Why ideology matters

Can I begin by thanking the Fabians for organising this event today. And can I say what a privilege it is for me to be opening this Conference today. It is a privilege because of the place that Tony Crosland holds in Labour history.

Nobody before or since has been able to bridge the divide that so often exists between intellectual thought and practical politics. As someone starting out on a political career and having spent a short amount of time in the academic world, what is remarkable is Crosland's ability to span the two.

And of course the best and most comprehensive example of that is The Future of Socialism which we celebrate and discuss today.

I think it is particularly appropriate to be having this event in Grimsby –given Crosland's passion for Grimsby.

Indeed it might have been even better to have it at Blundell Park, the stadium of Grimsby Town football club since so great was Crosland's devotion he insisted on taking Henry Kissinger there rather than having an important diplomatic meeting.

I also feel particularly privileged because Susan Crosland is here today. Susan and I first met when I was helping draft a speech Gordon Brown delivered on the 20th anniversary of Tony Crosland's death in 1997 and it was a great honour to have the chance to talk to you about Tony's life and work then and for you to be here today.

I also want to recognise the role of Roy Hattersley from whom I have learnt a lot about Crosland and equality, Dick Leonard, who has edited the new edition which comes out next week and Giles Radice, who published the excellent book Friends and Rivals, on Crosland, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey.

Crosland's Contribution Today

Indeed I want to begin somewhere Giles might appreciate since he and his wife, Lisanne were at one time good friends of my parents — with my own background.

I was seven years old when Tony Crosland died in 1977 and I dimly remember being taken to a music lesson in Leeds by my Mum and the news being announced on the radio.

I mention this because in the household in which I was brought up, Crosland and his ideas were not popular. His critique of Marxism, his views on public ownership.

My Dad published a satirical article in the New Statesman in 1959 — recently reprinted — comparing those who wished to take his view of socialism out of the Labour Party with Christians wanting to drop Christ. It began: "The title of my sermon 'Should We Drop Christ?' will have surprised some of the more traditionally-minded among you, but facts have to be faced…"

Indeed, I was recently at a 90th birthday party for Professor John Saville of Hull University, a close collaborator of my father's, at which someone who spoke said: You taught us that guy Crosland was the enemy.

That is some sort of tribute I think. There was a sense across the political spectrum of Crosland's intellectual ability and his importance as a political figure. I think this is because he combined revisionism—a determination to see the world as it was - with ideology - a unshakeable set of values. Far easier to take on someone who simply argued for pragmatism.

Today's task

I will develop this theme in my remarks, but before I do I think all of us should bear in mind a warning, taken from The Future of Socialism itself.

Crosland wrote: "Conservative or indolent-minded people on the Left, finding the contemporary scene too puzzling and unable to mould it into the old familiar categories are inclined to seek refuge in the slogans and ideas of 50 years ago. "

He went on: "Keir Hardie cannot provide…the right focus with which to capture the reality of the mid-twentieth century world….As indeed with his remarkable blend of idealism and practical shrewdness, he would have been the first to realise"

That blend of idealism and practical politics is, it seems to be me a pretty good description of Tony Crosland. I would guess therefore, and Susan would know better than anyone here, that he might perhaps have taken a dim view of anyone that used today's event to try and recycle the solutions suggested fifty years ago in the Future of Socialism.

The task for today then is surely simple: to be inspired by the past, by Tony Crosland, but not to be inhibited by it. The world has changed dramatically in the last fifty years —as Tony Crosland would have been the first to recognise. He could write about social democracy in one country, and today we live in a global economy which shapes many of our decisions; he makes no mention of our obligations to the developing world, today this is a central part of any socialist agenda; in his time environmental issues were about planning policy; today we face a threat to the sustainability of the planet.

So how can a book written fifty years ago, five years into Labour Opposition really help inform thinking in a government nine years into power?

I will argue today that it can because, in its approach and values, it speaks to the central task of renewal that faces the Labour Government over the coming years. Today I want to set out the nature of that task of renewal and I want to go on to suggest what lessons the Future of Socialism and Tony Crosland's other work teaches us for that task ahead.

The task of renewal

The government has a record of some success to be proud of:

• The longest continuous period of economic growth for generations
• Record investment in public services
• and the longest sustained falls in child poverty since records began.

But the task of renewal must acknowledge a fundamental truth about politics: little credit is accorded for past promises; the battle is about the future. This is particularly true after nine years in government - perhaps twelve or thirteen by the time of the next election - when the call of 'time for a change' will be louder.

The best answer to this call is for us to have undergone a process of renewal as searching, as basic and as profound as the Opposition. And for me this process of renewal must achieve three things:

• it must produce a clear analysis and critique of the condition of Britain — without that we become advocates of the status quo.
• it must provide a clear sense of the guiding purpose that will shape our policies and programme in the years ahead;
• and it must paint a picture of the good society we are trying to create

The relevance of the Future of Socialism is that it examined these basic foundational questions of politics and did not just do so for its time, but provides, even fifty years on, lessons for today.

They are:

• the lesson of revisionism which sees and understands the world from a progressive viewpoint but understands it as it is and not as we would hope it to be.
• the lesson that equality should be at the core of a progressive government's ideology.
• and the lesson that our picture of the good society must combine an appreciation and respect for individual aspiration with what I call a politics of the common good.

Revisionism

Let me start with the lesson of revisionism. This is the first and essential legacy of Crosland: the need to revise policy and approach in the light of changed circumstances.

As is well known, Crosland's central thesis in the book was that capitalism had changed out of all recognition from its pre-war incarnation and therefore policy needed to adapt. Public ownership was now unnecessary because of fundamental changes to capitalism: the acceptance of governmental responsibility for employment, the more equal distribution of income, and the advent of the post-war welfare state.

This in turn led to his critique of the advocates of public ownership which suggested they were confusing the means of socialism — public ownership among other tools - with the ends - greater equality.

Looking at it today, the importance of Crosland's revisionism seems to me to based on three things.

First, as I have said, the commitment to analyse the world and adapt on that basis. Not sticking with old solutions simply for the sake of it.

Secondly, the need to root the analysis of the world not only in academic analysis but in the nature of people's lives. Well before Mondeo man, Crosland was aware of and embracing higher consumption and he has no truck with those who under-value the importance of that spread of material prosperity. As he put it in A Social Democratic Britain: "…Those enjoying an above-average standard of living should be chary of admonishing those less fortunate on the perils of material riches."

And memorably he rejected the Webbs' hair-shirtism: "Total abstinence and a good filing-system are not now the right sign-posts to the socialist Utopia: or at least if they are, some of us will fall by the wayside."

But thirdly, what also seems to me crucial is to understand what revisionism is and is not for Crosland. It is an appeal to engage directly with the world as it is but it is not a plea for pure pragmatism. In his biography of Crosland, Kevin Jeffreys quotes an illuminating exchange between Crosland and Roy Hattersley towards the end of his life, when Crosland invokes the need for a follow-up to The Future of Socialism and says:

"The Centre must remember and keep reminding people that we are ideologists too"

And this is plain to see from a reading of the The Future of Socialism. The whole enterprise is based on the notion that there is purpose in thinking through politics from a set of first principles, from an ideology.

Indeed in perhaps the crucial intellectual chapter of the book, Crosland goes through five basic socialist aspirations: Protest against poverty, wider concern for social welfare in the interests of the disadvantaged, a belief in equality, a rejection of competitive antagonism and a protest against the inefficiencies of capitalism.

He then looks at the world and concludes that the two that seem most relevant to the circumstances of the 1950s are first, social welfare and secondly, social equality and the 'classless society'.

These observations about Crosland's revisionism matter because they urge us today to stand back and look at how the world has changed in the last nine years. But they also implore us to look at how we need to change the world, as we hold on to our guiding principles and mission.

So how has the world changed since 1997? Many of the issues that were of concern when we came to power have been partially tackled but remain important but there is a central context which is different: that lies with the impact of globalisation.

Whether it is the environment and the threat to the sustainability of our way life in each country because of the actions of all countries; the mobility of business and the rise of China and India which reshapes our economic map; the impact of migration including through EU expansion; or the scope that technology provides for terrorism to reach from one country across the world.

Globalisation brings obvious opportunities and challenges: the chance to explore through travel, work and leisure horizons undreamt of by Crosland fifty years ago except for the most wealthy. As well as a set of economic, social and foreign policy challenges.

My point today is not to explore these in great depth but to suggest that the process of renewal must involve a progressive story about these opportunities and challenges. It must centre around an acknowledgement of the massive insecurities and opportunities brought by globalisation and a prescription that this makes the role for government more not less important: as it is only government that can ensure a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of globalisation.

Within this context of globalisation, I would suggest that there are two central policy challenges we face. The first is to confront the denial of opportunity that still holds many people back. As a result of global economic change, the risk of job loss, obsolete skills and inadequate opportunities are greater.

Since 1997, significant strides have been made in expanding opportunity through higher employment, more opportunities for skills, the chance of childcare for parents. But we must recognise that whether it is people's desire to get on the housing ladder, the chance to progress in work, the opportunity to return to education, the task of extending opportunity must go far further.

Because of the rise in overall prosperity in the last 50 years, we can also be more ambitious than Crosland could be. In his time, a central concern was to ensure for the mass of the population, basic security in income, housing, retirement. That remains a central question but because of the huge increase in prosperity overall, we can also aim for the majority not the minority a chance at realising their potential more fully than Crosland could have dreamed.

The Swedish social democratic party talks about their ambitions as being founded on a 'ground floor' of basic security and a 'first floor' of self-realisation or fulfilling potential. Whether it is through work, leisure, travel, that ambition of giving people a chance to lead the life that they want is now far more realistic and possible.

The second central challenge is a sense reflected in concerns about crime and anti-social behaviour of a breakdown in community amidst bewildering global and national change. I see it in my own constituency Doncaster North, an ex-mining area, where community used to built around the pits.

The community of the past cannot be rebuilt nor can many of the other features of that time. But there is a yearning in our society for greater cohesion. Government cannot make community but it can help build a culture and institutions in which it becomes more likely to endure and grow.

If these are the two central policy challenges of renewal offered by an analysis of the condition of Britain, there is also a political challenge. The process of renewal must understand the nature and roots of this challenge. We face a Conservative leader who, at the moment at least, is talking the priorities of the centre-left: the environment, tolerance, poverty, public services.

We must understand why he is doing this. He is speaking this language not because he believes it, but because he knows that the Conservative Party have lost the ideological battles of the last ten years:

• For a society where there was no protection at work against greater fairness at work
• for a belief that poverty is inevitable against one that it says it can be tackled
• for tax cuts against public services.
• for narrow-mindedness on social issue against tolerance

We shall see over the coming years the contradictions between what the Conservatives, I suspect, continue to believe and what they claim they now believe. But it makes it all the more important that part of our renewal must be to re-state our guiding mission - as Crosland taught.

I am not suggesting that people ask on the doorstep — 'what's your guiding ideology?'. But I think that is to miss the point. People do want to know what it is that motivates you as a politician as a party and as a government. Competence is necessary but not sufficient.

All the evidence from social democratic parties that have stayed in office is that they must be able to mount an argument that they are building an economic and social model based on a distinctive ethos which would be put at risk by their opponents. We must vividly demonstrate that we stand for a particular governing ethos.

Cameron's presence should neither push us left or right but it should make us realise that we face a more exacting task: to spell out very clearly our sense of mission, what motivates and drive our politics, and to ensure that everything we do reflects that approach.

The Role of Equality

That takes me to the second lesson from Crosland and that concerns the role of equality in his vision and his mission for society.

As I said earlier, he believed a concern with social welfare — the relief of social distress - and the ideal of "social equality and the classless society" should be the primary aims of socialism. It was the second far more than the first that drove much of the philosophy and policy in the book.

His case for equality is based on three things: social justice, the waste involved in the denial of equal opportunity and the lessening of social antagonism that he believed would result from a more equal society.

Crosland did not think equal opportunity was enough as an aim for socialists but he drew our attention to something that can be easily missed because of the debate about whether it is enough. He pointed out that equal opportunity was an extremely radical and probably unrealisable notion.

As he put it: "Complete achievement of this is , of course, an unattainable ideal; for the children of talented parents start with a pronounced environmental advantage."

If Crosland thought equality of opportunity was unattainable, why did he also think it was not enough? Because he worried about the impact of replacing "one remote elite (based on lineage) by a new one (based on ability and intelligence)".

While a system based on ability and intelligence was to be preferred, he wrote"…If the inequality of rewards is excessively great, the creation of equal opportunities may give rise to too intense a competition, with a real danger of increased frustration and discontent."

So for Crosland what we have called meritocracy, since Michael Young, is an insufficient vision of progressive politics. The equal opportunity to be unequal would not get at, he believed, a basic progressive anxiety about society: that vast inequalities of outcome breed resentment and inevitably entrench class stratification.

Extraordinary changes have taken place in the fifty years since Crosland wrote. National income has tripled and with it personal prosperity, home ownership, access to foreign holidays, ownership of cars. The poorest tenth of the population has seen its average income rise by 90% after inflation in the last 45 years. It is wise, as Crosland warned, for the Left to show a proper appreciation of this fact and the enormous improvements this has meant in people's lives.

Of course, this rise in overall prosperity does not mean we have a more egalitarian society. Overall inequality – as measured by final incomes - has risen since Crosland's time, although its growth has been halted under this government. What about access to opportunities?

One way of measuring this is by looking at social mobility. A society in which there is greater social mobility between classes is one where there is greater equality of opportunity.

On one measure, because of more 'room at the top' in terms of professional jobs, there has been an increase in social mobility. But others have suggested that social mobility may have fallen when we look at the situation by income.

What is true is that the faith that Crosland had that education on its own would bring about a big improvement in equal opportunity and transitions between classes has not turned out to be right.

And we cannot be satisfied with the extent of poor life chances for so many people in our country. If we are in the business of defining the Labour government's mission in the years ahead, equality of opportunity must be at the core. The notion that each person should have the opportunity to realise their potential seems such a basic demand of justice, it is impossible to see how it could not be so.

In my constituency, Doncaster North, we are ninth from the bottom - 560th out of 569 English constituencies - for higher education degrees among households. This is an obvious example of the social injustice and waste that Crosland talks about. There is no reason to think there is any less ability in my constituency than elsewhere to take advantage of the opportunities that higher education offers but because of a combination of circumstance, low expectations, background inequality, access to the best schooling, it does not happen.

How does Crosland's agenda for equality of opportunity translate fifty years on? Education is the absolute core of this mission. What has changed since Crosland's time is our recognition that opportunity is shaped earlier even than 5 in the life-cycle, which is why programmes like Sure-Start are so important, and secondly, our belief that educational opportunities should continue long after the school leaving age, through further education and the acquisition of skills in the workplace.

Much of this has already been a priority for the government, but as we look ahead to priorities for public spending, education must be absolutely fundamental. In the last Budget, the Chancellor set out the aspiration to raise education to raise spending on each state school pupil to the current level of private schools. This is an important aim in the years ahead.

Yet, what I have learned since 1997 is that the drive for equality of opportunity cannot be isolated from the other inequalities in our society. The idea that we could separate or draw a clear distinction between different types of inequality is wrong.

That is why the government's mission to tackle child poverty is so important also to the mission of equality of opportunity. One generation's outcome helps define the next generation's opportunity. The resources directed to lower-income families since 1997 have precisely stemmed from this recognition.

At the same time, we have found out that improved incomes are necessary but not sufficient. Visit any community and we all know that inequality of life-chances is a much more complex phenomenon than that measured by income alone. It is as much about the quality of public services, the support provided to parents, the opportunities outside school provided for young people.

It is also important to state - as Crosland recognised — that this mission is about the majority not the minority. Whether it is about housing, education, youth services or balancing work and family life, issues of extending opportunity apply to the vast majority of the population.

What of Crosland's point about ethos and inequality — his warning about a society with competitive antagonism and excessive individualism. Our task must be to must come to terms with the new individualism that undoubtedly exists today and has many important attributes: a sense of motivation, ambition and expectations. But at the same time cultivate the other demand that undoubtedly exists: for a society imbued with a sense of responsibility that we owe to each other.

The Individual and the Good Society

This takes me onto the third lesson I take from Crosland for he understood that socialists needed to be responsive to individual aspiration and desires for higher living standards yet at the same time not neglect the notion of the good society.

While he embraces personal prosperity, Crosland devotes the whole of his last chapter to what he calls Issues of The Future, where he not only calls for liberal social legislation but also a change in culture: "We need not only higher exports and old-age pensions, but more open-air cafes, brighter and gayer streets at night, later closing-hours for public houses, more local repertory theatres…and so on ad infinitmum".

For the most part, Britain 2006 does not resemble the drabness of Britain 1956, partly because of the massive increases in prosperity and the changes that have followed. Cities around Britain have revived in the last decade as a result of new public investment, private investment and culture.

So does this have relevance today? It does because it urges an approach to progressive politics which sees individual consumption as necessary but not sufficient for a vision of the good society. Today, the issues that go beyond individual living standards may be different from those in Crosland's time but the insight is important.

This is about the politics of the common good. Appealing to people's instincts that we are part of a collective mission for society, in which we play our part in many different ways. I think there are reasons to be optimistic here about the way in which the ethos of Britain has changed significantly in the last ten years.

Those who reach adulthood at a certain time are inevitably influenced by the politics around them as well as whole set of other forces. Those in their twenties today grew up with a set of values just as did the children of Thatcher. It is a different set of values from the 1980s - with a much greater emphasis on issues of the centre-left.

We have to relish and answer this call for a politics of the common good. The key issues are obvious: they range from development around the world to the environment but also to more personal issues, the need for a culture that enables people to balance work and family life and the wider sense that we are trying to build a society with an ethos of responsibility and solidarity.

One answer to this must surely be to think harder about how we encourage a culture of responsibility. The responsibility to mentor children; the responsibility to volunteer while at work; the responsibility for respect for ethical values in corporate life; and the responsibility not to walk by on the other side. This is partly then about the role of government taking a lead, but it is also about local experience and national purpose.

We must have the places in our communities which can encourage a sense of empathy and mutual respect —what the theorists call social capital. I know from my own experience we have undervalued public spaces. The fascinating thing about sure-start centres is not simply that they are changing communities in terms of the services they provide to parents, but they represent places where community is being built.

Those I meet at SureStart centres always say the same; they thought they were alone until they met others at sure-start. Public spaces—whether they are libraries, sure-start centres or youth clubs — bring people together and enable people to build bonds of community. Building these institutions needs to be a priority in the years ahead.

At the national level, cohesion and community is difficult unless there is a sense of what we stand for as a nation. That is why the debate about Britishness is important — not as some artificial construct but a real living sense of what values we want to define ourselves to the world, what it means to be a citizen.

So I conclude that while it is hard for government to fashion this debate about the good society, it is essential to do so. It is essential because it tells the public not just where we want the country to go but what drives us as politicians.

The Nature of Politics

I have suggested three ways then in which Crosland's Future of Socialism can inspire us today. But the nature of the way we conduct politics and implement policy must be very different from that of fifty years ago.

The biggest change since Crosland wrote has surely been in expectations and ambitions of individuals. It applies, crucially, in the role individuals play as decision-makers shaping their own lives. Crosland was writing at a time when the rule of the expert and the well-educated was the expectation. His writing sometimes shares that expectation.

What we know today is that individuals demand more than this and also that we have better policy if it involves the individual. Neighbourhood crime can only be tackled with citizens involved, public health can only be improved if individuals are engaged, youth services will only help young people if they are shaping the services themselves. And voting once every four years is an inadequate expression for many of their wish to be involved in the process of shaping politics.

The truth is that there are many different mechanisms that can bring about this engagement. Some will involve greater individual choice, some well involve collective discussion and debate and some are simply about those in authority being better at listening and reaching out to individuals.

Perhaps the way to put it is this: Egalitarianism for Crosland was not simply a mathematical metric for the society, it was about a spirit and an ethos. Whether it is the way social security works, public services, or government, the ethos of egalitarianism is a long way from being implemented in the way public institutions work. In practice we need to look at more ways of empowering citizens, collectively and individually so that they can have the say they deserve and demand.

Conclusion

I want to conclude by summing up my argument:

Amidst the new challenge of globalisation, the condition of Britain is still one where too many are denied opportunity and there is too little sense of community, amidst the challenge of globalisation.

A broad commitment to a more equal society is a central and inspiring part of our mission for the country as we seek to extend opportunity to the millions and millions of families who could benefit from greater chances in education, work and housing.

But our vision of the good society sees personal prosperity allied to a different ethos: a sense of a politics of the common good: in our protection of the goods of our society like the environment and our duties to each other.

Let me end on this point of ethos.

What is most fascinating about The Future of Socialism is the extent to which this question of ethos is infused through it. Crosland hates the sense of class division and hierarchy which he perceives in Britain as compared to the United States. He remarks also, however, on what he perceives to be the relative solidarity of the 1950s, certainly as compared to the 1930s.

Governments do not and should not dictate the ethos of a society. But they can use their influence to shape it. The ethos of a country is profoundly affected by the ideological debates that occur within it. It is no accident that British politics has moved in a progressive direction since 1997. It is because we have been debating not the size of tax cuts, but how to improve public services; not stigmatising of certain groups, but how to create a more inclusive country; not isolationism, but how to fulfil our obligations to the developing world.

Some people would suggest that Tony Crosland would have been disappointed by the achievements of nine years of labour government. Others would suggest he was New labour before its time. I think he would have admired one thing above all: the sustaining of a Labour government in power for getting on for ten years. Because he would have known the massive opportunity this provides. It is those countries that have sustained progressive government that hard-wire their values into the country and transform it.

So let us avoid the pessimism that can sometimes infuse the left. There is a massive progressive opportunity that faces us. With the right process of renewal, we can sustain ourselves in power for years to come, and create a society with the ethos and the values true to many of the lessons that The Future of Socialism teaches us.

Ed Miliband is Labour MP for Doncaster North and Minister for the third sector. He was speaking at the Fabian Society Northern Conference 'The next future of socialism' in Grimsby Town Hall on Saturday 16th September 2006. The conference was kindly supported by the GMB and the New Statesman as media partner.