Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics

Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics is a 2015 book edited by Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst. The collection of chapters by different contributors attempts to further articulate the Blue Labour political tendency within the Labour Party and British politics more generally, building on previous books such as The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox: The Oxford London Seminars, 2010–2011 and Tangled Up in Blue. In his foreword, Rowan Williams states that whilst contemporary academic thought is increasingly questioning the idea of a "solitary, speechless individual" with utilitarian aims as a theoretical starting-point, this has not been accompanied by an associated shift in public rhetoric and popular imagination. He expresses his belief that if people are to change politics in a positive manner, especially in light of the recent financial crisis, we must develop new communitarian approaches that start from civil society upwards. The remainder of the book is accordingly a development of this basic notion, arranged thematically.

Adrian Pabst from the outset situates Blue Labour in opposition to the wider framework of social and economic liberalisation, and the categories of secular left and reactionary right, that have characterised the postwar settlement in British politics. Continuity is instead claimed to be found with the British Romantic tradition embodied by William Morris, with its "emphasis on the creativity of human labour, on the intrinsic importance of vocation and on the need to nurture virtuous action". Pabst proclaims the timeless values of the common good, participation, association, individual virtue and public honour as comprising Blue Labour's core beliefs.

Part One begins with Maurice Glasman adumbrating his ideas on the foundations of a good society, taking particular influence from Catholic Social Teaching. He points to Germany's postwar model of development, characterised by subsidiarity and decentralisation, and corporatism rather than class conflict, as a set of ideas from which influences can be drawn. He views this as being able to overcome the dichotomy between the two impersonal entities of state and market, both of which he sees as having damaged social cohesion. John Milbank then goes on to expose what he sees as the limits of contemporary liberalism in both its left-wing and right-wing incarnations, arguing that it promotes a contractual, self-interested worldview that ignored meaningful, reciprocal relations in favour of an increasing commodification of human existence. This is followed by a contribution by Frank Field, who charts the loss of the Labour Party's core working-class constituency. He identifies a lack of patriotism and a disconnect between both rights and privileges as well as contributions and entitlements as being particularly problematic.