In his 2002 autobiography, Interesting Times, the justly revered Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm dwells extensively on his experience of student politics in the ‘Red Cambridge’ of the 1930s. An ardent member of the Communist Party, he had a lot more to argue his way out of than modern Labourites; if you thought the 10p tax was tricky, try winning an argument on the Nazi-Soviet Pact. “We accepted the new line, of course,” he remembers, “Was it not the essence of ‘democratic centralism’ to stop arguing once the decision had been reached? And the highest decision had obviously been taken.” It seems that ‘calls for unity’, issued by closed party elites taking the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons, are nothing new in left wing politics.

Some of us, like Hobsbawm in the 30s, might not have a problem with this. As he explains elsewhere, his loyalty to the Comintern was all but unconditional, at least until the last, faintly ludicrous years of Stalin’s tyranny and the brutal crushing of the Hungarian revolt in 1956. To him and millions of communists around the world, the Soviet Union – however flawed – was a beacon of ‘really existing socialism,’ a non-negotiable rallying point for a fiercely disciplined international movement. Similar arguments, in essence, have long been bandied about in reference to Labour’s mis-steps over the past decade. The mere fact of government is an automatic justification for any betrayal of principle. Tribalism and ‘discipline’ have become substitutes for engagement. An unholy trinity of Prescott, Campbell and Mandelson preach ‘put up and shut up’ at every opportunity. 

In reality, any number of shadowy representatives from the ‘public affairs’ industry can now command more attention from the party leadership than any mere CLP could ever hope to; the proof lies in the changed nature of Conference, which helpfully combines fringe events where much is discussed and nothing changes with setpiece speeches where nothing of any significance is ever said at all. Such are the rigours of democratic centralism in the age of Sky News. But where do we come in?

On a national level and in the long term, it is clear that the British left is still stuck in a limbo of sorts, no longer able to advocate the interests of a withered union movement yet seemingly incapable of marshalling the better natures of the silent majority of British citizens who would vote for a social democratic movement that unashamedly shared their desire for a reformed society. Tightly controlling leaderships and an addiction to the news cycle leaves party membership a profoundly disempowering experience. The collapse of a political culture and public sphere worthy of the name is a well-documented phenomenon, which has served to hollow out the membership of all three political parties – although Labour has fared by far the worst. As an unusually strong and active university Labour club, we are in a position to do some hard thinking about what our role should be in relation to the party as a whole, at a time when the leadership’s stranglehold on internal debate has perceptibly weakened, and the process of politics itself is an increasingly prominent political issue.

A clear choice is open to us in this context. We can humbly receive gracious emissaries from the wonderful world of Westminster, beg them for some choice Blair anecdotes, and send them away reassured of our campaigning zeal and happy to offer some of us internships. We can hold endless policy forums without ever bringing policy motions, or exploring ways in which we can actively influence party policy through the formal and informal avenues open to us. Or we can do what students do best, what student politics should be all about – getting angry and getting even. Lord knows each and every one of us has things they disagree with the leadership about. We are not a think tank: we are an affiliated, campaigning Labour organisation. We earn our right to have our say in the wider movement by the work we do here in Oxford for the local candidates we admire and care about. No member of the cabinet deserves our deference. No policy, local or national, is immune to our scrutiny.

The way ahead is clear: we must work harder to campaign for change within the party whilst continuing to build support for Labour in the wider community. Few would disagree that, in any democratic political organisation, these two aims are inseparable; the right to the first is conditional on the second. Moreover, it is critical to realize that unless Labour is seen to be an organisation whose members can mobilise to make a tangible difference to party policy, then we wish shutting out huge numbers of principled, politically active people – especially the young – who see themselves as being ‘of the left’ but are rightly disgusted by the monied, militaristic excess of the past ten years, and mourn the death of their natural home.

This is not an issue of loyalty Vs betrayal, unity Vs fragmentation. It is deeply perverse that we seem to be much keener on putting in incredible effort on behalf of those in power than actively influencing what they do in our party’s name. Redressing that balance is key to OULC’s continued renewal, and it’s up to all of us to bring more policy motions, ask more difficult questions of speakers, and provide a broader range of clear mandates for our delegates in national organizations. As we go into another year and another freshers’ recruitment drive begins, a proclamation of the end of deference towards party elites would be the best possible advert for the vitality and relevance of our organisation.

Then came the ‘dead cat bounce,’ that favoured, gruesome metaphor of the hardened politico, which accurately postulated that no amount of international grandstanding and budgetary diarrhoea would be able to shore up the cracked conceptual foundations of the New Labour project. The past few months, they’ve not even bothered. Jacqui Smith’s pornos? Ed Balls bullying the teaching profession?

The systematized thuggery of an out-of-control police force? Damian McBride’s hateful little e-mail games? It is all of a piece. The failure of the current leadership goes beyond economics, beyond politics. It is cultural, and it is utterly complete.

That’s not to say that 12 years in government have been without achievement, even if the greater part of a positive Labour legacy is now unravelling. For a time it seemed like the political climate had fundamentally changed. After 2001, public servants began to be paid something approaching a reasonable wage, and we are close to repairing two generations of untold damage to the NHS. A liberal institutional consensus on race, disability, gender and sexuality has put down roots that no subsequent government will be able to destroy.

But these good intentions pale into insignificance when set against the avalanche of blind incompetence and corruption that has been gathering pace since before the last election. The doubling of unemployment and the likelihood of a ‘lost generation’ of dispossessed youth – the rotten product of a sickening infatuation with the City and a blatant disregard for the real productive capacity of our economy – leave supposed guarantees of steady, equitable growth in tatters.

The reprehensible behaviour of the police in recent weeks, not just in their handling of the G20 protests, but also in their heavily-criticised ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Climate Camp protestors in Nottingham and their overt collusion with energy firm E.on in the partisan policing of the Kingsnorth protest last year, is largely the fault of government. It marks the culmination of a long process of pointless engorgement of police powers at the expense of the vibrant, pluralist civil society that should sustain any true party of the centre-left, and signals worrying continuities with the draconian Tory tactics of the 1980s.

I could go on – the leadership’s collusion in torture and fatal addiction to the blinkered historical naivety of liberal interventionism abroad also deserve a mention – but here seems like a good place to change tack. It’s just those continuities with the 1980s which, like it or not, will dominate the historical assessment of 12 years of Labour government. I recently re-read Jonathan Coe’s marvellous, moving satire on Thatcherism, What a Carve Up!, a book which I know to be a firm OULC favourite, and rightly so.

It captures, for our generation and beyond, what the corruption and oppression of those dark years must have been like, its keen eye for detail evoking the systematic coarsening of public life, the wearing down of public servants and institutions, the erosion of public space, and the destruction of civil society that were the hallmarks of the old Tory consensus. I suggest that those of you with copies try dipping into that book again, and start looking from pig to man, man to pig, and wondering which one is which.

We (and by we I mean you and me) can do better. We have to do better, or the left in this country just doesn’t have a future. The Labour party is a broad church, it’s a very old one, and it’s all we’ve got. How might we go around rebuilding it for a new age, divorced from both the class warfare that defined it in the 50s and 60s and New Right infiltration that’s ruined it today? A new pragmatism is one answer, along with a firmer commitment to institutional and constitutional change.

The key to confronting the huge economic and environmental challenges ahead lies in a paradigmatic shift in political culture – a revolution in how people and government interact, coupled with a new understanding of what the state can achieve for the community; a ‘de-othering’ of government, if you like. The Cameroons recognise this, but as Conservatives they are incapable of drawing the right conclusions about how this new consensus might be achieved in practice. The Labour party recognises that the challenges of the 21^st century demand a reconfiguration of the mixed economy.

It’s obvious that we need a nationally co-ordinated, long-term transport strategy, funded and managed by accountable public servants in government departments, in the public interest; the same ‘commanding heights’ approach is also needed on energy, the environment and higher education, whilst post-crash banks may find the invisible hand of the market wielding the carrots and sticks of a tightly regulated, and partially state-owned, financial services sector.

At a local level this needs to be counterbalanced by a reinvigoration of city, borough and county councils and an end to the micromanagement of public servants. This doesn’t mean embracing the so-called ‘choice agenda’ – rather, it means giving real financial clout to local government and making improved public consultation, rather than the false freedoms of a marketised public sector, the emphasis of public service reform. Strange as it may seem, a continuing commitment to constitutional reform is absolutely vital to these changes.

We need the House of Lords, but we need it as an elected, non-partisan second chamber, which offers balanced representation of regions, interests, and expertise, rather than a new playground for a closed political elite. This is a precedent set not only by the American senate, but by the ancient differentiation between County and Borough seats in the House of Commons.

Time and again, history shows us that lasting, positive change is most frequently brought about by radical constitutional and institutional transformations that reconcile the structures of government with those of society; Britain’s post-war malaise – a malaise which, it is now evident, was not ended by either Thatcher or Blair – is due largely to our forbears’ failure to achieve just this reconciliation. The harsh realities of a new age require a fresh, innovative, and wholly pragmatic approach to progressive government. It’s up to us to shape that new consensus, and to help deliver it for future generations.