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In defence of 'Against the Odds'
Posted by Claire Spencer (@thedancingflea)
Tuesday, 17th November 2009
If you are a Twitter regular, you would have to have had been living under a rock to have missed @BevaniteEllie’s (pictured) successful campaign to have Against the Odds used as a Party Political Broadcast for the Labour Party. You would have had to have stayed under 
that rock to miss the reaction – which has ranged from delight to scepticism within the Labour grassroots, through to mockery and outright derision elsewhere. I’m not going to question people’s motives (again), but as I signed Ellie's petition to have it as a PPB, I’m going to speak out in its defence. To do so, I’m going to use the fiskings written by Sara Bedford and Matthew Barrett. I’m sure they won’t mind – heck, they probably won’t know. Or care:
Against the Odds: “They said that working people were not fit to govern - so we formed the Labour Party”
Sara: “A party where the intellect, stimulus and money was supplied by the decidedly middle-class Fabians and their friends.”
Matthew: “Which was bankrolled by the metropolitan middle class elitist Fabian Society”
The motion to unite the various left-leaning organisations was passed by the Trade Union Congress – which is, you know, fairly working class. Further, I don’t think the involvement of The Fabians made the Labour Party any less representative of the working class (and certainly more representative than nothing at all) – and as money was one of the many barriers that stood between them and politics, I’m quite glad that The Fabians saw fit to bankroll it. Lord knows the party wasn’t perfect – there was a lot of internal strife – but there was a party, and I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to diminish the importance of that on the basis of middle class involvement.
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Against the Odds: “They said that women didn’t deserve the vote”
Sara: “This glosses carefully over the fact that Emmeline Pankhurst...was refused membership of the Independent Labour Party...The refusal was on account of her gender. Several years before her death, Emmaline [sic] became concerned by socialism and joined the Conservative Party. We are of course still waiting for a woman to be elected leader of the Labour party, let alone become a Labour Prime Minister. The legislation to extend an equal franchise to women was brought in by Baldwin’s Conservative government in 1928.”
Matthew: “The Tories gave women the vote”
None of this is untrue – although I should stick some dates and additional information in here. Emmeline Pankhurst was turned away from her local branch, but managed to join the national branch in 1893. Clearly, the establishment she was fighting against existed throughout the political spectrum. But did the establishment say that women didn’t deserve the vote? Yes. And were the Labour Party among the strongest supporters of women’s suffrage (eventually) – yes. Support for women’s suffrage was incorporated into Labour Party policy in 1912, and in the same year, George Lansbury MP stood down in support of the movement, clashing with Asquith on several occasions on the matter.
I would also add that 36.7 percent of current Labour MPs are female, compared to 16.7 percent of Liberal Democrat MPs and just 10.3 percent of MPs in the Conservative Party.
Against the Odds: “They said the son of a miner could never become a minister. But no-one told Nye Bevan”
Matthew: “When did they say that? They didn't, because it obviously wasn't true. Miners had been ministers in several Labour governments before Attlee's. For example, the Labour Secretary for Scotland, William Adamson, was an ACTUAL MINER, not just the son of one. So Nye Bevan is completely irrelevant in this.”
Well, he’s not strictly irrelevant – he was an actual miner, for one thing – and at one point, it truly would have been unthinkable for a miner to become a minister. Bevan was a loyal member of the Labour Party, and one who achieved a great deal during his time in office – so while he may not have been the first, he was still remarkable.
Against the Odds: “It seemed impossible to stop the tide of fascism, until Cable Street and a few good men and women got in the way”
Sara: “The ‘good men and women’ were not organised by the Labour Party. Sadly the riots led to the Public Order Act that outlawed political marches without permission. We can see its authoritarian legacy in New Labour’s recent ban on protests near Parliament.”
Matthew: “Who were unrelated to Labour”
There was a healthy mix of people at Cable Street – and those who represented the Labour Party had to turn against the party leadership to do so. But many did. Should the actions of a party’s members be ignored if their leadership were in the wrong? I certainly don’t think so.
Against the Odds: “The shining vision of the NHS was for many an impossible dream, until we created it”
Sara: “The legislation may have been enacted during a Labour government, but the NHS was down to Liberal economist and reformer, William Beveridge, after a report was commissioned by the wartime coalition government. Only three years after the introduction of the NHS as a free at the point of use service, the Labour Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell pushed through prescription charges of one shilling per item and charges for half the cost of dentures and spectacles.”
The idea that health insurance should be extended to the dependants of wage-earners, and that voluntary and local authority hospitals should be integrated, was a generally popular one prior to the Second World War. The need to preserve the voluntary hospitals was the driving force behind actual change – which was started by the ruling Liberal government, and also moved along by the Conservatives, now that it comes to it. But enacting the legislation was a massive, massive pain in the arse – and therefore a big achievement for the Labour Party.
Against the Odds: “They said we were wasting our time making a stand against apartheid and that things could never change, but they did”
Sara: At the 1964 general election, most candidates expressed support for sanctions against South Africa, But once elected, Harold Wilson told the press that the Labour Party was ‘not in favour of trade sanctions’. And whilst the best known anti-apartheid campaigner is now a Labour MP, he was then very much a Young Liberal. The release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of apartheid owed nothing to the UK Labour Party.
Matthew: Yes, they did, but Labour had nothing to do with that.
Individuals from across the political spectrum had been concerned about the encroachment of South Africa’s divisive legislation since the National Party came to power in 1948. But from 1955, the Labour Party went a step further by passing resolutions questioning whether South Africa was fit to be a member of the Commonwealth, and at the 1958 Commonwealth Games, miners from South Wales protested the presence of the (white) South African team. Yeah, Harold Wilson totally bottled it when it came to trade sanctions, but, as the ANC website says: “[n]evertheless, Labour Party support was still vital to the campaign. By mid-March the London County Council and local authorities including Liverpool, South Shields, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the West Riding of Yorkshire and Conservative-controlled Staffordshire were boycotting South African goods.” So again, it comes down to whether you think you can ignore the actions of the rest of the Party when the leader messes up.
Against the Odds: “And Northern Ireland too”
Sara: “Tony Blair may have got the credit for the grinning photos, but the Prime Minister who made the Good Friday agreement come about was John Major, bravely and often under verbal fire from his own side.”
It’s important to give John Major his dues – he laid the groundwork, and did so diligently and consistently. But Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern succeeded where many others had failed – and without Blair’s persistence and gift for persuasion, this may never have come to pass.
There is a danger in focusing on the past – but I think it may be worth the risk, provided we can also convey our vision for the future. People have lost the context of the political narrative, they feel disconnected from it, angry with our politicians. But we are not separate from politics – we never have been – and I think a reminder of that could be a really great thing. The Labour Party is built on positive change, and while it hasn’t always been perfect, I am proud of what it has achieved in its history. We all should be.
