Keir Hardie supported Home Rule for Scotland, but we should be wary about ascribing contemporary views to historical figures. However, there are lessons from his work that we should adopt today.
I was giving the James Keir Hardie Memorial Lecture last night, hosted by Uddingston and Bellshill CLP - which includes his birthplace. The Keir Hardie society not only seeks to remember the life and times of the great man, but also to promote his ideas in a modern context. With that aim, my focus was his views on Home Rule and the relevance for current political debate In Scotland.
It is a bit of a challenge doing a Keir Hardie lecture as an after dinner speech. One thing the Keir Hardie Society won't be producing is a Keir Hardie joke book. As the Times Obituary rather harshly put it: "it was Mr Hardie's misfortune that he inherited more than an average share of Scottish dourness". Typically dismissive from the Times, but it does appear that humour was not one of the great man's rhetorical tools. In addition, he would certainly have frowned at the availability of alcohol at a political dinner!
Hardie's first Scottish Labour manifesto famously called for; home rule, a minimum wage and temperance. While the big issue in Hardie's day was Irish Home Rule, he did support a Scottish Parliament. Home Rule can be an ambiguous title, but it is different from independence.
Hardie was certainly not a nationalist. His life and work had an obvious UK and broader international solidarity context. My first job as a full time union official was in South Wales. I well remember attending a meeting in Merthyr Tydfil town hall where there was a wonderful bust of Keir Hardie - inspirational to a young idealistic union official. More recently, Newham council in London has published an excellent booklet commemorating Hardie's time as the MP for West Ham. It is hard to imagine an SNP politician standing for an English constituency!
We should always be wary about attaching views on current issues to historical figures. Hardie's thoughts on Home Rule were penned more than 120 years ago in a very different political environment. Something nationalists and others would do well to remember. They usually write that Keir Hardie would be 'turning in his grave' at the actions of the Labour Party today. If they are going to do this it would help to do some basic research. Hardie wont be turning in his grave for anything - because he was cremated!
More thoughtful arguments claiming Hardie would have supported independence come from Bob Holman - the author of an excellent concise biography of Hardie. He refers to Hardie's call for more working class MPs and railing against elitism of Westminster. Where I part company with Bob is the idea that the Scottish establishment is inherently more egalitarian. Gender balance, something he campaigned strongly on, yes, but that is largely due to the Scottish Labour Party's 50:50 policy, not the Parliament. Of course Hardie would have attacked privatisation and inequality, but these are political decisions of the Tories, who can be just as wicked as in Hardie's day. The White Paper was also short on substantive proposals that Hardie would have supported. In particular, not a single redistributive proposal, other than a tax handout to big business.
In the lecture I set out my own post-referendum analysis. That is largely as outlined in my blog post at the time, so I won't repeat it here. Similarly, my views on further devolution and the Smith Commission is set out in my column in last week's Sunday Times.
Finally, I do believe there were positives about referendum campaign including a revitalised discussion about politics that Hardie would have recognised as the norm in his day. In effect we have rediscovered that tradition. The other speaker at last night's event, Archie Macpherson, is an excellent example of the oral tradition and helped but some passion back into the No campaign.
Hardie was no political theorist, so we shouldn't treat his words as some sort of bible. He said "I am an agitator. My work has consisted of trying to stir up divine discontent with wrong".
That is the lesson we should take from his life today. He took the message of socialism to hundreds of thousands of ordinary people across the UK. He changed the way a generation thought about what was possible. An alternative vision of what today we would call social justice.
If there is a lesson for the Scottish Labour Party today, it is the importance of communicating a radical vision of what is possible. Not the fantasy politics of those who claim to want social justice, but spend all their time attacking Labour. But neither is it the managerialism that sometimes dominates party policy. A fairer Scotland is possible and Scottish Labour should be its champion.
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Spin it any way you want, Hardie if he lived today would be disgusted in tghe Labour or Torylite party as far removed from Hardie's socialist party as you can get....Blair and his left of centre supporters soon ousted many of longtime leftwing grassroots members/activists, by the time I left I knew I'd been with a bunch of strangers who were as far removed from my socialist values and that Labour had indeed been kicked out in the cold but their were in my eyes, aliens who were running under the name Labour. Hardie seeing how massively divided Labour was, how there was so many knives in real grassroots Corbyn's back he would NOT have been a happy man! He would also look at the situation Scotland was in and had a real hard look at Brexit, far right fascism/racism encouraged by UKIP and the Tories in power and THAT would be the last thing he would want his beloved Scotland to ever be infected with, let alone controlled by this far right fascist Tory party for decades to come.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt like the thousands of real grassroots Labour folk that found a home in SNP who were far nearer in many ways to old grassroots Labour than Blairite party has been for years. The obessive hatred for SNP and trying to paint them bad makes those spouting this rubbish goes to show that even if SNP made every Scot millionaires, you lot in this Labour that is an insult to the real grassroots Labour, would still spout #SNPBad. The reason majority of us never came back......should give you a reason we're pretty happy where we are, even if Indy was not on the table, I may have been born into Labour family but I'll be quite happy to die as one of the family of 120k SNP members.
Scottish Labour need to stop dictating about Labour members will be chucked out of they support Indy, if Hardie favoured Home Rule for Scotland way back then, with the world evolving nothing stand still or stays the same, Home Rule, devolution would most definitely have evolved to Independence had Hardie seen the state of UK now. The division is irreparable. Scotland is so far removed from England in too many ways, far-right fascist/racist Brexiters versus socialist/left of centre compassionate anti racist Remainer Scots. Labour and Tories in Scotland willing to sacrifice Scotland and its people because they are so far stuck in the past. What kind of civil war would Scotland land up with if we suffer as badly as is predicted, do you honestly think that almost 2 million Scots especially the young Scots will roll over and be shafted by Westminster and this union?
Not a chance, I certainly wouldn't see much peace in Scotland in the future if our struggles are by far worse having been trapped in this god forsaken broken union and the Scottish unionists will be blamed.
One correction should be made, read James Callaghan's Winter of Discontent and read where he admists it was over 30 Labour MPs and not SNP that let in the Tories under Thatcher, then again its one of Labour's traits, to blame everything on anyone else but themselves. I once was a loyal servant to Labour, now Labour sicken me to the core, not the name but the people who profess to be "Labour"
Ella, you say you are sickened by those of profess to be Labour. Hardie would fight the right across the UK, not break it up and run away. You loudly claim to have Labour values, yet are a member of the SNP. Bet you puke each time you look in the mirror.
ReplyDeleteHello Stewart. There are lots of socialists who feel like Ella - I don't feel welcome in the Labour Party, there is no place for my leftist views which are much more mainstream than Keir Hardie's ever were. When you look in the mirror have a wee think about whether the remark you posted above was the 'welcoming voice of Labour' - is this going to attract people back? Labour used to be about inclusion. The problem in Scotland is that many socialists feel so out of place in the party that they might as well feel out of place in another one - one that is marginally more left than Labour presently seems to be. This is not about badges this is about beliefs and if you think that Labour presently is a home for socialists please help to enlighten us. I am not a member of the SNP, the Greens or any party by the way.
ReplyDeleteWhat is worrying is that it seems that the perspective of many on the left in Scotland (now moving over to the SNP or Greens) has now been borne out by the leaked document and that the Labour people Ella mentions above actively worked against Corbyn and a Labour victory in the GE. If that doesn't make you question the type of people in the party I do not understand you. There comes a time when ideology must play a bigger part in one's life than adherence to what has simply become a brand.
With regard to the above article - very nice piece which I enjoyed reading Dave - keep them coming.
The thing I love about socialism is that whilst many people claim it, nobody owns it! Hi Dave, by the way.
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