"A Walk on Part - The Fall of New Labour" (Live Theatre, Wednesday 25th May 2011)

(dir: Max Roberts, w: Michael Chaplin)

This adaptation of Chris Mullin's diaries, jointly commissioned by Live Theatre and New Writing North, is an ambitious piece of theatre that seeks to provide a partial but panoramic impression of the New Labour era. Both diaries published to date are covered, spanning 1999-2010; Mullin's words are adapted pretty much verbatim. It could almost be 'epic theatre' with its historical emphasis and use of a small cast of five to play a gallery of 58 characters, including many familiar from recent political history. As adaptor Michael Chaplin states in the programme, the diaries 'will enlighten history students of future generations.'

It has particular resonance being performed in the north-east, as Mullin was a prominent back-bench MP for the Sunderland South constituency, who particularly specialised in Home Affairs and his dogged campaigning partially led to the release of the Birmingham Six in 1991 following a miscarriage of justice. It should also be noted that the sixty year-old Chaplin is the son of Sid Chaplin (1916-1986), that great chronicler of life in County Durham pit villages - a writer of short-stories, novels and several episodes of the TV series, When the Boat Comes In.

This play provides an insight into how an average politician sees the world; how he perceives himself, his political 'superiors' and his constituents. The likes of Tony Blair (referred to as 'The Man'), Gordon Brown, George Osborne, Nicholas Soames, Cherie Blair, John Prescott, Robin Cook, Dennis Skinner and Jeremy Paxman are vividly realised by the small cast.

Mullin is played as a self-deprecating anti-hero; a trustworthy, observant everyman, who documents the complexities of the political scene around him. As he notes in the programme: 'the most successful political diarists are people who have occupied the lower foothills. Perhaps because they have time to look around and observe details that those who occupy the stratosphere often fail to notice.' He is portrayed onstage as the reluctant junior minister, who cannot quite avoid the feeling that he is selling out his principles by being in government and achieving less than in his Select Committee days.

Cardiffian actor Hywel Morgan plays Blair, giving an inch-perfect rendition of the old joker-actor extraordinaire - carrying off the mannerisms and speech patterns just as well as Michael Sheen, if not better. It is a timely portrayal, reminding us just how persuasive and charming Blair could be - but not neglecting the darker side, the lack of attention to detail, the belief in following America "as an article of faith". New Labour is demonstrated at its venal worst through the vignette of a smug Geoff Hoon barely suppressing laughter whilst boasting of the precision of allied bombs. This was a moment in the first volume of diaries that chilled me to the core and it is just as hard-hitting when enacted.

The production is entirely sure-footed, as one would expect of the director Max Roberts, a founding member of the Live Theatre in 1973, which has been based on Newcastle's Quayside since 1982. The theatrical space itself is decidedly intimate; I was sat at one of the 'cabaret' tables near the front, which are on a level with the stage. This proximity avoids the distancing 'proscenium arch' effect that is tangible at many theatres; it is more informal and allows for an 'honest transaction' between the actors and audience.

Roberts has directed numerous plays by important northern playwrights such as Alan Plater, Tom Hadaway, C.P. Taylor, Julia Darling, Peter Flannery and Lee Hall. Probably his most famous play of recent years is Hall's The Pitmen Painters, which premiered at the Live Theatre in 2007, transferring to the National Theatre in 2008 and then Broadway in September 2010. This was based upon the real-life story of the Ashington Group of pitmen who became artists, whilst still working down the mines during the day. Phillippa Wilson, who appeared in that successful play, features here as Mullin's wife Ngoc and gives an uncanny impersonation of Clare Short.

The appropriately named 'recess' between Acts contained a few appropriately bland songs of the era: U2's 'Beautiful Day' - capturing the compulsory positvity of early-Blair era globalisation - and The Lighthouse Family's 'Lifted', as slick and insipid a cultural artefact as the pager, the Millennium Dome and 'Cool Britannia'. The emptiness of this latter song can be seen as symbolic of Blair's uplifting rhetoric, whilst also remembering how it was played in Alan Johnson's car in an early episode of Peep Show. It might be worth noting that Johnson was the sort of businessman whom New Labour were dazzled by, who ended up losing out in the financial crisis of 2008. His Labour Party namesake does not appear in the play, though is briefly mentioned by Nicholas Soames as 'worth around 30 more seats' than Gordon Brown as Labour leader in a speculative General Election.

John Hodgkinson is on stage for the full duration as Mullin and captures the man's crumpled decency; playing him almost as a professorial Charles Pooter, but a Pooter agonised about the state of the world and the compromises involved in government. The actor - veteran of many RSC productions, Sheffield-set film Whatever Happened to Harold Smith and appearances in excellent comedies such as Peep Show and People Like Us - manages an impressive feat of line learning. Hodgkinson's decision to address the audience, not to read the book onstage, allows for a straightforward, rather moving interaction with the audience. His performance suggests that Mullin is the sort of man we need in politics: an idealist open to compromise, but also capable of making a stand on certain issues.  He is redeemed by his principled position on Iraq; one gets the impression that Mullin would not have been able to live with himself had he voted for that disastrous adventure. Hodgkinson's Mullin is endangered, humane Labour incarnate - in all of his wrestlings with his conscience and dealings with the power-seeking Blair.

Mullin despairs of many of his fellow Labour Party people and many voters, even if there is no sense that hope is entirely lost. He comes across on stage as one of that seemingly dying breed - a liberal-left Labourite from the well-meaning middle-classes. He is righteously despairing of the proto-"Blue Labour" tendencies of the Blair government, particularly with regard to asylum and law and order policy. His final speech to parliament implies that Labour were not 'small-s socialist, small-l liberal and small-g green' enough, as he had always sought to be himself. Time and again, Blair and those in power took the path of least resistance: caving in to the media; fostering rather than challenging the public's complacent consumerism.

A Walk on Part is justifiably damning of the local and national media; wistfully highlighting Blair's missed opportunity to regulate the right-wing press and delivering a characteristic barrage of Sunderland Echo headlines to demonstrate local myopia and ignorance. The play indeed captures a paradox at the heart of Britain and Sunderland: greater affluence, but no greater wisdom or happiness - in the media, nor in people's lives: as shown in the encounters with often mean-spirited locals, moaning about asylum seekers and having to pay tax.

There are poignant, sad moments aplenty, such as Mullin's many dealings with asylum-seeker constituents - but also moments of sublime comedy, such as The Man's 'listening exercise', post-2005 election, and far too many more to mention. Its characteristic mix of humour and wistfulness is expressed in a moment early in the second act, as detailed in Alfred Hickling's Guardian review: 'It is election-night tradition that Sunderland South is first to declare its result. In 2005, the country's swiftest counters broke their own record, leaving Chris Mullin, the Labour MP who served the constituency for 23 years, to reflect in his diaries that he was, for 40 minutes, the only elected member of Parliament in the country: "Perhaps I ought to have considered forming a government".You cannot help feeling what a better, more genial place the country might have been if he had'.

A Walk on Part leaves one thinking of how much better things would be if someone with Mullin's intelligence and compassion was at the helm. It is a subtle, nuanced requiem for an era in British politics; an apologia for New Labour, highlighting some of its successes, but also fundamentally depairing of its failures on most issues that mattered.

This is a play for anyone interested in politics, recent history or the north east. Whilst it will no doubt transfer to other theatres and go down well in the capital, I would urge readers to see this while it is on in Newcastle, if at all possible.

A Walk On Part - The Fall of New Labour is on at the Live Theatre, Broad Chare, Quayside, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 3DQ - until Saturday 4th June 2011.
http://live.org.uk/whatson/mainhouseproduction.noscroll.php?production=0010

Richard Seymour - The Meaning of David Cameron (2010)

Book Review

The language of meritocracy is, or so I will argue, a language of class rule. I would also propose that the term, as applied to the present state of affairs, is a kind of collective insult on humankind. To imply that those currently at the top - the Warren Buffets and Roman Abramoviches of this world - are the very best, the nec plus ultra of humanity, is a kind of hate speech against the species. Dignity demands that we refute it. (pp.45-6) 

Cameronism is just another symptom of our democratic malaise rather than a cure [....] He eschews the crass populism of his predecessors, which dismayed bourgeois liberals. And he has excelled in the art of delegating nastiness. (pp.16-8)

Before they would extend the franchise, the British ruling class had to be repeatedly placed in mortal terror, and even then it required five separate pieces of legislation over almost a century before it was fully won. (p.22)

Richard Seymour's book is the latest in a series of entertaining, short and incisive political books published by Zero Books. Others have included a look at the 'market Stalinism' of post-industrial capitalism (Mark Fisher's Capitalist Materialism), post-WW2 cultural modernism (Owen Hatherley's Militant Modernism) and how feminism has been co-opted by consumerism (Nina Power's combative One Dimensional Woman). In addition, they have published a fascinating look at the cultural meaning of Michael Jackson and a superbly funny satire of the English football mentality (David Stubbs's Send Them Victorious: England's Path to Glory 2006-2010), published in timely fashion just as our latest World Cup farce began...

In this particular book, Seymour sets out to explore the current state of our politics, analysing the neo-liberal economic and political consensus that has shaped British politics for the last 31 years (and last 16 at least in terms of the 'main parties'). Our elections have, in his words, become 'rarefied [...] spectacles in which the most important questions have already been decided'. (p.17)

He covers this vast topic by focusing on three concepts crucial to neo-liberal politicians' success in marginalising opponents: Apathy, Meritocracy and Progress. He pitches into the debate that Compass and other such vaguely Centre-Left groups have had regarding a possible return to pre-Blair social democracy, as well as examining the 'philosophical underpinning' of Cameron's conservatism, most tangible in the works of Phillip Blond, author of Red Tory.

Court of Cameron

Seymour rightly identifies David Cameron is a product of neo-liberal times, who seeks to learn from his forerunners Thatcher and Blair; who intends to deliver unpalatable policies through deploying his media savvy, developed initially via his former job in public-relations at Carlton television. Seymour makes the telling point that DC will never allow himself to be seen as the bearer of bad news; he prefers to appear 'above the fray', a reassuring rector of the good church blighty, delegating the delivery of harsh announcements to the likes of Chancellor George Osborne or even the hapless Lib Dem Danny Alexander (replacement for the erstwhile David Laws). This book was published a month or so before the General Election and is remarkably predictive of what was to happen, regarding the Coalition: 'So it is with Cameron, who is not short of fall guys when a Tory attack goes awry.' (p.18) In this sense as well as in media presentation, Cameron echoes 'Teflon' Tony - who tended to ruthlessly dispatch any minister attacked by the tabloid press whose name wasn't Mandelson. The Liberal Democrats are being used as human shields to deflect blame for the unprecedented austerity package. 

Be under no mistake, there is no mandate for the centre-right Con-Dem coalition: against a heavily unpopular incumbent, Cameron's party could only muster 36.1% of the vote - lower than Churchill in the landslide Tory defeat of 1945. In a 2007 poll, only 8% of LD voters described themselves as 'right of centre' compared with 33% 'Left-of-Centre', a 25% difference that widened to 34% during the GE campaign with YouGov recording that 43% LD voters were L-o-C: http://today.yougov.co.uk/commentaries/peter-kellner/there-really-progressive-majority It will be interesting to see what view the 'Beveridge Liberals' - a group committed to the Welfare State who make up around half of the parliamentary party - take when the ideological cuts start biting, with jobs and services lost.

Personally, I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

Friederich von Hayek (quoted, p.32)

In the same YouGov poll, more of the public classed themselves as LOC than ROC, 29% to 24% This is not an instinctively right-of-centre country, and we need to be watchful of a liberal-conservatives acting as malign dictators, imposing potentially damaging cuts without a mandate.


'Never Had it So Good': The Tantalising Mirage of Social Democracy

Seymour's analysis of British politics in the 1945-79 period is deeply instructive; he argues that it would be folly to use Labour politics of this era as any sort of template for future policy direction. He seems to advocate the sort of democratic, libertarian socialism as embodied various by the likes of George Orwell and Tony Benn with his ideas of industrial democracy - which he contrasts with the corporatist consensus of Attlee-Wilson-Callaghan. He rightly sees the centre-left politics of this era as too top-down in general - the state dictating and not fostering active citizens. One can agree with this analysis in that there was little of the collaborative workplace democracy seen in countries like West Germany or Sweden.

There is a sense that the politics of the 1945-79 allowed complacency to set in; lasting social advances gained but not appreciated by all, making it relatively easy for Thatcher to change course towards free-market dogmatism. Seymour makes the excellent point that working people in Britain had - as in the famous words of 'One Nation' Tory PM Harold Macmillan - literally never had it so good as in that period: with levels of trade union membership at their historical height in 1979 and the majority of the public actually benefiting materially from a period of unprecedented growth and low unemployment. The Labour Party was popular in this Keynesian period; every election saw them gain more actual votes than in the 2001-10 period of New Labour rule, and in 1951 they garnered 13,948,883 votes (48.8%) - historically speaking, second only to John Major's Tories in 1992 (and then with a 7% greater share than the Grey Man achieved).

That Labour was supported by an increasingly prosperous and somewhat more vocal working-class in 1945-79 is beyond doubt; the problem is that relative prosperity did not in itself mean more power for working people. The establishment remained in charge, even if it appeared to be a more benevolent, paternalistic ruling class than today's yuppies and bankers. Seymour makes the key point that around a third of the working-class still tended to vote Tory in this period; a division which Thatcher went on to ruthlessly exploit by offering home ownership (selling council houses to their tenants) and exploiting very English fears over collective action shared by many small-c conservative workers: as seen in reaction to the Winter of Discontent and the Miners' Strike.

Seymour goes on to argue that, however well-meaning, Labour played its part in 'containing pressure from below', and did not transform society, even to the extent of the Swedish social-democratic experiment. (p.24) I would reflect that some things from that era are worth fighting to retain - idealistic institutions such as public libraries, the NHS and secular state education. Other Zero writers have rightly spoken up for the BBC - particularly as it existed prior to Thatcher's Broadcasting Act (1990) which de-regulated our media, to incalculable cost. Before then, the BBC generally acted as an enlightening influence, forcing the rest of television to raise its game. Compare the centralised, moribund ITV of today with the period prior to 1990 when it consisted of diverse regional companies producing programmes of real quality: can one imagine ITV or Sky executives commissioning Ways of Seeing, World in Action or Seven Up today, or even new equivalents of Inspector Morse, The Prisoner or Coronation Street?

"Ways of Seeing" - episode on advertising: never timelier

Jonathan Meades: iconoclastic, eccentric

We need accessible, intelligent broadcasting of the Play for Today, Monty Python's Flying Circus or Steptoe and Son calibre; the BBC (with the possible exception of C4) is the only broadcaster accountable enough to be able to do it. It does sometimes manage it: see the formidable documentaries of Adam Curtis or the absurdist travelogues of Jonathan Meades. To extend this good paternalism, I would argue that the state and local authorities have to act in some areas; for example, providing green public transport and reducing car and plane usage. Ken Livingstone's London congestion charge was pilloried, but since its application has worked and is here to stay.

The Post-WW2 social democratic dream could not last; built into it were the seeds of its own destruction. Whilst we had three times the deficit of today in 1945, we were heavily underwritten by US aid: the post-war Welfare State was contingent upon Keynes getting a good deal from the Americans - which he did, to the extent that positive domestic spending came at the expense of an independent foreign policy. A green perspective on this period has to balance the unquestionable social advances achieved - the programme of liberal reforms made when Roy Jenkins was at the Home Office, the decreasing gap between rich and poor - with the impact upon the planet of greater material prosperity.
 
Do not get me wrong. Social democracy - regulated, mixed-economy capitalism - is preferable to unrestrained capitalism of the Thatcher-Reagan-Clinton-Blair-Cameron kind. There should be an emphasis on limiting the gap between rich and poor, protecting valued public services from destructive 'market forces', but we need to avoid the obsession some socialists have with measuring the worth of a society in terms of % GDP growth. Consumer booms tend to undermine socialist and ecological values. We need a 'steady state' economic model, designed to put human activity more in proportion to the earth we rely upon. The greatest sacrifices will, of course, have to be made by the rich, but the majority will also have to scale back their activity and perhaps even aspirations; it is the Left's folly if it prioritises abundance for all - if higher consumer growth is their raison d'etre.

The state serves Kapital: neo-liberal ideology

The idea that populations could vote for, say, high redistributive taxes and see that implemented is excluded by the founding tenets of the neoliberal state. (p.32)

Seymour identifies with the ecological arguments, describing the neo-liberal consensus in Britain as 'founding state legitimacy on its ability to generate economic growth' (p.32). He also exposes the absurdity of the Coalition's position on cutting public services hard now - 'the number one priority' according to frenzied government memos - rather than regulating the banking system to ensure that society is protected from the rapacious financial services. Cameron has claimed that the crisis is of the state; he is correct only in the sense that the state is having to deal with the likely £trillions deficit primarily caused by bailing out the banks. The state should never have allowed the bankers to act as they did, but nor should it use the crisis to prioritise cutting jobs which are manifestly more useful to British society than City of London gambling, sorry, 'banking'. Seymour quotes an independent report from the New Economics Foundation (published in December 2009), which - after factoring in relevant impact on society/the economy, the bailout included - calculated that 'while a childcare worker created an average £9.50 for every pound she was paid, a City banker would mange to destroy £7 for every £1 earned. The irony of calling such people 'wealth creators' is hard to miss.' (p.57)

http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/A_Bit_Rich.pdf (well worth a read - the NEF have also suggested we use other measures than the tunnel-vision of GDP growth)

This is empirical evidence to support the moral and practical arguments for putting our public services before the maintenance of a discredited economic policy. Seymour also quotes the IFS, who found that despite supposed 'equality of opportunity' New Labour's policies led to greater inequalities. This same relatively independent entity was also very critical of George Osborne's 'progressive' first budget:

The Budget looks less progressive – indeed somewhat regressive – when you take out the effect of measures that were inherited from the previous Government, when you look further into the future than 2012–13 and when you include some other measures that the Treasury has chosen not to model. Conversely, looking at the impact of the Budget on households with different income levels overstates how regressive it is in comparison to an analysis based on households with different spending levels, which should give a better guide to their lifetime living standards.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/budgets/budgetjune2010/chote.pdf

In BBC documentaries such as The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and The Trap, Adam Curtis has focused on how the state has been used, since the days of Reagan and Thatcher, to turn citizens into consumers; expecting people to act selfishly, according to a selfish model of human nature that American PR man Edward Bernays derived from a reading of Sigmund Freud:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#

They have done this in order to negate the possibility of citizens organising or challenging the distribution of power; a new tactic for an establishment that has always regarded the mass as akin to a dehumanised mob. Seymour makes the point that earlier rulers such as Earl Grey were 'reforming to preserve, not to overthrow'; come the 1980s, those in power decided that no more concessions would be made - and we live with the consequences.

A Hoon for hire: lessons from the recent past

Labour certainly has gall if it regards itself as an egalitarian party. It will be tarnished by the 'liberal interventionist' foreign policy in the Middle East, illiberal measures such as ID cards and by the self-serving likes of Patricia Hewitt, the insufferable Hazel Blears and Geoff Hoon. As Seymour demonstrates, there is arrogance in these people, lecturing others about apathy and meritocracy when they are milking the system themselves, becoming ever more distant from the constituents they are supposed to be representing.

He recounts the Channel 4 documentary where GH spoke to a journalist posing as a representative for an American lobbying company, and claimed he could change government policy if paid £5,000 a day to do so: 'the fee discussed here was actually more than one of their unemployed constituents would receive in Job Seekers Allowance in a whole year. In the arithmetic of meritocracy, this means that Geoff Hoon is worth more than 500 of his unemployed constituents.' (p.57) I would exclude the principled likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Mullin from this analysis, of course, but Labour has to purge itself of such greed and hypocrisy if they are to be taken seriously as a potential ally. It should also be stressed how Gordon Brown cosied up to The City, ironically lauding the financiers as 'wealth creators'; furthermore, how Labour was apologetic about its 50p top-rate tax for the highest earners during the election campaign - portraying the measure as a temporary evil.

Conclusions?

The Meaning of David Cameron is a quick and enlightening read, marked by its strong marshalling of evidence, pithy humour and righteous, controlled anger. Do not expect an in-depth dissection of Cameron the man; that would be beside the point. Instead, we get an analysis of some of the buzzwords which the establishment use to quell dissent - buzzwords largely unchallenged politically or in the media. Unlike many writers of the left, Seymour does not completely ignore or denigrate the ecological viewpoint; he inches towards a steady-state solution. We also get a persuasive underlying argument that we need to re-claim the state as a positive agent, rather than as a tool of neo-liberalism.

Books should not just be designed to please or placate; they should make us question underlying assumptions and develop our ideas and arguments. Seymour's tract is certainly useful in both senses.