Over and out: reflections on an extended conversation with New Labour.
| Author | Thompson, Paul |
| Position | Editorial - Labour Party |
Even with your favourite columnists, there comes a time when you notice that they are re-cycling the same issues and arguments. Whether anyone else has noticed, we have. There have been almost fifty editorial commentaries in fourteen years, allowing for the odd double issue and guest editor. Until 2001, most were written by Paul, with Neal appearing regularly from the sub's bench, but most since that time have been co-written.
It might have been easier if the topics had ranged across every issue and part of the globe. And occasionally they have. Paul has written about class and science, Neal about crime. But most of the time the commentaries have been a long and critical conversation with New Labour. Sometimes that has felt a little one-sided and limited in its effectiveness. Not long ago a potential subscriber emailed Paul to say that having read the sample issue he'd been sent from 2001, New Labour hadn't been taking much of our advice and were we saying anything different in 2006? Suppressing the instinct to reply with some variation on go and get a life, one had to admit he had a point. More on the consequences of a dialogue with the deaf later.
Despite our valiant efforts in recent years to discuss the environment, global governance and consumerism, Renewal now needs an even wider and broader conversation. And like all institutions the journal must do what it says on the cover--it must renew itself. From the next issue, there will be a new editorial team that we are confident can do just that.
But a change at the top doesn't mean that our efforts have been wasted. Renewal's prime purpose has been to articulate and sustain a left social democrat politics and a radical modernising policy agenda. We have not been alone in that, but our voice has been important in maintaining and expanding that political space. What's more, that core conversation with Labour has been necessary. To understand why, we need a bit of time travel back to 1992.
Retracing the steps
When Renewal was launched by a group of five refugees from the Labour Coordinating Committee in the wake of Labour's fourth successive election defeat in 1992, the fashion was to believe that Labour was beyond hope, not only unable to win, but even to think. In our first editorial, we took issue with these views, arguing that we had heard them before, notably after defeats in the 1950s and in 1970, and that parties of the centre-left have successfully refashioned relations with the electorate and become associated with modernisation projects.
However, it was certainly true that Labour had failed to learn anything significant from the 1992 defeat and was largely treading water under John Smith's competent but cautious leadership. Our fourth issue contained a piece from one Tony Blair, then a shadow spokesperson, on 'why modernisation matters'. It argued that Labour had not sufficiently changed with society and called for a new relationship between citizen and community, with an integral role for radical constitutional reform.
John Smith's tragic death eventually gave Blair the opportunity to refashion the party. Renewal supported Blair's candidacy and early policies because only he had 'the language and the image to reach out beyond Labour's core support'. We supported the symbolic change for Clause Four--'a poor clause and a poor cause' as another editorial put it. 1996-97 was something of a honeymoon period between the journal and the new...
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