Middle class Middle English Democratic Socialism.

By John Champneys

In so far as New Labour has made any progress, it is in inclusiveness. The working poor have been advantaged. Progress is being made to end discrimination against women and ethnic minorities.

These are real advances. They do not say much about the society we want to live in.

Middle class socialists have a sense of fairness, and want a better Britain .It follows of course that they are interested in outcomes, as opposed to rubbery targets, pledges, vows and spin.

The sense of fairness insists on a more equal society. This means progressive taxation, and tackling gross inequalities at the top as well as at the bottom.

A better Britain includes first-rate public services. Public services are the things we share together, when they are strengthened, society is strengthened. The ethos of public services has to be public service, not moneymaking. Because the public interest matters, if the private sector is to be involved, it should be on our terms. This means the firm involved must have a prime interest in running a quality service, the price must not be too high, and there must be a good fallback if things go wrong. In general none of these safeguards are being achieved. No amount of spin will conceal disasters in school and hospital privatisations. An urgent re-think is needed, if we are not to think of new Labour to-morrow as we think of Railtrack today.

It does now seem to be agreed that people care desperately about public services. This means that we are NOT going to move to "self-reliance", i.e. buying our own schooling and healthcare, (and living in our own fenced-off private estate), as a tiny minority of thoughtless new millionaires would clearly like. We may have to use these private facilities sometimes, out of desperation, in the full knowledge that many of them are not very good anyway.

Middle England people care greatly for schools, hospitals, libraries, music, and the BBC. They can be persuaded to pay for them, and they use them fully. Here, as elsewhere, they do not want to be ruled by big business, with its crude short-term philosophy. Middle England has always been too intelligent to believe that life begins and ends with moneymaking.

Middle England people mainly live in or around towns and villages, not miles from anywhere in the country. They need green lungs and walking about places in their locality, and must not be hemmed in by dense housing forced into towns by the NIMBY attitude of country millionaires. Whilst they will support practical environmental improvements, they own cars and need to be able to get about in them

I believe that there is a split between young people living in large cities, who are socially liberal, a growing minority, and the rest of us who are less so. Both should be appealed to. We can surely agree, for instance, that you should not harm yourself, e. g. with addictive cancer sticks ( These are no longer treated permissively in America. and for once we should follow their lead.) We must build a better Britain, where we can fully use our energies creatively, and so where there is no need to escape from reality into orgies of drugs and booze (these do not enhance, they harm, fun dancing and partying.)

We shall know when we are making progress towards a better Britain, when we are more selfconfident, and less intolerant of minorities. Our nasty ineffective asylum policy needs changing from top to bottom. Our main aim for criminals should be rehabilitation not vengeance. Crime is not an isolated affair, e.g. criminals have families, go to school, and live in streets. Failures there lead in part to crime, so each prison place needed is automatically a failure not just of the criminal, but of the family, neighbourhood and society as a whole.

My suggested appeal has always been to "nice people". In Mrs. T’s time it would have been "nice people do not vote Tory". Now it should be possible to argue "nice people vote Labour". It is with deep and sincere regret that I could not argue this at present.

Surprisingly, middle class middle England is now ready to embrace some democratic socialism. Can we have some please?

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Last revision 18/8/01