The beautiful green valleys that stretch from Gower to Torfaen are dotted with a high number of post-industrial mining towns. The Labour Party was born in these towns. Its first Member of Parliament was elected to represent one of these towns. The party’s first major crusade was over a railway strike in one of these towns. Since 1922, these towns have loyally produced Labour Members of Parliament, almost exclusively. Even in the great defeat of 1931, in which Labour only returned 52 MPs across the entire United Kingdom, it was still elected in all seventeen of these mining towns.
From Crusaders to Technocrats
These towns produced some of the party’s finest orators, ranging from Aneurin Bevan to Neil Kinnock to Roy Jenkins. Men of different ideological convictions but united by a working-class, mining-oriented upbringing that schooled their powerful, emotional rhetoric. However, since the leadership of Tony Blair, Labour has abandoned its passionate oratory and emotion and replaced it with a ‘modern’ and professional, bland and technocratic managerialism. As a result, support in the post-industrial towns has been slowly ebbing away ever since. The unprecedented enormity of Labour’s defeat in October’s Caerphilly by-election may well be the first words in the last rites of the Labour Party.
Before Blair, Labour had always been a web of coalitions. It was a coalition of ideas between pragmatists and Social Democrats, ideologues and Socialists. It was a coalition of representatives of middle-class intellectuals and working-class trade unionists. These two coalitions (the coalitions of representatives and ideas) were not independent blocs. Many middle-class intellectuals were Socialist crusaders, and many working-class, former manual workers and trade unionists were pragmatic Social Democrats. This is, of course, a broad overview, but until the leadership of Tony Blair, Labour was fundamentally a coalition of these coalitions, and it was supported by a coalition of working-class voters and middle-class progressives.
Between 1963 and 1980, both party leaders (Wilson and Callaghan) were transcenders, with a foot firmly in each camp. Both enjoyed support from Trade Unionists and Social Democrats, Socialists and pragmatists, professionals and crusaders. However, by the time of Callaghan’s resignation in 1980, Labour’s centre of gravity had shifted. The next two leaders were not transcenders, but two men of incomparable upbringing who epitomised Labour’s crusading Socialist tradition. They were middle-class intellectual Michael Foot and working-class trade unionist Neil Kinnock. It is no coincidence that these two eccentric crusaders, who were elected successively as leaders, represented neighbouring seats in South Wales. They were men of enormous charisma and passion, two public and parliamentary orators of generational talent. Their style of politics was rooted in the trade union and working-class movement. It was passionate and spellbinding, and constituencies in South Wales during the elections of the 1980s stacked up majorities unmatched in the rest of the country.
Despite the support in South Wales, the 1980s were a desperate time for Labour. The entire party, including prominent figures of the crusading Socialist tradition, recognised that crusading Socialism alone could not win national elections. Post-industrial towns still loyally voted Labour, but the lack of a transcending leader had alienated middle-class voters. Then, jolted by further defeat in 1992, the party overreacted and backed Blair, a figure unapologetically on Labour’s right, and certainly no transcender. The Socialists were spellbound, and through a collective fall on their ideological swords, purged themselves of Socialism in the name of pragmatism. They accepted the removal of Clause IV, they accepted the severing of Labour from its Trade Union roots, they accepted the marginalisation of internal party democracy, all in the belief that electoral success would follow. And unprecedented electoral success did follow.
Last of the Orators
Labour’s electoral success had one notable downside. Throughout the 21st Century, support for the party slowly bled away in its post-industrial heartlands, and the eccentric Socialist orators who’d drawn such passion from ideological commitment either retired or ‘professionalised’ themselves. Formerly passionate Socialists such as Margaret Beckett, Clare Short, Frank Dobson, John Prescott and even Neil Kinnock, all brilliant orators, all to some degree professionalised their image and sacrificed their principles in an embracement of ‘Blairism.’ The retention of these figures did, however, sustain Labour in the post-industrial areas. These ex-Socialists may have sacrificed their principles, but they retained the passion and formidable oratory that their former Socialism and political education in the working-class movement had instilled in them. This was not to last. Things started to change rapidly when these figures retired. Since it abandoned the form of politics their passion had been schooled in, Labour could not replace its lost orators like-for-like. Instead, they were supplanted by the bland managerial types that represented Blair’s vision of a ‘modern’ Labour Party, and Labour lost its last connections with working-class, post-industrial towns.
This is not to say that a few loyal working-class representatives haven’t clung on, or that a few Socialists haven’t remained. But both are so relatively few in numbers that the overwhelming view of Labour today is that of middle-class managerial technocrats, devoid of charisma and passion. And what of those who have clung on? Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are prominent examples of Labour’s more charismatic working-class orators. And that’s the problem: Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are some of Labour’s most charismatic orators. Yes, they are sometimes impressive. But they are incomparable to Nye Bevan or Neil Kinnock. And can we blame them when the working-class movement that schooled their predecessors is today virtually unrecognisable from the party that was formed to represent it?
And what of the Socialists? The Blair project so successfully marginalised the Socialists that of the 403 Labour MPs elected in 2024, just 20 MPs sit in the Socialist caucus. The Socialists of today do not stem from such great crusaders as Neil Kinnock and John Prescott, who embraced the Blair reforms. Instead, they stem from Tony Benn and the faction of the left that splintered in 1980; the faction that was never committed to a coalition of Social Democrats and Socialists, of ideologues and pragmatists. The faction that the rest of the party has been marginalising ever since. And so, the gap between the party and what remains of the Socialists is too large to reconcile. The accidental leadership of Jeremy Corbyn proves this fact. A Socialist leadership of today’s post-Blair Labour Party is an impossibility because the Socialists are so marginalised and so few. The voters, including those in post-industrial, working-class constituencies, recognise this fact. And split parties don’t win elections.
The figures of great oratorical passion, the kind that used to be ten-a-penny in Labour, are now virtually non-existent. And the reason for this is clear: with no overarching ideology, they have nowhere to draw their passion from. A few, such as Jess Phillips, draw it from Feminism, others from issues surrounding Racism, others from Environmentalism, all important issues, but ones that are unlikely to resonate with working-class communities in post-industrial towns like Caerphilly. The professionalisation of the party has killed the great oratorical tradition, schooled by the working-class movement, that resonated with the working-class movement. Why? Because when Blair ripped out Labour’s Socialist soul, he replaced it with pragmatism. And pragmatism cannot exist on its own. Pragmatism is the brake on ideology. Pragmatism is an intellectual relationship with ideology. But it cannot exist on its own. That is why today’s Labour Party is a confused mass of bland middle-class professionals, lacking the rudder of ideology to steer any courage or conviction. And that is why Labour are haemorrhaging support in working-class constituencies. Since professionalising the crusading wing of the party and removing the Socialism that used to invigorate passion, Labour has lost the ability to speak the language of working-class communities.
People Want Passion
Labour is losing support in post-industrial towns all over the country. Some would have you believe that this is owing to Reform and their anti-immigration rhetoric. That’s nonsense. During the by-election, The Guardian‘s brilliant ‘Anywhere but Westminster’ series interviewed two constituents who were attracted to Nigel Farage. One said: ‘I like that he (Farage) tries to connect. I like that he tries to come down to our level.’ He also said: ‘… without legal immigrants in this country, the NHS would collapse.’ Another pointed out that ‘the working class people are struggling.’ These constituents have never voted for the pragmatic professional wing of the Labour Party; they voted for the passionate crusaders — the type that no longer exists inside Labour. In short, working-class constituents in these post-industrial towns want passion and clarity of ideas. So, of course, they feel invigorated by figures who they feel will make their voices heard in those areas that have been relatively impoverished for centuries. And the great Socialist crusaders used to do that.
Arguably, Caerphilly shows that Reform is beatable. The working-class who have supported Labour so loyally and for so long in these post-industrial areas are not a homogenous bloc moving towards Reform; they are a homogenous bloc alienated by Labour. When the Plaid Cymru candidate, Lindsay Whittle, who won the Caerphilly by-election, first stood all the way back in 1983, Labour won 46 per cent of the vote and Plaid 13 per cent. The by-election reversed this. Why? Not because of a sudden spike in personal support for Mr Whittle, or because of an overwhelming surge in the desire for Welsh Independence. Rather, it was because the disconnect between the electorate and the Labour Party, founded to represent their interests, has become so staggering. The constituents of Caerphilly felt as though Labour had abandoned them. A party that was originally formed by passionate Socialists to represent the working-class movement has been replaced by a selection of bland, middle-class, middle managers, with no vision and very little passion to speak of.
When Denis Healey was asked about New Labour, he indicated his support, saying, ‘What we need are pragmatic governments with a sense of vision.’ He was right. But just as a car needs a brake pedal and an accelerator, a political party needs pragmatists, and it needs visionaries. By removing the party’s Socialist soul and replacing it with some intangible idea of pragmatism, Labour has lost its visionaries, leaving only the cold, bleak pragmatists. And just like a car with no accelerator pedal, a political party of only pragmatists can only hope to continue on the momentum of its past. The Caerphilly by-election proves that momentum, that great momentum of the Blair years, has all but run out.
The Caerphilly by-election also proves that Reform is beatable in working-class towns, but not by Labour. And if Labour cannot win in towns like these, it cannot hope to be a party with any serious prospects for government in the future.
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