THE SINS OF OUR FATHERS

I must admit to being bewildered by the present Daily Mail campaign to vilify the father of the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. Given the profile of the Mail’s readership I presume the majority already view Ed as Red so exactly what is to be gained from presenting his father as a man who “hated Britain”, which he clearly didn’t, is beyond me.

Certainly his father Ralph was a prominent Marxist thinker but we knew that even before we knew Ed and David. Indeed I have visited his grave in Highgate cemetery located very near to that of Karl Marx himself. Whilst Marx’s resting place is a monument that of Miliband is understated: indeed if you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t find it. The Daily Mail were and did and placed a photograph of it online labelled “Grave Socialist” – an act it has now conceded as an “error of judgement”.

In his right of reply piece in the Daily Mail this week Ed Miliband said his father, a Jewish refugee fled Belgium aged 16 to escape the Nazis. He “loved” Britain and served in the Royal Navy.

I should add that it was also whilst studying at the LSE that he developed as a formidable Marxist, yes a Marxist but a British Marxist. He has been described as "one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation", on a par with Perry Anderson, Eric Hobsbawn and E P Thompson.

So whilst the Daily Mail might want to make a link between the Father Marxist and the Red Son, both of which again we knew, to suggest that Ed’s father “hated Britain” and then to raise question marks over his children’s loyalty is beyond the pale. When young Ralph wrote:  "When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are ... To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation" he was talking of the British insular nationalist tendency and contempt for the Continent in general both ironically exemplified by the Daily Mail to this day.

Although Ed Miliband does not share his father’s political beliefs the Daily Mail justifies its attack on the basis that Ralph may have influenced his son. So now let’s listen to the Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith who has launched an outspoken attack on the Daily Mail in the wake of the newspaper’s relentlessly hostile coverage of Ed Miliband’s late father.

Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Tuesday, the Tory backbencher accused the Mail and its owners, the Rothermere family, of doing "more to pursue the Nazi cause prewar" than any other publication. The Conservative MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston echoed the views of countless Twitter users by raising the Mail’s past associations with fascism and Nazism.

He said it was "odd for a newspaper to judge a man on the basis of the history of his family when that newspaper is owned by a family that did more to pursue the Nazi cause prewar than any other". 

Referencing Harold Harmsworth, the first Viscount Rothermere and proprietor of the Mail, who lavished praise on the Nazis in the run-up to the Second World War, Goldsmith remarked: "[Joseph] Goebbels himself wrote endless documents about Rothermere, describing him as being a strong ally and strongly against the Jews. Those are the words he used. ‘Strongly against the Jews’. Has Rothermere apologised? Have we ever had an apology from the Mail, or the Mail group, in relation to their history." 

The current Viscount Rothermere, Jonathan Harmsworth, is the chairman of DMGT, the publisher of the Daily Mail. Goldsmith continued: "Maybe they’ll say it doesn’t matter don’t judge a paper or current person on the back of their history. In which case. Leave the guy alone." I know not whether Jonathan Harmsworth is strongly against the Jews or pro-fascist I presume not. I do know though that he owns a rampant right-wing rag so it is legitimate, because his own paper says so, to ask was he influenced in his thinking by Rothermere. 

As I write the Mail group having apologised for the grave photo is now grovelling because a reporter was sent to a memorial service for Miliband’s uncle. I believe staff are being suspended: but fear not at the end of the day both Harmsworth and editor Dacre will still be firmly in place.

When the Miliband row first broke both Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg were quick to back Ed in defending his father. They could see where this was going. Not so the hapless Michael Gove. Gove, he who is of the opinion that people go to food banks because “they are not best able to manage their finances,” unlike Ralph Miliband, is obviously not one of the major intellects of his generation.

Gove also believes the Daily Mail has nothing to apologise to Miliband about and newspapers have the right to offend. Stupid man! Up to now a politician’s family, certainly the parents and grandparents, have been protected from scrutiny and attack by the media. What Cameron and Clegg immediately saw but Gove is blind to is whilst it is Miliband today - if this attack on his father is allowed to stand whose father is next? Or mother come to that or granny. Cameron’s? Clegg’s? Gove’s? Osborne’s? What did they say as teenagers that can be brought to bear against today’s politicians on the basis of what they said or did could have influenced them.

Make no mistake we are on a slippery slope. No surprise the Daily Mail is responsible for setting up this fairground  slide: but it is boggled eyed Gove who is the first down the slide on the mat waving as he goes like Toad of Toad Hall.

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on October 4 2013 and in other publications).

BRITAIN CAN DO BETTER

This afternoon (Tuesday) Labour Leader Ed Miliband made his keynote speech to his party’s annual conference in Brighton. Speaking as is now usual for more than hour without notes Miliband set out his vision of how “Britain can do better” under Labour, with an economy that works for “ordinary people once again”.

Whereas his previous two party addresses have established who Ed Miliband was and to set out his “One Nation” philosophy this speech added the message “Britain can do better” under Labour to those themes.

His words were given rapturous standing ovations as did his departure from the conference hall with wife Justine at his side as they walked through the cheering delegates to the sound of loud music followed by the media pack. However what was important for the Labour Leader is not whether the delegates “got it” but the nation at large.

Miliband pledged that his Labour Government would freeze gas and electricity bills for every home and business in the UK for 20 months if it wins the 2015 election. He added that energy firms had been overcharging “for too long” and it was time to “reset” the energy market.

He suggested he would support measures to give 16 and 17 year old votes in general elections. 

Miliband also promised Labour would build 200,000 new homes a year by 2020. 

The Labour Leader told delegates and the watching TV audience: “David Cameron talks about Britain being in a global race. But what he doesn’t tell you is that he thinks the only way Britain can win is for you to lose.” That means “the lowest wages, the worst terms and conditions, and the fewest rights at work - a race to the bottom. The only way we can win is in a race to the top.”

Miliband peppered his statements with the tag line: “We're Britain, we're better than this” earning cheers and applause from Labour’s activists. He received standing ovations for defending the NHS and promising to axe “the bedroom tax” - and tackled Tory criticism that he lacks leadership skills head-on, saying: “If they want to have a debate about leadership and character - be my guest.”

Echoing the message from his Shadow Cabinet colleagues over the week he told the party faithful, he had stood up to Murdoch, to vested interests on media regulation and the tobacco lobby as well as made the right call on Syria.

To find out what others thought I asked Lord Maurice Glasman who is a Miliband guru. He told me: “Ed finally defines his direction. Regional banks, living wage, interest rate cap, organizing, break up of oligopoly” all of which has been promised by Labour and Ed at this week’s conference. Yet Glasman also asks: “Can he hold the position?”

Next on my list was Neal Lawson who is Chairman of Compass which campaigns for The Good Society. He stated: “Ed’s speech was well delivered. Good lines and some good policy. But no theme or argument to carry a debate.”

So how do others see us? Amongst the international delegates was Terry Connolly. As his name suggests he is a member of Ireland’s Labour Party and organizes the PES activists in Europe. His view is very positive. “It was a powerful speech that showed that Ed Miliband is ready to become UK Prime Minister. He showed a strong commitment to the social democratic ideals of universality and outlined a clear vision of the future of the UK, a future which will be shaped by the Labour Party.”

Whether that future is shaped by Miliband and Labour is down to the great British voter.

(This article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on September 24 2013 and in other publications)

ONE NATION. ED’S THIRD WAY

If you had asked me before the end of last September about One Nation politics I would have pointed you in the direction of Benjamin Disraeli and the One Nation tradition in the old Conservative Party.

I say old Conservative Party because One Nation as a Tory philosophy is dead and buried. It was steamrolled by Margaret Thatcher who asked her party members “Are You One of Us” and if you replied “I’m a One Nation Tory” you certainly weren’t in her gang.

That was to last year’s Labour Party Conference in Manchester when party leader Ed Miliband captured the concept of One Nation for the socialists. He did it just a stone’s throw from where Benjamin Disraeli had first used the term in a speech at the Manchester Free Trade Hall some 140 years before on April 3 1872.

Now I presumed at the time this was the second coming of One Nation politics but I was wrong. It was the third. The second happened in the mid-1990’s when Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party. It was part of his New Labour journey from One Nation politics to the Stakeholder Society to the Third Way.

Nobody refers back to the Blair One Nation vision but it is there and that is why I ask is One Nation Ed’s third way? He is certainly not a Disraeli Tory and he is now in his speeches distancing his One Nation Labour Party from many of the core beliefs of both Old and New Labour. Ed has grasped One Nation politics and is proposing a new way of doing things.

So to his speech at the Fabian Society on Saturday January 12. The last time I saw Ed Miliband speak in public was to the Labour Party Conference when his unscripted address was without doubt the best speech I have ever sat and listened to. In contrast his speech to the Fabian Society was more low key, was scripted and even in places hesitant. Perhaps being in front of a supportive crowd, the largest Fabian Society conference in modern times, lessened the drive compared with his Manchester tour de force where critical union leaders were in the stalls.

Certainly the Fabians were anxious for flesh to be put on the One Nation bones. Did Ed achieve that? He certainly did for me but then I have long embraced the notion of One Nation politics, so for me it was a case of “welcome Ed, where have you been all this time?” Some of those around me shared my satisfaction but others didn’t and I wonder if they are waiting for Ed’s One Nation to fit their agenda, which I am not sure it is ever going to do.

I was interested to see that Ed reprised in his speech the remarks he made in Manchester about faith. Ed is an atheist which in some people’s eyes disqualifies him from the concept of faith, which is of course abject nonsense. He told the Fabians:

“I talked about it in my Labour Party conference speech a few months ago about why I came into politics.

“It was because of my personal faith.

“A faith that we are better, stronger together than when we are on our own.

“A faith that when good people come together they can overcome any odds.

“For me, that’s what One Nation Labour is all about.

“This faith isn’t unique to me.

“It is deeply rooted in our country.

“One Nation Labour is different from the current government.

“And from New Labour and Old Labour too.

“It will take on the vested interests in order to reshape our economy in the interests of all.

“It will insist on responsibility throughout society, including at the top so we can build a united, not divided, Britain.

“It will strive to spread power as well as working for prosperity.

“We must build One Nation.

“It is what the British people demand of us.

“And, together, it is what we can achieve.”

I asked someone close to Ed Miliband and the “faith” concept had he helped script the speech. He replied: “No. He is really there.” It now remains to be seen whether the nation becomes one behind Ed’s One Nation beliefs.

To read Ed Miliband’s speech in full click on the Labour List website link below:

http://labourlist.org/2013/01/ed-milibands-fabian-conference-speech/

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on January 12 2013)
 

ED’S SPEECH OF FAITH

“That is my faith. One nation: a country for all, with everyone playing their part. A Britain we rebuild together.”

You would have to be begrudging in the extreme not to acknowledge that Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party Conference on Tuesday was not one of the most remarkable of modern times. He had to speak both to party and nation to convince them both he has what it takes to be Prime Minister. In an hour long speech, without notes or prompts, he delivered that message without a hitch.

During his discourse Ed mentioned another speech made 140 years ago in Manchester close to where he was speaking. It was Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s “One Nation” speech. “One Nation” conservatives believe societies exist and develop organically, and that members within them have obligations towards each other. In my formative years in the 1950s and 60s “One Nation” Tories were the norm.

Today that is not the case. When Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron said “we are all in this together” he wasn’t talking to the nation but his millionaire colleagues around the Cabinet table as he promised them a forty thousand pound tax rebate to be paid for by the country’s pensioners. In capturing the “One Nation” concept for Labour Ed has stolen the Conservatives’ clothes they wrap themselves in when wanting to deceive the voters in to believing they are not the “nasty party”.

However it is not the Disraeli speech I want to dwell on here but one delivered towards the end of the 2010 General Election campaign. I will quote from Rowenna Davis’ excellent book “Tangled Up in Blue”. Here she writes about Maurice Glasman who has been trying to persuade the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to address a London Citizens assembly shortly before polling day.

“In a moment of frenzied passion, Glasman wrote all the words he wished Brown would say. It was a speech grounded in the Citizens UK tradition – it was about Brown’s personal life, his motivation and his identity. It referenced his childhood and his upbringing. It went right through Brown’s campaign as a student to get a decent wage for university cleaners to the introduction of a minimum working wage during his time as chancellor. It talked about his role in pressuring authorities to disinvest in apartheid South Africa, and the power of the people. It was emotional, heartfelt and genuine. And it was sent directly from Glasman to Ed Miliband’s inbox three days before the assembly was due to take place.”

Well Glasman, with Ed Miliband’s help, did persuade Brown to make the speech and although some changes were made in essence it remained in the Citizens UK tradition. Such was the power of the speech that although Brown’s back was against the wall his popularity shot up six percent. Coincidently in the initial days after Miliband delivered his leader’s speech on Tuesday six percent more British voters believed he was prime ministerial than before.

At the time of writing Brown’s speech Glasman, who was not close to the Prime Minister, was associated with the “Blue Labour” movement. The title “Blue Labour” has now fallen by the way side but if the adherents to that philosophy had to choose a new name “One Nation” would do very nicely.

In contrast to Brown, Ed Miliband has remained close to Glasman and made him a Lord in February 2011. Hence the university political professor has become a professional politician but there are many voices crying out to be heard by the Labour Party leader and it isn’t always Glasman who has his ear.

However if there is one word in the Miliband speech de force that convinces me Glasman had some input it is the word “Faith”. Glasman was Director of London Metropolitan University’s “Faith and Citizenship programme”.  “Faith” is a word Miliband highlighted time and again.

“Hold on a minute” you might say, “Miliband is a confirmed atheist, as was his father, as is his brother. How can he have faith?”

I have long argued in print that atheists, as with people of religion who truly believe in their God, are all people of faith. The truth is until we die we do not know if God exists or not. The act of faith is to say when there is no certainty “there is no God”. Hence Miliband is fully entitled to speak of his faith and indeed he based his entire speech on it.

Here are just three examples: “But I do believe the best way me for to give back to Britain, the best way to be true to my faith, is through politics…..That is who I am. That is what I believe. That is my faith……And I know who I need to serve in Britain with my faith. It’s the people I’ve met on my journey as Leader of the Opposition.”

Rowenna Davis tells us that Glasman’s Brown speech was about his personal life, his motivation and his identity. It referenced his childhood and his upbringing. It was emotional, heartfelt and genuine.

Miliband in his speech said: “I want to tell you my story. I want to tell you who I am. What I believe. And why I have a deep conviction that together we can change this country. My conviction is rooted in my family’s story, a story that starts 1,000 miles from here, because the Miliband’s haven’t sat under the same oak tree for the last five hundred years.” He closed with: “That is my faith. One nation: a country for all, with everyone playing their part. A Britain we rebuild together.”

I am sure Rowenna Davis would use the exactly same words to describe Miliband’s speech as she did for Brown’s – and what’s more, they would be true.

PS: Benjamin Disraeli was Britain’s only Jewish Prime Minister. If Ed Miliband is elected to that high office he will be the second.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on October 7 2012)

IS ED MAKING A BALLS OF IT?

The New Year got off to a bad start for the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband when Lord Maurice Glasman, his presumed guru, blasted him and the party for “showing no signs of winning the economic argument” in a wide ranging article in the New Statesman.


The media guns were swiftly turned on Miliband but should they have instead been aimed at the other Ed - Balls. After all the Labour Party leader has to lead on all fronts; it is the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ed Balls, who is meant to dominate the economic debate. Balls, who was an advisor then a ministerial colleague of the Iron Chancellor, Gordon Brown, knows more than anybody how he jealously guarded his turf, especially as Ed was one of his economic enforcers.

I will return to this theme shortly but first I want to concentrate on the speech given by Ed Balls to the Fabian Society at their Economic Alternative conference held on January 14. Whilst the Shadow Chancellor intoned the Labour Party economic policy mantra the main theme of his address was a robust defence of Keynes.

Balls is a disciple of John Maynard Keynes. He told the conference: “the reason why the real Keynes is so relevant today is that the global economy has been sliding into that rare and dangerous ’special case’ that Keynes identified in the 1930s and Japan suffered in the 1990s.

“You either learn the lessons of history or repeat the mistakes of history.

“With growth stagnating around the world, every country pressing ahead with deep cuts risks being a catastrophic mistake.

“Which is why Ed Miliband and I have argued for a global plan for growth, with clear medium-term plans to get deficits down, but stimulus now to avoid a global slump too.

“Rejecting the complacent isolationism of the 1930s and instead following Keynes’ lead by setting out a global solution to global problems – an economic alternative based on growth, job creation and balanced deficit reduction, which is the only sane way forward for Britain – and the only way back to credibility in the Euro area too.”

There were few detractors to Balls message and those that there were formed two camps. Some felt that Balls having argued the Keynes case didn’t go on to reach the Keynesian conclusion whilst others had no time for Labour’s timid approach on the economy.

On my way to the Fabian Society event held at the Institute of Education, part of the University of London in Bloomsbury, I passed through Gordon Square. A blue plaque on one of the buildings tells us that it was here that John Maynard Keynes spent many years of his life. I wondered whether Ed Balls’ female side may have got to him and he would have placed flowers on the doorstep before his speech but sadly no.

This is relevant because after Ed Balls speech I spoke to a number of people who said how impressed they had been with his performance as normally they found him repulsive; he was simply too aggressive. At the Fabians he was amongst friends but if Labour supporters rejected him because he acts in the media like an aggressive pit bull terrier imagine what a negative impact he must have on floating voters.

After Balls speech I sent out a Twitter on this theme. Here are just a few comments but I did not receive one in support of the present Balls style.

“Well that’s his and Gordon’s fault then; bring the real Miliband back and maybe, just maybe, people will start listening.”

“He was always been shallow and selfish in power. Now out of power why would that change?”

“Balls past behaviour and failings undermines everything he says and does now. People are neither stupid nor amnesiac.”

Now my point is this. It is all very well Ed Balls warmly embracing John Maynard Keynes but for the majority of voters the only Keynes they know is Milton. If he presents himself to the public as a rabid dog of war: first he is not seen as a Chancellor in waiting; secondly he is roundly rejected by the majority of the population, thirdly and worst of all Labour’s economic message is lost because the voters do not like the messenger.

So this presents Ed Miliband with a major problem. He has a shadow Chancellor who is identified by the majority of voters with the economic failures of the last Labour Government. He has an economic policy that is not even getting heard because of Balls’ aggressive stance. Hence when Glasman states Labour is showing signs of not winning the economic argument it could be said the good lord is merely stating as they would say in my part of London “the bleeding obvious”.

It was Tony Blair who said the New Labour project would only be complete when the Labour Party loved Peter Mandelson. I am not sure all the party ever did but Ed Miliband has a tougher job on his hands. He has to persuade the voters to love Ed Balls and when they have done that his economic policy. Sadly time is not on his side.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on January 26 2012).