Alice, through the looking glass
Francis Sedgemore, Tuesday 21 April 2009 at 11:21 UTC
Veteran leftist and former Labour MP Alice Mahon recently resigned her membership of the party to which for several decades she had devoted her political energies. Citing differences of policy and principle with a leadership that had abandoned the party’s socialist basis, and the organisation’s much discussed moral degeneration, Mahon appears to feel that New Labour is beyond redemption. She may be right.
Mahon’s parliamentary colleague Harry Barnes disagrees with her resignation, and on his blog yesterday listed 10 reasons why his comrade should have stuck with her party, right or wrong.
Maybe the individual known as Alice Mahon is simply tired, and no longer interested in being a “Socialist Politico”, as Barnes terms his species of political animal. I doubt Mahon would admit as much, but it doesn’t take the abandonment of one’s political principles to think in this way.
My maternal uncle Brian Sedgemore, a former MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, abandoned the Labour Party when he could take no more of its bullshit. Brian didn’t cease being a man of the left when following his retirement from parliamentary politics he took up nominal membership of the Liberal Democrats. In some ways this supposedly centrist party is further to the left than New Labour, and just as effective in representing working class interests.
Organisations come and go, and should never be allowed to become monolithic, however noble their causes. The Labour Party is no exception.
Feed the writer! 
Tuesday 21 April 2009 at 13:11 UTC
Alice tired ? That would be entirely out of character and it doesn’t fit in with all the TV and newspaper interviews she has just undertaken. Here is her letter of resignation, it isn’t from someone who has given up the fight. I think that the events which finally pushed her to resign were the local factors given in two paragraphs which start with the words – “My final reason for leaving the party…”
Dear Martin,
I am resigning as a member of the Labour Party and I wanted the local party to know before I make my decision public.
First, I would like to thank you and my friends in the party for your comradeship and support over the years. This has been a difficult decision to take as I feel I was almost born into the Labour Party.
However, I can no longer be a member of a party that at the leadership level has betrayed many of the values and principles that inspired me as a teenager to join.
You will recall when I stood down I said that after the illegal decision to wage war on Iraq I could not have served another term under Tony Blair’s leadership.
With hindsight I should have resigned then, but I thought this would be very unfair to Linda Riordan and labour members putting themselves forward for election to the council.
I also hoped that we might go back to being a really progressive and caring party should Gordon Brown succeed Tony Blair as leader.
In the event I could not have been more wrong.
Despite all the evidence and in the face of the credit crunch, Gordon Brown’s obsession with privatisation such as the Royal Mail is inexplicable and quite simply wrong.
Labour had its chance after Blair to get its finger on the pulse in the country, more social justice not less.
That chance was squandered with catastrophic results.
He has shown not one jot of contrition as he continues to privatise what is left of our public services.
At the same time he has failed miserably to tackle the corporate greed of the bankers.
As to foreign affairs, it becomes clearer by the day that the Labour Government cooperated with the Bush regime as they rendered whoever they judged to be guilty of terrorism to despotic regimes who tortured them and offered them no access to the legal process whatsoever.
Our ministers shame us in front of the world when they give their support to the Israeli government as they commit war crimes in Palestine and the Lebanon.
Brown has just announced plans to send another 900 troops to Afghanistan, billions to be spent on an unwinnable war and pensioners dare not turn on their heating because this Labour Government will not tackle the energy fat cats.
On the domestic front we said in our 2005 manifesto that we would not privatise Royal Mail, we lied.
That same manifesto promised a referendum on the European Constitution, we re-named it the Lisbon Treaty and reneged on that promise also.
If this Treaty is ratified we can say goodbye to any publicly owned services. Article 111-147 is clear, we will be handing over to private corporations, social services, education, transport and postal services. Even the NHS will be up for grabs.
The misnamed Welfare Reform Bill now going through parliament is something the Poor Law Guardians would have been proud of. This Labour Government should hang its head in shame for inflicting this on the British public just as we face the most severe recession any of us have experienced in a lifetime.
This assault on the poor and disabled is taking place at a time when former Labour Ministers still drawing an MPs salary, line up on an unprecedented scale to take up lucrative consultancies with private companies, that as ministers they previously had dealings with.
I have written to Gordon Brown about this, he simply passed me on to a civil servant. This personal greed and possible conflict of interest did not appear to concern him.
My final reason for leaving the party is because it is no longer democratic. The personally vindictive, dishonest campaign played out on the pages of the tabloids by certain Labour party members to deselect Janet Oosthuysen was despicable, but even more shaming was the behaviour of the NEC who have uttered not one word of criticism about the Home Secretary’s behaviour on expenses, but have ruined the political career of an excellent candidate whose only crime was to scratch her ex partner’s car.
The undemocratic nature of that selection continues as the reselection has been conducted without much transparency and is now subject to complaints from members of the Calder Valley Party.
Quite simply I have had it with New Labour.
Yours in friendship,
Alice.
Tuesday 21 April 2009 at 13:39 UTC
Harry – you know Alice personally, whereas I don’t, but reading through that resignation letter and other statements released to the press, I still detect on your former colleague’s part a sense of weariness with Labour politics.
I’m not a fan of Alice Mahon’s politics, at least when it comes to international affairs. I think she was (partly) wrong on Iraq, and very, very wrong on Yugoslavia. But in other ways Mahon has been a progressive force in British politics.
If you bang away at the political coalface for decades in this way, and watch while Labour turns into a mere shadow of its former self, then you are quite likely to turn away from it all with feelings of weariness, disgust and a whole lot of other negative emotions.
Much of the content of Mahon’s resignation letter is pure blah. The one heartfelt statement is: “Quite simply I have had it with New Labour.”. That’s a polite way of saying “Fuck ’em!”.
Tuesday 21 April 2009 at 17:15 UTC
Francis,
I disagreed with Alice on numbers of issues. On Yugoslavia I would have liked to have seen an earlier intervention. When we did act over Kosova, it was the crude bombings of Serbia which I criticised. Anthony Seldon indicates that it worried Blair also. Benn in his diaries thought I was crazy for having such a double-take on matters.
On Iraq I firmly opposed the invasion and was on the initial platform for the launch of Labour Against The War. But when the invasion had taken place, we were into a different ball game and I was for effective action to aid the Iraqi people and further progressive forces in their country such as their Trade Union Movement. When the Stop The War Coalition and Labour Against The War became soft on terrorism, I resigned and helped to set up Labour Friends of Iraq. Alice and I were then approaching matters from different directions although I never doubted her humanitarian concerns. And I first gained contact with Iraqi Trade Unionists via a meeting she organised prior to the invasion.
There was a great deal to like, however, about Alice and her politics. Perhaps she has had greater expectations of what Labour could achieve than I often have had.
Back-benchers in the Commons tend to know people best who were in their “intake”. So I knew Alice well, but was only likely to come across your Uncle in the Commons’ Chamber,in rebel division lobbies or in the Library. (I suspect that he is like me and the library is the only bit which he really misses.)
Well that is enough from under the foothills.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 at 00:40 UTC
“Back-benchers in the Commons tend to know people best who were in their “intake”.”
That’s interesting, Harry; it makes entry to the House of Commons seem like going to secondary school for the first time at age 11. If what you say is true, it’s also a shame. Backbenchers of whatever vintage should be working together closely, and so better holding the executive to account.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 at 11:30 UTC
Francis,
There are, of course, countervailing examples. From the start new MPs meet up with established MPs they knew well previously. With me this included Dennis Skinner and the late Bob Cryer. Then there were four South Yorkshire Labour MPs whom I had taught Politics to before they entered the Commons – on Sheffield University Industrial Day Release Classes. The Commons is then full of Committee work of various forms and that means you become friendly with numbers of people; many in other Political Parties. Then some are around more than others in the Commons Chamber, so I came to sit next to Dale Campbell-Savours who was a close friend of your Uncle. I saw Brian as a very forceful person in the Chamber of the Commons, but he seemed to be a rather private person moving around the building. But then our paths seldom crossed in the areas I mentioned above – for there are masses of Committees and the like. Another avenue which leads people beyond their own “intake” is for those who become front benchers and then work as part of departmental teams. But that wasn’t me. I was also less likely to be nobbled by others as I was seen as one of “the ususual left-wing suspects”. When my wife and I popped into a Commons bar to relax, it would be natural for us to join with people such as Alice and her husband Tony. The “secondary school” stuff probably comes from early experiences in the Commons when people find themselves in the same boat, whilst those who are established have their normal pattern of work which dominates their activities.
But then perhaps I am just talking about myself and not the general trend. Although there are other factors to consider. Many old hands retire and are replaced, whilst most of your own “intake” tends to carry on roughly as long as yourself – or this happened with me on the Labour side in years of general growing and then established Labour support from 1987 to 2005.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 at 11:52 UTC
“I saw Brian as a very forceful person in the Chamber of the Commons, but he seemed to be a rather private person moving around the building.”
That’s Brian through and through!
Wednesday 22 April 2009 at 20:39 UTC
There is much to disagree with or openly detest about the current Labour Government, and Alice Mahon has a longer pedigree than many in her work on British Labour principles, but I find her reflexive need to introduce something about a certain war, before other matters, to simply be the optical isomer of what she claims to abhor.
That is placing her personal aggrandizement over more altruistic principles. Half the Labour Party was against the invasion of Iraq, but managed to separate their opinions on one issue from their wider commitments.
“With hindsight I should have resigned then [...]“? Yet she didn’t, and that’s what she should be judged on; at least, regarding this point. Funnily, I have more difficulty accepting moral outrage from a defence witness for Milosevic as she expects others to accept on her defined causes.
I don’t know what reasons Francis’ uncle cited, but an unkind soul here would suggest that she hung onto certain benefits when the living was easy.
Now that the finances are going down the plughole, as could have been monitored had the chatterati not spent the past six years obsessing about a war which they made barely a dent in, she departs.
Of course, I am a very kind soul, so I won’t say this.
and the organisation’s much discussed moral degeneration,
Expect a libel writ from Schillings Laywers, Sedgie.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 at 21:37 UTC
“I don’t know what reasons Francis’ uncle cited…”
There follows Brian Sedgemore’s final speech in the House of Commons, delivered on 23 February 2005 during a discussion of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill…
My honourable uncle’s legacy is proof that Guy Fawkes and his companions were not the only people to enter Parliament with honest intentions. I am immensely proud to be Brian Sedgemore’s nephew.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 at 21:46 UTC
Wow! I thought Uncle Brian had resigned due to Eden’s folly!
Suppose I shouldn’t make fun of Uncles… am going to be one.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 at 22:07 UTC
http://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Brian_Sedgemore
Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow!
Could you send me a piece of the hem of his garment?