AHC/WI: British Labour pushes through Neoliberalism

[Callan]

What would it take for the British Labour party to be responsible for bringing in globalisation and Neoliberal reforms (like Australian and NZ Labour) instead of the Conservatives as OTL?

My initial thoughts on this are:

1. It would probably require a very far-back PoD, considering Labour's OTL leftward turn in the 80s.

2. There were a few pre-New Labour figures in the party who supported that sort of Liberal thinking (David Owen and Edmund Dell come to mind).

 

[Mumby]

What would it take for the British Labour party to be responsible for bringing in globalisation and Neoliberal reforms (like Australian and NZ Labour) instead of the Conservatives as OTL?

My initial thoughts on this are:

1. It would probably require a very far-back PoD, considering Labour's OTL leftward turn in the 80s.

2. There were a few pre-New Labour figures in the party who supported that sort of Liberal thinking (David Owen and Edmund Dell come to mind).

I think you'd require someone like a British Muldoon, a One Nation Conservative who ends up pretty much bankrupting the state, meaning it was Labour who had to make cuts to bring the economy back up to speed.

 

[Meadow]

Sounds like Wilson resigning in 1970 could be a good POD for this. I heard (from first-hand figures) that Owen and Jenkins were not particularly close before the SDP, however, so the obvious route of 'Jenkins takes over, loses to the Tories, Tories muck up and meanwhile Jenkins' protege Owen takes over for the 1980s' won't be as simple as that.

 

[Brundlefly]

You'd need a Tory paternalist prime minister throughout the late 1970s and the whole 1980s, who's softer on the trade unions and has sort of moderate positions toward the EC. With Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph out of the game, Thatcher also would have to get involved in some political scandal, meaning that the Hayek acolytes don't become the driving force within the Conservative Party. This PM (I don't know if Heath would be suitable) would have to be in office for at least as long as Thatcher. With, say, Michael Foot or Tony Benn receiving landslide defeats in the general elections, Labour starts inner-party reforms and the Jenkins wing takes over.

 

[Blackadder mk 2]

Sounds like Wilson resigning in 1970 could be a good POD for this. I heard (from first-hand figures) that Owen and Jenkins were not particularly close before the SDP, however, so the obvious route of 'Jenkins takes over, loses to the Tories, Tories muck up and meanwhile Jenkins' protege Owen takes over for the 1980s' won't be as simple as that.

I agree. Owen, apparently, saw Jenkins as the sort of 'for a better yesterday' figure who saw his time pass by, in contrast to Rodger's firm belief that he would be the best man for the job, and Williams own growing sense of political detachment making her prefer a Jenkins leadership to her own. Jenkins himself, from what I heard, didn't mind Owen but rapidly began to see him as a bit too eager to accept parts of Thatcherism and less than happy with what he saw as firm centrist principles, not to mention that he preferred going Yellow in place of setting up a new party.

You'd need to have someone like Owen take the leadership, so one idea could be that you'd need the Left to be weakened enough that they can't do much to stop it, and discredited enough that the Centre would go for those type of policies. Callaghan was more positive towards Owen compared to other figures on the Old Right, so maybe him as leader during the 70s might help, so having him become Leader earlier might be a great help. You could have a Tory government beforehand create the foundations of the movement, someone like Biffen who is chosen for RADICAL ideas but moves more centrist over time, or someone else who liberalises the economy but nowhere near the extent of Thatcher.

 

[Charles James Fox]

What if Heath wins in 1974 and muddles on until 1979? Labour under Callaghan come to power with the benefits of North Sea Oil, and when Callaghan retires sometime in the mid-1980s, someone like David Owen or Peter Jay takes over.

 

[V-J]

I don't think this is possible without a POD way back in the dark ages, Gaitskell's time ideally. I just can't see someone like Owen (who as an extreme you would really need for a 'neoliberal' party) being acceptable in the seventies/eighties of anything resembling OTL. The left was too dominant in the party, and moreover, it knew it was. Even under the old parliamentary system of electing leaders, if Owen went up against A.N Other from the right or the left, he loses. There would always be someone more acceptable.

I think you would need someone more acceptable to the party as a whole, someone in the Callaghan mould, to push something like this through - but of course if they were in that mould, it wouldn't be a 'neoliberal' vision they would push but something different, something more social market-esque.

 

[Magniac]

IMO you need "In place of strife" to be implemented at some point.

Even then, there are problems with UK economic fundamentals in the postwar era that are worse than what Australia had; an improvement in industrial relations mightn't be enough to help Labour modernisers RE accomodating the party to the Washington consensus, because there's Britain-in-decline structural problems above and beyond IR (at least that's what the CW has taught me--I might have to swat up on the subject to find if I'm right to have that impression).

Also, something to consider--Australian and NZ Labour did dreadfully electorally in the sixties and seventies, which helped the break-with-the-past politicians a lot come the nineteen eighties. Yet British Labour experienced their longest period as a party of government immediately prior 1980, the complete opposite to the Antipodean experience.

I don't think this is possible without a POD way back in the dark ages, Gaitskell's time ideally... The left was too dominant in the party, and moreover, it knew it was.

Tony Benn basically went to his grave boasting about having stood up to Gaitskell's 'revisionism'. It was a theme in his one of his last books, where he implied that Gaitskell was a proto-Blair.

That sort of forty+ year ideological resentment, that struck me as noteworthy.

 

[Blackadder mk 2]

Tony Benn basically went to his grave boasting about having stood up to Gaitskell's 'revisionism'. It was a theme in his one of his last books, where he implied that Gaitskell was a proto-Blair.

That sort of forty+ year ideological resentment, that struck me as noteworthy.

I never got the 'Benn used to be Gaitskell's Mandelson' meme a few years back. The only thing that kept him from joining the Bevanites was their reputation for disloyalty towards the party, and the closest he got to the right of the party was being a party centrist who didn't like Gaitskell 'rocking the boat', with the two having a mutual dislike. The whole Lords ordeal basically helped it go bad to the point that Benn basically spent the period of Gaitskell's death writing in his diary about how he was awful, and that people were faking affection for him, while he never let go of the inaction of the leadership, as you can probably tell.

 

[V-J]

Tony Benn basically went to his grave boasting about having stood up to Gaitskell's 'revisionism'. It was a theme in his one of his last books, where he implied that Gaitskell was a proto-Blair.

That sort of forty+ year ideological resentment, that struck me as noteworthy.

Tony Benn was a man fixated with the idea that a new National Government/Great Betrayal was just around the corner, so he's not exactly a reliable, impartial assessor of the facts. (In fact the quality of his political analysis was generally pretty weak - the strength of what he said was always in its simplicity)

 

[Magniac]

<snip>

Honestly, I'm only half aware of these details of what was happening at the time; what struck me about Old Benn's PoV is that it was obviously the projection of a lot of seventies and eighties Left triumphalism back onto--against--a man who'd been dead since the early sixties.

I don't think Benn pulled that out of nowhere. I think he was expressing a genuine feeling about what opposition Gaitskell would 'ideally' have faced if he had served through 'til circa 1970. Something to keep in mind when considering OPer's W-I about post-Gaitskell modernisers going even further into ideological revisionism.

 

[Maeglin]

I would strongly differentiate the 1983-1996 Australian experience and 1984-1990 New Zealand experience.

The Australian Labor Party pushed through economic liberalisation without utterly alienating its base. It was part-pragmatism (the economy was poor, and the only reforming tools available were those of neoliberalism), part conformity with the 1980s zeitgeist.

New Zealand's Labour Government was much more radical, and infinitely more ideological. You had a bunch of people with extreme views seizing control of the parliamentary party, without consultation of the rank and file membership (who were horrified). By the end, you had Jonestown comparisons in the media, as MPs said they would rather lose their seats (and they did lose their seats) than backdown from the neoliberal agenda.

The UK is only likely to see Australian type reforms. For New Zealand type reforms, you would need a sort of right-wing mirror image of Tony Benn to get in, after having told everyone they were truly socialist.

 

[Magniac]

Tony Benn was a man fixated with the idea that a new National Government/Great Betrayal was just around the corner, so he's not exactly a reliable, impartial assessor of the facts.

Maybe I'm much too used to reading Australian old Leftwingers attempt to whitewash the fact they'd ever been against Whitlam (or, conversely, trying to put it across that East Timor is the sole reason for them ever having had problems with Gough. Yeah, nah.)

 

[Magniac]

I would strongly differentiate the 1983-1996 Australian experience and 1984-1990 New Zealand experience.

The Australian Labor Party pushed through economic liberalisation without utterly alienating its base.

Very good point. In fact, many--though not all--of Australian Labor's traditional intellectual supporters have argued strongly "this isn't neoliberalism, this is a fusion of social democracy and neoliberalism."

David Lange's fans don't have nearly as strong a case to make. Though I think some do try.

The UK is only likely to see Australian type reforms. For New Zealand type reforms, you would need a sort of right-wing mirror image of Tony Benn to get in, after having told everyone they were truly socialist.

Speaking of which, I do think Hawke's ACTU legacy did help him a lot, the whole appearance of having been a Leftwing militant unionist of sorts. And the original policy groundwork done by ex-socialist Hayden was probably even more important, if mostly unheralded.

But OTOH, I think Neville Wran could also have pulled off the party transformation, if given the chance. Former NSW soft Left/nonaligned lawyer? Not quite the same dynamic.