New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism
Martin Brown wrote When I was in London recently I saw a play called "Feel Good," a ruthless satire of Blair's Labor Party. Have you seen it?. Any thoughts. = MK: Unfortunately no. I'd appreciate your review of it. = If a similar play about the Clinton Administration had appeared on Broadway it would not have been obvious if it had been written by an lefty-ADA democrat or a member of Hillary's right wing conspiracy. = MK: It's easier to distinguish ADA analogues like Roy Hattersley and the right wing conspirators of the UK Conservative Party, if only because the punk Thatcherites there are so obviously out of touch with reality. Nevertheless your raising of ADA is instructive, in that, like Hattersley, they look pretty left relative to what passes for the centre today. But ADA began life as a ferociously anti-communist organisation that tried to reconcile its cuddly socioeconomic policies with its full support of the national security state and engagement in McCarthyite red-baiting and blacklisting. More than a few veterans of the Wallace campaign could relate stories of ADA activities during that period and after. The contemporaneous publication of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s "The Vital Center" gives the ideological flavour that most informed ADA. Of course there were others but his was the most influential. Michael Lind is the most representative of that tendency today, even feeling the need to bash Wallace still, in his co-authored intro to a Schlesinger celebration he and John Patrick Diggins edited for Princeton UP a few years back. ADA and Hattersley are marginal precisely because of the success of their policies, but neither can bring themselves to admit it, at least yet. Thanks to the ADA's rampant anti-communism a door was opened for the conservative resurgence of the 1960s and the Reagan ascendancy, and the subsequent rise of the DLC, purveyors of the "new realism" (as opposed to the cold war realism of ADA c.1948). The DLC is New ADA, pandering to today's vital center (significantly to the right of the old) while Old ADA proffers its comparatively more attractive policies in relative oblivion, rather like Hattersley today. Just as both tried to reconcile the irreconcilable -- capitalism with a human socioeconomic face and capitalism with a ruthless political edge -- so the DLC represents the continuation of that process with consequently diminishing returns for the former as yet more ground is ceded to the right. Pretty much sums up the Third Way worldwide. Michael K.
RE: New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism
When I was in London recently I saw a play called "Feel Good," a ruthless satire of Blair's Labor Party. Have you seen it?. Any thoughts. If a similar play about the Clinton Administration had appeared on Broadway it would not have been obvious if it had been written by an lefty-ADA democrat or a member of Hillary's right wing conspiracy. -Original Message- From: Michael Keaney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 9:16 AM To: PEN-L (E-mail) Subject: [PEN-L:15927] New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism Penners A few weeks ago Tony Blair presidentially appointed the chairman of the Labour Party without acknowledging that the post already existed, and has done for decades. The chair of the party an elected post. But such is Mr Tony's adherence to the norms of democracy that he saw fit to override legal protocol and impose his own appointee. The person he chose, Charles Clarke, was, only a while ago, being written off by such "insightful" commentators as Andrew Roth as too associated with the "failed" regime of Neil Kinnock, whose close adviser he was. In an earlier post Clarke was identified as having been a key figure in the Labour leadership's efforts to discredit the miners' strike of 1984/5 and having had earlier experience in CIA-backed ICFTU trade unionism. That his association with the electorally failed regime of Kinnock would have put an end to his political career is a measure of the inanity that passes for political journalism in Britain, where there is barely any acknowledgement of the largely obvious: the vast majority of the Blair entourage are the beneficiaries of the Kinnock ascendancy. Kinnock himself is now ensconced as the vice president of the European Commission, succeeding Leon Brittan in the mission to tailor that august institution to suit British sensibilities, in line with the British state's overall determination to integrate further in the European Union (see earlier posts by Mark Jones). The role of Kinnock and Brittan in this requires a separate post that may, or may not, materialise. Whatever, Kinnock has hardly failed and has been well-rewarded by his backers in the permanent government with his current appointment. Meanwhile Kinnock's erstwhile deputy, Roy Hattersley, continues to display a quality that is both endearing and infuriating: political naivete. In the article below, in which he complains of Clarke's appointment (whilst making sure not to bad-mouth Clarke himself), he says: "When I was a member of Labour's national executive, Tony Benn would make long speeches about the plot to transfer all power from party members to the parliamentary leadership. Neil Kinnock and I shook our heads in bewilderment and mumbled about the need for Tony to lie down in a darkened room. I now realise that, far from being demented, he was prescient." Nice one, Roy. Now, prescience would imply there being some element of continuity in the Kinnock "reforms" and the present Blair autocracy. But that is not a road Roy is either willing or able to travel down, at least yet. The truth of the matter is that New Labour is the ultimate triumph of the "liberal" wing of the CIA and US National Security State. Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Michael Foot represented an interregnum which allowed the dangerous emergence of the New Left within the Labour Party, and which had to be beaten down and out with the full force of the British secret state, itself assisted by its US allies (hence the disowning of the miners' strike, support for repressive Thatcherite employment legislation, the surrender of the BBC and the assiduous courting of business interests). While the out-and-out reactionaries like James Angleton believed any kind of socialism equated to Soviet communism, the liberals used the language of social democracy (via the Socialist International, the ICFTU, etc.) and nurtured relationships with certain amenable social democrats (Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Stewart, Denis Healey, David Owen, Shirley Williams, George Robertson, Peter Mandelson, to name but a few) via such tailor made outfits as the British American Project for a Successor Generation in order to accomplish exactly what Blair is achieving now. There is a lot of detail behind all this that requires deeper explanation, but the essence is just that. As for Mark's points re the split between the US and the UK, it is quite possible that slavish adherence to US dictates appeals less than a leadership role (there could be no other for Great Britain, after all) in a European counterweight to US hegemony. Fanciful it might be, a long term ambition it would certainly have to be. Nevertheless, it would be a strategically logical maneuver for a third-rate imperialist power desperately punching above its weight. The Conservatives' attachment to empire (preserved by the pun
New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism
Penners A few weeks ago Tony Blair presidentially appointed the chairman of the Labour Party without acknowledging that the post already existed, and has done for decades. The chair of the party an elected post. But such is Mr Tony's adherence to the norms of democracy that he saw fit to override legal protocol and impose his own appointee. The person he chose, Charles Clarke, was, only a while ago, being written off by such "insightful" commentators as Andrew Roth as too associated with the "failed" regime of Neil Kinnock, whose close adviser he was. In an earlier post Clarke was identified as having been a key figure in the Labour leadership's efforts to discredit the miners' strike of 1984/5 and having had earlier experience in CIA-backed ICFTU trade unionism. That his association with the electorally failed regime of Kinnock would have put an end to his political career is a measure of the inanity that passes for political journalism in Britain, where there is barely any acknowledgement of the largely obvious: the vast majority of the Blair entourage are the beneficiaries of the Kinnock ascendancy. Kinnock himself is now ensconced as the vice president of the European Commission, succeeding Leon Brittan in the mission to tailor that august institution to suit British sensibilities, in line with the British state's overall determination to integrate further in the European Union (see earlier posts by Mark Jones). The role of Kinnock and Brittan in this requires a separate post that may, or may not, materialise. Whatever, Kinnock has hardly failed and has been well-rewarded by his backers in the permanent government with his current appointment. Meanwhile Kinnock's erstwhile deputy, Roy Hattersley, continues to display a quality that is both endearing and infuriating: political naivete. In the article below, in which he complains of Clarke's appointment (whilst making sure not to bad-mouth Clarke himself), he says: "When I was a member of Labour's national executive, Tony Benn would make long speeches about the plot to transfer all power from party members to the parliamentary leadership. Neil Kinnock and I shook our heads in bewilderment and mumbled about the need for Tony to lie down in a darkened room. I now realise that, far from being demented, he was prescient." Nice one, Roy. Now, prescience would imply there being some element of continuity in the Kinnock "reforms" and the present Blair autocracy. But that is not a road Roy is either willing or able to travel down, at least yet. The truth of the matter is that New Labour is the ultimate triumph of the "liberal" wing of the CIA and US National Security State. Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Michael Foot represented an interregnum which allowed the dangerous emergence of the New Left within the Labour Party, and which had to be beaten down and out with the full force of the British secret state, itself assisted by its US allies (hence the disowning of the miners' strike, support for repressive Thatcherite employment legislation, the surrender of the BBC and the assiduous courting of business interests). While the out-and-out reactionaries like James Angleton believed any kind of socialism equated to Soviet communism, the liberals used the language of social democracy (via the Socialist International, the ICFTU, etc.) and nurtured relationships with certain amenable social democrats (Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Stewart, Denis Healey, David Owen, Shirley Williams, George Robertson, Peter Mandelson, to name but a few) via such tailor made outfits as the British American Project for a Successor Generation in order to accomplish exactly what Blair is achieving now. There is a lot of detail behind all this that requires deeper explanation, but the essence is just that. As for Mark's points re the split between the US and the UK, it is quite possible that slavish adherence to US dictates appeals less than a leadership role (there could be no other for Great Britain, after all) in a European counterweight to US hegemony. Fanciful it might be, a long term ambition it would certainly have to be. Nevertheless, it would be a strategically logical maneuver for a third-rate imperialist power desperately punching above its weight. The Conservatives' attachment to empire (preserved by the punk Thatcherite tendency) is wholly anachronistic, as it was in 1945. But it was why the "liberal" wing of the US national security state preferred to do business with the Gaitskellites, who could be relied upon not to do anything foolish re Cold War strategy, but who also "knew their place" in the new international order dominated by the US. Once the labour movement was destroyed, including especially the trade union bastions of Communist Party influence in Britain, the right wing of the Labour Party could be entrusted with the rudder of state, subject, of course, to the imprimatur of the permanent government. Blair mistook his Clarke for a chair The PM flouted party rule
