WHO SPEAKS FOR LABOUR?
there is nowhere for the party to debate its future
AT LONG last there are encouraging signs that a genuine policy debate is beginning in the Labour Party. After nearly two de- cades of burrowing deeper into a left-wing tunnel with no exit, the party is not so much reversing direction, as pausing to think where it really ought to go. For the first time since the early 1960s, some of its leading spirits are opening their minds. All this immediately raises the question: where should the debate take place? The natural forum, you may say, is the party confer- ence. But those of us who actually observe them, year after year, know that confer- ences are for ratification rather than blow- by-blow policy-making. The truth is, on the Left at any rate, arguments are tradi- tionally conducted in print. That in turn raises the question: what paper? There is no obvious answer to this question. Earlier this year the Left of the party demonstrated conclusively what some of us had long taken for granted, that it is incapable of creating a new national newspaper, even a Sunday. The News on Sunday survives, just; but it is clearly never going to provide an arena of intellectual discussion. Robert Maxwell's papers are no good for this purpose either. They have travelled a long way down-market since he bought them, and the knock-on effect of the new bonk journalism, via the Sun, will if anything make the Daily Mirror still less suitable for serious political argument, even supposing Maxwell, who has his own views for his newspapers to promote, were disposed to permit open debate.
The Guardian, it is true, has recently provided generous space for Labour gurus to sound off. But, like the Mirror, it is regarded with intense suspicion by all wings of the Labour movement, though for different reasons. Like Gaul, it is divided into three parts: its political coverage tends to be Labour loyalist; the leaders often have a peculiar Social Democrat flavour, sometimes veering towards what can only be called Left Thatcherism (rather like Mrs T herself in certain rare moods); and then there are bits of the paper wholly occupied by the hardish Left. Essential to an effec- tive debate is an open correspondence column, and the Guardian's appears to be firmly in the grip of the sectarians. In short, the Guardian lacks the coherence and continuity of purpose to make itself the right theatre for a creative Labour debate.
The Observer ought to be an excellent forum, despite the baleful presence of Tiny Rowland, for it is now unquestionably a left-wing paper. Moreover, from an intel- lectual viewpoint it has the highest quality readership of any national: if I want to put across an idea to the widest spectrum of book-buying opinion, the Observer is the paper I choose. But for this very reason it cannot come clean about its political stance. Among its readers are innumerable Tory and SDP voters, and non-politicals, and if it were deliberately to seek to accommodate systematic Labour Party soul-searching in its columns, many read- ers would feel uneasy, to put it mildly and this would be dangerous at a time when the Sunday Telegraph is offering such strong, and temptingly eccentric, competi- tion. So the Observer won't do either.
We are left, then, with periodicals, and on the Left it is a dismal scene. New Socialist never really established itself. New Society occasionally astonishes with a sharp new idea but is habitually dull and guilty by association with the social work- ers, now the most unpopular group in the country. Marxism Today is widely said to be lively but on close inspection is hard going and under-researched (compared, say, to the Economist). Besides, its title is a fatal handicap. Marxism is a busted flush everywhere except on the campus, that traditional home of lost causes, and even there the smarter dons are beginning to thin out their shelves of once proudly- displayed texts. Its title makes the maga- zine peculiarly inappropriate for this de- bate, since whatever direction the Labour Party eventually heads, it is not going to be more Marxism, in any shape or form. Young people are at last beginning to see Marx for what he is, a 19th-century moral philosopher no more relevant to today than, say, Comte or Herbert Spencer.
Which leaves the New Statesman; and were that journal in better shape it would now be poised to collar the entire debate and flourish mightily in consequence. But it has just shed its first editor in a decade who had any real conception of how to conduct a radical journal of opinion, and for reasons which bode ill for its future. John Lloyd was only in charge a short time, and had not even begun to tackle large parts of the paper — the books and arts pages, for instance — which have com- pletely lost their way. But in the political pages at least he had started to move the paper away from its self-destructive sectar- ianism towards a broader journalism of serious discussion and argument. The pap- er had acquired a more realistic and better informed view of the world and had, in consequence, begun to rise in influence and sales.
But Lloyd's new direction involved con- tinual battles with a sectarian and recal- citrant staff, and he decided there were more worthwhile things to do. So he is leaving. This indicates to me that the New Statesman board does not not know its business.
A weekly has to express the personality of its editor, and unless he is allowed to choose his own staff — sack and replace the lot if necessary — he cannot do his job. In the event of a clash between editor and staff, it is the staff who ought to go. The New Statesman board clearly does not grasp this point, which suggests to me they are unlikely to find a good successor and revive the paper. So all this leaves Labour as a party ready and anxious to have a debate, and with nowhere to hold it.
`The electronic office has ruined the Derby sweep.'
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