What's New about ‘New Labour’?
| Published date | 01 February 2001 |
| Author | Paul Allender |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9256.00136 |
| Date | 01 February 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
What’s New About ‘New Labour’?
Paul Allender
Oxford Brookes University, the Open University and Oxford University
There have been many words written and said about New Labour. With a view to not adding any
further unnecessary ones here, this article will focus upon and evaluate the claim of novelty. What
is it that is new about New Labour? What constitutes this ‘newness’? Is it a new political formation
or just a product of ‘spin’? Or is it something else? After a very brief reference to the literature, this
article will seek to situate the creation and development of New Labour within some external
causal factors and also refer to internal influences upon it.
What’s New About ‘New Labour’?
Steve Ludlam has done all of us who are studying New Labour a great service with
his review article ‘New Labour: What’s Published is What Counts’ in British Journal
of Politics and International Relations 2(2), June 2000. While not absolutely exhaustive,
his list of books reviewed plus his bibliography is a tremendous resource and I refer
the reader to it as a reading list.
Perspectives on New Labour
For my part, I divide the literature, as regards the novelty of New Labour, into six
perspectives. These are:
• The ‘New Labourites’: mainly Mandelson and Liddle (1996); Gould (1998); Blair
(1996 and 1998), plus work from Demos and other groups inside the New
Labour ‘camp’;
• Opposition from the Labour Left and others: mainly Ken Coates, Michael Barratt
Brown et al. from Spokesman Books in Nottingham, but also Roy Hattersley
(1998);
• The third way and/or a new social democracy: Anthony Giddens (1998); Will
Hutton (1999); Andrew Gamble and Tony Wright (1999);
• Those who suggest that New Labour is merely a product of ‘spin’, ranging from
Norman Fairclough (2000) to Stephen Bayley (1998);
• Those who stress the continuities between Old and New Labour: David Coates
(1996); Royden Harrison (1996); Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann (1997); Geoffrey
Foote (1997); David Rubenstein (2000);
• Those who suggest that New Labour is continuous with Thatcherism: Marxism
Today (1998) but also Colin Hay (1999); Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (1997);
Richard Heffernan (2000).
There are also a number of texts that do not fit easily into any of these categories:
Coates and Lawler (2000); Driver and Martell (1998); Shaw (1996); Brivati and
Bale (1997); Hazell (1999); Blackburn and Plant (1999); the forthcoming Ludlam
and Smith (2000); Taylor (1999), plus a number of others.
© Political Studies Association, 2001.
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
W H A T ’ S N E W A B O U T ‘ N E W L A B O U R ’
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It is very difficult to select from the literature to make some general points. How-
ever, Mandelson and Liddle (1996), Ken Coates (1996 and 1999), Giddens (1998),
Gamble and Wright (1999), Fairclough (2000), Harrison (1996), Marxism Today
(1998), Hay (1999), Coates and Lawler (2000), Driver and Martell (1998), and
Brivati and Bale (1997) stand out as must-be-read texts.
New Labour as Continuous with ‘Old’
This article will argue that essentially there is nothing new about New Labour. As
such, it falls into the fifth perspective, above. That is, the continuities between it
and so-called ‘Old Labour’ are more significant than the cleavages between the
two. Times have changed and British social democracy perceived that it needed
to modernise itself to catch up with these ‘new times’. It is interesting to note that
both Mandelson and Liddle (1996) and Blair (1996 and 1998) stress the continuities
between New Labour and the party’s traditions, particularly its founders and the
post-war government. Perhaps one quote from Blair is sufficient to illustrate this:
‘Our values do not change. Our commitment to a different vision of society stands
intact. But the ways of achieving that vision must change. The programme we are
in the process of constructing entirely reflects our values. Its objectives would be
instantly recognisable to our founders ...’ (Blair, 1996, p. 18). So, the ‘arch-
modernisers’ also emphasise continuities. What is it then, according to them, that
makes it different to ‘Old Labour’? There is the obvious ‘modernisation’ element,
much more of which later. However, there is also the question of which ‘Old Labour’
they are comparing themselves with. If it is the founders of the party and the 1945
Labour government, they cite continuities. However, if it is the corporatism of
Wilson and Callaghan of the 1970s or the ‘Bennite aberration of the late 1970s and
the early 1980s’ (Mandelson and Liddle, 1996, p. 21), then...
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