Labour: lurching towards where it always has been


by Dave Osler    
6:00 pm - March 11th 2010

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Lurch, according to my dictionary, is an archaic or dialect intransitive verb, which means ‘to prowl or steal about suspiciously’. Seemingly its sole use in twenty-first century English is to provide Tories with an all-purpose pejorative designation for any identifiable outbreak of milquetoast social democracy inside the Labour Party.

Labour, you see, never moves to the left in a cautious and considered manner after a period of due ideological reflection and deliberation. Nor does it ever hop, skip and jump in a general westerly direction, or veer to port in the wake of demonstrable justification for setting just such a course. Oh no. As far as the Conservatives are concerned, Labour is perpetually ‘lurching towards the left’, even when it is idling in neutral.

You can find a classic example of the genre on conservativehome.com, which warns its readership that Labour is lurching leftwards after … get this … selecting trade union officials for winnable seats. The piece is based on an article in The Times, headlined ‘Safe seats for union backers prompt fears that Labour will turn Left after election’. Seduce my aged footwear.

This is patently nonsense, for two obvious reasons. First, trade union officials have always made up a substantial chunk of Labour MPs, ever since the party was founded. It is no more unusual for union employees to make it to Westminster on the Labour ticket than it is for stockbrokers or army officers to be elected as Tories.

Second, there is no correlation whatsoever between working for a union and leftism. Indeed, former union officials have historically constituted the right inside the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Unite deputy general secretary Jack Dromey, PPC for Birmingham Erdington, strikes me as pretty likely to uphold the tradition. Youthful flirtation with radicalism notwithstanding, he is not the sort of guy who walks past a boat, only to find himself overcome with a sudden inexplicable desire to rock it.

John Cryer, political officer of the same union and picked to fight Leyton & Wanstead, is a former workmate of mine, at both Tribune and Lloyd’s List. He has been an MP before, representing Hornchurch from 1997 to 2005, when he was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group.

But while John is an all-round good egg, his politics are solidly mainstream Labour left. Unlike many Blairite cadres, for instance, he has never been in a far left organisation of any description.

Finally, there is Ian Lavery, president of the National Union of Mineworkers and selected for Wansbeck. Conservativehome happily brands him a ‘convicted football hooligan’ and he was indeed found guilty of a public order offence at a football match in 1985.

Lavery counters that he was victimised by the Old Bill for his role on picket lines in the miners’ strike, and was assaulted and spat on after his arrest. OK, I wasn’t there, but that version of events doesn’t sound in the least implausible to me.

Conservativehome’s gripe seems to be ‘mining seat picks NUM activist as Labour candidate shock horror’, which is about as surprising as an Old Etonian securing majority support from a Conservative Association in one of the leafier parts of the Home Counties. It’s hardly earth-shattering stuff, guys.

In ideological terms, Dromey, Cryer and Lavery are all entirely unexceptional examples of the type of people who have tended to become Labour MPs over the last century. If Labour is lurching anywhere at all, it is lurching towards exactly where it is already.

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About the author
Dave Osler is a regular contributor. He is a British journalist and author, ex-punk and ex-Trot. Also at: Dave's Part
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Reader comments


1. Bilbo

Ian Lavery has been a signatory to the Campaign for a New Workers Party. That is where he differs from John Cryer.

http://www.cnwp.org.uk/downloads/NewCNWPDeclaration.pdf

2. Alisdair Cameron

Lurching to the left? Chance would be a fine thing. look if the current mob lurched leftwards 24/7 for the next five years, they’d only then be approaching the centre-ground.
The likes of mandelson,Miliband etc would oppose a genuinely left-of-centre party to the death, while too many of the current cabinet just say whatever is to their personal advantage or positioning. Even if Lavery et al wanted to take Labour leftwards as newby minions they won’t be able to.

3. Bob B

As mentioned before, quite a few times, I regard the left-wing and right-wing labels as pretty well useless as descriptive handles because the connotations of both are thoroughly obscure. It really isn’t clear what information either tag is intended to convey.

Thomas Hobbes relates:

“For words are wise men’s counters; they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever”
Leviathan (1660) Bk.1 Chp.4
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/chapter4.html

4. Rabid Raccoon

“It is no more unusual for union employees to make it to Westminster on the Labour ticket than it is for stockbrokers or army officers to be elected as Tories.”

fait point, but…..

“Second, there is no correlation whatsoever between working for a union and leftism.”

I would say there is a very strong correlation, but that it is not an absolute.

“If Labour is lurching anywhere at all, it is lurching towards exactly where it is already”

I agree, but I get the impression from many posters that a move left would be a good thing

5. Watchman

It has to be said that the assumption a trade union official will be left-wing rather ignores the obvious fact that not everyone in trade unions is left-wing. At least two Conservative MPs during the 1980s had been trade union officials as I remember (from one of those survey of the jobs held before entering parliament which stuck in my then young mind because it seemed to a simple black/white childlike way of thinking rather unlikely – unfortunately it did not name them, but would be interesting to know who they were). I know several current and ex-shop stewards who vote Conservative also.

So the underlying assumption of the Conservative Home article seems wrong, although I have to admit I doubt there is such a thing as a right-wing NUM activist.

6. Matt

Pity really – if they lurched (or walked, sauntered, skipped, pranced, danced, ran, slithered, hopped, jumped or otherwise moved) towards the Left they might get my vote. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a left of centre party to vote for?


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  1. Political Animal

    RT @libcon: Labour: lurching towards where it always has been http://bit.ly/cj4aEY

  2. Liberal Conspiracy

    Labour: lurching towards where it always has been http://bit.ly/cj4aEY





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