Labour's New New Jerusalem
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The words of William Blake's Jerusalem were invoked by Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee when he launched his party's proudest achievement: the creation of a welfare state.
"I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem, In England's green and pleasant land."
But some leading Labour Party figures no longer believe in the top down model that was meant to make real that vision of a "new Jerusalem". Mukul Devichand hears from leading Labour Party figures who want a radical new welfare settlement, saying the state itself is to blame for society's ills as much as the market.
This new cadre of Labour thinkers is known as "Blue Labour". Two years ago we made a programme about them. Then they were worried about the impact of immigration on blue collar communities.
Now they are part of Labour's inner circle: academic Maurice Glasman has been elevated to the House of Lords; Jon Cruddas MP is in charge of writing the party's manifesto; and Ed Miliband's widely applauded "One Nation" conference speech last year was written by "Blue Labour" godfather Marc Stears.
The post war welfare settlement, according to Lord Glasman, represented the triumph of those who believed that government could solve social problems. That victory, says Glasman, came at a price: "A labour movement that was active and alive in the lives of people became exclusively concerned with what the state was going to do."
The alternative, according to Blue Labour thinkers, is welfare delivered at local level rather than by a centralised state; and a benefits system that prioritises those who contribute over those who do not. "The key concept we use is incentive to virtue," Lord Glasman tells Mukul Devichand, "so we have to be judgemental."
Producer: Fiona Leach
Interviewees include:
Maurice Glasman Labour Peer
Sir Robin Wales Labour Mayor of Newham
Jeremy Cliffe Britain Politics Correspondent, The Economist
Polly Toynbee Guardian Columnist
Andrew Harrop General Secretary, The Fabian Society.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Thanks for downloading from the BBC. This is Analysis. |
| 0:40.0 | I'm Mukle Devachand and this week I'll be looking at a new idea from some in the Labour Party that involves doing welfare without the state. And we'll see. Nothing evokes the shared national spirit of England's |
| 1:09.0 | nothing evokes the shared national spirit of England's industrial age more than this poem by William Blake, |
| 1:15.6 | first set to music almost a century ago. |
| 1:18.9 | And was Jerusalem building here, he asks, amongst England dark satanic mills. |
| 1:29.0 | Blake's words have a special significance for the Labour Party. In 1945, Prime Minister Clement Attley |
| 1:36.2 | invoked his new Jerusalem when he launched Labour's proudest achievement, the creation |
| 1:42.0 | of a welfare state for the British people. from mental fight, nor shall the souls sleep in my hand till we have built Jerusalem in |
| 1:57.0 | England's green and pleasant land. |
| 2:01.0 | Atley believed that central government planning had won the war and so now it could secure the peace. |
| 2:07.0 | He put his faith in the rational bureaucrats of Whitehall to provide a social safety net for all. |
| 2:13.0 | The idea has defined the Labour Party ever since. |
| 2:17.0 | But listen to these men who work for the current Labour leader, Ed Miliband. |
| 2:21.0 | They lament the failures of that new Jerusalem. The dark |
| 2:25.6 | satanic mills gone but replaced by degraded communities. People have lost trust in |
| 2:32.1 | our welfare system. I would suggest that the answers to our problems do not simply lie within white wall itself. |
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