Maurice Glasman, a political theorist and economic reformer, is also a Labour life peer at the House of Lords. The Blue Labour movement was also founded by him. It aims to return Britain’s main centre-left party back to its roots as a vehicle of the working class. This includes local democracy, trade unionism and patriotism. This contrasts sharply with the neoliberal tendencies of Tony Blair’s New Labour, which embraces globalization and does not fear finance capital.
Glasman was the first to speak out about this paradoxical politics after the Great Recession, more than a decade of Labour rule, which had left working-class Britons economically and politically precarious and physically and spiritually isolated. The movement’s name reflects its paradoxical nature. Blue is the traditional color for conservatism in Britain. It is scandalous to add “blue”, to “Labour” (he credits Catherine, his wife, with the coinage). She, in turn, took inspiration form the Red Tory movement, which seeks to re-infuse British conservatism with solidaristic, prolabor elements that shaped it before The Thatcherite revolution. ).
Even before Blue Labour was named, Glasman was voicing concern about his party’s progressive, neoliberal drift. This saw the left’s “liberation form national government and democracy”–that’s, the political success of the postwar class compromises on both sides. He predicted that working class people would leave Labour if it didn’t renegotiate its commitment to a world without borders ten years ago. Some branded him a reactionary, but many ignored his warning. A few years later, Labour would loose its grip on its northern heartlands as the working-class overwhelmingly voted to leave Europe.
As the Tories fail in government, Labour is poised for a return to No. 10 I met Glasman on the patio at a South Kensington pub. It was freezing cold in London so Glasman and I had to sit down for an interview. This interview was edited to ensure clarity and length.
Sohrab Ahmari – Start from the beginning. Please tell me about your roots.
Maurice Glasman :I am a Jewish working-class man who was born in East London. My father owned a small, failing business. My mother was religious. She was really religious and very left-leaning. This is what I mean by the dead tribe. A strong commitment to the Shabbos. We were extremely Orthodox and devoted to the left.
S.A. S.A.
M.G. M.G. : No. In college, I was only interested music and the possibility for sexual intercourse. Student politics was not something I could do. It was tedious and boring. I was a big fan of community organizing. After establishing a close relationship with the Industrial Areas Foundation I returned to university as an academic. You have a lot of time to do these things.
London was becoming a highly globalized, intense city in the late 1990s. However, the cleaners and cooks of London weren’t earning a living wage. So I organized through faith communities, including mosques. But the Roman Catholic Church was the basis of it. They also had relationships with the poor. That is how I got my politics.
The 2008 crash followed. Because banks were borrowing at half the rate of poor people, I started an anti-usury campaign. My mum died in 2008, just as the crash. I was so upset about the state my Labour party, which had become completely disconnected from labor issues and fully committed to globalization, that I began to cry. Blue Labour was a loving letter to Mum. She was conservative, patriotic, and Labour-oriented. Just recently, I gave a talk about her death and Blue Labour just began to explode. Before I knew it I was being coopted and placed in the House of Lords by the Labour party!
S.A. S.A.
M.G. M.G. Labour was not interested in working-class people anymore.
S.A. S.A.
M.G. M.G. : It’s really awful! It was shocking to me at first. Blue is the color associated with conservatism. It is also the color that represents sadness. It was my attempt to combine those sensibilities with a party, which had become overwhelmingly progressive, depising history, stranded and contemptuous for the things I loved, such as family. This led to an amazing reaction. It was fascist and colonialist.
S.A. S.A.
M.G. M.G. : The past is gone. There’s a story that I find interesting, especially since I’m Jewish. It’s that the British working class didn’t hesitate to fight in World War II. They did not become communists, nor did they become fascists. They just joined the Army and fought. I have a lot of respect for these people and their ancestors. New Labour, the working class, said that they were irrelevant and they are a problem.
These working-class people were not a problem to me. They were my inspiration and solution. These people voted for Brexit and voted in their millions to support the Conservative government in 2019. The new era sees the working class as a political force, while in the past, they were totally irrelevant to political calculation.
S.A. S.A. All of these conditions created the ideal environment for organizing and militancy. These conditions have been eliminated by the neoliberals. Many of the production takes place offshore and workers are often employed on gigs. Workers don’t have the chance to form solidarity or turn it into collective action.
M.G. M.G. It manifested itself as a conservative organization that only wished for recognition of labor as a part of the country that should matter. And, despite all the changes you described, that isn’t gone away. The pandemic proved that. There was a distinction made between Zoom-workers and those who had to leave. The country realized its dependence on them, and that they kept the country running. They were indeed made heroes, but I thought they were just workers.
Emigration plays a significant role in the new circumstances. The link between Labour and the working classes has been broken. Labour did not talk about family or community. The unions and Labour have largely abandoned that vision. They have no place in the working-class values. Now things are changing. This is what happened with the Brexit vote. These people still believed in solidarity and had an attachment to the current political system. They understood that Parliament, democracy, accountability were at stake. They voted to protect it. Capital has attempted to fracture this political sense of solidarity but they failed. This is the amazing discovery that has been made.
S.A. S.A.
M.G. M.G. The Conservatives refused to accept it. Boris Johnson was fired for having one piece of cake and one drink. This is absurd. They couldn’t build their electoral position. People believe they are corrupt and ineffective, so they vote Labour. But Labour isn’t [wholeheartedly supported]. Yes, Labour has made progress. It has accepted Brexit, it talks of some limitations on immigration, and it is talking about retraining employees. They are still stuck in 2008, though. They want everything to return to the way it was. They are not running on a populist electoral platform that would grant them the mandate to transform and recognize labor. They will win, but it won’t be a significant win. Part of it is their inability to confront the conservatism that is deeply ingrained in working-class people: the desire for a place, the desire for security in an uncertain world.
S.A. S.A. What is the telos (the end point) of the human being? As someone of faith, I have a view of this, one that secular people can at least partially agree to. People thrive in families and people thrive when there is order. That’s Blue Labour, I think.
M.G. M.G. They’re non-colonized. They are blessed not to have to go to university or be subjected for compulsory moral and linguistic servitude. They are able to see the reality of life: sacrifice, hard work, and giving. They know that love is difficult and that it’s necessary to keep those bonds of obligation throughout the generations.
It hasn’t disappeared, thank God. They haven’t been able to root it out. The left is now stuck in an odd situation. They know they need these workers but still view them as unwelcome relatives who they would prefer not to invite to their family parties. Don’t underestimate how much progressivism has colonized the Church. It can sometimes be indistinguishable with an NGO.
Blue Labour has made it a priority to rediscover the concept of covenant. We are blessed to have Parliament and the monarchy. Unfortunately, the Church is the weakest link in that chain. It can’t speak about the Kingdom as such. Nor can it talk about the role of politics in creating that sense of faith-based solidarity. It turns out that capital resists more easily the more conservative and faithful members of the working class. They have the sense that humans are sacred and that nature is sacred. This means that they have obligations to these gifts as trustees, not as recipients.
S.A. S.A.
M.G. : Let’s do!
S.A. : The most frustrating part of being a pro-labor conservative in the Anglo-American world is that you hear your fellow right-wingers lament various cultural phenomena–collapsing church attendance, declining family formation and total fertility, and so on. They never connect these cultural developments with material economic developments. It is maddening to me.
M.G. M.G. This is our responsibility in this generation: to integrate conservative traditions with a critique of market society. This goes back to Anglo-American conservatism’s roots. It goes back to Burke. Despite his genius and the enormous amounts of money he was able to get right, Burke couldn’t cope with the radical disintegration social bonds that capital generated. It was impossible for him to do. The capture of conservatives is now a reality. They don’t understand the concentration of power, the liquidation or solidarity, nor the desecration ….. You see it time and again. That was Trump. Trump promised a national industrial strategy but couldn’t actually implement it. It’s now evident with Conservatives. Our task is to combine the moral obligations of conservatism and the best political-economic analysis from the left. This left failed in many respects, but Marx was right about “everything sacred becoming profane”.
S.A. S.A.
G.M. G.M. They opted for finance capital …. instead of productive capital. There were once associations of local industrialists in America. They are now subordinated to Wall Street. That’s the challenge. This politics is not intellectually articulated but it exists within the people: They want liberty and solidarity, decency from the system. This is what we have to do.
Sign up today
Receive weekly emails to your inbox
S.A. S.A. What are the shining shards that represent hope?
G.M. G.M. Even though they are stuck in a market fantasy and have no control over the markets, even the Conservatives created Brexit. They wanted sovereignty, democratic control, and accountability to the people. They moved into this space. They moved into a more pro-labor job. Boris Johnson said, “F-k business”, when he was told that “The City of London does not approve”. Michael Gove’s project “Leveling up” is important and everyone across the Atlantic should be aware of the fact that this is the first time in the ’60s we have discussed industrial strategy and national self sufficiency.
Labour’s side has accepted Brexit and accepted immigration limits despite hate and loathing. They’ve also begun to engage in national industrial strategy. We can’t lose. That is the thing that keeps us going. Because people are people and love one another. This is the most amazing thing. We are not at all vulnerable when you consider the forces that are against us. We are able to stand over the oppressive forces of the working class like a constant shadow because of their obduracy. While we don’t organize, labor is always moving and will endure. We are people of faith. They can’t end human relationships or the meaning that comes from them. The dignity of workers is something they cannot destroy.
