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‘The builders and the dreamers’

Mark Perryman argues the radical intent of Labour ’45 remains as modern as ever, even as its present-day cabal of Blairites dream of a neoliberal future

“WINNING the peace” in 1945 should be the Labour Party’s greatest cause for celebration. A landslide victory against the odds; the wartime cross-party coalition under Churchill replaced by a majority Labour government. 

Yet Labour in 2015 seems all set to forget about those achievements. It seems the Labour middle ground prefers a post-election rethink amounting to making permanent Blair’s dismissal of the party’s history. Yet in many ways ’45 provides Labour with the closest thing it has to a party identity.

The right knows all about the value of history in creating a present and future political identity. Any anniversary — VE Day, Magna Carta and Waterloo most recently — will be turned into an Establishment celebration of continuity conservatism, whatever the contradictions these events may contain.

So where are the Labour voices to celebrate the hope the party represented 60 years ago in ’45? They are almost entirely absent as the headlong rush towards a rootless modernisation is preferred at all costs. Labour’s ’45 was about the collision of three crucial and enduring factors.

First it was a popular anti-fascism rooted in physical opposition to Mosley’s Blackshirts, most famously of course at Cable Street. This was an opposition with a community campaigning dimension too, dividing the legitimate concerns particularly around housing which Mosley sought to exploit from the anti-semitic and fascist solutions he offered.

This often meant working with tenants who might have British Union of Fascists sympathies at first, but as Phil Piratin — the Communist MP for Mile End in the ’45 landslide — explained in his autobiography Our Flag Stays Red, if Cable Street was to acquire real meaning, this was exactly what was required. 

This was a politics the Communist Party in London’s East End carried out with dramatic effect on Mosley’s support in the area. It exposed the appeasement of Nazi Germany that remained rife amongst the ranks of Tory MPs and others right up to the outbreak of war and for some even for a while after.

Second was a popular internationalism, pioneered in the 1930s during the Spanish civil war with initiatives volunteering for the International Brigades, providing medical support and ambulances to huge Aid For Spain collections and providing hospitality for Basque refugee children. It was politically militant, yet attracted broad support of every possible variety.

And when the Red Army entered WWII in 1941 the same principles applied for quite possibly the biggest and most successful campaign in the Communist Party’s history. Solidarity with the eastern front combined with pressure to open a second front from the west.

From the 1950s onwards, attitudes towards the USSR would divide not only the wider left but also the Communist movement itself. None of this applied in the 1940s, with a huge proportion of the British population looking towards the heroism of the Red Army with unbridled respect — bordering on wonderment.

Third was a popular collectivism. The wartime economy demanded a far greater degree of equality via sacrifice than most in Britain were previously accustomed to. Of course privilege, inequality of opportunity and class relations still existed, but rationing, conscription and military production seriously undermined all three. Labour’s prominent and successful role in the Churchill coalition government served to legitimise the party, its leaders and ideas.

The embryonic ideas behind the welfare state produced by William Beveridge, and a fairer economic system produced by John Maynard Keynes, emerged as a new common sense. The “land fit for heroes” of 1918 that so swiftly turned towards depression and hunger marches was the kind of peace few looked forward to with any enthusiasm. Instead, an alternative politics and government took shape.

The Communist contribution to all three factors cannot be underestimated, though plenty will do their best to do precisely that.  Electoral success was just one measure of this. When the Labour landslide came Willie Gallagher was re-elected as a Communist MP, joined by fellow Communist Phil Piratin. The party’s general secretary Harry Pollitt came within a handful of votes of winning a third seat too in the landmark Welsh mining constituency of the Rhondda.

But the broader impact was, if anything, more substantial. In working-class communities up and down the country Communists enjoyed a genuine base of support, with hundreds of local councillors. In the trade unions the Communists became known as the “political wing” of the labour movement. Culturally and ideologically organised Marxism was a genuine force of influence, and when Labour failed to deliver on its housing promises it was the Communists who led with direct action and the squatting of empty properties. 

The cold war and the revival of post-war Conservatism under Churchill may suggest to some that the brief radical experiment of ’45-51 hardly matters. This is the sad mythology that Labour’s latter-day so-called modernisers pedal. The years ’45-51 established a consensus that underpinned the creation of the NHS, publicly owned railways, mines and utilities, comprehensive education and a welfare state that lasted over three decades.

This remains Labour’s greatest ever achievement and even if Burnham, Cooper and Kendall don’t have the good sense to join Jeremy Corbyn in celebrating this very much nowadays, we should.

It was Labour after all that produced Aneurin Bevan, who more than any other figure represented the best of its’45 radical impulse. “We have been the dreamers. We have been the sufferers. Now we are the builders,” said Bevan in ’45.

Never mind the nonsense of new Labour pledge cards or the dishonourable immigration pledge mug. Those three lines of Bevan’s are as good a summary of Labour’s past, present and future hope as we’re ever likely to hear. Wear them with defiant pride.

  • The Philosophy Football Bevan “We have been the dreamers” T-shirt is available from www.philosophyfootball.com or call 01273 472 721 to order.

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