Reply to Stephen Meredith, ‘Mr Crosland's Nightmare? New Labour and Equality in Historical Perspective’
| Author | Kevin Hickson |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00273.x |
| Published date | 01 February 2007 |
| Date | 01 February 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Controversy |
Reply to Stephen Meredith,
‘Mr Crosland’s Nightmare? New Labour
and Equality in Historical Perspective’
Kevin Hickson
It is now half a century since Tony Crosland wrote his magnum opus The Future of
Socialism (Crosland 1956) and 30 years since he died suddenly while serving as
foreign secretary in 1977. Moreover, it is more than nine years since New Labour
was first elected. However, the debate over the nature of British social democracy
and the extent to which New Labour has broken with ‘Croslandism’ continues
unabated. It is within this context that Stephen Meredith has made an interesting
contribution to the debate (Meredith 2006). He argues, contra Roy Hattersley and
others, that it is the underlying continuity between Croslandite and New Labour
versions of social democracy that stands out. The debate rests largely on what is
conceived by the term ‘equality’ and Meredith argues that there are strong simi-
larities between Crosland’s conception of equality and the meaning attached to that
concept by New Labour, as outlined most clearly in Gordon Brown’s Crosland
Memorial Lecture in 1997 (Brown 1999). The reason why this has often been
overlooked, Meredith argues, is that New Labour has concealed its social demo-
cratic commitment in order to build and then maintain an electoral coalition
capable of sustaining it in power for longer than one term. Meredith’s article is
written in an accessible and stimulating manner, but ultimately fails to convince
me. No doubt this may be because I am an old-fashioned social democrat and New
Labour critic and therefore am not capable of being convinced! However, it may
also be the case that there is a need for greater clarity than is provided, especially
in terms of the conception of equality and the relationship between ends (values)
and means (policies) that is central to debates within social democracy. The aims of
this reply are therefore to point to the main issues on which I disagree with
Meredith and to suggest why it is still the essential discontinuity that stands out
between Crosland and New Labour in these areas.1
The first issue in need of greater clarification is that of ends and means. The simple
formulation of this position is to state that social democracy is committed to the
realisation of given values (ends) which require governments to implement specific
policies (means). This distinction between ends and means was formulated by
Labour party revisionists, notably in theoretical terms by Crosland and Douglas Jay
(Crosland 1956; Jay 1962), in order to reject the fundamentalist position of the
Labour left, who continued to argue that public ownership was essential for the
realisation of socialism. The early sections of Crosland’s The Future of Socialism set
out to reject such a fundamentalist position. The nature of economic activity had
changed radically since Marxist doctrine had been formulated. Crosland identified
four changes in particular. First, there had been a growth in the size, responsibilities
and powers of the central state, not only through public ownership under the Attlee
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00273.x BJPIR: 2007 VOL 9, 165–168
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
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