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A politics that values stability, as much as individual freedoms, has an honourable history on the British left
Towards the end of the 1980s, I presented a paper to a Labour party students’ organisation called Clause 4, a soft-left grouping. It was not a triumph. Handwritten on both sides of several sheets of foolscap, the paper was very theoretical, drawing from the post-Marxist thinking of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. I lost my place halfway through and excruciating minutes passed. There was a heavy, ominous silence when I finished. Then someone said: “This is not what I joined Clause 4 for.” That turned out to be the most generous response I would get.
Though haplessly delivered, the paper was nevertheless a very minor sign of the times. As Labour came to terms with three successive defeats at the hands of Margaret Thatcher, I argued that the late-80s left should spend less of its time narrowly focused on class, and more on the emancipatory potential of feminism, gay rights and other social movements. Continue reading...