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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 7.2.93
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JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Good afternoon and welcome to On The
Record. As you probably saw in the News, John Smith has just finished making
what was billed as his most important speech since becoming Leader of the
Labour Party. Did he show that after all he does have that elusive vision
thing? Two influential commentators deliver their verdict.
DIMBLEBY: A little under a hour ago John Smith
finished what was billed as his most important speech since he became leader of
the Labour Party over six months ago. Until now he has been much castigated
for his failure to lead from the front. The result say his critics - inside as
well as outside the Party - is that Labour is adrift and rudderless. With his
speech this morning, as it were, will it turn that tide of criticism?
JOHN SMITH MP: We should not be in favour of government
simply for its own sake. Equally, we should never abdicate our responsibility
to market forces. In the modern world you simply can't leave everything to the
market, anymore than you can leave everything to the state. And the political
debate in Britain has be bedeviled for too long by simplistic arguments and
false choices between these two extremes. For the truth, and we all know it is
that we need both dynamatic markets and active government. For years we've
conducted a largely sterile debate about the ownership of industry and services
as if privatisation and nationalisation are the only conceivable choices in
economic policy. Well in the Labour Party we see clearly the merits of the
mixed economy and the need for an active and creative partnership between the
public and private sectors, a partnership being explored by Labour councils all
over the country.
We also comprehend that in a world of
multinational ownership of companies, the only truly national asset which we
possess is the skills and accumulated knowledge of our own people. Ownership
today is therefore largely irrelevant. As Neil Kinnock wisely observed, it is
education and training that are the commanding heights of the modern economy.
DIMBLEBY: In a speech clearly intended to revamp
Labour's image, Mr Smith went on to redefine the role of the individual.
SMITH: And in a very real sense democratic
socialism in the modern world is a radical theory of citizenship in which
access by all to the power of knowledge is the foundation of liberty. I want
for this country a future that puts power back in the hands of our citizens,
democratic power that has been taken from them by over centralised government,
economic power that has been taken from them through Major's disastrous
management of our country's wealth. The power of knowledge that has been
diminished by botched education reforms, by lack of investment in skills and in
training and by under-resourced colleges and universities. These are the
powers I want to see restored to the citizens of our country because these are
the enabling powers that give people real control over their own lives.
DIMBLEBY: Reaction to that speech now from two
trenchant critics of political theatre, both influential commentators - Tony
Howard of The Times and Andrew Neil, the Editor of The Sunday Times.
Andrew, you took a meat cleaver to the
Carlton Club speech of John Major earlier in the week. How do you mark this
one?
ANDREW NEIL: Well, let me continue in that vein, I
mean it's just as if the Prime Minister got paid by cliche, he'd be a rich
man, so would the leader of the Opposition. I would mark it about six out of
ten, he's now reached the ideological position that Ian McCloud had reached in
1965, so I suppose that's progress of sorts.
ANTHONY HOWARD: I thought as a performance it was better
than that, I think John Smith is improving, he always had this terrible thing,
you know, of putting his hands down his side of his trousers and swinging like
a metronome. He's got rid of that to an extent, he's now using his right hand,
if we can encourage him to use his left hand, he'll become a speaker.
NEIL: This is the theatre critic of The Times
speaking here you know.
HOWARD: But I thought as a performance it was
better than he's done before.
DIMBLEBY: It's going to, of course, be poured over
by insiders in the Party for coded messages, open signals and the rest. Do you
think that that speech, given that it's going to be across the televison and
radio news, it's going to be in the newspapers tomorrow, people are going to be
commenting on it - is it going to give the public the impression that this is a
new leader of a new party with a new image, Tony?
HOWARD: Well, I think he's in some difficulty, I
did, I must say, I may be unfair but I looked up his election manifesto which I
think was published on April 30th and that was called I think "New Powers to
Victory". This one today was called "A New Way Forward" so it's a sort of
variation. Then he did a quite interesting thing at the Fabian Society in May
and I didn't find anything really new beyond those two things he'd done before
in this speech, in fact, I found rather less because he'd been rather braver on
the previous occasions asking questions like, what is the right balance between
universal and selective benefits? Got none of that today; got no stuff about
the unions today; got no stuff about Clause Four today, except by implication.
DIMBLEBY: Andrew.
NEIL: I think it means almost nothing to the
public at all, I think this just goes over the public's head beause they've got
more important things to worry about, as did the Carlton Club speech because
this was a coded speech for Labour's own audience, I mean, I think the merit of
the speech is that it's part of an education process trying to drag the Labour
Party into the 1990s. In a way he was seeking now to consolidate all the gains
that Labour had made under Neil Kinnock in terms of modernising their policies,
getting rid of the ideological baggage which had lost them four elections in a
row. I mean that's fine, there's purpose to that and it's early years yet but I
think what it hasn't done and there was no guidance in this speech at all, as
to the direction that he now wants to take Labour. Given that he's established
that it's going to be a modern social democratic party, alright, but what
does that mean in terms of the radical policies that the country needs to make
Labour distinctive, we didn't get that.
DIMBLEBY: He did focus enormously on the
individual, on the rights and the freedoms of the individual, without spelling
out the difference in contra distinction to the collective but it was clearly a
different emphasis from what people think...
HOWARD: He said that on the 27th May, he said
Labour must show we're on the side of the individual against vested
interests....
DIMBLEBY: Well he's emphasising the point then.
HOWARD: I know but it's not new...
NEIL: I'd expect you to go back and read the
files Tony.
HOWARD: The trouble is that the speech has been
overhyped, now Mr David Hill, I think he's called, you say a very resourceful
fellow who is his own press secretary and he obviously worked deciduously
yesterday afternoon selling it to Sunday papers saying this was the most
important speech his leader had yet made. Okay, he did a good job but I'm just
trying to say, look he wasn't saying very much new today that he hadn't said
before.
DIMBLEBY: What do you think...in the Party there
are the traditionalists and there are the so-called modernisers and actually
quite a fierce debate going on, as it were, between the Tony Blairs, I put that
in inverted commas, and the Bryan Goulds, in inverted commas. What's this
going to say to them, a plague on both of you or you're both in the House and
we love you?
NEIL: Well, I think that although there is a
lot of coded language, in fact, Peter Walker could have made this speech five
years ago actually and Harold Macmillan used to make speeches about this as
well that we're not a laissez-faire party and we don't believe in full state
control either (interruption)... there's a lot in John Major's speech that is
not that different from the John Smith speech but although it was done in coded
language in an attempt not to upset anybody or cause huge divisions in the
Labour Party, there seems no doubt in my mind the review belonged to the social
democratic wing of the Labour Party, the more centre left progressive wing
rather than the left wing of the Party, you would be happier with John Smith,
Mr Prescott will not be happy with this.
DIMBLEBY: The modernisers will be much happier
than he?
NEIL: I think so.
DIMBLEBY: I hesitate to say that he is not a
moderniser because otherwise he'd be down my throat and it's not a fair
description but the modernisers at least will....
NEIL: I would think so.
HOWARD: I think they'll be reasonably happy but
I think that the better distinction was made in an interesting article today by
Alastair Campbell in the Sunday Telegraph of all places, he's the political
editor of the Daily Mirror, and he said the divide is not between modernisers
and traditionalists, it's between fanatics and long-gamers and I think up to
now, Mr Smith has been regarded as somebody who sees it as a very long game and
maybe the frantics I think they're called not fanatics - the frantics - will be
pleased that he's a little bit in their direction.
NEIL: Absolutely, I agree with that.
DIMBLEBY: Would it be right to say that given
we're a long way out still from an election, the jury has to be out on whether
or not this does signal to the party, we have to have radical reforms if we're
going to get there or we can do incremental changes that will help us achieve
the victory given the state of the Tory Party?
NEIL: The future of the Labour Party does not
depend on it returning to some kind of Gaitskell-like consensus just on the
centre left. This country needs radical policies, non-socialist but radical
policies and the radicalism of the Labour Party, the jury is still out on that
and John Smith with a small c is a very conservative man.
HOWARD: But I think he's moved quickly because I
think it was a set back for Labour when John Prescott and I think it was he
invented this phrase, "Clintonisation" and this was, I think, a threat to the
modernisers of the Labour Party and I think today he's tried to get the debate
back on track away from the idea that we have to simply imitate the Democrats
of the United States.
DIMBLEBY: Both of you, thank you very much.
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