My thanks to Labour Home for providing a link to the 1983 Election Manifesto. This has long been derided by the right as the "longest suicide note in history." Well , now we've all stopped being " intensely relaxed" about the filthy rich younger comrades may find it strangely relevant. Frankly, I still agree with every word.
Emergency programme of action
Within days of taking office, Labour will begin to implement an emergency programme of action, to bring about a complete change of direction for Britain. Our priority will be to create jobs and give a new urgency to the struggle for peace. In many cases we will be able to act immediately. In others, which involve legislation, they will take longer to bring into effect. But in all cases we shall act swiftly and with determination.
This is what we plan to do. We will:
Launch a massive programme for expansion.We will:
Provide a major increase in public investment, including transport, housing and energy conservation.
Begin a huge programme of construction, so that we can start to build our way out of the slump.
Halt the destruction of our social services and begin to rebuild them, by providing a substantial increase in resources.
Increase investment in industry, especially in new technology - with public enterprise taking the lead. And we will steer new industry and jobs to the regions and the inner cities.
Ensure that the pound is competitive; and hold back prices through action on VAT, rents, rates and fares.
Introduce a crash programme of employment and training, with new job subsidies and allowances.
Begin to rebuild British industry, working within a new framework for planning and industrial democracy. We will:
Agree a new national economic assessment, setting out the prospects for growth in the economy. Prepare a five-year national plan, in consultation with unions and employers. Back up these steps with a new National Investment Bank, new industrial powers, and a new Department for Economic and Industrial Planning.
Repeal Tory legislation on industrial relations and make provision for introducing industrial democracy.
Begin the return to public ownership of those public industries sold off by the Tories.
Start to create a fairer Britain, with decent social services for all. We will:
Raise child benefit, and give special help to one-parent families and families with disabled dependants.
Uprate the pension by the full amount needed to protect against inflation
Provide more resources for the health service with an increase of at least 3 per cent a year in real terms.
Improve the personal social services, such as meals on wheels and home helps, with an increase of at least 4 per cent a year in real terms.
Spend more on education, including on essential books and equipment; end the assisted places scheme; and stop selection in secondary schools.
Begin to develop comprehensive care for the under-fives.
Begin to develop a strategy to eliminate low pay.
Introduce positive action programmes to promote women's rights and opportunities, and appoint a cabinet minister to promote equality between the sexes. We will:
Strengthen the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act.
Improve child care and other social services.
Take steps to end discrimination in education and training.
Reverse Tory cuts in maternity rights.
Increase the maternity grant.
Encourage and assist local authorities to begin a massive programme of house-building and improvement, through an immediate 50 per cent increase in their housing investment programmes. Priority will go to the urgent repair and replacement of run-down estates. We will freeze all rents for the first full year.
Begin a major programme to stop the waste of energy. We will stop Sizewell and abandon the Tory PWR programme; and open urgent discussions, with the unions and management in the coal industry, on a new Plan for Coal.
Give more help to public transport, with funds to improve services, keep down fares, and increase investment - especially in rail electrification and better freight facilities. Councils will be given new powers to support local services.
Act to improve the environment and deal with pollution - including a ban on lead in petrol. An urgent start will be made on improving our inner cities, including action on derelict land and buildings.
Introduce a positive action programme for ethnic minorities. We will also introduce citizenship and immigration laws which do not discriminate against either women or black and Asian Britons.
Give a new priority to open government at local and national levels, and give local communities greater freedom to manage their own affairs. We will also introduce an early Bill to abolish the legislative powers of the House of Lords.
In international policy, we shall take new initiatives to promote peace and development. We will: Cancel the Trident programme, refuse to deploy Cruise missiles and begin discussions for the removal of nuclear bases from Britain, which is to be completed within the lifetime of the Labour government.
Ban arms sales to repressive regimes.
Increase aid to developing countries towards the UN target of 0.7 per cent.
Re-establish a separate Ministry of Overseas Development.
Take action to protect the status of refugees in Britain.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
WHEN LABOUR WAS LABOUR......
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8 comments:
It's nice that some of it still appears to hold water, but then, given enough time, and a favourable eye, almost any manifesto would. Even I've been sentimental (yes, that's all it is) about it at times, but it's absurd to use the state of the world in 1983 as the basis for any future manifesto.
"Frankly, I still agree with every word."
Hence the image problem of the hard left in relentlessly walking towards the 'old Labour' category.
Actually Guido has already posted the detaileed bit of the manifesto which dealt with the banks It seems we are noww implmenting this pledge
"... a National Investment Bank to put new resources from private institutions and from the government.... Exercise, through the Bank of England, much closer direct control over bank lending. Agreed development plans will be concluded with the banks and other financial institutions. Create a public bank... set up a Securities Commission to regulate the institutions and markets of the City... Set up a tripartite investment monitoring agency to advise trustees and encourage improvements in investment practices and strategies... We expect the major clearing banks to co operate with us fully on these reforms, in the national interest. However, should they fail to do so, we shall stand ready to take one or more of them into public ownership. This will not in any way affect the integrity of customers' deposits. "
Tom, which bit of this Manifesto exactly do you disagree with? Ethical foreign policy? Investment in jobs? Public services to be re-claimed from private sector? Better transport? Anti Trident?
It's you who is stuck in some "Old Labour" projudicial mindset. This is a decent, socialist programme.It wasn't "hard left." It was the mainstream Labour message. For some of us still in the Party after all this time, it still should be.
Susan, surely you can see the pointlessness of making bland statements like "ethical foreign policy" and "better transport". Both of those topics have been addressed already (the first one very satisfactorily, as far as I'm concerned), but because your ethics and transport priorities are different, you're not happy with the results.
The solution is not to deny that they have been tackled, but to be more *specific* about what you want - and hope the electorate are OK with that. Let's face it, with political language the way it is, "unprincipled" means nothing more than "I disagree with them" - it's a short cut lazy people take to avoid having to talk about their so-called principles.
The great thing about Labour having been in power is that we've had to be specific, and to cut out the BS. Certain things we thought would be good did turn out that way, other things didn't, so we learn and move on.
BTW, for anyone still holding to the idea of the "Integrated Transport Policy", I suggest they track down the (1982?) "Yes Minister" episode, and consider if the idea would be any more feasible in 2008.
No, B4L, I'm NOT happy with Iraq and Afghanistan, which you are SERIOUSLY suggesting conforms to an ethical foreign policy ????. There was plenty of BS from Blair about the WMDs and there is plenty of BS every time I hear a Labour Minister speak.
So let me be specific.
I want a Party that is in favour of peace not war.
One which defends those who need defending against the super-rich
And one which promotes public rather than private enterprise.
More council homes would be a start, so would re-nationalising the utilities to stop the profitering and takje people out of fuelk poverty.
And how about a transport system run in the interests of the people which actually got people out of their cars and helped de-clog the roads. That would of course require taking it out of the hands of the provate sector, too.
But the money we wouldn't be soending on Triudent would of course helpo that initiative.
The interesting thing is that so much of the 1983 Manifesto remians relevant. Some ( equality legislation, maternity pay etc) has actually been carried out. But we are still a long way from where we wanted to be in 1983.And, if you're about to say that times have changed, no they haven't. We are indded back where we started ie about to undergo a serious recession which needs a Labour Government - NOT New Labour - to sort it out
you are SERIOUSLY suggesting conforms to an ethical foreign policy???
In general, yes, but what I think is irrelevant (though correct, naturally). My point is that it's absurd to talk in a bland way about ethics when there are profound disagreement about what they mean.
And yet you follow up with "I want a Party that is in favour of peace not war". No adult could seriously make a comparison like that, not after little things like World Wars. It might do for a Conference speech, but it's not serious politics.
*
If Labour's values haven't changed since 1983, creating a brand new Manifesto should hold no shocks for you, but harking back to a dusty old document rather than thinking afresh is just sentimentality.
I think the point is that far from being a "dusty old document" the 1983 programme actually does stand the test of time. We still need better care for our elderly, we still need to repeal the Tory anti trade union laws, we still need to stop the madness of a new generation of Trident.
The sadness is that so much does remain to be done - and have you never heard of universal truths. By your crass analysis of history, and life in genral, no doubt Shakespeare's insights into man's inhumanity to man are just "dusty old documents" which should be binned. Which is NOT to say the 1983 election manifesto is Shakespearian or a work of art. Brown, however, as I have said before, is a tragic figure.
It may sound platitudinous to say one is in favour of peace - not war. And maybe it is.
But that does not render it either meaningless of valueless.
My politics are very serious. Why do you think I've spent all my adult life in the Labour Party ?
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