Jon Cruddas, until the last election the Member of Parliament for Dagennham and Rainham, wrote a book to mark the centenary and provide a new perspective on the history of the Party.
A Century of Labour is a masterclass in the complexities of modern party politics. Labour is not bound by a single political objective. It is a community of competing ideas about how we live together.
For Jon Cruddas, the competition revolves around three perspectives on social justice. Over the last 100 years, those ideas have evolved. Some have proved apposite for the social and economic challenges facing the U.K. at successive moments in its history, and became the bedrock of social policy at that moment.
Success for Labour, like success for any political party, is the product of deep conversation, pluralism -balancing competing ideas-, tolerance and political strategy. The picture Cruddas paints of the party has two sides. One looks a lot like civil society. There is social infrastructure to connect people. There are conversations about how to live peaceably. There is an unwritten almanac, continually updated, recording the shared moral order. There is natural mutual aid.
The other is mechanical. Looked at from this side, the Party is a machine geared up to win.
The conversation with Jon in this podcast explores what can be learned from A Century of Labour for the future of progressive politics, an effective balance between state and civil society, and finding new solutions to the existential challenges of climate change, managed migration and ethical A.I.
Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Get in touch with us any time by messaging us on the Substack.
Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson.
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