Travails of Socialism

Britain, it seems, is so cautious, conservative and class-ridden a country that it has taken a hundred years for it to come to terms with the first Labour government of 1924. That is, if we are to believe 2 books which have just appeared on the subject – Peter Clark’s ”The Men of 1924” and David Torrance’s ”The Wild Men. A possible explanation for this sad state of affairs was explored in Guardians of Power – the myth of the liberal media (2006) namely that the british masses are simply too stupid to understand where their true interests lie. The Brits have every reason to be grateful if not complacent – the country was the first to industrialise and used this to build an Empire - little wonder, then, that they felt, what a friend of mine used to call, ”illusions of adequacy”. Such feelings were understandable in the immediate post-war period – when I grew up – but surely the younger generation knows better?

In Scotland it does and has said very clealy ”A plague on both your houses” in preferring the SNP in recent polls.

But why does the Labour party remain so unattractive? After all, a majority of British citizens support the renationalisation of public utilities.

Last autumn I discussed several books here which analysed the debates which have torn the party apart in recent decades – but none of them dealt properly with the critical question of why people apparently feel such resistance in voting for the party.

It’s understandable that progressives feel antipathy to Keir Starmer – the media has done an effective job în painting him aș an unreliable, indeed duplicitous, individual. For a better treatment of the question, I recommend

Warring Fictions - left populism and its defining myths (Christopher Clarke 2019)

whose basic argument is that conventional ways of understanding Labour’s 

civil war focus on the wrong issue. The conflict doesn’t really run along a political 

spectrum – between ‘left-wingers’ and ‘centrists’, between ‘radicals’ and ‘moderates’

, or through degrees of egalitarianism. Instead, it is a clash between two world 

views: characterised by the author as ‘left populism’ and ‘left pluralism’. 

As the book’s title suggests, it’s at the level of narrative and analysis where 

the crux of this distinction lies. This review puts it well -


“Warring Fictions” focuses on three myths, which sustain left populism but are not 

found on the pluralist left: the Dark Knight, the Puppet Master and the Golden Era.

• The Dark Knight claims that the political spectrum is a moral one; that 

• the left is where virtue lies and that the further to the right you go the 

• more wicked or self-serving. It frames policy questions in terms of good 
• and evil, and treats those with different values as enemies and traitors.

• The Puppet Master myth describes the belief that far-sighted elites 

• coordinate and control society for personal gain. It holds that there is a 

• singular ‘will of the people’ which is frustrated by ‘the establishment’ – and 
• that governments wield immense power, oppressing wilfully rather than 
• mediating badly.

• The Golden Era is the declinist view that a left-wing Arcadia – a spirit 

• of ‘original socialism’ – once existed but has been polluted by modernity. 

• This is fed by the notion of a drift to the right on all fronts. It undermines internationalism, and stops the left engaging with an interconnected world.