; the Sunday Mirror, ‘Blair’s triumph as New Labour born’; the People, ‘Labour shakes off the shackles of the past’; the Sunday Times, ‘Old left routed as Clause 4 is confined to dustbin of history’; and the Independent on Sunday, ‘“Old Labour” is officially dead.’138 Blair’s change cemented Labour’s modernisation into the party’s constitution. Consequences of the Clause IV victory Blair’s decisive victory on Clause IV both enhanced his reputation and enabled him to contemplate further change.139 Whilst publicly Blair was enamoured with the result over Clause IV, proclaiming the success of ‘the widest consultation exercise ever undertaken by a British political party’, privately, the Labour leader was furious at the conduct of the unions throughout the Clause IV campaign.140 Two days after the conference result, Blair gave interviews to both the Guardian and the Daily Mirror demanding democratic reforms from the trade unions.141 He asserted: ‘I do not believe anyone seriously believes that had there been ballots in some of the big unions the memberships would have voted against change.’142 The Guardian article further hinted at internal party discussions due to take place at Cranfield School of Management in the summer of 1995. Significantly, these deliberations would begin the Partnership in Power process detailed in Chapter 6. Blair did, however, immediately begin to make small changes to the party’s conference voting arrangements, selection process and consultation mechanisms. The October 1995 Conference dealt with a number of outstanding constitutional issues, firstly, the conference rubber stamped 181

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Sawyer as the new party General Secretary, second, the change to Clause IV was reaffirmed and, finally, the voting arrangements of the conference were realigned, only two years after Smith’s major reforms. On the first matter, Sawyer’s election was approved as a technicality without any debate, or the need for a card vote.143 On the second, Scargill’s threat of a legal challenge to the party, gave him the opportunity to move an alternative to the new Clause IV at the October conference.144 According to Sawyer, this out-of-court settlement cost the party £130,000 in legal fees, but avoided the likely possibility that the High Court would find against them.145 At the 1995 Conference Scargill’s alternative was subsumed within a raft of small constitutional changes and was roundly defeated by 88.7 per cent to 11.3 per cent, with the Special Conference’s decision on the new Clause IV also being reaffirmed by 91.8 per cent to 8.2 per cent.146 Blair’s anger at the decision of UNISON and the TGWU to vote against his proposals of Clause IV, led him to pursue further changes in the party–union relationship at the 1995 Annual Conference. As described in Chapter 4, the Trade Union Links Review Group’s report, Trade Unions and the Labour Party, endorsed by the 1993 Conference, changed the composition of conference voting from 90/10, to 70/30 between the unions and the constituencies.147 Crucially, the report also put forward that ‘once individual membership exceeds 300,000 under the new membership scheme, the NEC should propose a further shifting in favour of the CLPs until the figure 50/50 is reached’.148 By the 1995 Annual Conference, Labour’s membership had reached 350,000 and Blair wasted no time in pushing not just for a ‘further shifting’ in the direction of the CLPs at conference, but for a 50/50 split in the voting composition between the constituencies and the unions. This caused some mild controversy as Prescott believed he had been assured that, in return for his support over Clause IV, there would be no further organisational changes until after the next general election.149 The change comfortably passed through 182

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conference, however, by 90.6 per cent to 9.4 per cent, receiving a much greater level of support than the 64.2 per cent which approved the 1993 recommendation, demonstrating the momentum behind Blair’s leadership.150 Yet, the move to 50/50, having been previously agreed in 1993, was as far as Blair could proceed in reforming the conference without a further round of consultation. The 1995 Annual Conference also approved several smaller constitutional changes which had an impact on the modernisation of the party. The conference agreed to use a national by-election panel, whereby the NEC would draw up an approved list of candidates from which constituencies could select.151 This formalised a process that had, in reality, been operating for some years. Using a by-election panel ensured that only candidates who were sympathetic to Blair’s project and in tune with the party’s modernisation could be selected by local parties. In the run-up to the 1997 general election, the central control exerted by the party was shown through the NEC’s refusal to endorse two locally selected candidates: Liz Davies (Leeds North East) in 1995 and John Lloyd (Exeter) in 1996.152 The leadership continued to tighten its grip on the party through the selection process for the new devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and London in 1998, which would use the approved panel system, whilst selections for the European Parliament, in the following year, could only be chosen from a centrally approved pool of candidates. A further element of modernisation arising from the October 1995 Conference was in the use of consultative ballots. Following the success of the membership ballot on Clause IV, constituency ballots were formally approved as a consultative device by 97.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent at the October Conference.153 This paved the way for plebiscitary democracy within the Labour Party and weakened the role of the NEC and the party conference. Whilst the conference’s position as Labour’s primary decisionmaking body was reaffirmed, Blair’s previous reaction to the unions, which had failed to ballot their members or recognise 183

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Modernisation of the Labour Party

the strength of support shown through Labour’s own consultation in the Clause IV debate, indicated a strong expectation for union leaders to respect any future canvasses. In 1996, an all-member ballot was used to gain the membership’s approval of Labour’s draft manifesto, New Labour, New Life for Britain. The consultation exercise, ending with a ballot paper requiring a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer as to whether members supported the manifesto, cost the party over £190,000.154 Over 95 per cent of individual Labour members (218,023) voted ‘yes’, on a 61 per cent turnout, with 92.2 per cent of affiliated organisations, on a 24.2 per cent turnout, also approving the manifesto.155 This was the largest postal ballot of any British political party resulting in the highest number of returns ever made to a Labour ballot until the 2015 Labour leadership election. Mike Marqusee has criticised the use of such ballots, claiming that: ‘they eliminate  informed collective discussion and transform every key decision into a test of loyalty to the leadership’.156 Whilst there are some merits in his denunciation of the ballots as a means of evidencing membership involvement in policy formulation, they were successful in engaging more Labour members than ever before to play an active role in the party. Moreover, Marqusee’s analysis overlooks Labour’s other forums of debate: the BLPs, CLPs and the National Policy Forum, which remained largely unaltered until 1997. These ballots were not intended to be used in isolation and aimed to involve Labour’s membership, alongside the party’s traditional mechanisms for policy engagement. Cruddas, however, is uncertain to what extent this was achieved: I was less enthusiastic about the song and dance New Labour thing. That’s not to say I wasn’t supportive, but I thought it could have been more radical than it actual was, rather than resort to plebiscitary politics. An argument I would have is that New Labour in and of itself failed, because it failed to consolidate a genuine, robust social democratic labour architecture and policy agenda, it was too timid on the policy and didn’t go far enough into consolidating the 184

Clause IV, 1994–95 party into a generally pluralist Scandinavian style social democracy. Which we tried when we set up the idea of Party into Power, the National Policy Forum.157

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Indeed, the new party structures created during the Partnership in Power process, covered in Chapter 6, had debatable results. Conclusion Although the rewriting of Clause IV has been described by Jennifer Lees-Marshment as ‘only’,158 and Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann as ‘wholly’,159 symbolic due to the moves Labour had made away from nationalisation before 1995, the impact of the change on Labour’s modernisation should not be understated. Similarly, a number of Labour MPs have also expressed reservations about the value of the change. Chris Mullin bemoaned the time that would be spent ‘navel gazing’, Prescott labelled the new Clause an ‘unnecessary ideological controversy’, and Short claimed it was ‘of little significance and not worth a great deal of effort’.160 In contrast to these arguments, Blair recalled that the new Clause was incredibly significant as it provided hard evidence of Labour’s modernisation: ‘it does matter because the Labour Party has lost four elections and it has got to prove definitively … that it’s changed’.161 Whilst Mandelson claims that Clause IV ‘was like the red rose on stilts, this time with real meaning. The red rose was a spray-paint job, Clause IV was the real thing’.162 Within academic circles, Bale, Cronin, Driver and Martell, and Pattie have also convincingly argued that the reform was key to breaking with Labour’s past.163 Although recognising the break away from Old Labour, Gerald Taylor has claimed that: ‘There is little in this change which marks Labour as a “New” party separate from its history and traditions.’164 This draws a parallel with Martin Smith’s view that Kinnock’s Policy Review recast social democracy within the party’s own history and thus was neither an accommodation with Thatcher nor something entirely new.165 185

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However, in the case of Clause IV, the party which emerged following the reform could, in nearly every aspect, be described as a new creation. Beyond mere symbolism, the rewriting of Clause IV cemented the changes made under Kinnock and Smith, placing an identifiable ideological, organisational and constitutional gap between Old Labour and New. Whilst party policy had oscillated between left and right throughout Labour’s history, before 1995 Clause IV had remained unchanged for seventy-seven years. Critically, Blair described the rewrite as an ‘ideological re-foundation’, whilst Blunkett stated the change gave ‘birth to New Labour’.166 In addition, the change to Clause IV was significant due to the impact of the result on Labour’s electoral fortunes and even Blair’s own future. Blair claimed: ‘I was absolutely clear: if the change was rejected, I was off.’167 The leader’s closest allies were also aware of the potential damage to the New Labour project if Blair was defeated on Clause IV. McDonagh claims: ‘I think there was an understanding that if Tony Blair didn’t win this, he would go’,168 whilst Mandelson reflects: I was worried that we would lose to be honest. I was not an early enthusiast because I thought it risked bringing the roof down on us. I thought for that to be the first thing he did would be more than the party could take and if he lost would be terminal. I was worried about it. By the end of August, I had embraced the risk and became a supporter.169

In contrast, however, Blair recalls: ‘To be honest, I didn’t ever think we were going to lose it. I did think as we got underway it wouldn’t be a walkover.’170 Yet, the battle over Clause IV and the very real fears of defeat held by the leader’s inner circle signified an importance beyond mere symbolism. Blair’s new Clause IV provided a fundamental break with Labour’s past that was extremely unlikely to be reversed in the short or medium term. Clause IV separated New Labour from the party’s history by making an indelible change in the party’s constitution. 186

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The significance of the changes to party organisation can also be demonstrated through the impact on Labour’s polling. Tudor Jones has shown that Blair was ‘influenced by private poll findings which indicated that voters remained unconvinced that Labour had really changed its character’.171 Riddell adds to this by stating that Blair ‘fully understood the importance of demonstrating that Labour had changed, just as Bill Clinton had sought to show the Democrats had changed’.172 Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell and John Curtice’s examination of polling data reveals how Labour’s modernisation brought them closer to the mean voter. This polling indicates the contrast between Old Labour and New. In 1983, 78 per cent of the electorate was to Labour’s right, but by 1992 this number had decreased to 59 per cent, due to Kinnock’s reforms.173 Although Smith’s leadership had little impact on these figures, with 58 per cent still to the right of Labour in 1994, by 1997 this had decreased to 40 per cent, nearly half the figure polled in 1983.174 These changes show the huge impact of Blair’s reforms of Labour’s constitution, image and policy. Blair was also to garner widespread support for his changes within both the PLP and the wider party itself. As shown, 90 per cent of the constituency section voted for the Clause IV change during the membership ballot. The support of MPs in Blair’s early tenure is more difficult to assess, particularly as there were very few vocal challenges against the leadership in his first decade. Michael Levy’s 1995 study of forty-five Labour MPs gives an insight into PLP support for Blair’s reforms. This indicated that the overwhelming majority of his sample supported both modernisation (80 per cent) and Clause IV reform (81.9 per cent). However, a minority opposed these changes (20 per cent and 18.1 per cent, respectively).175 Tony Blair’s ascendancy to the top of the Labour Party and his immediate actions as Labour leader enshrined the party’s modernisation, which had taken placed since 1983, into the party’s constitution. Blair’s move to replace the party’s General Secretary 187

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was a harbinger for the organisational changes to come. In his first two years of office Blair made a permanent mark on Labour’s constitution by rewriting Clause IV, going further than any Labour leader before him. The change to Clause IV established Blair’s authority within the party and allowed him to present his case for change and modernisation to Labour’s members and to the wider public. Through this symbolic, but significant change, Blair made a fundamental break between Old Labour and New, and, crucially for the forthcoming general election in 1997, moved the party closer to the nation’s mean voter.

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6

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Partnership in Power, 1995–97

The Partnership in Power project aimed to modernise the internal mechanisms of the Labour Party in preparation for government. The changes led to a two-year ‘rolling programme’ for policy formation, new opportunities for membership engagement through policy forums, a restructuring of the NEC, and a downgrading of the policy role of the party conference. The project was designed to avoid confrontations between the party leadership and members during the lifetime of the next Labour government. Partnership in Power aimed to prevent a repeat of the disagreements between the party and the government which had damaged Labour during previous periods of office. However, whilst this fundamental goal was achieved, the extent to which these reforms actually created a ‘partnership’ between the party and its members is the subject of some debate. Whilst the intentions of Partnership in Power were honourable, the end result diminished the role of the party members and increased the power of its leadership and, far from a partnership, created a simmering divide between the two groups. The appointment of Sawyer as Labour’s General Secretary afforded him the opportunity to modernise the internal structures of the Labour Party before the 1997 general election in order to avoid the internal conflicts faced by previous Labour governments. Mandelson recalls that this was a key aim of the exercise: ‘Partnership in Power was about … saying that to be successful, a Labour 189

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government had to work not at odds with the party, but in tandem with the party’.1 Cruddas links this goal with the unique opportunity presented by Labour’s, likely, forthcoming election victory: [Tom] could see what you could build was this one off opportunity before the election in 1997 to redesign, or reimagine an internal Labour democracy that got beyond this annual shootout at the conference, annual contest in the NEC when in government about sell-outs, all of that, and build a genuine stakeholder model across the whole party, all its regions, all its stakeholders, that met every quarter that had a 192 strong, big body.2

Consequently, between 1994 and 1997 Sawyer laid the groundwork for the modernisation of the NEC, NPF and party conference. Cranfield The Partnership in Power reforms began during NEC away days at Cranfield University. Immediately following his appointment as Labour’s new General Secretary in October 1994, Sawyer began to make links with outside agencies to improve the internal organisation of the party, particularly with the Cranfield School of Management at Cranfield University. The new Labour General Secretary had visited the School when he attended courses in 1991 and 1993 with both the TUC and with NUPE, National and Local Government Officers’ Association (NALGO) and the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) during the UNISON merger. Sawyer recalled the impact of his previous visits on the Partnership in Power process: The Labour Party leadership didn’t look at strategy in a kind of meaningful way, it wasn’t something that political leaders did, so I’d kind of learnt through going with the unions that actually this was a good thing to do, get all your top team there together and you all have proper facilitation, you have good tutors and you look at some of the issues that are facing you in a classroom. It would be a no-brainer in any business, or even any charity today, but actually, it had never been done in the Labour Party before.3 190

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Cruddas, who served as the party’s secretary for the courses, recognises Sawyer’s central role in this process: ‘Tom had a number of long-term management consultants who had worked with him in UNISON and he brought them in along with Bob Fryer from Northern College as counsellors, advisors on reshaping organisations.’4 Consequently, in December 1994, Sawyer rekindled his relationship with Cranfield when he, Jack Straw and Richard Rosser visited the School to discuss with Gerry Johnson the possibility of providing courses on organisational and cultural change to the Labour Party.5 Ten weeks after being appointed General Secretary, Sawyer introduced a business plan to Labour’s NEC setting out priorities for his first year in the post.6 In the note Sawyer highlighted that, as Labour had been out of government since 1979, ‘the majority of the NEC have little experience of running the party when Labour is in power’.7 The March Executive firmed up these proposals, approving Sawyer’s suggestion for ‘workshops with a management consultant’ and surveying NEC members’ availability for two weekend courses at Cranfield.8 Skinner was the only member to vote against the resolution and refused to attend the seminars, stating: ‘It is not a smart thing to do, to talk about what we will do after the general election when we have not won it yet.’9 The Cranfield courses took place over three weekends in June, July and November 1995. Sawyer, Beckett, Harriet Harman, Gordon Colling and Jonathan Powell attended an exploratory first session on 16 and 17 June 1995. The discussions focused on four areas: the role and main tasks of the NEC, the critical success factors if this role was being delivered, the blockages to achieving this, and how the critical success factors could be achieved. Some of the key conclusions drawn included an expansion of the NEC’s membership to include ‘local government, CLPs on a regional basis, backbench PLP, Socialist Societies, Co-op, [and] MEPs’.10 Furthermore, there was a suggestion that a review of conference 191

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‘size, frequency, content, format [and], function’ should take place.11 Finally, the first session produced ideas about the role of the NEC in developing Labour Party policy, favouring the involvement of the ‘membership in such debate through policy forums’, and expressing a will to ‘empower individual members [through] open forums and forms of ballot’.12 The second event at Cranfield took place between 15 and 17 July 1995 and built on the themes of the June workshops. A three-line whip was placed on the NEC’s attendance. The session concluded that ‘the current culture of the NEC/Party was not conducive to the effective delivery of the [party’s] purpose’.13 Moreover, the renewal of the policy forums was again highlighted, alongside proposals to change party conference, and the wish for a more representative NEC. Maggie Jones, Sawyer’s replacement as one of UNISON’s members on the Executive, recalls the animosity of the second session: ‘there were two-thirds of the people on the NEC who [said] … let’s give this a fair wind, and there were some people that were going to resist it at all costs’.14 Sawyer discussed the outcome of the Cranfield courses with Blair throughout September 1995.15 During a private meeting on 13 September, Labour’s General Secretary noted: I said the head (him) was okay, the body (the majority of the members) were okay, but the problem was the neck. The hand of activists who joined body and head were offside. He remembered this analogy and we discussed how he could appeal to activists. I said there were three legs to his reform programme, not two. His two are right: 1) Build the membership; 2) reform the party; but there is a third: manage the party, which he is not good at doing.16

The Cranfield sessions had stressed the need for the NEC to have a clear purpose in order to work hand in hand with a future Labour government. Moreover, during the workshops, members of the Executive had expressed concern that Blair’s office was operating independently of the party’s structures, an arrangement which could cause internal wrangling if repeated when in government. 192

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Campbell’s diaries indicate Sawyer also used the head, neck and body analysis at a meeting of senior staff.17 Blair’s response to Sawyer at their meeting on 13 September provides a fascinating insight into his early leadership: Blair said, ‘You’re right, you’re right, the problem is I’m not really political. I don’t like all this politicking and I’m not good at it. If I didn’t care about people – I could have joined the Tory Party just to be an MP. In fact, I could have probably led the Tory Party – but I chose Labour.’18

On reflection Blair states: ‘I was interested in changing the world, I basically knew I wasn’t a Conservative and the Labour Party seemed the natural home for somebody who believed in social justice and wanted change.’19 The conclusion reached during this discussion between Labour’s leader and general secretary was a commitment for a symbolic organisational change of Labour’s internal structures. Despite an initial understanding, Blair’s commitment to the organisational change and party management process was not always enthusiastic.20 Sawyer reported in November 1995 that the leader had ‘lost his zeal for reforming the party’ as the Cranfield discussions ran ‘into the sand’.21 Although a final NEC visit to Cranfield took place in November 1995, Sawyer had become disenchanted with the lack of engagement from some elements of the party’s Executive and the waning interest of the party leadership, commenting that the eventual ‘outcome was only a shade of what it might have been’.22 Yet, Blair was won over to the need for refreshing Labour’s structures by the argument that change could prevent a recurrence of the disharmony between a Labour government and its wider party. Ultimately, Blair recognised this ‘seemingly innocuous exercise in party management’ as ‘ultimately a very important change’ for his future leadership.23 Maggie Jones, a Task Force chair during the Partnership in Power process, states: ‘I would say Tony gave [Tom] a free hand, but I’m not sure that the Partnership in Power stuff was Tony’s idea, it was very much Tom’s 193

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idea.’24 However, Blair’s input into the process led to a more topdown model of organisational change which prioritised quelling dissent over genuine partnership.

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Party into Power Following the Cranfield discussions, Sawyer took a project for party organisational reform to Labour’s NEC in January 1996. The report outlined the findings of the NEC members who attended the training sessions. Sawyer detailed Labour’s plans for putting the suggestions into action in a process he entitled The Party into Power. Four task forces of the NEC were agreed: 1) ‘The NEC at work’, led by Maggie Jones; 2) ‘Relationships in Power’ led by Mo Mowlam; 3) ‘Strengthening Democracy’, led by Margaret Wall from MSF; and 4) ‘Building a Healthy Party’, which was merged with an existing regeneration group led by Diana Jeuda.25 The recommendations passed by a healthy majority, with only Dennis Skinner voting against.26 Sixteen of the twenty-nine members of the NEC took part in the Task Forces.27 Party into Power was based on three underlying principles: first, the wish for partnership between the party and a future Labour government; second, the concept of a stakeholder party, with each organ having a role to play in Labour’s direction; and third, a revitalised method of policy-making.28 The original intention was to publish recommendations in 1996, before the next general election; however, internal opposition delayed the final approval of what became Partnership in Power until the 1997 Conference.29 The documents arising out of the Party into Power project spoke of establishing harmony between a future Labour government and the wider party, but provided few suggestions as to how this would  be achieved. Whilst these reports highlighted the need for cultural change, in reality, the project became defined by the structural changes required in order to curb the power of the extra-parliamentary party. 194

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The four Task Forces met between May and December 1996 before the publication of the draft document Labour into Power: A Framework for Partnership in January 1997, following its endorsement by twenty-two votes to one (Skinner) at the NEC.30 The remit of Task Force 1, ‘The NEC at Work’, was to discuss the composition of the party’s Executive and its relationship with Labour’s leadership. On the latter, at the group’s second meeting, Whitty, the former party General Secretary, argued that ‘the NEC was not in a constructive relationship with the leadership … it was oppositionist’.31 With some overlap, Task Force 2, ‘Relationships in Power’ also stressed the need for the NEC to be ‘a supporter of the party in government’.32 Consequently, these two Task Forces aimed to achieve a cultural shift in the relationship between the NEC and the party leadership. Yet, beyond drafting language to this effect, little was put in place to ensure such a relationship blossomed, beyond suggested changes to the NEC’s composition. Rather, cultural change was achieved by gerrymandering the composition of the Executive to reduce the potential for criticism or opposition. By August 1996, the minutes of Task Force 1 clearly indicated that ‘a considerable amount’ of the group’s time had been taken up discussing ‘the composition of the NEC’.33 By September, an increased membership of the Executive to include ‘the PLP, EPLP, local government, [and the] regions’ was being discussed.34 The Task Force also suggested that the number of Executive meetings could be reduced.’35 By the tenth meeting of Task Force 1 it was agreed that the trade union seats should be maintained, the women’s quota should be raised from four to six, the European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP) leader should be granted a seat, local government allocated two places, central government four places, the PLP two places and CLPs eight places.36 These suggestions were then sent to a central steering group consisting of Sawyer, Jeuda, Cruddas, Fryer and Minkin, which collated the work of the four Task Forces. 195

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Task Force 3, ‘Strengthening Democracy’, largely focused on increasing the influence of the NPF. As shown in Chapter 4, this body had been approved in 1990, revised in 1992 and had met for the first time in 1993, but established little significance within the party’s internal organisation. At Task Force 3’s third meeting, the ‘current inadequacy’ of the NPF was discussed ‘in terms of its decision-making process and representative process’.37 By the eighth meeting of the group, the Task Force began to discuss increasing the number of stakeholders on the NPF to well over 100.38 Task Force 4, ‘Building a Healthy Party’, piggybacked on an existing regeneration task force and largely lauded the achievements of New Labour’s membership drive, with little focus on how to retain and engage these members once in government.39 Labour into Power Like the plebiscites on Clause IV and the Road to the Manifesto, the draft reforms of Party into Power were rebranded into a consultative document, entitled Labour into Power: A Framework for Partnership, and taken to the party’s membership. In contrast to the 1994 and 1996 exercises, Labour received a poor response to  the consultation on the party’s suggested organisational changes. Membership interest in the exercise was not aided by the general election campaign, with party meetings being suspended in lieu of campaigning activity. In an effort to elicit further interest, the NEC published a simplified summary report in early June.40 This consultation document included suggested questions for discussion at branch level and a response sheet which could be returned to head office. Yet, although the June consultation document made the reforms a little clearer to Labour’s wider membership, the party had left little time for responses to be returned before the closing date on 20 June 1997. Thus, due to pressure from the constituencies this was extended to 4 July by the May NEC.41 196

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Labour into Power was distributed throughout the party in February 1997 and began what eventually became seven months of consultation. By this stage the four Task Forces, which had been plagued by considerable overlap, were redefined in four sections of the report: Task Force 1 became ‘The National Executive Committee’, Task Force 2, ‘Partnerships in Practice’, and Task Force 3, ‘Policy Development and Review’, with Task Force 4 keeping the same name. Labour into Power emphasised, for a public audience, the Cranfield work and Labour’s commitment to ‘Partnership in Power’.42 It was stated that this partnership was to be ‘based upon mutual support and effective two-way communications providing opportunities for consultation and discussion’.43 Similar to the reports of the Task Forces, Labour into Power suggested the creation of a new Joint Policy Committee, with members drawn equally from the Shadow Cabinet and the NEC, chaired by the leader. Regarding the party conference, the report wanted to move away from ‘gladiatorial contests and deeply divisive conflicts’.44 Instead, Labour into Power aimed to provide more opportunities for lay party members to take an ‘active part in discussion’.45 The document formalised the two-year rolling programme of Labour policy-making and suggested a heightened role for the NPF. In a detailed section on the roles and responsibilities of the NEC, the most significant change suggested was to the Executive’s composition. Labour into Power put forward for consultation that an explicit bloc of the NEC should be reserved, for the first time, for the Shadow Cabinet and local government representatives, alongside increased representation for women achieved through quotas. A June 1997 discussion document, Partnership in Power (Consultation), simplified the reforms and placed them within the history of Labour’s ‘process of modernisation’.46 Labour were keen to emphasise the links between the 1990 document Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s and the current review, principally the aims to revitalise the rolling programme and the NPF.47 However, 197

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the June 1997 document focused largely on the structural reforms suggested, such as the changes to party conference and the NEC, rather than the cultural change which such a ‘partnership’ was meant to achieve. Only 842 responses were received to Labour’s seven-month consultation, with 216 (25.6 per cent) submitted after June as they made use of the Partnership in Power (Consultation) response sheet.48 This suggests a lack of engagement with both the initial Labour into Power consultation and the refreshed Partnership in Power (Consultation) document. The consultation failed to achieve either a substantial response, or a clear view on how Labour’s ‘partnership’ should be achieved. Although 60 per cent of CLPs responded, only forty-two responses were received from individuals.49 In contrast, 230,400 and over 100,000 members returned ballot papers in the Road to the Manifesto and Clause IV consultations, respectively.50 Clearly, these consultations were easier for the Labour membership to take part in, as they were given a clear, yes or no, choice. Perhaps more tellingly, outside of the ballot papers, over 8,000 individual written consultation responses were received during the Clause IV debate51 – ten times the figure achieved in the Labour into Power exercise. Part of the problem with the Labour into Power discussion was the open nature of responses to the initial consultation, launched in February 1997. Unlike the Clause IV debate, members were not immediately guided by pre-populated response sheet and so, in effect, members/CLPs were asked to make general comments on the thirty-four pages of Labour into Power. Although a simplified version of the report was published in June, alongside an extension to the consultation until July, this left only weeks for BLPs and CLPs to digest the information, call a meeting and formally respond. As such, the exercise provided no clear steer. Only 43 per cent expressed some support for the rolling programme, whilst as little as 24 per cent of respondents voiced explicit support for the changes to the NEC.52 The numbers opposed to the Labour into 198

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Power suggestions were not released by Labour, but notes indicated that ‘there was substantial concern that party conference must remain the sovereign policy-making body’.53

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Partnership in Power The modernisation of the Labour Party from 1979, pursued vigorously between 1987–89 and 1994–97, took the party to a landslide general election result in May 1997. Across these years Labour reformed its policies, voting procedures, internal structures and constitution. This led to Labour securing 418 seats, double the number achieved in 1983 and an increase of 147 from 1992. The party’s share of the vote also increased from 27.6 per cent in 1983, 30.8 in 1987 and 34.4 in 1992, to 43.2 in 1997. The challenge remained, however, to sustain a Labour government in office and to achieve a second full term by preventing infighting between the now government and the wider party. Following the closure of the consultation exercise and Labour’s general election victory, Labour into Power was renamed Partnership in Power. Regarding the change of title, Mandelson states: ‘the words were chosen very carefully and were about how the Labour Party can be in power without losing the support of its grass roots’.54 The final document firmed up the proposals made in Labour in Power to provide detailed numbers about the composition of the NEC and NPF. However, beyond two compromises on the ability for constituencies to submit contemporary motions, and for the NPF to issue minority reports to conference, the proposals not only remained largely unaltered from Labour into Power, but also failed to address how the Labour Government would work in partnership with the NEC, NPF and Conference. Ultimately, Partnership in Power was taken to the NEC in July 1997, passing by nineteen votes to one, and to the party conference two months later, where it passed with little registered opposition and without the need for a card vote.55 199

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National Executive Committee composition The least controversial of the Partnership in Power reforms concerned the composition of Labour’s NEC. Previously, Labour into Power had concentrated on establishing a partnership between the NEC and an incoming Labour government to avoid the disputes which had occurred between 1974 and 1979. Labour into Power also suggested that there should be ‘separate, direct representation of CLPs, PLPs and the Cabinet’ on the NEC.56 In addition, the report put forward the deletion of the women’s section, to be replaced by female quotas, and the addition of a local government section. However, in both Labour into Power and the consultation document Partnership in Power (Consultation), no detailed proposals regarding numbers of representatives were put forward. The consultation exercise, which ran between February and July 1997 also offered little insight into the views of lay members about the composition of the NEC. Although the final document, Partnership in Power, welcomed that 24 per cent of respondents expressed explicit support for Labour into Power’s NEC proposals, this figure was clearly not an overwhelming endorsement.57 Partnership in Power altered the size and the balance of Labour’s NEC. Alongside changes to the NEC’s sub-committees and the creation of new sub-taskforces, the most visible alteration put forward in Partnership in Power dealt with the actual composition of the Executive. The reforms generally satisfied the party leadership, which gained guaranteed places for three government representatives; the trade unions, whose representation remained the same; and the rank-and-file membership, who were apportioned six seats free from the interference of MPs. Reflecting on the changes, Maggie Jones, the Chair of Task Force 1, recalled: We did change the format of the NEC, not as much as I would have liked … We got a compromise that for the NEC was quite progressive really, more women on the NEC. We did away with the MPs being able to stand in the constituency section, so that was, at the time, quite radical.58 200

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Due to this carefully negotiated balance Cruddas also regarded the process as a ‘score draw’ between the sides but expressed frustration that his ideas about including ‘different forms of socialist society’ and ‘different forms of local government representation’ were not included in the final draft.59 Sawyer played a central role in the construction of the final Partnership in Power document passed by conference in October 1997. Alongside being the party’s General Secretary, Sawyer also took a seat on the Partnership in Power steering group.60 Whilst Blair sought an end to Labour’s public quarrels and a ‘stripped down’ mechanism for the party’s policy-making through Partnership in Power, Sawyer quotes the Labour leader as stating that ‘he didn’t really know’ what he wanted to do about the NEC.61 Hence, Sawyer was given a fairly free hand on NEC reform. In the academic histories of this process, Sawyer has been misquoted by Anderson and Mann, and Russell, as wanting ‘a radical dilution of trade union representation on the party’s ruling body’.62 The former cite a New Statesman article from July 1996 as evidence for this viewpoint but no such statement or sentiment is expressed by Sawyer in the piece.63 In the article Sawyer actually put forward his will to increase representation on the NEC – within the constituencies and the PLP – and not to decrease the numbers of any group.64 The potential for a dilution of trade union influence on the NEC was a concern identified by New Left in New Labour in July 1997, who demanded at least one third of the total membership should be reserved for direct trade union representation. In the event, the number of directly elected trade union representatives, remained the same.65 Partnership in Power formalised each of the suggested new NEC sections detailed in Labour into Power and proposed, for the first time, exact numbers in each category. This marked a substantial shift from the NEC’s previous composition (see Table 4). Overall, the reforms safeguarded the twelve trade union seats but removed their traditional majority on the NEC as the five seat women’s 201

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Table 4

The composition of Labour’s NEC before and after the 1997 Partnership in Power changes Minimum quota of women after Partnership in Power

NEC composition before Partnership in Power

NEC composition after Partnership in Power

Leader Deputy leader Treasurer Women Division 1: Trade unions Division 2: Socialist societies Division 3: CLPs Division 4: Local government Division 5: PLP Government EPLP Youth

1 1 1 5 12

1 1 1 0 12

1

1

7

6 2

3 1 1 1

1

3 3 1 1

Total

29

32

12

6

section, which was previously voted for by annual conference where the unions held great sway, was deleted. The women’s section was replaced by quotas, guaranteeing a minimum number of women across the trade union, CLP, government (cabinet or shadow cabinet), PLP and local government sections. The CLPs also lost a representative, despite the increases in party membership, but gained an assurance that members of the PLP and EPLP would be ineligible for the constituency section.66 Controversially, this rule did not extend to Labour peers.67 Before Partnership in Power, the CLP section had been dominated by MPs; indeed, all seven members in 1996/97 were parliamentarians. The proposals also granted new seats to the government (three), PLP (three), EPLP (one) and local government (two). 202

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Only three composite motions against Partnership in Power were discussed at the 1997 Conference, with one of these – Composite 50 – explicitly opposing the section on NEC reform. This composite criticised the reduction of the CLP section from seven to six members and also bemoaned the lack of influence lay members would have in the newly proposed government, PLP and EPLP sections.68 Although Composite 50 was defeated on a card vote by 37.15 per cent, to 62.85 per cent, it achieved the highest level of support of any of the composites on Partnership in Power.69 Whilst the majority of proposals within Partnership in Power left the NEC’s traditional role unchanged, such as its involvement in agreeing the manifesto, a number of smaller reforms were introduced which, according to Russell, ‘profoundly changed the status and powers of the Executive’.70 Significantly, the NEC’s sub-committees were granted delegated powers so that decisions did not need to be taken by the full executive. Beckett, who attended the Cranfield sessions, was broadly supportive of the ‘logical’ changes to the NEC’s membership, however she states: ‘There was a big diminution of the powers of the NEC … I remember starting off not hostile to the idea and then realising, actually, it was robbing the NEC of a lot of its powers.’71 The key reform in this regard was the revitalisation of the JPC and the power granted to it as the gatekeeper of the policy process. The NEC would no longer play a front-line role in the formulation of policy, although all thirty-two of its members were also members of the NPF and eight Executive members were placed on the JPC. Labour’s Policy Director Matthew Taylor announced to the NPF in 1998 that the NEC had ‘devolved its authority to the JPC’.72 Due to these changes, Seyd has claimed that, after Partnership in Power, the NEC became ‘completely devalued in importance … [as] nothing more than the administrative arm of the leaders’.73 Similarly, Wring describes the NEC’s post-1997 remit as a ‘largely administrative forum’.74 Following Partnership in Power, the NEC would only be ‘adequately informed and their views taken into 203

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account on key policy discussions and decision’ – a long way from the role envisaged for the Executive by the outside left in 1979–81.75 The NEC’s authority had already been substantially eroded in the years before Partnership in Power. Once Kinnock had established a majority on the Executive from the mid-1980s, the leadership’s central control of the Policy Review Groups to some extent bypassed the traditional policy-making avenues of the party. More pronounced, however, was Blair’s use of all-member ballots to endorse the change to Clause IV and the party’s 1996 draft manifesto, as described in Chapter 5, which effectively side-tracked the NEC and conference in lieu of the plebiscitary authorisation of Labour’s membership. The NEC retained some elements of control after 1997, such as its constitutional right to decide, alongside the Parliamentary Committee, which items from the party programme would be included in the party’s election manifesto. Yet, in practice, the leader controlled this process, hence the outside left’s demands for change in 1979–81. The NEC also continued to hold great sway in the selection of by-election candidates. Due to the firm loyalist majority for Blair on the Executive, this brought the extra-parliamentary party under even tighter central control. For by-elections an NEC sub-committee drew up a shortlist of candidates from which constituencies could select. This meant that the NEC could act as a gatekeeper to ensure that candidates were of a high quality and, more importantly, broadly sympathetic to New Labour. The Executive also used its powers to block ‘unsuitable’ locally selected candidates, Liz Davies and John Lloyd (see Chapter 5).76 The Partnership in Power NEC reforms lasted for nearly twenty years, barring one small change in 2007. In the 1997 report the Black Socialist Society were granted a future seat on the Executive should their membership reach 2,500. However, this did not occur until 2007 when Keith Vaz took up the seat on the NEC.77 This small change, already agreed in principle in 1997, increased 204

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the number of NEC members to thirty-three and was the only alteration to Labour’s NEC composition between 1997 and 2016. Fundamentally, the Partnership in Power NEC reforms remained untouched until 2016 when, amidst some controversy, one frontbench member from the Scottish Parliament and one from the  National Assembly of Wales were added to the Executive.78 These changes were widely seen as an attempt to wrestle control of the NEC away from Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn.79 In 2017, four further members were added to the NEC, three to the CLP section and one to the trade union section as Corbyn reclaimed his grip over the Executive.80 The National Policy Forum The changes to Labour’s policy and decision-making process through Partnership in Power marked the first significant wholesale modification of the party’s structural arrangements in its history. The reforms established eight Policy Commissions alongside renewing the Joint Policy Committee (JPC) and National Policy Forum (NPF). These changes restricted the possibility of embarrassing defeats for the party leadership at Labour’s annual conference. On the one hand, the reforms aimed to create a partnership between the leadership and the party’s members via widespread consultation through the NPF process, thus – in theory – meaning that the policy proposals voted on at conference had already been shaped by the wider membership. On the other hand, Partnership in Power also greatly increased the centralised control of the leadership and enabled it to manage the party’s organisational structures to avoid widespread public dissent. The Partnership in Power reforms had a harbinger in Labour’s Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s, approved by the 1990 Conference. This document had already established the principle of the rolling programme and the NPF.81 Moreover, it suggested that Labour policy would be formulated through a two-yearly 205

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policy cycle, with a limited number of resolutions to amend this programme accepted from CLPs (two), trade unions (two minimum), Youth Conference (three), Women’s Conference (five), and regional parties (five).82 Owing to the 1992 defeat and the internal wrangling over OMOV in 1993, the majority of Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s was never implemented. Russell has argued that this document was ‘remarkably similar’ to Partnership in Power.83 Whitty, the key author of Democracy and Policy Making agrees with this assessment.84 These arguments are particularly convincing as Sawyer was intimately involved with the 1990 document, alongside Whitty, and was the chief instigator of Partnership in Power. During Task Force meetings and throughout the Labour into Power consultation exercise, the Labour Party annual conference was safeguarded as the party’s ‘sovereign’ policy and decisionmaking body.85 Although conference retained its role at the top of Labour’s organisation, following Partnership in Power, like the suggestions put forward in Democracy and Policy Making, it would only consider policy after a two-year consultation period during which time the NPF, JPC, Policy Commissions and the NEC would, to various extents, act as arbiters. This two-year, rolling programme allowed Labour to renew and debate all party policies over three years between 1997 and 2000.86 This process began in the Policy Commissions and the NPF. The NPF met eight times before the Partnership in Power package was approved by conference under the chairmanship of Sawyer (1993–95) and Cook (1995–2001). However, the Forum struggled to make an impact on Labour’s policies, or wider membership, before the 1997 reforms took hold. Although approved in 1990, with a draft membership discussed within Kinnock’s office in 1991, the Forum did not meet until 1993. Sawyer, the NPF’s first chair, recalls there was little initial enthusiasm for the new process: The first Forum was held at the Ark in Hammersmith … I was very committed to it because I wanted to see us have a Policy Forum and a rolling programme … Blair made a plenary speech and I said … 206

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let’s go into breakout rooms, and when I got to the breakout rooms, there was nothing there. The office had produced no papers at all, nothing, so it was a real, real, uphill struggle.87

The 1993–97 Forum had a substantially reduced membership than that originally proposed by Kinnock in 1991.88 Alongside this reduction, Labour’s 1992 document Agenda for Change also created a Joint Policy Committee ‘to coordinate policy development and to act as a steering group for the Forum’.89 Owing to concerns about the rising costs of creating the NPF, the 1993–97 ‘interim’ forum contained only ninety-seven members, exactly half the number proposed in 1991. The 1997 proposals bore strong resemblance to the 1991 draft drawn up by Kinnock’s office, increasing the NPF’s membership to 175, with similarities in the vast majority of the areas from which members were drawn onto the Forum. Beyond the increase in membership, the major changes represented the deletion of the women’s organisations section, which was replaced by quotas Table 5

The composition of Labour’s National Policy Forum, 1992–97 1991 Proposal

1992 Agenda for Change

1997 Partnership in Power

NEC Shadow Cabinet PLP EPLP National Trade Unions Councillors CLPs CLP affiliates Regional Labour Parties Women’s organisations Socialist societies Youth BAME Co-op

29

16

18 5 25 14 35 35

6 3 20 8 22 2

32 8 9 6 30 9 54

11 4 4 11 3

11 2 2 4 1

4 2

Total

194

97

175

18

207

3

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across every section, and the delineation of regional and constituency party members in 1997, compared with CLP and CLP affiliates in 1991 (although the combined membership from these groups remained strikingly similar: seventy in 1991 and seventy-two in 1997). Moreover, whilst in the 1991 draft the Shadow Cabinet were only included on an ex-officio basis, in Partnership in Power their membership on the NPF was formalised with the granting of eight government seats. In contrast to his reservations expressed about the 1993 Forum, Sawyer told the 1997 Conference: We are recommending to you that we have a new Policy Forum which will be qualitatively different from the small, fledgling but successful body that has been working in the party since 1993, an extended and expanded forum to give all stakeholders proper representation, a forum meeting regularly throughout the year and throughout the whole of the Parliament to develop the party’s policy programme.90

Similarly, Beckett states that these changes were ‘an improvement, essentially’.91 Yet, whilst the 1997 reforms to the NPF were intended to open up policy-making to the grassroots of the Labour Party, Cruddas has expressed reservations about the reality of the process: ‘It could have always been much better than it was … the  Joint Policy Committee, the National Policy Forum, they could have become genuinely engaging, deliberative processes with a Labour Government and Blair didn’t want to do any of that.’92 Similar arguments have also been expressed by Minkin who regarded the leadership’s eventual use of the changes as an exercise in ‘management’ and Sawyer who recorded his sadness about the end product.93 The Partnership in Power reforms of Labour’s NPF composition have remained largely unchanged for over 20 years, during which time no seats were subtracted from the 1997 model. The numbers of seats granted to the Shadow Cabinet, PLP, EPLP, trade unions, socialist societies, BAME and the Co-operative Party 208

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have not changed as of 2019. The seats apportioned to the NEC remained unaltered until the previously highlighted changes to the Executive’s own composition made in 2007, 2016 and 2017. These, in turn, increased the number of Executive members on the NPF. In addition, councillors and CLPs have both gained one extra seat on the NPF and a variety of small bodies have been granted one or two seats resulting in an overall membership of 203 as of 2019.94 Alongside the NPF, eight Policy Commissions were created by the Partnership in Power reforms, composed of representatives from the government (3), NEC (3) and NPF (4). The commissions focused on: economic and social affairs, trade and industry, environment, transport and the regions, health and welfare, education and employment, crime and justice, democracy and citizenship, and Britain in the world.95 Although the number of Policy Commissions has fluctuated over the years, as of 2018/19 eight commissions remain in the party’s policy-making machinery with broadly similar parameters to those created in 1997.96 Controversially, in September 2018, Labour’s internal Democracy Review recommended that: ‘a new NEC policy committee will replace the Joint Policy Committee and National Policy Forum to have political oversight of the policy-making process’.97 Amidst union opposition, the NEC deferred such proposals, pending the outcome of a longer review.98 The reform of Labour’s policy-making and annual conference Beyond the establishment of the Policy Commissions and the renewal of the NPF, the major changes instituted by Partnership in Power substantially altered the path on which new policies moved through the party. These reforms moved Labour away from the traditional process of constituency party resolutions being submitted to the NEC, or to annual conference, and directed local activity through the Policy Forum and Policy Commission 209

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process. After Partnership in Power, the NEC’s role in Labour’s policy-making cycle was dramatically reduced. Moreover, annual conference ceased to be a serious arena in which Labour policy was debated or amended. In year one of the rolling programme, Partnership in Power stipulated that the Policy Commissions should review Labour’s current policies related to their area of investigation, alongside consulting on future priorities. A draft report would then be presented to the NPF and discussed before being sent to the NEC and annual conference. In year two, a more formal debate was suggested around a draft policy document, arising out of the consultation, which would then be submitted to the NPF by the commissions. At this stage, amendments are invited from the wider party. These changes led to conference having the ability ‘for the first time … to debate and vote on alternative positions within policy statements reflecting different constituencies of opinion within the party’.99 Labour’s JPC was also renewed under the Partnership in Power reforms to act as the steering group for the NPF. The JPC was chaired by the party leader and included eight government representatives alongside eight NEC members, with initially two NPF ‘observers’. This provided Blair with a built-in majority on the increasingly important committee and effectively ensured that the JPC would act as a gatekeeper for the party leadership. Many of the policy functions previously invested in the NEC were transferred to the JPC after the 1997 reforms. The JPC determined the areas of policy to be examined by the new Policy Commissions and ruled on the validity of alternative provisions to NPF reports. Whilst the new system was, in some ways, an advance on previous Labour policy-making, in others it greatly restricted the influence of local members. As Emmanuelle Avril has described, ‘increased membership participation does not necessarily entail membership influence’.100 Following the changes, constituencies could no longer submit resolutions to conference on issues covered 210

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by the Policy Commissions. This both decreased the possibility of embarrassing defeats for the leadership at the annual conference and diluted the impact of model resolutions circulated by pressure groups. The changes also removed the complex process of compositing resolutions from the conference. Sawyer announced at the 1997 Annual Conference that: Instead of the current way of trying to discuss every issue, every year, of working out a complex system of composite resolutions and giving delegates little time to debate and discuss and to be involved with the government, it will be a real opportunity for real engagement and real debate between the government and the party at every single level.101

On the one hand, there was a general acceptance that the compositing process needed reform and thus the Partnership in Power proposals aroused little opposition within the party. On the other, the lack of any space on the conference agenda for constituency viewpoints led to internal opposition. As such, a compromise was agreed allowing one ‘contemporary’ resolution from each CLP to be submitted. As previously highlighted, only three composites against the Partnership in Power changes were placed on the agenda of the 1997 Conference, despite seven being tabled.102 Labour Left Liaison, a group including the CLPD, the Campaign Group of MPs, Labour Party Black Section, and the Labour Women’s Action Committee, attempted to rally support in favour of the three composites, but with little impact.103 Although forty-eight constituencies submitted resolutions calling for a delay in implementing the Partnership in Power reforms, these were composited into one motion, Composite 48, which was easily defeated.104 Internally, a compromise on the ability of constituencies to submit resolutions on issues not covered by the NPF, or Policy Commission reports, was brokered during the consultation to stave off widespread opposition. This idea was introduced by Minkin as a way of ‘discussing such issues as they arose’, rather than waiting for them 211

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to be introduced in the rolling programme process.105 Minkin saw this as a safeguard because he ‘was not clear where Blair was taking the party’.106 The compromise allowed each constituency and affiliated organisation to submit one motion to conference ‘on a topic which is not substantively addressed in the ongoing policy work of the NPF’.107 The Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) would decide: first, whether such motions met the criteria, and second, the number of motions put forward to the conference. The involvement of the CAC ensured the party leadership maintained an element of control over the process. However, this compromise did not satisfy everyone in the party and one of the three composites against Partnership in Power at the 1997 Conference explicitly called for CLPs and trade unions ‘to have the right to submit directly to conference amendments to the draft policy documents’.108 Composite 53 was defeated by 67.48 per cent to 32.52 per cent, but showcased a level of concern about the neutering of the conference’s ability to shape debate.109 At the 1998 Conference, debates were held on four contemporary topics determined by a ballot of delegates.110 The second area of compromise before the final publication of Partnership in Power centred on the ability of the NPF to submit alternative, or minority proposals, to their draft reports to conference. This element was enshrined in Partnership in Power: ‘Where the NPF was unable to reach a consensus view it would be the responsibility of the NPF to include alternative proposals representing different constituencies of opinion.’111 Russell claims that this compromise was necessary in order to secure trade union support for the package of reforms.112 The ability to debate alternative proposals at the party conference, alongside the promise of ‘separate votes on key sections and proposals’, was, on paper, a major advance in the party’s policy-making apparatus.113 It was some irony that Partnership in Power’s promise of future amendable policy documents was voted on by the 1997 Conference on an unamendable basis. In reality, after 1997, the commitment to allowing alternative 212

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proposals meant very little. Initially, at the 1999 Conference, the JPC carried out their gatekeeping role so strictly that no amendment qualified as a minority position.114 However, reflecting on these events, Maggie Jones places the blame on Blair’s office rather than the leader himself: I think Tony was up for it actually as a package, but then people around him started to sort of box him in and say, oh you know although this is meant to be a discursive dialogue between the leadership and the party, don’t worry Tony, we’ll make sure that we deliver at all costs anything you say, which takes away the idea that it’s meant to be a sort of, you know, developing dialogue. So it started off on good terms, that we would all work together to create  these kinds of really thought through policies, but by the time the dead hand of the leader’s office had kind of interfered in it, people got cynical about it, but it was a good idea in the first place.115

The 2000 Conference saw thirty-seven NPF resolutions debated as amendments and the 2001 Conference, seven. Labour’s policy cycle was then rejigged after the 2001 election with all final decisions held over until the end of the three-year cycle at the 2004 Conference. Conclusion The improved opportunities for lay member engagement in the policy process, within both the NEC and the NPF, brought forward by Partnership in Power, alongside the compromises engineered on contemporary motions, were small steps towards a partnership with a reluctant leadership. Seyd convincingly argues that throughout the drafting of the reforms an internal struggle ensued between two models fighting for ascendancy.116 In this regard, Sawyer, Cruddas and Minkin each pushed for a bottom-up package of reforms which emphasised partnership, accountability and gave space for amendments and minority reports. In contrast, 213

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Blair, Gould and Mandelson moved towards a top-down model, in which they held the keys of actual power. The victory of the latter system effectively neutered the Labour Party conference and the NEC of their policy-making powers. Although Blair afforded a high priority to membership engagement, this did not automatically translate to direct lay member involvement in policy formulation. Blair argues: ‘you can see in today’s Labour Party what the alternative is, that you end up with a load of policies that you’re going to struggle with’.117 Even the leader’s key allies recognise Blair’s relative lack of interest in the Partnership in Power project. Sally Morgan reflects: ‘[Blair] wasn’t that engaged in a way … He was very good at spending time with the party and he really loved spending time with party members  … but he was never somebody who was going to be pouring over constitutional stuff or resolutions.’118 Hunter accords with this view, but emphasises that Blair wanted to both listen to the party and to exercise some element of control: ‘I think he was wanting a properly disciplined party – and why not, you can’t win general elections unless you have absolute discipline … as well as membership, increasing members, staying in touch with the membership, being informed by the membership.’119 Similarly, Mandelson explicitly states: ‘it wasn’t about control … yes, it was about management, but not control, and it was to bring the party along with the leadership and the government, rather than cut them loose and face the splits Labour governments had experienced in the past’.120 Blair also refutes that the Partnership in Power process was solely about establishing control: It can be what you want it to be, is the actual answer. There is nothing wrong, by the way, with party leadership exercising a  guiding hand. If you want to call that ‘control’, that’s just another way of doing it. You’re never going to win unless the leadership are doing that because you’ve got to have policies in the end that cohere together and add up to a realistic programme of power.121 214

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Along these lines, Blair’s stated aim for the Partnership in Power reforms was to ensure that ‘routine resolutions didn’t happen just by tabling a motion, but instead grew out of a managed process that required long debate and discussion in policy groups’.122 Key to this was leadership control of the policy pathway. Philip Gould asserted that: ‘Labour must replace competing existing structures with a single chain of command leading directly to the Leader of the party.’123 Once established, Mandelson then saw the significance of the new structures which ‘would not permit [the activists] to take back control’.124 Hence, the control of the conference agenda and a diminution of NEC’s powers became the leadership’s ultimate priority, sometimes to the detriment of genuine partnership with the party’s grassroots. In contrast to the leadership’s positions, senior members of the party staff – including Sawyer, Minkin, and Cruddas – although sharing the leader’s wish to avoid electorally damaging resolutions at conference, also wanted to involve party members at every stage of Labour’s policy-making.125 Yet Cruddas recognises that Sawyer, as Blair’s hand-picked General Secretary, had inherited a difficult situation: Tom was in an invidious position. Lewis, myself and a few others were saying we need to democratise but there was a sort of fork in the road where it could become a genuinely pluralist model, or it could become a model for party management and authoritarianism in the party, and arguably it became more of the latter than the former.126

Privately, Sawyer recorded in his Journal a growing frustration that the final form of Partnership in Power resulted in ‘the sanitisation of party conference and the NEC’ and not the partnership with the leadership he had envisaged because Blair was ‘not the slightest bit interested in that’.127 Minkin’s recollection of the events is similar, stating that ‘the project had to aim at the best that could be done which avoided the Leader going his own way’.128 Cruddas is more scathing in his assessment that: ‘a combination of changed 215

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proposals and the subsequent management of the process conspired to route the process away from any idea of a new pluralism, and towards the altogether more sinister territory of centralisation and control’.129 On reflection, Sawyer does see merit in the Partnership in Power changes, even if they did not take Labour to the final destination he intended: Did I think Partnership in Power was good? Yeah. Are they keeping the Policy Forums? Yeah. They’re keeping them now, even the Corbyn regime, so there must be some good. It is an opportunity for members who are not in the hierarchy to meet with senior politicians and actually talk about policy. I don’t think you can knock that, it’s a great opportunity and I think it works. In order to give them that right, if you like, they lost some of their rights, which was basically to pass a whole load of motions at conference.130

His views chime with the Guardian’s 1997 description of the changes as a ‘trade-off’ between an increasingly disciplined conference and lay member involvement in the policy process.131 The Partnership in Power reforms of Labour’s policy-making route have been quietly criticised by historians. Fielding states that the introduction of the Policy Forum process made Labour ‘more democratic’, but equally recognises that the reforms have ‘downgraded’ Labour’s conference.132 Seyd and Quinn have also criticised the impact on party conference. Quinn criticises the ‘diminution’ of conference, whilst Seyd describes the post-1997 conference as ‘ruthlessly stage managed’.133 Panitch and Leys take this further, stating that the changes ended ‘the era of serious policy contestation’.134 However, the substantial increase in the leadership’s control of the policy-making process was not the main intention of the principal authors of Partnership in Power, even if, in practice, managerial control and the dilution of conference became a reality. Russell has argued that Partnership in Power ‘created far weaker bodies than those originally envisaged’.135 This firmly accords with the views of those who favoured the bottom-up approach. 216

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Partnership in Power, 1995–97

In principle, Partnership in Power created far more opportunities for Labour’s members to engage in the policy process. Blair recalls: ‘The Partnership in Power framework allowed you to interact with the membership.’136 However, the impact of such interaction was debatable. Ann Black, an NEC member from 2000 to 2018 and an NPF member from 1998 to 2018, recognised that whilst the reforms had seen participation in policy debates increase, the impact of the process on influencing policy was ‘much less clear’.137 This opinion accords with Meacher’s view that the NPF was a ‘paper aeroplane device [which] just goes around and around. It talks about things but it can’t do anything.’138 Moreover, Clarke, as party chair in 2001, tried to encourage Blair to allow the NPF a greater remit in policy-making and membership engagement but claimed the Prime Minister ‘didn’t see it as important’.139 Despite these problems, however, the Partnership in Power reforms have largely been preserved throughout the leaderships of Blair, Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn. Partnership in Power established a new link between Labour’s leadership and the party’s membership through the revitalisation of the NPF and the creation of Policy Commissions, however, this relationship was one in which the members played a junior role and the leadership acted as a gatekeeper at every stage of the process. The leadership’s determination to hold the keys of power, by ensuring a built-in majority on the renewed JPC and within the Policy Commissions, alongside their nominees’ alacrity to carry out instructions from above, removed any possibility of real partnership. Whilst the new proposals did not furnish the party leadership with additional tools to obstruct opposition, the removal of constituency motions from the conference agenda, alongside the clandestine meetings of the NPF, allowed the sanitisation of policy-making to take place behind closed doors. Partnership in Power provided a blueprint for a genuine partnership between a Labour government and party members which could avoid public policy confrontations. The fear of dissent from any quarter, 217

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however, led the management of this partnership to be too heavily weighted in favour of Blair’s governments. Whilst the unsatisfactory operation of this partnership did not lead to an immediate divorce between the party’s leadership and its members, Labour’s decline in membership between 1997 and 2009 suggests that many of the party’s ‘partners’ became disengaged after not receiving enough attention.

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Conclusion: The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97

Labour’s modernisation advanced the party from general election defeats in 1979, 1983 and 1987 to a position of electability by 1992 and government in 1997. The changes introduced in this period took Labour from a landslide defeat in 1983, with the party’s 209 MPs their lowest total since 1935, to a landslide victory in 1997, with the return of 418 Labour MPs being the highest number ever recorded for a single party. Labour’s modernisation fundamentally reversed the party’s positions on a several key issues. In constitutional terms, mandatory selection, introduced in 1979, was overturned in 1990. In addition, the electoral college for leadership elections introduced in 1980, weighted in the favour of the trade unions 40/30/30, was realigned to 33/33/33 by Smith’s changes in 1993. Finally, just as the left had altered Labour’s constitution in the 1979–81 period, Blair’s New Labour project sought to place an indelible, modernising mark in Labour’s rule book. The change to Clause IV enshrined Labour’s move away from nationalisation into the party’s constitution. In policy terms, Labour’s opposition to Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community, and council house sales were reversed between 1983 and 1987, whilst the party’s commitments to unilateralism, public ownership and the repeal of Conservative trade union laws were removed in the early phases of the Policy Review between 1987 and 1989. In organisational 219

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terms, the activities of the St Ermins Group, CLV and Solidarity provided a bulwark to further left-wing victories after 1981, but the crucial contribution in establishing organisational stability within the Labour Party was made by the soft-left’s split from their former hard-left colleagues in 1986. This realignment gave Kinnock a firm alliance on the Executive from which to undertake large-scale change within the party. Finally, the Partnership in Power reforms in 1997 fundamentally altered the structure, format and operation of Labour’s NEC, conference and policy-making procedures, making the management of Labour’s internal operations far more controlled and the prospect of dissent far less likely. Whilst the initial fightback against the left’s ascendancy may have been waged by the traditional right of the Labour Party in the years between 1980 and 1983, this battle had little effect on Labour’s organisation, policies or electability. Neither did this fightback give a modernising majority to Labour’s leader, Kinnock, from 1983. It was not until the realignment of Labour’s left in 1986 that the Labour leader could command a stable majority on the party’s NEC. The crucial event in establishing such control was the defection of the soft-left, led by Tom Sawyer, following the Inquiry into Liverpool District Labour Party in 1985–86. The hard-left’s organisational and policy victories in the 1970s and early 1980s were not reversed until the soft-left had moved towards the leadership. Through his majority on the NEC from 1986, Kinnock was able to institute far-reaching policy changes, firmly distancing the party from the left. Between 1987 and 1989 Labour’s Policy Review, authored by Sawyer and Kinnock, reversed Labour’s positions on unilateralism, public ownership and Conservative trade union legislation. However, these changes did not amount to an accommodation with Thatcherism, but were an attempt to refresh Labour’s policies for the twentieth-century whilst keeping within the parameters of the party’s history. In addition, Labour’s use of private polling, market research, focus groups and advertising agencies in 220

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Conclusion

these years allowed the party to more effectively communicate its changes to the public. Yet, despite the changes made during the Kinnock years, Labour’s organisation and constitution remained largely unreformed. Kinnock’s attempt at securing reform of the trade union bloc vote though OMOV failed in 1984, whilst his hybrid OMOV scheme, introduced in 1987, had no impact on the trade unions at party conference, or during leadership elections, and had only minimal impact in candidate selections. The party’s defeat in 1992 and the election of John Smith as Labour leader brought questions about future strategy. Although Smith was steadfast in his pursuit of OMOV, the eventual compromise he brokered, and the ultimately narrow margin of his victory on the issue, led to both a pause on further modernisation, and accusations from the party’s ardent modernisers that Smith was not changing the party far enough, or fast enough. Through Smith’s reforms the unions essentially traded a small share of their conference bloc vote, from 90 to 70 per cent, and a small decrease in their vote within the electoral college for leadership elections, from 40 to 33 per cent, for arguably an increased role in candidate selection. The changes still left the unions with a comfortable majority at the party conference (until further changes in 1995) and an equal share in leadership elections alongside the PLP and CLPs. Although Smith was quite clearly on course to win the next general election at the time of his death, the margin of such a victory was still up for debate, especially considering Labour’s defeat after being ahead in the polls during 1992. Tony Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party made permanent changes to Labour’s constitution and long-lasting alterations to the party’s policy machinery. Such revisions went further than any previous Labour leader had ever successfully ventured. Blair’s change to Clause IV, part 4, of Labour’s constitution provided definitive proof to the party and the public that Labour had fundamentally changed, enshrining modernisation in the party’s rule book. Blair highlights the absolute importance of providing a 221

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definitive symbol that Labour had changed in securing the 1997 victory: We won in 1997 because we were a reasonable party and because people were fed up with the Tories. We won by a landslide in 1997 because we had definitively changed. I think we would have won provided we were reasonable, but I think transforming the party was key to the landslide victory, because that gave a whole swathe of people, some of whom who had voted for Margaret Thatcher, the willingness to come over and vote Labour and we kept those people by and large for three election victories.1

Blair clearly indicates that his changes, going further than those planned by Smith, allowed the public to see a new Labour Party, and not the party which had been defeated at four successive general elections between 1979 and 1992. In the run-up to 1997, with Labour clearly on course for victory, the party’s attention turned towards ensuring that a future Labour government would not suffer the infighting and pitfalls of previous Labour administrations. Blair’s intention was not merely to win a general election, but to win successive elections to allow a Labour government’s changes to become part of the fabric of society: I was always of the view that the great problem of the Labour Party was that of course it could win an election, especially after a long period of Tory government, the question was could it win successive elections and in its hundred-year history it had failed to do that. The longest period we’d ever governed for was six years and we’d only ever won one full term of government. I was convinced that you couldn’t change the country unless you could win successive elections and to do that you had to build a coalition where you really were securing a new vote and anchoring it in a Labour government, that was the reason why you had to show why the Labour Party had changed fundamentally.2

Labour’s previous period of office from 1974 to 1979 had been riven with internal strife. These disagreements, between the party’s left and the government, and between the government and the unions, played out on a public stage, terminally damaging 222

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Conclusion

Labour’s electoral prospects in 1979 and beyond. Consequently, Blair was determined to avoid a repeat. His selection for General Secretary, Tom Sawyer, was rare amongst the leader’s allies since he had experienced the 1974–79 government as an active party member and union official. Using this knowledge, Sawyer’s flagship reform during his period of office, 1994–98, was Partnership in Power. This package of reforms made the NEC’s structure more representative of the wider party by: increasing the number of women and banning MPs from standing as constituency representatives; streamlining the party conference; removing the ability for constituencies to submit an unlimited number of motions; revolutionising the party’s policy-making pathway; and rejuvenating the NPF. Although these reforms prevented widespread, public disagreements between the party’s grassroots and the unions, and Blair’s Labour government, the exercise was carried out with such alarming robustness that, in effect, it stifled debate. Nevertheless, in the exercise’s stated aim of maintaining a Labour government and securing the re-election of that government, Partnership in Power was ultimately successful. The modernisation of the Labour Party had no single author, or single point of origin. Without the fightback of the traditional right in the early 1980s, there might not have been a party left to save. Without the defection of the soft-left in 1986 there would have been no majority for any modernising changes in the Kinnock years. Without Kinnock’s policy reforms Labour would have been unable to re-establish electability, and without Smith’s move towards One Member, One Vote the party would have remained, in the eyes of the public, in the pockets of the trade unions. All these forces played significant roles in the modernisation of the Labour Party. Although such changes put Labour on course for a general election victory, crucially, Blair’s modernisation allowed the party to be seen as a fundamentally new force, reflective of late twentieth and early twenty-first century politics, and firmly in tune with the British electorate. Without Blair’s change to Clause IV 223

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Labour could not prove, beyond doubt, to the public that the party had changed from the days of the old left, or the 1983 manifesto. Without the Partnership in Power reforms the all too familiar attacks on Labour governments from the left, and from some within the trade unions, could have doomed Labour to another one-term government. Put simply, Blair’s modernisation built and extended the Kinnock and Smith reforms and provided the apparatus for Labour to win three successive general elections. Yet, the failure to build on both the modernisation of the party and the country in the latter years of New Labour’s term of office led, at the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections, to the search for fundamentally new answers in Labour’s quest to return to government.

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Notes

Introduction 1 Peter Mandelson, The Blair Revolution Revisited (London: Politico’s, 2002); Peter Mandelson, The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour (London: Harper Press, 2010); Alastair Campbell, Diaries: Volume One, Prelude to Power (London: Hutchinson, 2010); and Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics For Ever (London: Little, Brown and Company, 2011). 2 Stephen Driver and Luke Martell, New Labour: Politics After Thatcherism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999); Colin Hay, The Political Economy of New Labour: Labouring Under False Pretences (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); Richard Heffernan, New Labour and Thatcherism (Hampshire: Macmillan, 2000); Tudor Jones, Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell to Blair (London: Routledge, 1996). 3 Meg Russell, Building New Labour: The Politics of Party Organisation (London: Palgrave, 2005); Lewis Minkin, The Blair Supremacy: A Study in the Politics of Labour’s Party Management (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); Thomas Quinn, Modernising the Labour Party: Organisational Change since 1983 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Gerald Taylor, Labour’s Renewal? The Policy Review and Beyond (London: Palgrave, 1997). 4 Colin Hughes and Patrick Wintour, Labour Rebuilt: The New Model Party (London: Fourth Estate, 1990), p. 205. 5 Mark Wickham-Jones, Economic Strategy and the Labour Party: Politics and Policy Making (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 1. 6 Colin Hay, ‘Labour’s Thatcherite Revisionism: Playing the “Politics of Catch-Up”’, Political Studies, 42:4 (1994), pp. 700–7. 7 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, pp. 35–47; Martin Smith, ‘Continuity and Change in Labour Party Policy’, in Martin Smith and Joanne Spears (eds), The Changing Labour Party (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 217. 8 Minkin, Blair Supremacy; Russell, Building New Labour.

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Notes: Introduction 9 Adam Lent, ‘Labour’s Transformation: Searching for the Point of Origin’, Politics, 17:1 (1997), p. 9. 10 This view builds on the work of Richard Heffernan’s response to Lent in  his 1998 article: Richard Heffernan, ‘Labour’s Transformation: A  Stage Process with No Single Point of Origin’, Politics, 18:2 (1998), pp. 101–6. 11 Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann, Safety First: The Making of New Labour (London: Granta Books, 1997); James Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts (London: Routledge, 2004); Steven Fielding, The Labour Party: Continuity and Change in the Making of New Labour (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Gould, Unfinished Revolution; Dianne Hayter, Fightback! Labour’s Traditional Right in the 1970s and 1980s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005); Richard Heffernan and Mike Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Inside Kinnock’s Labour Party (London: Verso Books, 1992); Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt; Andy McSmith, Faces of Labour: The Inside Story (London: Verso Books, 1997); Minkin, The Blair Supremacy; Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labour (London: Verso, 2001); Patrick Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (London: Palgrave, 1987); Martin Smith and Joanna Spear, The Changing Labour Party (London: Routledge, 1992); Eric Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979: Crisis and Transformation (London: Routledge, 1994); David Osler, The Labour Party PLC: The Truth Behind New Labour as a Party of Business (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2002); Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?; Hilary Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties (London: Hogarth Press, 1987); Dominic Wring, The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 12 On Tony Blair: Tom Bower, Broken Vows: Tony Blair, The Tragedy of Power (London: Faber & Faber, 2016); Francis Beckett and David Hencke, The Survivor (London: Aurum Press, 2005); John Rentoul, Tony Blair (London: Little, Brown and Company, 2001); Peter Riddell, The Unfulfilled Prime Minister: Tony Blair’s Quest for a Legacy (London: Politico’s, 2005) Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: Simon & Schuster, 2005); Jon Sopel, The Moderniser (London: Bantam, 1995); Philip Stevens, Tony Blair (London: Politico’s, 2004); on Gordon Brown: Francis Beckett, Gordon Brown: Past, Present and Future (London: Haus Books, 2007); Tom Bower, Gordon Brown: Prime Minister (London: Harper Perennial, 2007); Paul Routledge, Gordon Brown: The Biography (London: Pocket Books, 1998); on Neil Kinnock: George Drower, Kinnock: A Biography (London: The Publishing Corporation, 1994); Robert Harris, The Making of Neil Kinnock (London: Faber & Faber, 1984); Eileen Jones, Neil Kinnock (London: Robert Hale, 1994); Michael Leapman, Kinnock (London: Unwin Hyman, 1987); Martin Westlake, Kinnock (London: Little, Brown and Company, 2001); on Peter Mandelson: Donald MacIntyre, Mandelson and the Making of New Labour (London: Harper Collins, 2000); Paul Routledge, Mandy (London:

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13

14 15

16 17

18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25

Pocket Books, 1999); on John Smith: Andy McSmith, John Smith: A Life 1938–1994 (London: Mandarin, 1993); Mark Stuart, John Smith: A Life (London: Politico’s, 2005). Gordon Brown, My Life, Our Times (London: Bodley Head, 2017); Tony Blair, A Journey (London: Hutchinson, 2010); Joyce Gould, Witchfinder General (London: Biteback, 2016); David Blunkett, The Blunkett Tapes: My Life in the Bear Pit (London: Bloomsbury, 2006); David Blunkett, On a Clear Day (London: Michael O’Mara, 2002); Campbell, Diaries; John Prescott, Docks to Downing Street (London: Headline Review, 2009); Jack Straw, Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor (London: Pan, 2013); Mandelson, The Third Man; Chris Mullin, A Walk on Part: Diaries 1994–1999 (London: Profile, 2012); Giles Radice, Diaries 1980–2001 (London: W&N, 2004); Jonathan Powell, The New Machiavelli (London: Vintage, 2011). Lord Prescott, Interview with Author, 27 July 2018; Labour Party, Report of 1995 Annual Conference (London: Labour Party, 1995), p. 96. Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts; Steven Fielding, Labour: Decline and Renewal (London: Baseline, 1999); Jones, Remaking the Labour Party; Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism; Gould, Unfinished Revolution. Hayter, Fightback! David Kogan and Maurice Kogan, The Battle for the Labour Party (London: Kogan Page, 1982); Austin Mitchell, Four Years in the Death of the Labour Party (London: Methuen, 1983); Seyd, The Rise and Fall; Paul Whiteley, The Labour Party in Crisis (London: Methuen, 1983). Taylor, Labour’s Renewal. Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt. Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws. Lord Kinnock, Interview with Author, 27 March 2018. Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 8; Bob Fryer and Stephen Williams, Leadership and Democracy: The History of the National Union of Public Employees: Volume 2 1928–1993 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2011), p.  449; Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 269; McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 121; Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws, p. 66. Ivor Crewe, ‘The Policy Agenda: A New Thatcherite Consensus?’, Contemporary Record, 3:3 (1990), p. 7; David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1992 (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 61; Martin Smith, ‘Understanding the “Politics of Catch-up”: The Modernization of the Labour Party’, Political Studies, 42:4 (1994), pp. 711, 714. Hay, ‘Labour’s Thatcherite Revisionism’, p. 700; Heffernan, New Labour and Thatcherism, p. 178. Stephen Driver and Luke Martell, ‘From Old Labour to New Labour: A Comment on Rubinstein’, Politics, 21:1 (2001), p. 50.

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Notes: Introduction 26 Keith Alderman and Neil Carter, ‘The Labour Party and the Trade Unions: Loosening the Ties’, Parliamentary Affairs, 47:3 (1994), pp. 321–7; Mark Wickham-Jones, ‘Introducing OMOV: The Labour Party–Trade Union Review Group and the 1994 Leadership Contest’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 52:1 (2014), pp. 33–56; Mark Wickham-Jones, ‘John Smith’s Settlement? The Work of the 1992–93 Labour Party–Trade Union Links Review Group’, Industrial Relations Journal, 47:1 (2016), pp. 21–45. 27 Wickham-Jones, ‘John Smith’s Settlement’, p. 21. 28 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, pp. 82–114. 29 Fielding, Labour: Decline and Renewal, p. 75; James Naughtie, The Rivals: Blair and Brown: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage (London: Fourth Estate, 2001), p. 47; Quinn, Modernising the Labour Party, p. 134. 30 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 61; Wickham-Jones, ‘Introducing OMOV’, p. 33. 31 Jennifer Lees-Marshment, Political Marketing and British Political Parties (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 189; Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 31. 32 Mullin, Walk on Part, p. 26; Prescott, Docks to Downing Street, p. 191; Clare Short, An Honourable Deception? New Labour, Iraq and the Misuse of Power (London: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 45. 33 Minkin, Blair Supremacy; Russell, Building New Labour. 34 Patrick Seyd, ‘Labour Government–Party Relationships: Maturity or Marginalisation?’ in Anthony King (ed.), Britain at the Polls 2001 (New York: Chatham House, 2002), pp. 95–116; Patrick Seyd, ‘New Parties/ New Politics? A Case Study of the British Labour Party’, Party Politics, 5:3 (1999), pp. 383–405. 35 Fielding, Labour: Decline and Renewal, p. 122; Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism, p. 283; Patrick Seyd, ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’, in Anthony King (ed.), New Labour Triumphs, Britain at the Polls 1997 (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1998), p. 66; Quinn, Modernising the Labour Party, p. 63. 36 Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 51, 193; Blunkett, On a Clear Day, p.  181; Colin Brown, Prescott: The Biography (London: Politico’s, 2005), p.  265; Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, pp. 270–3; Liz Davies, Through the Looking Glass: A Dissenter inside New Labour (London: Verso, 2001), pp.  77–8; Fielding, The Labour Party, pp. 130–5; Robert Garner and Richard Kelly, British Political Parties Today (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 135; Gould, Unfinished Revolution, pp. 88–9; John Golding, Hammer of the Left (London: Politico’s, 2003), p. 3; Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws, pp. 59, 64–6; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, pp. 8–9, 41–6; Eileen Jones, Kinnock, pp. 85–6; Leapman,  Kinnock, pp.  113–17; Mandelson, Third Man, p. 105; David

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37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44

45

Marsh, The New Politics of British Trade Unionism: Union Power and the Thatcher Legacy (Hampshire: Macmillan,  1992), pp.  158–9; McSmith, Faces of Labour, pp. 159–60; Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 56; Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism, pp. 212–13; Rentoul, Blair, p. 139; Shaw, Labour Since 1979, pp.  39–40; Sopel, Blair, p. 135; Stuart, John Smith, p. 321; Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, pp. 43–52; Westlake, Kinnock, p. 339. Greg Rosen, ‘Tom Sawyer (Lord Sawyer of Darlington)’, in Greg Rosen, Dictionary of Labour Biography (London: Politico’s, 2001), p. 500. Tony Blair, Interview with Author, 17 April 2019; Charles Clarke, Interview with Author, 18 May 2018; Anji Hunter, Interview with Author, 13 March 2019; Lord Kinnock, Interview with Author, 27 March 2018; Baroness Morgan, Interview with Author, 31 July 2018; Lord Mandelson, Interview with Author 18 March 2018; Dennis Skinner, Interview with Author, 21 May 2018. Blair, Interview; Kinnock, Interview. Seyd, ‘Labour Government–Party Relationships’, p. 114n. ‘How we fought corruption in our ranks’, The Independent, 10 September 1998. Lord Sawyer, Journals 1982–1998, Private Collection. Lord Tom Sawyer Archive, Teesside University. Kenneth Morgan, ‘The Historical Roots of New Labour’, History Today, 48:10 (1998); Labour Party, Report of the 1994 Annual Conference and 1995 Special Conference (London: Labour Party, 1995), p. 106. Labour Party, Labour Party Rule Book 2018 (London: Labour Party, 2018), pp. 5, 20–1; ‘Revealed: Labour’s latest democracy review proposals’, LabourList, 19 July 2018 [https://labourlist.org/2018/07/revealedlabours-latest-democracy-review-proposals/] (accessed 1 May 2019); ‘Jeremy Corbyn risks new rift with Labour moderate after opening door to mandatory reselection of MPs’, The Telegraph, 19 January 2018; ‘Jeremy Corbyn supporters launch campaign to bring back Labour’s historic Clause IV’, The Independent, 27 February 2018.

Chapter 1 1 2 3 4

Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 312. Russell, Building New Labour, p. 12. Kogan and Kogan, Battle for the Labour Party, p. 26. Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘Statement of Aims’, 1973, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy Archive, Bishopsgate Institute, London, CLPD/404; Patrick Seyd, ‘The Labour Left’, PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 1987, p. 207.

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Notes: Chapter 1 5 Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism, p. 139. 6 Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘Priorities for 1979’, CLPD Archive, CLPD/404, p. 1. 7 Eric Shaw, Discipline and Discord in the Labour Party (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 185. 8 ‘Labour MP told to retire’, Guardian, 20 June 1972, p. 1. 9 Labour Party, NEC Report 1973 (London: Labour Party, 1973), pp. 6–7, 12–13. 10 Labour Party, NEC Report 1974 (London: Labour Party, 1974), pp. 23–4. 11 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1974 (London: Labour Party, 1974), pp. 325–35. 12 Ibid., p. 322. 13 Ibid., p. 170. 14 Ibid., p. 181. 15 Ibid., p. 182. 16 Ian Mikardo, Back-Bencher (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), p. 190. 17 Labour Party, Conference 1974, p. 181. 18 Mikardo, Back-Bencher, p. 190. 19 Shaw, Discipline and Discord, pp. 186, 192. 20 Labour Party, Conference 1974, p. 342; Seyd, Rise and Fall, p. 210. 21 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 36. 22 Kogan and Kogan, Battle for the Labour Party, p. 32. 23 Ibid., p. 36. 24 ‘Wilson goes all the way for Reg’, Guardian, 22 July 1975, p. 1. 25 Kogan and Kogan, Battle for the Labour Party, p. 34. 26 Harris, The Making of Neil Kinnock, p. 81. 27 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 26 November 1975, LHASC. 28 Labour Party, Organisation Sub-Committee Minutes, 26 January 1976, LHASC. 29 ‘Labour group plans protest’, Guardian, 27 September 1976, p. 20. 30 Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 196. 31 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1977 (London: Labour Party, 1977), p. 163. 32 Ibid., p. 324. 33 Alison Young, The Reselection of MPs (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), p. 107. 34 Labour Party, Conference 1977, p. 324. 35 Ibid. 36 Mikardo, Back-Bencher, p. 192. 37 Labour Party, ‘Report of Working Party on Re-Selection of Members of Parliament’, in Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference 1979 (London: Labour Party, 1979), pp. 445–6. 38 Ibid., pp. 447–9.

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Notes: Chapter 1 39 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1978 (London: Labour Party, 1978), p. 281. 40 ‘Labour set for re-selection row’, Guardian, 2 October 1978, p. 22. 41 Seyd, Rise and Fall of Labour Left, p. 107. 42 Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80 (London: Random House, 1990), p. 357. 43 ‘Tumult over vote muddle’, Guardian, 5 October 1978, p. 6. 44 Labour Party, Conference 1979, p. 282. 45 Lewis Minkin, The Contentious Alliance: Trade Unions and the Labour Party (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), p. 195. 46 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 28 February 1979, LHASC. 47 Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979, p. 45; Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 199. 48 Timothy Heppell, Choosing the Labour Leader: Labour Party Leadership Elections from Wilson to Brown (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), p. 68. 49 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 25 July 1979, LHASC. 50 Labour Party, Conference 1979, p. 270. 51 Ibid., pp. 271, 310–12. 52 Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘AGM 1980: Secretary’s Report’, CLPD Archive, CLPD/199, p. 1. 53 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 30 September 1979, LHASC; Labour Party, Conference 1979, pp. 250–1; Jim Mortimer, A Life on the Left (Sussex: The Book Guild, 1998), p. 352. 54 Golding, Hammer of the Left, p. 119. 55 Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (London: Victor Gollancz, 1994), p. 440. 56 Labour Party, ‘Selection of Parliamentary Candidates: Report of the NEC Consultation’, LHASC, p. 2; Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1990 (London: Labour Party, 1990), p. 21. 57 Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘AGM 1979: Secretary’s Report’, CLPD Archive, CLPD/199, p. 6. 58 Ross Young, ‘The Labour Party and the Labour Left’, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2001, p. 189. 59 Rank and File Mobilising Committee for Labour Democracy, ‘Labour Party: Democracy in Danger’, 1980, CLPD Archive, CLPD/308, p. 1. 60 Frank Allaun, Ian Mikardo and Jim Sillars, Labour: Party or Puppet? (London: Tribune Group, 1972), pp. 3, 12. 61 Leonard P. Stark, Choosing a Leader: Party Leadership Contests in Britain from Macmillan to Blair (Hampshire: Macmillan, 1996), p. 42; Hayter, Fightback!, p. 41. 62 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1976 (London: Labour Party, 1976), p. 212. 63 Labour Party, Conference 1977, pp. 380–1. 64 Harris, The Making of Neil Kinnock, p. 138.

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65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Labour Party, Conference 1977, pp. 379–80; Hayter, Fightback!, p. 41. Labour Party, Conference 1978, p. 271. Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 511. Labour Party, Conference 1979, p. 252. Ibid., pp. 262, 271. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 45. Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws, p. 13. David Owen, Time to Declare (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 425; Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 551. Ivor Crewe, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 32. Kenneth Morgan, Michael Foot: A Life (London: Harper Perennial, 2008), p. 375. The percentages presented in the text are always in the order of PLP– Constituencies–Trade Unions. So 33/33/33 refers to 33.3 per cent each for the PLP, Constituencies and Trade Unions. 25/25/50 refers to 25 per cent to the PLP, 25 per cent to the Constituencies, and 50 per cent to the Trade Unions. Tony Benn, End of an Era: Diaries: 1980–90 (London: Random House, 1992), p. 9. Mitchell, Four Years, p. 41. Benn, End of an Era, p. 10. Baroness Gould, Interview with Author, 29 November 2018. Owen, Time to Declare, p. 441. Heppell, Choosing the Labour Leader, p. 69. Labour Party, Organisation Sub-Committee Minutes, 7 July 1980, LHASC; ‘NEC Supports Call for Electoral College’, Tribune, 11 July 1980. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 23 July 1980, LHASC. Stark, Choosing a Leader, pp. 48–9. Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1980 (London: Labour Party, 1980), pp. 152, 191. Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘AGM 1980: Secretary’s Report’, p. 1. Ibid., p. 191. Benn, End of an Era, pp. 42–3. Ibid. Ibid., p. 37. Heppell, Choosing the Labour Leader, p. 8. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 3 December 1980, LHASC. Labour Party, Labour Weekly, 23 January 1981, LHASC, p. 7. Hayter, Fightback!, p. 14. ‘Cheers after votes switch puts unions ahead in surprise result’, Guardian, 26 January 1981, p. 4.

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Notes: Chapter 1 96 Mitchell, Four Years, p. 45. 97 Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘AGM 1981: Secretary’s Report’, CLPD Archive, CLPD/39, p. 1. 98 Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘Emergency: Our only chance of victory’, 16 January 1981, CLPD Archive, CLPD/33, p. 1. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 ‘AUEW may hand victory to Labour Left’, Guardian, 21 January 1981, p. 24. 102 Kogan and Kogan, Battle for the Labour Party, p. 105. 103 Labour Party, ‘The Constitution and Standing Orders of the Labour Party’, in Labour Party, Conference 1979, p. 468. 104 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1973 (London: Labour Party, 1973), p. 167. 105 Crewe, SDP, p. 31. 106 Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 496. 107 Whiteley, The Labour Party in Crisis, p. 3. 108 Seyd, Rise and Fall of the Labour Left, p. 123. 109 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 25 July 1979, LHASC; Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 523. 110 Harris, Kinnock, p. 132; Kogan and Kogan, Battle for the Labour Party, p. 65. 111 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 30 September 1979, LHASC; Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 542. 112 Labour Party, Conference 1979, p. 275. 113 Ibid., p. 282. 114 Kogan and Kogan, Battle for the Labour Party, p. 83. 115 Labour Party, Conference 1980, p. 148. 116 Ibid., p. 215. 117 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1981 (London: Labour Party, 1981), p. 210. 118 Ibid., p. 212. 119 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 48. 120 Mitchell, Four Years, p. 45. 121 See Christopher Massey, ‘The Militant Tendency and Entrism in the Labour Party’, in Matthew Worley and Evan Smith, Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 238–57. 122 Michael Crick, The March of Militant (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), 2; Gould, Witchfinder General, p. 214. 123 Labour Party, Organisation Sub-Committee Minutes, 12 November 1975; Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 23 April 1980, LHASC. 124 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 26 November 1975; Jones, Foot, p. 493. 125 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 26 January 1977, LHASC.

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Notes: Chapter 1 126 Labour Party, ‘Report of the Special Committee to Examine Documents on Entrism’, 1977, Militant Tendency Archive, Modern Record Centre, Warwick, 601/C/3/4/5; see also Labour Party, Conference 1977, pp. 383–5. 127 Daily Telegraph, 21 March 1980; Daily Mail, 21 March 1980. 128 Labour Party, Organisation Sub-Committee Minutes, 9 December 1981, LHASC. 129 Ibid.; Hayter, Fightback!, p. 40. 130 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 16 December 1981, LHASC. 131 Labour Party, ‘Militant Tendency Report’, 1982, LHASC, pp. 2–3. 132 Ibid., p. 3. 133 Panitch and Leys, Parliamentary Socialism, p. 203. 134 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 23 June 1982, LHASC; Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1982 (Labour Party: London, 1982), p. 52. 135 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 15 December 1982, LHASC. 136 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 23 February 1983, LHASC; Golding, Hammer of the Left, p. 375. 137 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference 1980, pp. 297–9. 138 Owen, Time to Declare, p. 424. 139 Heppell, Choosing the Labour Leader, p. 82. 140 Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979, p. 16. 141 Owen, Time to Declare, p. 458. 142 Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (London: Pan Books, 1991), p. 531. 143 Shirley Williams, Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography (London: Virago, 2009), p. 283. 144 Bill Rodgers, Fourth Among Equals (London: Politico’s, 2000), p. 208. 145 Crewe, SDP, p. 76. 146 Owen, Time to Declare, p. 480. 147 Crewe, SDP, p. 118. 148 ‘Council for Social Democracy’, Guardian, 5 February 1981, p. 3. 149 Ibid. 150 Crewe, SDP, p. 104. 151 Ibid., p. 133. 152 Rodgers, Fourth Among Equals, p. 264. 153 Lord Whitty, Interview with Author, 28 November 2018. 154 Heppell, Choosing the Labour Leader, p. 83. 155 David Kogan, Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), p. 42. 156 ‘Hattersley urges fightback’, Guardian, 26 January 1981, p. 4. 157 Hayter, Fightback!, p. 5. 158 Ibid., p. 130.

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Notes: Chapter 2 159 Labour Solidarity Campaign, ‘Statement by 150 Labour MPs’, Hattersley Archive, Hull History Centre, DRH/1/17; ‘Foot leads Labour MPs counter-attack on Left’, Guardian, 30 January 1981, p. 1. 160 ‘Labour MPs find safety in numbers’, Guardian, 19 February 1981, p. 2. 161 Labour Solidarity Campaign, ‘Future of the Labour Solidarity Campaign’, 11 November 1981, Roy Hattersley Archive, Hull History Centre, DRH/1/2. 162 Dianne Hayter, ‘St Ermins Group’, Dictionary of National Biography [https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/96690] (accessed 1 May 2019). 163 Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 195. 164 Ibid. 165 Hayter, Fightback!, p. 102. 166 Benn, End of an Era, pp. 70–1. 167 Kogan, Protest and Power, p. 32. 168 Hayter, Fightback!, p. 103; Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 50. 169 Baroness Hayter, Interview with Author, 29 January 2019. 170 Hayter, Fightback!, p. 104. 171 Benn, End of an Era, p. 174. 172 Andrew Taylor, Trade Unions and the Labour Party (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 143. 173 Labour Party, ‘NEC/TULV Conference’, 5–6 January 1982, LHASC. 174 Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, ‘Secretary’s Statement to the 1981 AGM’, CLPD Archive, CLPD/168, p. 1. 175 Steve Ludlam, ‘The Making of New Labour’, in Steve Ludlam and Martin Smith, New Labour in Government (London: Macmillan, 2001), p. 28. 176 Hayter, Fightback!, p. 184. 177 Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 138. 178 Hayter, Fightback!, p. 189.

Chapter 2 1 Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979, p. 38. 2 Neil Kinnock, ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, Contemporary Record, 8:3 (1994), p. 543. 3 Whitty, Interview. 4 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 8; Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 449; Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 269; Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws, p. 66; McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 121. 5 Michael Crick, Militant (London: Biteback, 2016); Peter Shipley, The Militant Tendency: Trotskyism in the Labour Party (London: Foreign Affairs Publishing, 1983); Peter Taaffe, The Rise of Militant (London: Militant

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6 7

8

9

10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20

21 22

Publications, 1995); Diane Frost and Peter North, Militant Liverpool: A City on the Edge (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013); Derek Hatton, Inside Left (London: Bloomsbury, 1988); Peter Kilfoyle, Left Behind: Lessons from Labour’s Heartland (London: Politico’s, 2000); Michael Parkinson, Liverpool on the Brink: One City’s Struggle against Government Cuts (Berkshire: Policy Journals, 1985); Neil Pye, ‘Militant’s Laboratory: Liverpool City Council’s Struggle with the Thatcher Government’, in Jonathan David and Rohan McWilliam (eds), Labour and the Left in the 1980s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017); Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn, Liverpool: A City that Dared to Fight (London: Fortress, 1988). Lord Sawyer, Interview with Author, 6 November 2015. The Times, 29 September 1982; Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 56; Greg Rosen, Old Labour to New: The Dreams that Inspired, the Battles that Divided (London: Politico’s, 2005), p. 447. Lord Blunkett, Interview with Author, 12 November 2018; Brian Brivati and Richard Heffernan, The Labour Party: A Centenary History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p. 123. Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 193; Crick, Militant, p. 279; Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws, p. 66; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 9; Jones, Kinnock, p. 85; McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 171; Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism, p. 212; Eric Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1945 (London: Blackwell, 1996), p. 174. ‘Midwife of the soft left’, The Observer, 8 September 1991, p. 19. Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 468. See note 9. Clarke, Interview. Kinnock, Interview. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, October 1983 to October 1986, LHASC; Tribune, 1983–86; Hayter, Fightback!, p. 117–23; Sawyer, Journal; Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 254–61; Kinnock, Interview; Clarke, Interview; Sawyer, Interview; Lord Whitty, Interview. ‘Kinnock holds NEC balance’, Tribune, 7 October 1983 p. 5. Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 254. ‘Right struck the hardest bargain at Blackpool’, Tribune, 12 October 1984, p. 3. Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1984 (London: Labour Party, 1984), pp. 66–7. Dianne Hayter, ‘The Fightback of the Traditional Right in the Labour Party 1979 to 1987’, PhD thesis, Queen Mary, University of London (2004), p. 154. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 26 March 1986, LHASC. Sawyer, Interview.

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Notes: Chapter 2 23 ‘How we fought corruption in our ranks’, The Independent, 10 September 1998. 24 Sawyer, Journal, 9 October 1984. 25 Benn, End of an Era, p. 297. 26 Sawyer, Journal, 28 December 1984. 27 Ibid. 28 Skinner, Interview. 29 Crick, Militant, p. 279. 30 Tony Benn, Free at Last: Diaries 1991–2001 (London: Arrow Books, 2003), p. 39. 31 Whitty, Interview. 32 Sawyer, Journal, 28 November 1984. 33 Ibid. 34 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 28 November 1984, LHASC. 35 Sawyer, Journal, 28 November 1984; Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 28 November 1984; LHASC. 36 Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 449. 37 Sawyer, Journal, 3 December 1984. 38 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 12 December 1984, LHASC. 39 Blunkett, Interview; Sawyer, Journal, 12 December 1984. 40 Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979, p. 39; NEC Minutes, 12 December 1984, LHASC. 41 Sawyer, Interview. 42 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 12 December 1984, LHASC. 43 Benn, End of an Era, p. 399. 44 Sawyer, Journal, 12 December 1984. 45 Sawyer, Journal, 28 December 1984. 46 Sawyer, Journal, 17 December 1984. 47 Ibid. 48 ‘Working to win’, Tribune, 4 January 1985, p. 1. ‘Far left reacts fiercely to Tribune’s about-turn’, Guardian, 11 January 1985. 49 ‘Working to win’, Tribune, 4 January 1985. 50 Ibid. 51 Sawyer, Journal, 1 January 1985. 52 Patrick Seyd, ‘The dawn of the left’s new realists’, Guardian, 25 April 1985, p. 9; Patrick Seyd, ‘Bennism without Benn’, New Socialist, 27 May 1985, p. 6. 53 Ibid. 54 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 29 September 1985, LHASC. 55 Eric Heffer, Labour’s Future: Socialist or SDP Mark 2? (London: Verso, 1983), p. 74; Benn, End of an Era, p. 423. 56 Sawyer, Journal, 7 October 1985. 57 Skinner, Interview.

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Massey, ‘The Militant Tendency’, p. 238. Benn, End of an Era, p. 275. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 22 February 1983, LHASC. Ibid. Golding, Hammer of the Left, p. 372. Tom Sawyer, ‘Seventh meeting of the Labour Party NEC held on 23 February 1983’, Sawyer Archive. Golding, Hammer of the Left, p. 372. Harry Smith, Interview with Author, 18 February 2019. John Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics (Blackwell: London, 1987), p. 209. Peter Kilfoyle, Interview with Author, 14 December 2018. Crick, Militant, p. 340. Ibid., p. viii. Frost and North, Militant Liverpool, p. 83. Blunkett, Interview. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 27 March 1985, LHASC. Sawyer, Journal, 23 March 1985. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 25 September 1985, LHASC. Benn, End of an Era, p. 422. Kinnock, Interview. Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1985 (London: Labour Party, 1985), p. 120. Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 261. Blunkett, Interview. Heffer, Labour’s Future, p. 74. Kinnock, Interview. Blunkett, On a Clear Day, p. 157. Labour Party, Conference 1985, p. 177. Kenneth Baker, The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics (London: Faber & Faber, 1993), p. 109. Blunkett, Interview. Shaw, Discipline and Discord, pp. 262–3. Ron Todd to Neil Kinnock, 26 November 1985; David Basnett to Larry Whitty, 26 November 1985. ‘How we fought corruption in our ranks’, The Independent, 10 September 1998; Blunkett, Interview. Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 269; Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 447; Leapman, Kinnock, p. 113. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 27 November 198, LHASC. Labour Party, ‘NEC – Emergency Resolution 1. Liverpool City Council’, 27 November 1985, Sawyer Archive. Kinnock, Interview.

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93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124

Hayter, ‘The Fightback of the Traditional Right’, p. 154. Sawyer, Journal, 28 November 1985. Whitty, Interview. Sawyer to Rodney Bickerstaffe, ‘Liverpool’, 29 November 1985, Sawyer Archive. Crick, Militant, p. 293. Tony Mulhearn, Interview with Author, 14 December 2018. Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 448. Wise voted against the editorial board expulsions in 1983 (NEC Minutes, 22 February 1983, LHASC). Boothroyd and Turnock had voted to expel the editorial board in 1983 (NEC Minutes, 22 February 1983), whilst all four had voted against Heffer’s September 1985 motion supporting Liverpool Council (NEC Minutes, 25 September 1985). Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 270. McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 173. Sawyer, Interview. Ian Lowes, Interview with Author, 18 February 2019. Mulhearn, Interview. Jane Kennedy, Interview with Author, 8 November 2018. Ibid. Sawyer, Journal, 16 January 1986. Gould, Interview. Taaffe and Mulhearn, Liverpool, p. 360. David Blunkett, Labour Weekly, 21 Feb 1986; Quoted in Eric Shaw, Discipline and Discord, p. 270. Labour Party, ‘Investigation into Liverpool District Party: Minority Report Submitted by Margaret Beckett and Audrey Wise’ (February 1986), Sawyer Archive. Ibid., p. 12. Dame Beckett, Interview with Author, 24 October 2018. ‘Labour in Liverpool: How Power was Concentrated’, New Socialist, April 1988, p. 13. Labour Party, ‘Investigation into the Liverpool District Labour Party: Report’, Sawyer Archive, p. 36. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 44. Betty Boothroyd, The Autobiography (London: Century, 2001), p. 118. Labour Party, ‘Investigation into the Liverpool District Labour Party: Report’, p. 44. Crick, Militant, p. 295. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 26 February 1986, LHASC. Sawyer, Journal, 28 February 1986.

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Notes: Chapter 2 125 Blunkett, Interview. 126 Royal Courts of Justice, ‘The Rt Hon. The Vice-Chancellor between Dowling & Ors – and – Whitty & Ors’, 25 March 1986, Sawyer Archive, p. 21. 127 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 26 March 1986, LHASC. 128 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 18 April 1986, LHASC. 129 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 21 May 1986, LHASC. 130 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 12 June 1986, LHASC. 131 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 21 May 1986 to 27 October 1986, LHASC. 132 ‘NEC Election Hustings’, Tribune, 6 September 1985, pp. 6–7; ‘NEC Elections’, Tribune, 12 September 1986, pp. 6–7; McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 175. 133 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1986 (London: Labour Party, 1986), p. 34. 134 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1983 (London: Labour Party, 1983), p. 66; Labour Party, Conference 1986, p. 13. 135 Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 269; Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 449; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 8; Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws, p. 66; McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 121. 136 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, October 1983 to September 1984, LHASC. Patrick Seyd makes a similar calculation but only details 14 recorded votes when in fact there were 15 in this period. See Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (Hampshire: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 170–1. 137 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, October 1984 to September 1985, LHASC. 138 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 25 and 29 September 1985, LHASC. 139 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, January 1986 to September 1986, LHASC. 140 Hayter, Fightback!, pp. 117–23. 141 Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 269; Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 449; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 8. 142 ‘Working to win’, Tribune, 4 January 1985; ‘Sun shines on Kinnock as Benn is eclipsed’, Guardian, 8 April 1985, p. 3. 143 Tom Sawyer to Tony Benn, letter dated 17 April 1985, Sawyer Archive. 144 Sawyer, Journal, 5 June 1985. 145 Benn, End of an Era, p. 411. 146 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 25 September 1985, LHASC. 147 Sawyer to Bickerstaffe, ‘Liverpool’; Sawyer, Journal, 28 November 1985. 148 Sawyer, Interview. 149 Sawyer, Journal, 1 January 1986. 150 Leapman, Kinnock, p. 116. 151 Labour Party, ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Appeals and Mediation Committee’, 18 December 1985, LHASC, p. 1. 152 Blunkett, Interview.

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Notes: Chapter 3 153 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 18 December 1985, LHASC. 154 Ibid. 155 David Blunkett, ‘Labour must resist purge mentality’, Tribune, 3 January 1986, p. 20. 156 Sawyer, Interview. 157 Kinnock, Interview; Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 270; Westlake, Kinnock, p. 339. 158 Brivati and Heffernan, Labour Party, p. 123. 159 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 9. 160 Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, p. 66. 161 Shaw, Labour Since 1979, p. 39.

Chapter 3 1 Kinnock, Interview. 2 Tom Sawyer, ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, September 1987, Sawyer Archive. 3 Labour Party, Home Policy Committee Minutes, 14 September 1987, Sawyer Archive. 4 Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1992, 61; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 189. 5 Crewe, ‘The Policy Agenda’, p. 7; Smith, ‘Politics of Catch-Up’, pp. 711, 714. 6 Hay, ‘Labour’s Thatcherite Revisionism’, p. 700. 7 Perry Anderson, English Questions (London: Verso, 1992), p. 346. 8 Benn, End of an Era, p. 546. 9 Hay, ‘Labour’s Thatcherite Revisionism’, p. 700; Hay, Political Economy of New Labour, p. 42. 10 Gregory Elliott, Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Death of Labour England? (London: Verso, 1993), pp. xiii, 156. 11 Mark Wickham-Jones, ‘Recasting Social Democracy’, Political Studies, 43:4 (1995), pp. 698–702; Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), p. 706; Fielding, Labour: Decline and Renewal, p. 71. 12 Kinnock, Interview. 13 Ibid. 14 Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, Labour’s Grass Roots: The Politics of Party Membership (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 54. 15 Kinnock, ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, pp. 539–40. 16 Labour Party, The New Hope for Britain: Labour’s Manifesto 1983 (London: Labour Party, 1983); Labour Party, Britain Will Win (London: Labour Party, 1987); Garner and Kelly, British Political Parties Today, p. 116.

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44

Jones, Remaking the Labour Party, pp. 119–20. Labour Party, Britain Will Win, pp. 6, 13, 15–16. Kinnock, Interview. Clarke, Interview. Kinnock, Interview. Westlake, Kinnock, p. 424. Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 292; Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 465; Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 84; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 40; Jones, Kinnock, p. 105; Dan Keohane, Labour Party Defence Policy since 1945 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), p. 115; Mandelson, Third Man, p. 105; Marsh, The New Politics, p.  158; McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 131; Rentoul, Blair, p. 139; Shaw, Labour Party Since 1979, p. 163; Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, p. 43; Wring, Politics of Marketing, p. 101. McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 131; Russell, Building New Labour, p. 136; Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 84; Eric Shaw, ‘Towards Renewal? The British Labour Party’s Policy Review’, West European Politics, 16:1 (1993), p. 114. Beckett, Interview; Clarke, Interview; Kinnock, Interview; Mandelson, Interview; Whitty, Interview. Prescott, Interview. Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 40. Sawyer, Journal, 7 July 1987; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 37. Sawyer, Interview. Marsh, New Politics, pp. 158–9. Tom Sawyer to Neil Kinnock, 23 July 1987, Neil Kinnock Archive, Cambridge, KNKK/2/2/1; Westlake, Kinnock, p. 171. Sawyer, Journal, 27 July 1987. Clarke, Interview. Sawyer, ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, Sawyer Archive, p. 1. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., pp. 6–7. Westlake, Kinnock, p. 424. Sawyer, Journal, 14 September 1987. Tony Benn, ‘The Aims and Objectives of the Labour Party’ (1987), Sawyer Archive, pp. 4–5. ‘Labour agrees to review that holds nothing sacred’, Guardian, 15 September 1987, p. 1; ‘Labour seeks policy review backing’, The Times, 15 September 1987. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 23 September 1987, LHASC; Rosen, Old Labour to New, p. 476. Skinner, Interview.

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Notes: Chapter 3 45 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1987 (London: Labour Party, 1987), p. 14. 46 Ibid., p. 11. 47 Ibid., p. 13. 48 Lees-Marshment, Political Marketing, p. 141. 49 Labour Party, ‘Minutes of a Joint Meeting between the Shadow Cabinet and National Executive Committee’, 20 November 1987, LHASC. 50 Labour Party, ‘Labour and Britain in the 1990s’, LHASC (1987); Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 83. 51 Mandelson, Interview. 52 Mandelson, The Third Man, p. 104; Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 82. 53 Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 80. 54 ‘Joint NEC/Shadow Cabinet Meeting’, note prepared for Neil Kinnock, November 1987, Kinnock Archive, KNKK/2/1/96. 55 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 29 October 1987, LHASC; Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 44. 56 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change: A new Agenda for Britain. Final Report of Labour’s Policy Review for the 1990s (London: Labour Party, 1989). 57 Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, p. 35. 58 Clarke, Interview; Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1992, p. 54. 59 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 102. 60 Kinnock, Interview. 61 Neil Kinnock, ‘Recommended Members for Policy Review Groups’, c.1987, Kinnock Archive, KNKK 2/2/1; Charles Clarke, Interview with Author, 18 May 2018. 62 Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, pp. 49–50. 63 Ibid., p. 21. 64 Roy Hattersley, Choose Freedom: The Future for Democratic Socialism (London: Michael Joseph, 1987). 65 Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, p. 101. 66 Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, p. 40. 67 Benn, End of an Era, p. 556. 68 Ibid., p. 537. 69 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 69. 70 ‘Kinnock shift on party blueprint’, The Times, 6 February 1988, p. 1; ‘Labour poised for public wrangle on party policy’, Guardian, 8 February 1988, p. 3. 71 David Blunkett and Bernard Crick, The Labour Party’s Aims and Values: An Unofficial Statement (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1988), p. 4; Matt Beech, The Political Philosophy of New Labour (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. 90. 72 Lord Blunkett, Interview with Author, 12 October 2018. 73 Roy Hattersley, Who Goes Home: Scenes from a Political Life (London: Abacus, 1995), p. 292.

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Notes: Chapter 3 74 Heffernan and Marquesse, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, p. 101. 75 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1988 (London: Labour Party, 1988), p. 15. 76 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 75. 77 Shaw, ‘Towards Renewal?’, p. 118. 78 Labour Party, Democratic Socialist Aims and Values (London: Labour Party, 1988), p. 9. 79 Ibid., p. 10. 80 Ibid., p. 3. 81 Shaw, ‘Towards Renewal’, p. 118. 82 Ibid., p. 205. 83 Sawyer, ‘An Approach to Policy Making’, p. 7; The Observer, 13 September 1987. 84 Lord Whitty, Interview with Author, 28 November 2018. 85 Peter Mandelson, ‘Labour Listens’, Sawyer Archive, 23 March 1988; Westlake, Kinnock, p. 428. 86 ‘Kinnock kicks off “into the nineties” campaign’, Guardian, 18 January 1988, p. 2. 87 Shaw, ‘Towards Renewal?’, p. 114; Russell, Building New Labour, p. 132. 88 ‘Labour listens and bores take full advantage’, Guardian, 26 January 1988, p. 3; ‘Labour travels to Brighton to talk a lot and listen a little’, The Times, 26 January 1988, p. 2. 89 ‘Labour “hit by crisis of identity”’, Guardian, 12 January 1988. 90 ‘Tribune and Labour’s policy review’, Tribune, 51(45), 6 November 1987, p. 2; ‘Sawyer defends “Labour Listens”’, Guardian, 13 November 1987. 91 Labour Party, Conference 1988, p. 16. 92 Ibid., p. 17. 93 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 101. 94 Shaw, ‘Towards Renewal?’, p. 114. 95 McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 131; Quinn, Modernising the Labour Party, p. 164. 96 Mandelson, Interview. 97 Kinnock, Interview. 98 Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979, p. 85. 99 Labour Party, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency (London: Labour Party, 1988), p. 1. 100 Ibid., p. 4. 101 Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, p. 74. 102 Benn, End of an Era, p. 545. 103 ‘Todd tells Tribune rally that traditional principles must form basis for Labour politics’, Tribune, 42(41), 7 October 1988, p. 2; ‘What’s to do, Ron? Ron – what’s to do?’, Guardian, 6 October 1988, p. 1; Sawyer, Journal, 12 October 1988. 104 Sawyer, Journal, 12 October 1988.

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Notes: Chapter 3 105 Benn, End of an Era, pp. 520–1, 540–1. 106 Westlake, Kinnock, p. 451. 107 Benn, End of an Era, p. 540; ‘Benn tries for Labour leadership’, Guardian, 24 March 1988, p. 1. 108 Benn, End of an Era, p. 541; Westlake, Kinnock, p. 452. 109 Beckett, Interview. 110 Labour Party, Conference 1988, p. 11. 111 Ibid. 112 Kinnock, Interview. 113 Labour Party, Conference 1988, p. 11. 114 Rosen, Old Labour to New, p. 495. 115 McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 141. 116 Labour Party, Conference 1988, p. 76. 117 Ibid. 118 Kinnock, ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, pp. 539–40. 119 Labour Party, Britain Will Win, p. 13; Labour Party, The New Hope for Britain, p. 9. 120 Mark Bevir, ‘The Remaking of Labour, 1987–1997’, Observatoire de la Société Britannique, 7 (2009), [http://journals.openedition.org/osb/861] (accessed 1 May 2019). 121 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 143. 122 Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 470. 123 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 144. 124 Ibid. 125 Labour Party, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency, p. 10; Patrick Seyd, ‘Labour: The Great Transformation’, in Anthony King (ed.), Britain at the Polls 1992 (London: Chatham House, 1992), p. 78. 126 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, p. 21. 127 Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 471. 128 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 147. 129 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, p. 25. 130 Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 471. 131 ‘Labour hardens line on unions and legal curbs’, Guardian, 30 September 1989, p. 4. 132 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1989 (London: Labour Party, 1989), pp. 96, 167–8. 133 Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1992, p. 51. 134 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 128. 135 IFF Research, ‘Post-Election Research’, 1987, KNKK/2/1/96. 136 Mark Bevir, ‘The Remaking of Labour’. 137 Labour Party, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency, p. 4. 138 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, p. 9. 139 Bryan Gould, Goodbye to All That (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 203.

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Notes: Chapter 3 140 Labour Party, Looking to the Future (London: Labour Party, 1990), pp. 6–7. 141 Bevir, ‘Remaking of Labour’. 142 Gould, Goodbye to All That, pp. 216–17; Richard Hill, The Labour Party and Economic Strategy, 1979–1997: The Long Road Back (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), p. 36. 143 Labour Party, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency, p. 6. 144 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, p. 14. 145 Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1992, p. 51. 146 Labour Party, Looking to the Future, p. 7. 147 Labour Party, Opportunity Britain (London: Labour Party, 1991), p. 4. 148 Labour Party, A New Hope for Britain, p. 12. 149 Labour Party, Britain Will Win, p. 6. 150 Labour Party, Democratic Socialist Aims and Values, p. 9. 151 Labour Party, ‘Policy Review Group on the Productive and Competitive Economy: Quantitative Polling on These Topics’, LHASC (March 1988), p. 5. 152 Labour Party, ‘First Draft: Productive and Competitive Economy Policy Review Group Report’ (March 1988), LHASC, p. 16. 153 Labour Party, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency, p. 5. 154 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, p. 6. 155 Ibid. 156 Labour Party, Looking to the Future, p. 17; Labour Party, It’s Time to get Britain Working Again (London: Labour Party, 1992). 157 Seyd and Whiteley, Labour’s Grass Roots, p. 48. 158 Ibid., p. 47; Labour Party, ‘Britain in the World Policy Review Group: Quantitative Polling on these topics’, December 1987, LHASC, p. 12. 159 Kinnock, Interview. 160 Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 475. 161 Sawyer, Journal, 7 October 1985. 162 McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 178. 163 Labour Party, ‘Britain in the World Policy Review Group: Quantitative Polling on these topics’, p. 12. 164 Whitty, Interview. 165 Labour Party, Social Justice and Economic Efficiency, p. 46. 166 Labour Party, Conference 1988, p. 127. 167 Ibid., pp. 140, 179–80. 168 Sawyer, Journal, 12 October 1988. 169 Labour Party, Conference 1988, pp. 140; 179–80. 170 Robin Cook, ‘If the beginning of START 2’, LHASC; Westlake, Kinnock, p. 443; Short, An Honourable Deception, p. 30. 171 Kinnock, Interview. 172 Westlake, Kinnock, p. 444.

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Notes: Chapter 4 173 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 9 May 1989, LHASC; Tony Benn, ‘Britain in the World – An Alternative Draft’, LHASC, Manchester, p. 2. 174 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 9 May 1989, LHASC. 175 Sawyer, Journal, 15 May 1989. 176 Mandelson, Interview. 177 Neil Kinnock to Tom Sawyer, 15 May 1989, Sawyer Archive. 178 Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 476. 179 Sawyer, Journal, 28 May 1989. 180 Ibid. 181 Baroness Jones, Interview with Author, 28 November 2018. 182 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, p. 86. 183 Ibid., p. 87. 184 Labour Party, Conference 1989, p. 42. 185 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 125. 186 McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 178. 187 Seyd, ‘Labour: The Great Transformation’, p. 79. 188 Heffernan and Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, p. 222. 189 Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1992, pp. 2–3. 190 House of Commons Information Office, By-Election Results 1987–02, Factsheet M12 (London: House of Commons Information Office, 2003), pp. 4–5. 191 Lukas Audickas, Oliver Hawkins and Richard Cracknell, UK Election Statistics 1918–2017, House of Commons Briefing Paper CBP7529 (London: House of Commons, 2017), p. 64. 192 Labour Party, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, Private Collection. 193 Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1992, pp. 2–3. 194 Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 206. 195 Roger Jowell, Barry Hedges, Peter Lynn, Graham Farrant and Anthony Heath, ‘Review: The 1992 British Election: The Failure of the Polls’, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 57:2 (1993), p. 241. 196 Robert Waller, ‘The Polls and the 1992 general Election’, in Ivor Crewe and Brian Gosschalk, Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1992 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1995), p. 177. 197 Glyn Matthias and David Cowling, ‘The ITN Exit Poll’, in Crewe and Gosschalk (eds), Political Communications, p. 243. 198 Blair, Interview.

Chapter 4 1 Labour Party, ‘Affiliation Fees to the Party’, RG15, August 1992, LHASC, p. 1. 2 Ibid., p. 8.

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Notes: Chapter 4 3 Kogan, Protest and Power, p. 76. 4 Fielding, Decline or Renewal, p. 75; Naughtie, The Rivals, p. 47; Quinn, Modernising the Labour Party, p. 134. 5 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 61; Wickham-Jones, ‘Introducing OMOV’, p. 33. 6 Seyd and Whiteley, Labour’s Grass Roots, p. 51. 7 Labour Party, Conference 1984, p. 57. 8 Ibid., pp. 66–7. 9 Westlake, Kinnock, p. 276. 10 Kinnock, Interview. 11 Clarke, Interview. 12 Labour Party, Conference 1985, p. 194. 13 Ibid., pp. 189–94. 14 Labour Party, Conference 1985, p. 16. 15 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 44. 16 Labour Party, Conference 1987, p. 23. 17 Labour Party, Conference 1988, p. 76. 18 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 47. 19 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 28 February 1990, LHASC; Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979, p. 118. 20 Labour Party, ‘Selection of Parliamentary Candidates: Report of the NEC Consultation’, LHASC, p. 2; Labour Party, Conference 1990, p. 21. 21 Labour Party, Conference 1990, p. 120. 22 Labour Party, Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s (London: Labour Party, 1990), LHASC, p. 8. 23 Labour Party, Agenda for Change (London: Labour Party, 1992), p. 28. 24 Routledge, Gordon Brown, p. 178. 25 Catherine Haddon, Making Policy in Opposition: The Commission on Social Justice (London: Institute for Government, 2012), p. 11. 26 Stuart, John Smith, p. 320. 27 Labour Party, ‘Party Review Group on Party/Trade Union Links’, 13 July 1992, LHASC, p. 2. 28 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 89. 29 ‘Labour NEC backs curb on union vote’, Guardian, 28 May 1992, p. 20. 30 Sawyer, Journal, 27 May 1992. 31 Ibid. 32 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 27 May 1992, LHASC; Stuart, John Smith, p. 321. 33 Sawyer, Journal, 27 May 1992. 34 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 27 May 1992, LHASC; Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 24 June 1992, LHASC. 35 Independent, 2 June 1992, Financial Times, 2 June 1992, Daily Telegraph, 2 June 1992, Guardian, 2 June 1992.

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Notes: Chapter 4 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 95; Sopel, Tony Blair, p. 135. Sawyer, Journal, 9 June 1992. Sawyer, Journal, 12 June 1992. Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 89. Sawyer, Journal, 28 June 1992. Westlake, Kinnock, p. 613. Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 319. ‘Move to end union bloc vote shelved’, The Times, 25 June 1992, p. 7. McSmith, John Smith, p. 296. Sopel, Blair, p. 148. Westlake, Kinnock, p. 613. Lord Elder, Interview with Author, 23 January 2019. Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1992 (London: Labour Party, 1992), pp. 192–4. Sopel, Blair, p. 134. John Smith, Guiding Light: The Collected Speeches of John Smith (London: Politico’s, 2000), p. 173. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 95. ‘Labour’s union link review “a stitch-up”’, Guardian, 24 June 1992, p. 2. Labour Party, ‘Party Review Group on Party/Trade Union Links’, 20 July 1992, LHASC, p. 3. Ibid., p. 2. Labour Party, Conference 1992, p. 197. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 95. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 22 July 1992, LHASC. Sawyer, Journal, 24 September 1992. Stuart, John Smith, p. 326. Labour Party, ‘Trade Union/Party Links Review Group, 21 October 1992, LHASC, p. 1. Sawyer, Journal, 23 October 1992. McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 58. Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 322. Gould, Unfinished Revolution; Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism, p. 238; Rentoul, Tony Blair, p. 210; Russell, Building New Labour, p. 51. Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 185. Blair, Interview. Elder, Interview. Sawyer, Journal, 30 October 1992. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 91. Jon Cruddas, Interview with Author, 28 November 2018. Sawyer, Journal, 18 November 1992.

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Notes: Chapter 4 72 ‘Register of Labour Supporters; Estimation of Costs’, 6 November 1992, LHASC, p. 1. 73 AEEU, ‘Nigel Harris to Larry Whitty’, 12 November 1992, LHASC; NUPE, ‘Register of Labour Supporters – Estimation of Costs’, 13 November 1992, LHASC; T&G, ‘Register of Labour Party Supporters’, 18 December 1992, LHASC. 74 ‘Unions could retain Labour voting power’, Guardian, 20 November 1992, p. 6. 75 Macintyre, Mandelson, p. 273. 76 ‘To All Members of the Trade Union Links Review Group’, 2 December 1992, LHASC. 77 Whitty, Interview. 78 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 91. 79 ‘Party/Trade Union Links Outline Final Report’, 18 November 1992, LHASC, pp. 5–6. 80 Ibid., p. 13. 81 Labour Party, Labour Party/Trade Union Links: Interim Report of the Review Group and Questionnaire (London: Labour Party, 1993), pp. 10–12. 82 Ibid., p. 15. 83 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 84 Sawyer, Journal, 2 February 1993 and 28 February 1993. 85 Labour Party, Labour Party/Trade Union links: Interim Report, pp. 22–3. 86 Ibid., p. 25; Russell, Building New Labour, p. 57. 87 ‘Blow to Smith’s block-vote hopes’, Guardian, 8 April 1993, p. 7. 88 ‘Union rebuff to Smith vote plan’, Guardian, 26 May 1993, p. 6. 89 ‘Smith firm in face of union blow: Labour reformers want compromise’, Guardian, 8 June 1993, p. 1. 90 Cruddas, Interview. 91 ‘Enraged T&G throws out “fraudulent” reforms’, Guardian, 9 July 1993, p. 24. 92 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 97. 93 McSmith, John Smith, p. 307. 94 Stuart, John Smith, p. 327. 95 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 96. 96 Fryer and Williams, Leadership and Democracy, p. 527. 97 Alderman and Carter, ‘The Labour Party’, pp. 328–9; Shaw, Labour since 1945, p. 193. 98 Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 322; Brown, Prescott, p. 279; McSmith, Faces of Labour, p. 58. 99 Prescott, Interview. 100 Sawyer, Interview. 101 Elder, Interview. 102 Cruddas, Interview.

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Notes: Chapter 4 103 Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 322. 104 McSmith, John Smith, p. 308; Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 97; Rentoul, Blair, p. 211; Sopel, Blair, p. 161. 105 Sawyer, Journal, 12 July 1993. 106 Sawyer, Journal, 13 July 1993. 107 Brown, Prescott, p. 280. 108 Sawyer, Journal, 14 July 1993. 109 Stuart, John Smith, p. 327. 110 Labour Party, ‘To all Members of the Trade Union Links Review Group’, p. 2, LHASC, 14 July 1993. 111 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 19 July 1993, LHASC. 112 Labour Party, Trade Unions and the Labour Party: Final Report of the Review Group on Links between the Trade Unions and the Labour Party (London: Labour Party, 1993). 113 Sawyer, Journal, 2 October 1993. 114 Labour Left Liaison, Campaign Briefing, 2 October 1993, LHASC. 115 Larry Whitty to John Smith, ‘Procedure at Conference: Policy Issues’, 4 August 1993, LHASC. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 118 Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 344; Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 185; Russell, Building New Labour, p. 54; Shaw, Labour since 1945, p. 193. 119 Brown, Prescott, p. 270; McSmith, John Smith, p. 311; Prescott, Docks to Downing Street, p. 174; Rentoul, Blair, p. 180; Stuart, John Smith, p. 333. 120 Elder, Interview. 121 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1993 (London: Labour Party, 1993), p. 179. 122 Sawyer, Journal, 2 October 1993. 123 Morgan, Interview. 124 Beckett, Interview. 125 Elder, Interview. 126 Prescott, Interview. 127 ‘Verbal bulldozer clears the path for Smith reforms’, The Times, 30 September 1993, p. 2. 128 Prescott, Interview. 129 Stuart, Smith, p. 337. 130 Rentoul, Blair, p. 214. 131 ‘Smith pulls off high-risk gamble, Guardian, 30 September 1993. 132 Gould, Interview. 133 Whitty, Interview. 134 Elder, Interview. 135 Labour Party, Conference 1993, p. 179. 136 ‘Smith pulls off high-risk gamble, Guardian.

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Notes: Chapter 5 137 Fielding, Decline or Renewal, p. 75; Naughtie, The Rivals, p. 47, Russell, Building New Labour, p. 61; Quinn, Modernising the Labour Party, p. 134; Wickham-Jones, ‘Introducing OMOV’, p. 33. 138 Wickham-Jones, ‘John Smith’s Settlement?’, p. 40. 139 ‘Smith pulls off high-risk gamble’, Guardian; ‘One Man One Victory, Daily Mirror, 30 September 1993, p. 1. 140 Radice, Diaries 1980–2001, p. 305. 141 Labour Party, Conference 1993, p. 133. Emphasis added. 142 Wring, Politics of Marketing, p. 126. 143 Martin Pugh, Speak for Britain: A New History of the Labour Party (London: Vintage, 2011), p. 386. 144 Blair, A Journey, p. 57. 145 Blair, Interview. 146 Mandelson, Interview. 147 Hunter, Interview. 148 Elder, Interview. 149 ‘Smith outguns union barons’, The Independent, 30 September 1993. 150 Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 347. 151 ‘Smith wins but it’s a deal with the devil’, Sunday Times, 3 October 1993. 152 Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 174. 153 Mark Pack, PollBase [https://markpack.org.uk/opinion-polls/] (accessed 1 May 2019).

Chapter 5 1 Fielding, Decline and Renewal, p. 121. 2 Blair, A Journey, p. 57; Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 174; Mandelson, Third Man, p. 116. 3 Mandelson, Interview. 4 Blair, Interview. 5 Beckett and Hencke, The Survivor, p. 145. 6 Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 51; Brown, Prescott, p. 332. 7 Whitty, Interview. 8 Sawyer, Journal, 20 May 1994–21 July 1994. 9 Tony Blair to Tom Sawyer, 9 October 1990, Sawyer Archive. 10 Julia Langdon, Mo Mowlam: The Biography (London: Little Brown and Company, 2000), p. 256; Sawyer, Interview. 11 Hunter, Interview. 12 Sawyer, Journal, 17 July 1994. 13 Sawyer, Journal, 26 July 1994. 14 Tom Sawyer, ‘Note used in my interview for the General Secretary’s job’, November 1995, Sawyer Archive, pp. 1–4.

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15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Labour Party, Rule Book 1993–94 (London: Labour Party, 1994), p. 27. Blair, Interview. Blair, A Journey, p. 82. Dianne Hayter, Martin Easteal and Fraser Kemp were also candidates. Kemp received the three votes which did not go to Sawyer. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 17 October 1994, LHASC. Brown, Prescott, p. 332. Prescott, Interview. Blair, Interview. ‘Sawyer gets his chance to finish Labour’s reinvention’, The Independent, 18 October 1994. Labour Party, Rule Book 1993–94, p. 11. Tony Blair, Let us Face the Future: The 1945 Anniversary Lecture (London: Fabian Society, 1995), p. 4. Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1992, p. 47. Labour Party, Democratic Socialist Aims and Values, pp. 9–10. Hughes and Wintour, Labour Rebuilt, p. 70. Benn, End of an Era, p. 556. Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 31. Beckett, Interview. Elder, Interview. Rentoul, Blair, p. 254. Ibid. Giles Radice, Southern Discomfort (London: Fabian Society, 1992), p. 5. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 24. See ‘Floating voters become target’, The Times, 28 September 1992; ‘Party failed trust test in South’, Guardian, 28 September 1992; ‘This is how Labour can win: Can John Smith get to No 10? To do so he must woo waverers who believe the party is not for those who want to “get on”, says Giles Radice’, The Independent, 29 September 1992; ‘Smith’s missing agenda’, The Times, 30 September 1992; ‘Still a party of the past’, Guardian, 1 October 1992. Straw, Last Man Standing, p. 185. Jack Straw, Policy and Ideology (Blackburn: Blackburn Labour Party, 1993), p. 2. Ibid., p. 10. Straw, Last Man Standing, p. 188. Straw, Policy and Ideology, p. 10. Benn, Free at Last, p. 168. Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock gave Straw ‘great encouragement’, see Jack Straw, ‘And so farewell, monstrous icon, 1918–1995’, The

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45

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46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Independent, 29 April 1995; Straw, Last Man Standing, p. 189. See also Peter Riddell, ‘The End of Clause IV’, Contemporary British History, 11:2 (1997), pp. 30–2. Will Hutton, ‘Labour needs to make red-blooded reforms’, Guardian, 10 May 1993; Peter Riddell, ‘Blinkers made in Scotland’, The Times, 22 March 1993; ‘Straw tells Smith to recast party’s founding beliefs’, The Times, 22 March 1993. Fabian Society, A New Constitution for the Labour Party: The Report of the Archer Committee (London: Fabian Society, 1993), p. 5. Anne Campbell, Calum Macdonald, Nick Raynsford, Malcolm Wicks and Tony Wright, A New Agenda (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 1993), p. 14. Neil Kinnock, Tomorrow’s Socialism, 5 February 1994, BBC Two, quoted in Jones, Remaking the Labour Party, p. 134. Kinnock, Interview. Labour Party, Conference 1993, p. 277. Blair, Interview. Blair, A Journey, p. 9. Labour Party, Conference 1994 and Special Conference 1995, p. 106. Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 226. Tony Blair, Breakfast with Frost, 12 June 1994, quoted in Wring, Politics of Marketing, p. 134. Hunter, Interview; Campbell, Diaries: Volume One, p. 50; Rentoul, Blair, p. 254. Ibid., p. 20. Blair, A Journey, p. 81. Ibid., p. 82; Alastair Campbell, quoted in Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 216; Rentoul, Blair, p. 255; Seldon, Blair, p. 221; Seyd, ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’, p. 57. Prescott, Interview. Prescott, Docks to Downing Street, pp. 191–2; Riddell, Unfulfilled Prime Minister, p. 27. Sopel, Blair, p. 269; John Kampfner, Robin Cook: The Life and Times of Tony Blair’s Most Awkward Minister (London: Phoenix, 1998), p. 101. Labour Party, Conference 1994 and Special Conference 1995, p. 105. Hunter, Interview. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 178. Patrick Wintour and Keith Harper, ‘Defeat raises question over Blair team’s conference management’, Guardian, 7 October 1994, p. 7. Cruddas, Interview. Rentoul, Blair, p. 257; Seldon, Blair, p. 224; Sopel, Blair, p. 284. Labour Party, Conference 1994 and Special Conference 1995, pp. 192–9. Ibid., p. 199.

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Notes: Chapter 5 71 ‘Blair makes best of setback’, Guardian, 7 October 1994, p. 1; ‘Blair scorns defeat on Clause Four’, The Times, 7 October 1994, p. 1. 72 Cruddas, Interview. 73 The Guardian, 7 October 1994, p. 7. 74 Riddell, ‘The End of Clause IV’, p. 25. 75 Labour Party, Conference 1993, p. 277; Labour Party, Conference 1994 and Special Conference 1995, p. 199. 76 Labour Party, Conference 1994 and Special Conference 1995, pp. 179–80, 189. 77 Ibid., pp. 63–4. 78 John Rentoul, ‘Tony Blair’, in Kevin Jeffrey’s (ed.), Leading Labour: From Keir Hardie to Tony Blair (London: IB Tauris, 1999), p. 218. 79 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 30 November 1994 and 14 December 1994, LHASC. 80 ‘Killing the Clause’, The Independent, 9 October 1994, p. 15; Clause Four will stress social justice’, Independent on Sunday, 13 November 1994. 81 ‘Clause Four will stress social justice’, The Independent. 82 ‘We’ll stay Socialist’, Tribune, 16 December 1994, p. 5. 83 ‘Labour MEPs Defend Clause IV’, Guardian, 10 January 1995, p. 1. 84 ‘Testament to equality and democracy’, Tribune, 4 November 1994, p. 4; Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, p. 177. 85 European Parliamentary Labour Party, ‘Minutes of the Twenty First Meeting of the EPLP’, 11 January 1995, LHASC, p. 1. 86 ‘Major must minimise impact of a Clause 4 victory for Blair’, The Times, 12 January 1995, p. 11. 87 Hayter, Interview. 88 ‘Angry Blair slaps down rebel MEPs’, Guardian, 12 January 1995, p. 1. 89 ‘Blair conversion delights opt-out Tories’, Guardian, 2 December 1994; ‘Labour draws up policy to retain opt-out schools’, The Times, 2 December 1994, p. 2; ‘Mr Blair exercises his right to choose’, The Independent, 2 December 1994, p. 1; ‘Hattersley joins attack on Blair over son’s school’, The Sunday Times, 4 December 1994. 90 ‘Blair’s school choice heralds policy rethink’, The Independent, 2 December 1994, p. 17. 91 Ken Livingstone, You Can’t Say That: Memoirs (London: Faber & Faber, 2011), p. 345. 92 See note 89. 93 Osler, Labour Party PLC, p. 49. 94 ‘Blair fears Clause 4 humiliation’, Guardian, 30 December 1994, p. 1. 95 Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 32. 96 Mandelson, Blair Revolution Revisited, p. 53. 97 Labour Co-ordinating Committee, The Forward March of Modernisation (London: Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1998), pp. 18–19. 98 Baroness McDonagh, Interview with Author, 1 February 2019.

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105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

Morgan, Interview. Blair, Interview. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 30 November 1994, LHASC. Sawyer, Journal, 21 January 1995. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 178. Hansard, 21 February 1995. [https://api.parliament.uk/historichansard/commons/1995/feb/21/engagements] (accessed 1 May 2019). Labour Party, Labour Party News, March 1995, Sawyer Archive, p. 8; Seyd, ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’, p. 57. Tony Blair, ‘A message from Tony Blair’, January 1995, LHASC. McDonagh, Interview. Blair, Interview. Labour Party, Labour Party News, January 1995, Sawyer Archive, p. 1; Labour Party, ‘LPN Jan Cover’, 9 January 1995, LHASC, p. 1. Labour Party, Labour’s Objects: Socialist Values in the Modern World (London: Labour Party, 1994). Ibid. Labour Party, Labour’s Aims and Values: The Consultation Report (London: Labour Party, 1995), p. ii. Ibid., p. 5. McDonagh, Interview. Blair, Interview. Sawyer, Journal, 14 March 1995. Campbell, Diaries: Volume One, p. 160. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 13 March 1995, LHASC. Ibid. Prescott, Interview. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 13 March 1995, LHASC. Sopel, Blair, p. 293. Labour Party, Rule Book 2018, p. 3. Sawyer, Journal, 14 March 1995. Skinner, Interview. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 13 March 1995, LHASC. McDonagh, Interview. Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 25 January 1995, LHASC; Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 179. Labour Party, ‘Aims and Values: Regional Summary’ (1995), LHASC, p. 1. Fielding, The Labour Party, p. 128; ‘Seyd, ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’, p. 59. Labour Party, ‘Aims and Values: Regional Summary’ (1995), LHASC, p. 1. Labour Party, Conference 1994 and Special Conference 1995, p. 289.

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Notes: Chapter 5 133 Hunter, Interview. 134 ‘Triple blow for Blair as unions bite back’, The Times, 14 April 1995, p. 1. 135 Only the CWU and the much smaller BECTU, balloted. The AEU conducted an opinion poll. See ‘Union backs Blair on Clause Four’, Guardian, 22 April 1995, p. 8. 136 Fielding, The Labour Party, p. 75; See also, Shaw, Labour since 1945, p. 198. 137 Labour Party, Conference 1994 and Special Conference 1995, p. 307. 138 ‘Blair triumph buries the past: 65% vote to scrap Clause 4’, The Observer, 30 April 1995, p. 1; ‘A Clause 4 celebration – Blair’s triumph as New Labour born’, Sunday Mirror, 30 April 1995, p. 2; ‘Blair we go! Victory as Labour shakes off shackles of the past’, The People, 30 April 1995, p. 2; ‘Old left routed as Clause 4 is consigned to dustbin of history’, The Sunday Times, 30 April 1995, p. 1; ‘“Old Labour” is officially dead’, Independent on Sunday, 30 April 1995, p. 1. 139 Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism, p. 229. 140 Tony Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1992), p. 51. 141 ‘Blair targets unions in new round of reforms’, Guardian, 1 May 1995, p. 1; ‘Blair warns the unions: Don’t push me around’, Daily Mirror, 1 May 1995, p. 2. 142 ‘Blair targets unions in new round of reforms’, Guardian, 1 May 1995, p. 1. 143 Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1995 (London: Labour Party, 1995), p. 3. 144 Labour Party, ‘NUM Constitutional Amendment’, 27 September 1995, LHASC; Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 27 September 1995, LHASC. 145 Sawyer, Journal, 8 September 1995. 146 Labour Party, Conference 1995, p. 76. 147 Labour Party, Conference 1993, p. 168. 148 Labour Party, Trade Unions and the Labour Party: Final Report, p. 20. 149 Sawyer, Journal, 23 November 1994; Rentoul, Blair, p. 263. 150 Labour Party, Conference 1995, p. 76; Labour Party, Conference 1993, p. 168. 151 Labour Party, Conference 1995, p. 76. 152 Labour Party, ‘NEC Disputes Committee’, 27 September 1995, Sawyer Archive, pp. 1–7; Seyd, ‘Tony Blair’, pp. 67–8. 153 Labour Party, Conference 1995, p. 76. 154 Labour Party, ‘Report to the National Executive Committee: Budget for “Road to the Manifesto”’, 28 June 1996, Sawyer Archive; Labour Party, ‘Ballot Paper’, 1996, Sawyer Archive. 155 Labour Party, ‘Press Release: New Labour, New Life for Britain – Ballot Results’, 4 November 1996, Sawyer Archive. 156 Mike Marqusee, ‘New Labour and its Discontents’, New Left Review, 224 (1997), p. 137.

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161 162 163

164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171

172 173 174 175

Cruddas, Interview. Lees-Marshment, Political Marketing, p. 189. Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 31. Mullin, A Walk on Part, p. 26; Prescott, Docks to Downing Street, p. 191; Short, An Honourable Deception?, p. 45. Blair, Interview. Mandelson, Interview. Tim Bale, ‘“The Death of the Past”: Symbolic Politics and the Changing of Clause IV’, in David Farrell, David Broughton, David Denver and Justin Fisher (eds), British Elections and Parties Yearbook 1996 (London: Frank Cass, 1996), p. 172; Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 383; Driver and Martell, New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism, p. 26; Charles Pattie, ‘New Labour and the Electorate’, in Steve Ludlam and Martin Smith (eds), New Labour in Government (London: Macmillan, 2001), p. 37. Taylor, Labour’s Renewal?, p. 190. Smith, ‘Understanding the politics of catch-up’, pp. 711, 714. Blair, ‘Let us Face the Future’, p. 12; Blunkett, On a Clear Day, p. 214. Mandelson, Blair Revolution Revisited, p. 53; Blair, A Journey, p. 85. McDonagh, Interview. Mandelson, Interview. Blair, Interview. Tudor Jones, ‘Labour’s Constitution and Public Ownership: From Old Clause Four to New Clause Four’, in Brian Brivati and Richard Heffernan (eds), The Labour Party: A Centenary History (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 311. Riddell, Unfulfilled Prime Minister, p. 25. Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell and John Curtice, The Rise of New Labour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 107. Ibid. Michael Levy, ‘Modernisation and Clause IV reform: The Attitudes of Backbench MPs’, in David Farrell, David Broughton, David Denver, Justin Fisher, British Elections and Parties Yearbook 1996 (London: Frank Cass, 1996), pp. 181–2.

Chapter 6 1 2 3 4 5

Mandelson, Interview. Cruddas, Interview. Sawyer, Interview. Cruddas, Interview. Sawyer, Journal, 20 December 1994.

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Notes: Chapter 6 6 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 25 January 1995, LHASC. 7 Labour Party, ‘Plans and Priorities: Note from the General Secretary’, 11 January 1995, Sawyer Archive, p. 11. 8 Labour Party, ‘National Executive Committee Minutes’, 29 March 1995, LHASC, p. 4; Labour Party, ‘Plans and Priorities: Beyond the General Election – Note to the NEC’, 29 March 1995, p. 1. 9 ‘Labour leaders take lessons in power’, The Sunday Times, 18 June 1995, pp. 1, 7. 10 Labour Party, ‘NEC Workshops: A Summary of the Content and Output of Workshop 1: Cranfield School of Management, 16–17 June 1995’, LHASC, pp. 1–4. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Labour Party, ‘NEC Workshops: A Summary of the Content and Output of Workshop 2: Cranfield School of Management, 13–15 July 1995’, LHASC, pp. 1–4. 14 Baroness Jones, Interview with Author, 28 November 2018. 15 Tom Sawyer to Tony Blair, ‘Strictly Private and Confidential’, 20 September 1995, Sawyer Archive. 16 Sawyer Journal, 13 September 1995. 17 Campbell, Diaries: Volume One, p. 269. 18 Sawyer, Journal, 13 September 1995. 19 Blair, Interview. 20 Seyd, ‘Labour Government–Party Relationships’, p. 97. 21 Sawyer, Journal, 3 November 1995. 22 Sawyer, Journal, 12 November 1995. 23 Blair, A Journey, p. 101. 24 Jones, Interview. 25 Labour Party, ‘The Party into Power: Note by the General Secretary to  NEC’, 31 January 1996, LHASC, p. 1; Minkin, Blair Supremacy, pp. 201–2. 26 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 31 January 1996, LHASC. 27 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 201. 28 Labour Party, ‘Proceedings of the Minutes of the Parliamentary Labour Party’, 19 February 1997, Sawyer Archive, p. 1. 29 Cronin, New Labour’s Pasts, p. 390. 30 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 29 January 1997, LHASC. 31 Labour Party, ‘Party into Power Project: Task Force 1 – The NEC at Work. Report of the Second Meeting of the Taskforce’, 14 May 1996, LHASC, pp. 2–3. 32 Labour Party, ‘Party into Power Project: Task Force 2 – Relationships in Power. Report of the Second Meeting of the Taskforce’, 3 June 1996, LHASC, p. 2.

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Notes: Chapter 6 33 Labour Party, ‘Party into Power Project: Task Force 1 – The NEC at Work. Report of the Fourth Meeting of the Taskforce’, 21 August 1996, LHASC, p. 2. 34 Labour Party, ‘The Party into Power Project: Task Force 1 – The Role and Functions of the NEC’, September 1996, LHASC. 35 Ibid. 36 Labour Party, ‘Party into Power Project: Task Force 1 – The NEC at Work. Report of the Tenth Meeting of the Taskforce’, 2 July 1997, LHASC, pp. 2–3. 37 Labour Party, ‘Party into Power Project: Task Force 2 – Democracy in the Party. Notes of the Third Meeting’, 18 July 1996, LHASC, p. 1. 38 Labour Party, ‘Party into Power Project: Task Force 2 – Democracy in the Party. Notes of the Eighth Meeting’, 26 February 1997, LHASC, p. 1. 39 Labour Party, ‘Building a Healthy Party Seminar’, LHASC, 13 August 1996. 40 Labour Party, Partnership in Power (Consultation), June 1997 (London: Labour Party, 1997). Not to be confused with the final document also titled Partnership in Power published in October 1997. 41 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 21 May 1997, LHASC. 42 Labour Party, Labour into Power: A Framework for Partnership (London: Labour Party, 1996), Sawyer Archive, p. 4. 43 Ibid., p. 4. 44 Ibid., p. 13. 45 Ibid. 46 Labour Party, Partnership in Power (Consultation), p. 2. 47 Ibid., p. 4. 48 Labour Party, Partnership in Power (London: Labour Party, 1997), p. 18. 49 Labour Party, ‘Results of the Consultation Exercise’, 23 July 1997, LHASC, p. 1. 50 Labour Party, ‘Press Release: New Labour, New Life for Britain – Ballot Results’, 4 November 1996, Sawyer Archive; Labour Party, ‘Aims and Values: Regional Summary’ (1995), LHASC, p. 1. 51 Labour Party, Aims and Values: The Consultation Report, p. ii. 52 Labour Party, ‘Results of the Consultation Exercise’, 23 July 1997, LHASC, p. 3. 53 Labour Party, Partnership in Power, p. 19. 54 Mandelson, Interview. 55 Labour Party, NEC Minutes, 30 July 1997; LHASC; Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1997 (London: Labour Party, 1997), LHASC, p. 28. 56 Labour Party, Labour into Power, pp. 25–6. 57 Labour Party, ‘Results of the Consultation Exercise’, 23 July 1997, LHASC, pp. 18–19.

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63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79

80 81 82

Jones, Interview. Cruddas, Interview. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, pp. 202–3. Sawyer, Journal, 13 March 1996. Anderson and Mann, Safety First, p. 324; Russell, Building New Labour, p. 179. Steve Richards, ‘Interview: Tom Sawyer’, New Statesman, 12 July 1996, pp. 20–1. Ibid. ‘Labour’s left calls for rethink on party shake-up’, Guardian, 2 July 1997, p. 14. Labour Party, Partnership in Power: Rule Changes Proposed by the NEC (London: Labour Party, 1997), p. 6. Sawyer, now a peer, was elected to the NEC in 1999 amidst controversy about his eligibility. See Davies, Through the Looking Glass, pp. 77–8. Labour Party, Conference 1997, p. 16. Ibid., p. 28. Russell, Building New Labour, p. 183. Beckett, Interview. Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 231. Seyd, ‘Labour Government’, p. 101. Wring, Politics of Marketing, p. 155. Labour Party, Labour into Power, p. 12. Labour Party, ‘NEC Disputes Committee’, 27 September 1995, Sawyer Archive, pp. 1–7; Seyd, ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’, p. 67. Ann Black, ‘NEC Meeting, 20 March 2007’, [https://annblack.co.uk/ reports_of_meetings/nec-meeting-20-march-2007/] (accessed 1 May 2019). Labour Party, Labour Party Rule Book 2017 (London: Labour Party, 2017), p. 5. Ann Black, ‘NEC Meetings September 2016’ [https://www.annblack. co.uk/reports_of_meetings/nec-meetings-september-2016/] (accessed 1 May 2019); ‘Jeremy Corbyn supporters fail to block Scottish and Welsh members joining NEC’, The Independent, 26 September 2016; ‘Bust up over influence of Scottish Labour, The Spectator, 25 September 2016 [https:// blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/labours-leadership-battle-fight-controlgoverning-council-now/] (accessed 1 May 2019); ‘Huge row as Labour conference passes rule changes which could “stitch up” Jeremy Corbyn’, Daily Mirror, 27 September 2016 [https://mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ huge-row-labour-conference-nec-8922274] (accessed 1 May 2019). Labour Party, Labour Party Rule Book 2018, pp. 5, 20–1. Labour Party, Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s, p. 3. Ibid., p. 4.

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Notes: Chapter 6 83 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 31. 84 Whitty, Interview. 85 Labour Party, Labour into Power, p. 12; Labour Party, Partnership in Power (Consultation), p. 5; Labour Party, Partnership in Power, p. 7. 86 Labour Party, Partnership in Power, p. 7. 87 Sawyer, Interview. 88 Labour Party, ‘Democracy and Future Policy Making’, 12 March 1991, Kinnock Papers, Churchill College Cambridge, KNKK 2/1/143, pp. 2–3. 89 Labour Party, Agenda for Change, p. 28. 90 Labour Party, Conference 1997, p. 12. 91 Beckett, Interview. 92 Cruddas, Interview. 93 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 226; Sawyer, Journal, 27 July 1997. 94 Labour Party, ‘National Policy Forum/About Labour Policy Forum/Policy Making’ [https://policyforum.labour.org.uk/about/ npf] (accessed 26 September 2019). 95 Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, ‘New Labour and the Party: Members and Organisation’, in Steve Ludlam and Martin Smith (eds), New Labour in Government (London: Macmillan, 2001), p. 79. 96 Labour Party, ‘Labour Policy Forum’ [https://www.policyforum. labour.org.uk/] (accessed 1 May 2019). 97 Labour Party, Democracy Review (London: Labour Party, 2018). 98 ‘Corbyn’s proposals to transform Labour Party parked for a year’, Guardian, 18 September 2018. 99 Labour Party, Partnership in Power, p. 7. 100 Emmanuelle Avril, ‘The Evolution of Decision-Making in the British Labour Party: From Grassroots to Netroots?’, in Emmanuelle Avril and Christine Zumello (eds), New Technology, Organisational Change and Governance (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 105. 101 Labour Party, Conference 1997, p. 12. 102 Labour Left Liaison, Campaign Briefing, 3 October 1997, Sawyer Archive, p. 1. 103 Ibid. 104 Labour Party, Conference 1997, pp. 15, 28. 105 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 211. 106 Ibid. 107 Labour Party, Partnership in Power, p. 16. 108 Labour Party, Conference 1997, p. 17. 109 Ibid., p. 28. 110 Seyd, ‘New Parties/New Politics?’, p. 393. 111 Labour Party, Partnership in Power, p. 15. 112 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 143.

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Notes: Conclusion 113 Labour Party, Partnership in Power, p. 15. 114 Eric Shaw, ‘The Control Freaks? New Labour and the Party’, in Steve Ludlam and Martin Smith (ed.), Governing as New Labour: Policy and Politics under Blair (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 56. 115 Jones, Interview. 116 Patrick Seyd, quoted in ‘Tony’s Model Resolution’, New Statesman, 25 July 1997, p. 18. 117 Blair, Interview. 118 Morgan, Interview. 119 Hunter, Interview. 120 Mandelson, Interview. 121 Blair, Interview. 122 Blair, A Journey, p. 102. 123 Gould, Unfinished Revolution, p. 235. 124 Mandelson, Blair Revolution Revisited, p. 216. 125 ‘New poll shock for Labour’, Guardian, 16 May 2000, p. 1. 126 Cruddas, Interview. 127 Sawyer, Journal, 27 July 1997. 128 Minkin, Blair Supremacy, p. 204. 129 Jon Cruddas and John Harris, Fit for Purpose: A Programme for Labour Party Renewal (London: Compass, 2007), p. 11. 130 Sawyer, Interview. 131 ‘Labour NEC backs big changes to curb dissent’, Guardian, 31 July 1997, p. 8. 132 Fielding, Labour: Decline and Renewal, p. 122. 133 Seyd, ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’, p. 66. Quinn, Modernising the Labour Party, p. 63. 134 Panitch and Leys, End of Parliamentary Socialism, p. 283. 135 Russell, Building New Labour, p. 275. 136 Blair, Interview. 137 Labour Reform, Reforming Labour: Reclaiming the People’s Party (London: Polemic Books, 2001), p. 28. 138 Daniel Rye, ‘Political Parties and Power: A Multi-dimensional Analysis’, PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London (2012), p. 137. 139 Clarke, Interview.

Conclusion 1 Blair, Interview. 2 Ibid.

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Bibliography Blunkett, David, and Crick, Bernard. The Labour Party’s Aims and Values: An Unofficial Statement. Nottingham: Spokesman, 1988. Boothroyd, Betty. The Autobiography. London: Century, 2001. Brivati, Brian, and Heffernan, Richard. The Labour Party: A Centenary History. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Bower, Tom. Broken Vows: Tony Blair, The Tragedy of Power. London: Faber & Faber, 2016. Bower, Tom. Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. London: Harper Perennial, 2007. Brown, Colin. Prescott: The Biography. London: Politico’s, 2005. Brown, Gordon. My Life, Our Times. London: Bodley Head, 2017. Butler, David, and Kavanagh, Dennis. The British General Election of 1992. London: Macmillan, 1992. Callaghan, John. The Far Left in British Politics. London: Blackwell, 1987. Campbell, Alastair. Diaries: Volume One, Prelude to Power. London: Hutchinson, 2010. Campbell, Anne, Macdonald, Callum, Raynsford, Nick, Wicks, Malcolm, and Wright, Tony. A New Agenda. London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 1993. Crewe, Ivor. SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Crewe, Ivor. ‘The Policy Agenda: A New Thatcherite Consensus?’ Contemporary Record, 3:3 (1990): 2–7. Crick, Michael. The March of Militant. London: Faber & Faber, 1986. Crick, Michael. Militant. London: Biteback, 2016. Cronin, James. New Labour’s Pasts. London: Routledge, 2004. Cruddas, Jon, and Harris, John. Fit for Purpose: A Programme for Labour Party Renewal. London: Compass, 2007. Davies, Liz. Through the Looking Glass: A Dissenter inside New Labour. London: Verso, 2001. Driver, Stephen, and Martell, Luke. ‘From Old Labour to New Labour: A Comment on Rubinstein’. Politics, 21:1 (2001): 47–50. Driver, Stephen, and Martell, Luke. New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. Drower, George. Kinnock: A Biography. London: The Publishing Corporation, 1994. Elliott, Gregory. Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Death of Labour England? London: Verso, 1993. Fabian Society. A New Constitution for the Labour Party: The Report of the Archer Committee. London: Fabian Society, 1993. Fielding, Steven. Labour: Decline and Renewal. London: Baseline, 1999. Fielding, Steven. The Labour Party: Continuity and Change in the Making of New Labour. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

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Bibliography Frost, Diane, and North, Peter. Militant Liverpool: A City on the Edge. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013. Fryer, Bob, and Williams, Stephen. Leadership and Democracy: The History of the National Union of Public Employees: Volume 2 1928–1993. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2011. Garner, Robert, and Kelly, Richard. British Political Parties Today. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. Golding, John. Hammer of the Left: Defeating Tony Benn, Eric Heffer and Militant in the Battle for the Labour Party. London: Biteback Publishing, 2016. Gould, Bryan. Goodbye to All That. London: Macmillan, 1995. Gould, Joyce. Witchfinder General. London: Biteback Publishing, 2016. Gould, Philip. The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics For Ever. London: Little, Brown and Company, 2011. Haddon, Catherine. Making Policy in Opposition: The Commission on Social Justice. London: Institute for Government, 2012. Harris, Robert. The Making of Neil Kinnock. London: Faber & Faber, 1984. Hattersley, Roy. Choose Freedom: The Future for Democratic Socialism. London: Michael Joseph, 1987. Hattersley, Roy. Who Goes Home: Scenes from a Political Life. London: Abacus, 1995. Hatton, Derek. Inside Left. London: Bloomsbury, 1988. Hay, Colin. ‘Labour’s Thatcherite Revisionism: Playing the “Politics of Catch–Up”’. Political Studies, 42:4 (1994): 700–7. Hay, Colin. The Political Economy of New Labour: Labouring Under False Pretences. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Hayter, Dianne. Fightback! Labour’s Traditional Right in the 1970s and 1980s. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. Hayter, Dianne. ‘St Ermins Group’. In Dictionary of National Biography [https:// doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/96690]. Hayter, Dianne. ‘The Fightback of the Traditional Right in the Labour Party 1979 to 1987’. PhD thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2004. Heffer, Eric. Labour’s Future: Socialist or SDP Mark 2? London: Verso, 1983. Healey, Denis. The Time of My Life. London: Penguin, 1990. Heath, Anthony, Jowell, Rodger, and Curtice, John, The Rise of New Labour. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Heffernan, Richard. ‘Labour’s Transformation: A Stage Process with No Single Point of Origin’. Politics, 18:2 (1998): 101–6. Heffernan, Richard. New Labour and Thatcherism. Hampshire: Macmillan, 2000. Heffernan, Richard, and Marqusee, Mike. Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Inside Kinnock’s Labour Party. London: Verso Books, 1992. Heppell, Timothy. Choosing the Labour Leader: Labour Party Leadership Elections from Wilson to Brown. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.

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Bibliography Hill, Richard. The Labour Party and Economic Strategy, 1997–1997: The Long Road Back. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. House of Commons Information Office. By-Election Results 1987–02: Factsheet M12. London: House of Commons Information Office, 2003. Hughes, Colin, and Wintour, Patrick. Labour Rebuilt: The New Model Party. London: Fourth Estate, 1990. Jenkins, Roy. A Life at the Centre. London: Pan Books, 1991. Jones, Eileen. Neil Kinnock. London: Robert Hale, 1994. Jones, Mervyn. Michael Foot. London: Victor Gollancz, 1994. Jones, Tudor. ‘Labour’s Constitution and Public Ownership: From Old Clause Four to New Clause Four’. In The Labour Party: A Centenary History, eds Brian Brivati and Richard Heffernan, 292–321. London: Macmillan, 2000. Jones, Tudor. Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell to Blair. London: Routledge, 1996. Jowell, Roger, Hedges, Barry, Lynn, Peter, Farrant, Graham, and Heath, Anthony. ‘Review: The 1992 British Election: The Failure of the Polls’. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 57:2 (1993): 238–63. Kampfner, John. Robin Cook: The Life and Times of Tony Blair’s Most Awkward Minister. London: Phoenix, 1998. Kavanagh, Dennis, and Butler, David. The British General Election of 1992. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992. Keohane, Dan. Labour Party Defence Policy since 1945. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993. Kilfoyle, Peter. Left Behind: Lessons from Labour’s Heartland. London: Politico’s, 2000. Kinnock, Neil. ‘Reforming the Labour Party’. Contemporary Record, 8:3 (1994): 535–54. Kogan, David. Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. Kogan, David, and Kogan, Maurice. The Battle for the Labour Party. London: Kogan Page, 1982. Labour Co-ordinating Committee. The Forward March of Modernisation. London. Labour Co–ordinating Committee, 1998. Labour Reform. Reforming Labour: Reclaiming the People’s Party. London: Polemic Books, 2001. Langdon, Julia. Mo Mowlam: The Biography. London: Little, Brown and Company, 2000. Leapman, Michael. Kinnock. London: Unwin Hyman, 1987. Lees-Marshment, Jennifer. Political Marketing and British Political Parties. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008. Lent, Adam. ‘Labour’s Transformation: Searching for the Point of Origin’. Politics, 17:1 (1997): 9–15.

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Index

Abbott, Diane 171 Allaun, Frank 31, 58–9 Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union 150–1 Amalgamated Engineering Union 27, 35, 38, 140, 142 Armstrong, Hilary 146 Baker, Kenneth 72 Basnett, David 33–4, 238n.87 Beckett, Margaret 57, 73–5, 77, 81, 85, 96, 111–12, 140, 142, 152–3, 164, 191, 203, 208 Benn, Tony 1978 Conference 27 1979–81 constitutional amendments 39, 41 1981 Deputy Leadership election 34, 47–8, 51, 53 1988 Leadership election 110–12 calls for a general strike 62–3 Clause IV 164, 166, 180 Commission of Enquiry 32 hard-left 58–60, 62, 64, 73, 106 One Member, One Vote 136 Policy Review 98, 103, 105–6, 108, 123 relationship with Tom Sawyer 58, 65–6, 68, 71, 82, 84 see also hard-left; soft-left Bickerstaffe, Rodney 99, 122, 124, 137, 146–8, 150, 152 Bish, Geoff 96, 127

Black, Ann 217 Blair, Tony 1997 general election 222 choosing to join Labour 193 Clause IV 10, 12, 107, 159–60, 162–3, 167, 219, 221 1994 Conference 168–70 1995 Special Conference 180–1 campaign 171–81 crisis meeting 173–4 wording 177–8 modernisation 8, 17, 160, 142, 185–8, 222–4 One Member, One Vote 7, 140, 142–7 Partnership in Power 7, 214–15, 217 party management 192–3, 201, 208, 210, 213–14, 223 Policy Review 103, 116, 129 relationship with John Smith 157–8 relationship with Tom Sawyer 7, 14–16, 160–2, 174, 192–3, 215, 223 resignation threat 186 trade union relations 142–3, 157, 181–2 Blunkett, David Clause IV 186 Militant expulsions 54, 62, 73–4, 77, 79–84, 86 miners’ strike 63–7 Policy Review 105–6, 123

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Index Blunkett, David (cont.) relationship with Neil Kinnock 65, 72 support for rate-capped councils 70, 72 support for the hard-left 54, 57, 59, 67, 71, 82 Stonefrost inquiry 72–3 see also soft-left Booth, Albert 56–7, 59, 64 Boothroyd, Betty 57, 59, 64, 75, 77–8, 239n.101 Brown, Gordon 103, 118, 143, 147, 153, 158, 168, 217 Burlison, Tom 140–1, 145, 148 Callaghan, Jim 20–2, 30–4, 36 Campaign for Labour Party Democracy 20–1, 24–30, 33–8, 45–6, 49, 80–1, 133, 151, 211 Campaign for Labour Victory 43, 45–6, 220 Campaign Group 59–60, 81, 105, 111–12, 180, 211 Campbell, Alastair 138, 168, 169 Clarke, Charles 10, 55, 95–7, 101, 103, 115, 133, 217 Clarke, Eric 53, 57, 59, 63–4, 73 Clarke, Tony 57, 59, 64, 75, 77, 140, 149 Clause IV 1994 Conference 168–71 1995 Special Conference 178, 180–1 1995 Conference 181–4 attempts at change before Blair 163–7 ballot 179–81 Blair’s resignation threat 186 campaign 171–8 Defend Clause IV 172, 174 MEPs’ opposition 172–4 Scargill’s opposition 182 significance 185–8 trade union opposition 182–3 Clinton, Bill 187 Coates, Ken 23–4

Colling, Gordon 57, 140, 191 Conservative Party 3, 5, 11, 25, 44–5, 61, 66–70, 72, 90–2, 94–5, 113–14, 116, 126–8, 137, 158–9, 175, 219–20 Constituency Labour Party delegates 1, 6, 23, 26, 32, 42–3, 77, 130–2, 134, 151, 169, 171, 175, 179–80 Contact Group 114–5 Commission of Enquiry (1980) 29, 32, 37 Cook, Robin 105, 123, 137–8, 140, 142, 169–70, 206 Corbyn, Jeremy 13, 18, 205, 216–17 council house sales 93–4, 219 Crosland, Anthony 92, 106 Cruddas, Jon 143, 145, 147, 170, 175, 184–5, 190–1, 195, 201, 208, 213, 215–16 Cunningham, Jack 105 Davies, Liz 183, 204, 261n.67 defence policy see multilateralism; unilateralism; Policy Review delegates see Constituency Labour Party delegates Derer, Vladimir 29, 35 deselection 21–3, 25, 29 see also mandatory reselection Dowling, Felicity 80 Dunwoody, Gwyneth 57, 59 Edmonds, John 137, 140, 148–9 Elder, Murray 139, 142, 147, 152, 154, 157, 161, 164 Europe 1, 5–6, 19–20, 41, 44, 46, 50, 93–4, 110, 118–21, 172, 219 Exchange Rate Mechanism 118–20 see also Policy Review Evans, John 57, 112, 136 Evans, Roy 57, 59 Fabian Society 46, 165–6 Foot, Michael 3, 5, 32–5, 39, 42–4, 48–9, 51–2, 58, 128 Fryer, Bob 191, 195

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Index Gaitskell, Hugh 162–3 Gang of Four 42, 45–6 general election 1979 general election 3, 21–2, 28–9, 31, 36, 219 1983 general election 3, 5, 29, 44–5, 52, 63–4, 92–3, 119–20, 219 1987 general election 3–4, 55, 81, 88–9, 92–7, 100, 107, 118–21, 126–7, 129, 135, 139, 219 1992 general election 3, 11, 90, 119, 127–9, 135, 139, 164–5, 206, 219, 221 1997 general election 7, 9, 18, 159–60, 183, 189–90, 196, 199, 219–22 Gibson, Anne 146, 154 GMB 34–5, 73, 76, 138, 140–1, 143, 145, 148–9, 151 Golding, John 68 Gould, Bryan 103, 105, 117–18, 131, 139, 140 Gould, Joyce 33, 77, 140, 154 Gould, Philip 100, 168, 215 Hadden, Alan 57, 59, 64, 71 Haigh, Eddie 10, 53–4, 57, 62, 64–6, 70–1, 74–5, 77–87, 123, 136 hard-left 5, 17, 20, 53–5, 57, 59–67, 70, 73–5, 77, 79–88, 90, 105–7, 111–2, 121, 123, 163–4, 172, 177, 220 Harman, Harriet 191 Hattersley, Roy 43, 46, 57, 59, 64, 67, 105–6, 121 Hatton, Derek 69, 72, 76, 80 Hayter, Dianne 48–9, 172 Hayward, Ron 39 Healey, Denis 42, 45, 47–8 Heffer, Eric 32, 48, 57–60, 62–4, 66, 68, 71–2, 75, 81, 99, 112 Hewitt, Patricia 101 Hough, Neville 57, 59, 64, 75, 77 Hoyle, Doug 57, 59, 64–5 Hughes, David 39 Hunter, Anji 157, 161, 168–9, 180, 214 Jenkin, Patrick 69, 72 Jenkins, Roy 42, 44

Jeuda, Diana 81, 140–1, 194–5 Jones, Maggie 124–5, 192–4, 200, 213 Kaufman, Gerald 103, 122 Kennedy, Jane 75–6, 85 Keynesianism 93, 117–19 Kilfoyle, Peter 69 Kinnock, Neil 1983 general election 63–4 1983 leadership election 58–9 1987 general election 94–5 1988 leadership election 110–12 1992 general election 126, 128–9, 187 accommodation with Thatcher 90–2, 185 building an NEC majority 10, 15, 49–50, 52–8, 64–5, 70, 74, 79, 81, 84, 86–7, 89, 220, 223 see also soft-left Clause IV 162–3, 165–7 constitutional change 52, 56 mandatory reselection 29 miners’ strike 65–6 Militant Tendency 1981 inquiry 39 1985 Conference 71–2 1985–6 Inquiry 73, 79 National Policy Forum 7, 206–7 One Member, One Vote 1984 attempt at change 131–5, 221 1987 hybrid scheme 221 1992 attempt at change 135–6, 138–9 Policy Review 93–4, 101, 128, 220 ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ 89, 96–8 defence policy 120–6 Democratic Socialist Aims and Values 106–7 Labour Listens 107, 109 supply-side socialism 117–18 trade union policy 114–15 relationship with Tom Sawyer 10, 15–16, 55, 64–5, 74, 85, 87, 89, 95, 122, 124–7 Shadow Communication Agency 100 Kitson, Alex 56–7, 59, 64–5

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Index Labour Co-ordinating Committee 30, 36, 38, 173 Labour Left Liaison 151, 211 Labour Party 1980 leadership election 3 1981 deputy leadership election 53 1983 leadership election 53, 58–9 1988 leadership election 110–12 1992 leadership election 131, 139 1994 leadership election 159 Agenda for Change 135, 207 Campaign Management Team 101, 127 Conference Arrangements Committee 25–6, 212 constitution 1–3, 5–7, 12–13, 19–30, 32–3, 36–41, 45–7, 49–51, 78, 80, 131, 133, 145, 157, 160, 162–8, 170–2, 176–83, 186–8, 199, 204, 219–21 Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s 134, 197, 205–6 electoral college 5, 12, 29–35, 37, 41–3, 46–7, 50, 112, 130–5, 143–5, 150, 152, 156, 219, 221 Joint Policy Committee 135, 197, 203, 205–10, 213, 217 ‘Labour and Britain in the 1990s’ 100 Labour’s Objects: Socialist Values in the Modern World 176–7, 179 manifesto 1983 manifesto 3, 5, 51, 94, 113, 120, 125–6, 224 1987 manifesto 94, 113, 120, 125–6 1992 manifesto 119 1997 manifesto 1, 184, 204 control of manifesto 36–8 see also National Executive Committee New Labour 1–2, 15–17, 90, 129, 160, 181, 184–6, 204, 219, 222, 224 register of non-affiliated groups 40 Shadow Communications Agency 100, 110, 121

see also Clause IV; Labour Party Annual Conference; National Executive Committee; National Policy Forum; One Member, One Vote; Partnership in Power; Policy Review Labour Party Annual Conference 1972 Conference 22, 30 1973 Conference 21, 23, 30, 36 1974 Conference 23–4 1975 Conference 25, 30 1976 Conference 25, 30–1 1977 Conference 26, 28, 31, 36 1978 Conference 26–8, 31 1979 Conference 28, 31–2, 36–7 1980 Conference 32–4, 37, 41, 47 1981 Conference 38 1981 Special Conference 34–5, 41–7, 50–1, 132 1982 Conference 40 1984 Conference 56, 71, 133 1985 Conference 66, 71–3, 133 1987 Conference 97, 99, 103, 134 1988 Conference 105, 108, 110–12, 122, 125, 134 1989 Conference 116, 118, 124–5 1990 Conference 134, 141, 156, 205 1992 Conference 135, 139, 141 1993 Conference 146, 148, 150–8, 167 1994 Conference 162, 168–71, 173, 175 1995 Conference 181–3 1995 Special Conference 172–4, 178, 180–1 1997 Conference 199, 201, 203, 208, 211–13 reform to policy making path 209–13 reform to voting formula 1, 6, 12, 134, 141, 151, 154, 156, 180, 182–3, 221 three year rule 23–6, 28, 31, 37, 47 Labour Solidarity Campaign see Solidarity Lansman, Jon 35 levy-plus see One Member, One Vote

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Liverpool Inquiry see Militant Tendency Livingstone, Ken 58, 106, 123, 173 Lowes, Ian 76, 80

Mulhearn, Tony 74, 76, 80 Mullin, Chris 13, 66, 185 multilateralism 11, 92, 120, 122–6

McCluskie, Sam 57, 59, 64–5 McDonagh, Margaret 173, 175–7, 179, 186 Major, John 3, 127, 175 mandatory reselection 3, 5, 20–31, 37, 41, 47, 50, 131, 134 see also deselection Mandelson, Peter 7, 98, 100–1, 109, 123, 143, 157, 159–60, 168, 185–6, 189, 199, 214–15 Manifesto Group 45 Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union 115, 145, 148, 151, 153–4 Maynard, Joan 57, 59–60, 63–4 Meacher, Michael 53–4, 57–60, 62, 64–7, 75, 79–86, 115, 123 Mikardo, Ian 23, 25–8, 31 Militant Tendency 26, 38–40, 46, 53–4, 67–88 expulsions 15, 51, 56–8, 62, 68, 78–81, 85 Hayward-Hughes Report 30–40, 68 influence in Liverpool 68–9, 75–6 Kinnock’s 1985 Bournemouth Speech 71–2 Liverpool Inquiry 10, 14–15, 52–3, 55, 59, 73–9, 82, 85, 87 rate-capping campaign 53–4, 69, 70–1 Stonefrost Report 72–3 Underhill Report 38–9, 68 see also Hatton, Derek; Mulhearn, Tony; soft-left miners’ strike 6, 15, 52–3, 60–7, 69–71, 81, 84, 86, 93 Minkin, Lewis 12, 136–7, 140, 142, 147, 195, 211–13 monetarism 93 Morgan, Sally 152, 173–4, 214 Morris, Bill 137, 140, 148 Mowlam, Mo 161, 194

National Executive Committee control of election manifesto 19, 30, 36–8, 41 hard-left majority 19, 38, 40, 48, 52, 55–8, 64–5, 68, 82–3 Liverpool expulsions 79–81 Liverpool Inquiry 73–9 reform 7, 13–14, 18, 192, 197–205, 215, 220 soft-left, centre-right majority 6, 40, 47–9, 51–2, 54–8, 70, 81–3, 86–8, 93 voting for representatives 56–7, 80–1, 134, 171 see also Militant Tendency; Partnership in Power; soft-left; Trade Union Links Review Group nationalisation 1, 5–6, 11, 19, 21, 41, 50, 91–4, 106–7, 113, 116–17, 119–20, 128–9, 163–4, 178, 185, 219–20 National Organisation of Labour Students 30, 38 National Policy Forum 6, 16, 134–5, 184–5, 190, 196–7, 199, 203, 205–13, 217, 223 National Union of Mineworkers 66, 180 see also miners’ strike National Union of Public Employees 54, 74–6, 122, 124–5, 137–8, 141, 143, 145–8, 150–1 New Agenda Forum 165–6 New Labour see Labour Party nuclear disarmament see multilateralism; unilateralism One Member, One Vote 130–58 1993 Conference 150–6 levy-plus 146–8 registered supporters’ scheme 141–5 symbolic or revolutionary 156–8 Trade Union Links Review Group 12, 135–8, 140–5, 148–50

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Index opinion polling 44, 94, 100, 116, 119–20, 124, 126–9, 158, 165, 187, 220–1 outside left 5, 20, 35–8, 40, 43, 50, 151, 204 Owen, David 32, 41–3

Clause IV 13, 168–9, 176–8, 182, 185 One Member, One Vote 140, 142, 146–9, 152–4 Prosser, Margaret 140–1, 148–9 public ownership see nationalisation

Partnership in Power conference reform 209–13 consultation 196–9 Cranfield 14, 181, 190–4 exercise in control 213–18 Labour into Power 196–201, 206 NEC reform 200–5 National Policy Forum reform 205–9 see also National Policy Forum Party into Power 185, 194–6 Peace of Bishop’s Stortford 6, 20, 48–9, 51 Policy Review 3, 6, 9–11, 16, 52, 89–129, 134, 219–20 accommodation with Thatcher 90–93 ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ 95–103, 112, 127 defence policy 91–2, 94, 99, 101, 110, 120–6 Democratic Socialist Aims and Values 103–7, 163–4 economic policy 92–3, 105–6, 110, 117–18 see also supply-side socialism effect on polling 126–8, 159 Europe 94, 118–19 Labour Listens 89, 98, 103, 107–9 Meet the Challenge, Make the Change 112–13, 128 Moving Ahead 99–100, 103 Social Justice and Economy Efficiency 109–10, 121 nationalisation 91, 94, 106, 119, 163 trade union reform 94, 110, 113–16 Powell, Jonathan 191 Prentice, Reg 21, 25 Prescott, John 8, 96, 112, 162

Radice, Giles 156, 165 Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (union) 150–1 Rank and File Mobilising Committee 30, 34 realignment of the left see hard-left; soft-left registered supporters’ scheme see One Member, One Vote revisionism 11, 91–2, 106 Richardson, Jo 57, 59–60, 64, 111–12 Rodgers, Bill 42–4 Rosser, Richard 140, 191 St Ermins Group 45–51, 56, 74, 220 Sawyer, Tom 14–17 1983 leadership election 58–9 Chair of Home Policy Committee 87, 96 Clause IV 168, 170, 177, 182 Clause IV consultation 16, 174–5 Damascene conversion 15–16, 53–5, 73, 75–6, 82–4 General Secretary of the Labour Party 7, 75, 160–2, 181–2, 189, 191, 223, 253n.18 leader of the soft-left 6, 54–5, 63, 85, 88, 220 Militant Tendency 1983 expulsions 68 changes previous position on Militant 75–6, 79, 87 motion to establish Liverpool Inquiry 73 objects to widespread expulsions 78–80 refuses to back expulsion of a Militant in Sheffield 85–6 support for Militant positions 68, 74–5, 82

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Index Sawyer, Tom (cont.) view on Kinnock’s 1985 Conference speech 72 miners’ strike 61 votes against call for a general strike 62–3, 65–6 votes to support reimbursement for trade union losses 64, 66 National Policy Forum 16, 206–8 no say, no pay 137–8 One Member, One Vote 1993 Conference 150, 152 levy-plus 146–8 moves motion into investigating union link 135–7 registered supporters’ scheme 141–3, 145 Trade Union Links Review Group 140, 145, 148–50 Partnership in Power 16, 190, 193–4, 201, 208, 213–16, 223 Conference reform 211 Cranfield 190–2 NEC reform 201–2, 261n.67 Party into Power 194 Policy Review 6, 16 ‘An Approach to Policy Making’ 97–103, 112 authorship of the Review 89, 95–8, 127–8, 220 defence policy and NUPE 121, 124–6 Labour Listens 89, 98, 103, 107–9 relationship with Dennis Skinner 58–60, 62–3, 70 relationship with Neil Kinnock 10, 15, 55, 65, 74, 85, 87, 89, 101–3, 121, 124–7 relationship with Tony Benn 15, 54, 58, 60, 65, 68, 84–5 relationship with Tony Blair 15–16, 160–2, 174–5, 192–3, 208 support for the hard-left 15, 54, 57, 59, 62, 64, 68, 71, 82, 123 Scanlon, Hugh 27, 38 Scargill, Arthur 172, 180, 182 selection of MPs 1, 12, 20, 23, 56, 130–5, 138–45, 149–51, 156, 183, 204, 221

see also deselection; mandatory reselection Sharples, Adam 96–7 Short, Clare 13, 111–12, 123, 140, 142, 149, 185 Skinner, Dennis 171 Clause IV 178, 180 hard-left 53, 57–60, 62–4, 66 Militant Tendency 68, 70–1, 73–4, 86 miners’ strike 62 Partnership in Power 191, 194–5 Policy Review 98–9, 103, 106, 110 Smith, Harry 80 Smith, John Clause IV 162, 164–8 Commission on Social Justice 135 Democratic Socialist Aims and Values 105 One Member, One Vote 3, 6, 11–12, 135, 156–8, 221, 223–4 1993 Conference 150–4 during 1992 campaign 131 Trade Union Links Review Group 137–50 relationship with Tony Blair 7, 156–7, 159–60, 173 resignation threat 151–2 supply-side socialism 117 Social Democratic Party 3, 5, 9, 20, 41–2, 44–6, 50–1, 95, 126, 129 soft-left 6, 10, 15, 19–20, 50, 53–5, 89, 111, 123, 220, 223 1983 leadership election 58–9 Bennism without Benn 66 Militant Tendency 55, 67–88 miners’ strike 61–7, 81 realignment of NEC left 55–8, 81–8, 220, 223 see also Blunkett, David; Haigh, Eddie; hard-left; Meacher, Michael; miners’ strike; Sawyer, Tom Solidarity 45–6, 48–51, 220 Straw, Jack 165–7, 191 supply-side economics 1, 92, 117–19

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Index Taverne, Dick 21–2 Thatcher, Margaret 3, 11, 90–1, 127, 185, 222 Tierney, Syd 57, 59, 64–5 Todd, Ron 111, 115 Trades Union Congress 47, 62–3, 114–15, 118, 148, 190 Trade Union Links Review Group see One Member, One Vote trade unions bloc vote 6–7, 19, 23, 27, 38, 47, 124–5, 130–5, 140–1, 145, 149, 151, 154, 156, 180 see also Labour Party Annual Conference Transport and General Workers’ Union 33, 35, 53, 73–4, 111, 115, 138, 140–1, 143, 145, 151, 159, 178, 180, 182 Tribune 65–6, 111, 172–5 Tribune Group 45, 48 Turnock, Charles 57, 64, 75, 77–8, 239n.101

Underhill, Reg 38–9 unilateralism 1, 5–6, 19, 41, 50, 91–4, 113, 120–6, 128–9, 219–20 Union of Communication Workers 122, 140, 151 Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers 35, 38, 138, 140, 145, 149, 151 UNISON 149, 180, 182, 190–1 Varley, Eric 56–7, 59 Wall, Margaret 194 Whitty, Larry 16, 44, 53, 61, 73–5, 96, 107, 121, 137, 143, 153–4, 160–2, 170, 195, 206 Williamson, Nigel 66, 84 Williams, Shirley 42, 44 Wilson, Harold 20–1, 36 Wise, Audrey 57, 59–60, 62, 64, 74–5, 77, 85, 239n.100

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