Labour Needs Leader to Win in Future

Roy Hattersley, The Times June 9, 2010

"Glamp" in style

Rachel Sylvester

Where am I?

On the first day of the 1983 Labour Conference I sat in the front row of the MPs’ enclosure and listened, with modified rapture, to the announcement that I had been elected deputy leader of the party.

The chairman invited me to join him on the platform, where Neil Kinnock — who had just beaten me in the leadership election — was still receiving the rapturous applause. Gerald Kaufman, a Shadow Cabinet colleague, whispered in my ear. “Grab his hand and give a joint wave. George Brown did it with Harold Wilson and Harold hated it. Made them look like equal partners.”

I did my best, but only managed to grasp Neil Kinnock’s wrist and hold his clenched fist in the air like a defeated contender conceding victory to the new champion. Back in my seat, Gerald stared at me in silent contempt. The magic moment was immortalised in a Labour Party poster and I was much admired for the generosity of spirit with which I had accepted defeat.

Neil Kinnock was elected leader in the first of the “democratic” contests that followed an outbreak of what Labour activists laughingly called “constitutional reform”. The democratic legitimacy of the process was illustrated by the behaviour of the two big unions that supported me.

When pressed to consult his members, Terry Duffy, the president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, said that the cost of a ballot could not be justified since, whatever its outcome, the AEU would vote for me.

The General, Municipal and Boilermakers Union actually held a consultation. But on the eve of the election David Basnett, the general secretary, asked my permission to break his mandate so that the GMB could be on the winning side. I agreed. But John Smith, my campaign manager, and Peter Mandelson bullied him into doing his democratic duty on the not altogether complimentary grounds that the election was not about me but the policies that I represented.

Thanks largely to John Smith and his death-or-glory insistence that Labour leadership elections must be legitimised by “one member one vote”, party democracy has improved since then. But there are recidivists who yearn for the choice to be made by Labour MPs alone. Presumably they have forgotten, or never knew, what old-style elections were like. More horses were traded in a couple of weeks than change hands at Newmarket in a whole year and, in 1980 — thanks to a combination of cowardice and malice — the Parliamentary Labour Party chose the wrong man.

Michael Foot, despite his manifold virtues, was not cut out to challenge Margaret Thatcher for the premiership. Denis Healey was.

He was also the most popular politician in Britain.

Michael Foot beat him because dozens of craven MPs foolishly believed that the campaigns of left-wing harassment by their local activists would end if the party was led by a “genuine socialist”. And half a dozen Honourable Members — about to follow the Gang of Four into the SDP — voted for the candidate most likely to guarantee a Labour defeat. Two of them, Tom Ellis and Neville Sandelson, had the grace, or gall, to admit it.

The electoral college — forgive the mixed metaphor, but I am writing through gritted teeth — usually chose the right candidate.

A convicted “rightwinger” like me could never have persuaded Labour to accept the genuine, and absolutely essential, reforms that Neil Kinnock brought about.

And in the 1992 leadership election, by giving John Smith 90 per cent of the total vote, the party demonstrated that it had identified a man who, had he lived, would have become a great prime minister. After Smith’s victory was announced, Bryan Gould — his defeated opponent — received a huge cheer of sympathy. Neil Kinnock reminded me: “Labour loves a loser.” Not any more. The leadership election that followed John Smith’s death changed all that.

Tony Blair was the candidate who promised victory — the answer to the prayers of a party frustrated by 15 years in opposition. Labour leadership elections, for better or worse, reflect the inner tensions of the party and determine the direction — principled or populist, progressive or pusillanimous — that Labour is going to take.

In 1983, having given me a personal drubbing , the party adopted, year by year, the policies on which I had fought my campaign — multilateral rather than unilateral nuclear disarmament, enthusiastic membership of the European Union and acceptance of the mixed economy.

This year a more sophisticated Labour electorate is looking for a candidate who combines the three virtues of popularity with the party (Kinnock), attraction to floating voters (Blair) and a policy position that is both reasonable and radical.

The quality of this year’s Labour leadership candidates justify hopes of that elusive treble being achieved and qualifies them for comparison with their predecessors in 1976. In the spring of that year, as a Foreign Office Minister, I was standing on the tarmac of Sofia airport — holding a huge bunch of gladioli in my arms and listening to the tenth or twelfth verse of the Bulgarian national anthem — when the British Ambassador told me: “The Prime Minister has resigned.”

Hoping that the foliage would protect me from exposure by lip reading, I asked: “Is he the big noise here or is that the party chairman?” The ambassador, still at rigid attention, replied out of the corner of his mouth: “Not their Prime Minister. Our Prime Minister.” Jim Callaghan won the leadership election that followed — defeating, handsomely, Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Tony Crosland. Oh brave old world that had such people in it.

Roy Hattersley was deputy leader of the Labour Party, 1983-92

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Labour Needs Leader to Win in Future

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