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· Peter Franklin reflects on Labour's failure to improve the lot of its core vote
· How should Conservatives respond to the left's assault on family and civic ties, which has undermined the working class, and created an underclass?
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One by one they fell, once rock-solid seats changing colour as the computer graphics danced and whirled to Peter Snow's demented beat. Who can forget that election night, not of course that dark day two-and-a-half years ago, but this year's Euros. I must say I enjoyed myself immensely, even if it was at our opponents' expense. The shock, the humiliation, the re-ingested verbiage - and that was just the BBC. But as the Liberals lost Yeovil and Labour lost Yorkshire, I started to wonder: Why? Perhaps this all had something to do with Europe, I thought. But before I could cut myself on those razor-sharp political instincts of mine, the BBC put me right. You see, the result was nothing to do with Europe, it was merely a result of the, er, low turnout.
Well that's a relief! Britain is after all a nation of fanatical Europhiles - it's just that they were washing their hair on polling day and didnt vote. And who can blame them? Given the nightly feast of quality broadcasting lavished upon us by the BBC, it's a wonder that any one gets out at all. But despite the license-fee funded propaganda, the undeniable fact remains that turnout was low and lowest of all in Labour areas. This is a pattern precedented in local elections and, yes, the general election, where the more Tory the seat, the more people turned out to vote - against us as it happens.
Famously, Tony Blair won fewer votes in 1997 than John Major did in 1992. More to the point, Blair's 1997 victory was built on Major's 1992 votes. Forget all those stories about stay-at-home Tories, they were too busy voting Labour. It was those that voted for Neil Kinnock in 1992 that were washing their hair in 1997 - an irony in more ways than one. Still, New Labour weren't about to worry. With former Tories taking the strain in Middle England, the heartlands could afford to relax. And, of course, should the Conservative corpse show signs of life, the old Labour vote would be ready to sit on the coffin lid. Only this isn't what happened. First came a Conservative revival in local government -we overtook the Liberals last year and came within 2% of Labour this year. That should have been warning enough. But then came the Euro campaign, where polls showed us closing the gap. At this point, Labour did start sweating and nervous appeals were made to the core vote, but where were they? Reaching for the ballot paper or the shampoo bottle? Happily, the Timotei won the day and so did we.
The working class is being replaced by a growing middle class, and a growing underclass
Not that traditional Labour voters use Timotei, of course. Carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush will do for them - or so traditional Labour politicians would have us believe. But Old Labour have got it wrong too. A return to cloth caps and block votes won't bring back the core vote. The regimented ranks of unionised factory workers have gone the way of Red Robbo and the three-day week. Old Labour may like to think itself as subversive, but it has itself been subverted by the disintegration of the traditional working class.
Historically, the Left has exercised power through the social and economic ties that once brought cohesion and community to the urban masses. And, at some times and in some guises, Socialism has acted to strengthen those ties and direct them to the defence of the weak against the strong. But as British socialism came to owe more to Marx than to Christ, the strengthening turned to weakening. The social ties were seen as obstacles to progress, most of all the allegiances to family and nation that might so easily be played upon by the Right. The economic ties, meanwhile, were not so much unpicked as warped to the needs of the Socialist elite. And thus the familiar bestiary of Labour politicians, union barons and leftist intellectuals rose up to preside over an industrial and moral decline culminating not in the liberation of the working class, but the formation of an underclass.
Fortunately, the rise and fall of the working class intertwines with a happier tale - that of the rise and rise of the middle class. The reason why the stories are intertwined is that so many characters from the former have moved over to the latter. For as working class ties frayed and unravelled, the opportunities of the free market allowed millions to escape the consequences - at least in material terms.
The political outcome of all this is familiar - Old Labour sinking with its power base and the New Right coming to power on a wave of aspiration. Except that this narrative is incomplete. To a growing middle class and a shrinking working class, one must add a burgeoning underclass. It too must have an associated political interest with which it will wax and wane in synchrony. And indeed it does, what one might call the New Left - by which I don't just mean New Labour. What distinguishes the New Left from Old is that it seeks to exploit the weakness of the underclass rather than the strength of the working class. Why bother with the means of production, when one can control the means of the unproductive?
Dependency flourishes, and the family is undermined
Picture, if you will, the transfer of wealth from taxpayers to those who lack the means to provide for themselves. Now picture the hands through which that wealth must pass before it reaches the intended recipients. Yes, I'm sure you all get the picture. Now, I realise that for individual recipients such largesse presents itself as the thin trickle of dependency, but trace back the trickles as they fan out from streams, then rivers and finally raging torrents of wealth. Can you feel the power? Now how do you suppose such power will be used? Forget, for a moment, the selflessness of those with a true dedication to public service. From a distance they are conduits of power, but do not direct its flow. Think instead of those that do. Of those whose own power depends upon the dependency of millions. Here then, is the New Left, cultivating poverty like a cash crop. Its dead hand can be felt wherever the State intervenes, supplanting the family, subverting communities. And it strikes first at our children, both at school and at home, nurturing the intellectual, emotional and moral roots of dependency.
Let's hear from Anthony Giddens, architect of Tony Blair's 'Third Way': "High rates of separation and divorce are probably here to stay, but one can see many ways in which these could enrich, rather than destroy, social solidarity... Recombinant families may bring in their train a rich nexus of new kin ties, almost like pre-modern extended kin groups."
So there you have it, New Labour's family values. While their doctors of spin exalt the wholesome Blairs, their doctors of philosophy extol the broken family. But as I said before, New Labour and the New Left aren't quite the same thing. The Blair coalition is built from more than one component. Sure enough, its foundation is the underclass and those who service the dependency culture. But then there are the nurses, teachers and other public sector workers that provide services to the nation as a whole. And finally there is middle England - richer than ever, but not so rich as not to fear decline in the public sector.
In government, we may have pumped billions into new spending, but we never stood a chance. Those funds fuelled the dependency culture, which diverted resources from the legitimate public services, whose decline undermined the advances of the new middle class. And so by creating dependency in the underclass, the New Left created a 'middle-down' coalition for New Labour to exploit. But our troubles are their troubles now. And as this Government is finding out, crude expenditure is no solution when the real problem is with the system itself.
Still why should New Labour care? They can fight us on our own ground, safe in the knowledge that we won't be fighting on theirs. It's an attitude that doesn't say much for Labour, but what does it say about us?
The Conservative response
So where's this heading? Back down the primrose path to Disraeli's One Nation? Actually, no. Well then, the way forward to some libertarian utopia? Wrong again. Wet and dry: they're yesterday's weather. The Conservative Party stands for free markets and we don't need to compromise on that out of some sense of middle class guilt - the modern underclass is not impoverished by capitalism for the simple reason that it has no contact with it. The dependency culture has nothing to do with the free market, it is a construct of the State - and as such, we can also do without the convolutions of those that seek to privatise that which can't be sold. In short, we don't need economic answers to an essentially social problem.
Where, then, will the social answers come from? So far they have come from the Left, if only by default. With libertarians whispering in one ear and corporatists in the other, the Conservative Party has been too distracted to find a social voice. Perhaps we fear it may possess an unpleasant, authoritarian tone. This need not be the case. True Conservatism believes that respect for family, community and nation is innate, God given. Indeed, it would be an artificial and oppressive environment that punished virtue and rewarded vice.
Our task then is not to impose our values on the poor. But to dismantle the power structures that enable the New Left to impose its values on the poor. If still we hesitate it is for three reasons.
Firstly, being radical doesn't come easily to Conservatives. But Conservatism is not about defending the status quo irrespective of our core values, but about defending our core values irrespective of the status quo. Secondly, there are those who'll always kow-tow to the establishment, any establishment - as Margaret Thatcher discovered in her fight against the Unions and William Hague with his continuing fight against the single currency. And thirdly, and most shamefully, there are those that simply don't care. They have calculated that the British economy is rich enough to maintain a scrap heap of the permanently unemployed. 'Let the New Left have the poor', they say, 'as long they keep them from rioting, who gives a damn?'
But it is we who are damned if we take that attitude. You see, New Labour have been making calculations of their own. While they fight for the votes of the rich, the poor they can take for granted. And they'll get away with it too - unless we offer the poor something the state can never buy them: hope.
Related links
The ccfwebsite.com briefing on poverty
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