Blunkett: a study in opportunism


    TONY MULHEARN, member of the group of Liverpool 47 councillors who fought
    the Thatcher government between 1983 and 1987, reviews David Blunkett by
    Stephen Pollard.

    If the axiom ‘by your friends shall you be known’ was ever in question,
    Steven Pollard’s autobiography of Blunkett dispels such doubts. ‘A big
    beast’…an ‘Extraordinary man’… ‘Like no other in British history’…
    ‘Awe-inspiring force of nature’, are some of the epithets Blunkett’s fall has
    provoked.

    Pollard, an ex-Fabian who effortlessly made the transition to Thatcherism,
    describes Blunkett’s "drive and determination", "his contempt for the
    Islington set", a "working class lad born into poverty". His experiences,
    Pollard argues, make him "incapable of betrayal".

    Blunkett counts among his friends Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre; CEO of
    Murdoch’s News International Les Hinton; his regular holiday companion is Paul
    Potts, CEO of the Press Association and deputy editor of the Daily Express in
    its most conservative phase.

    Blunkett undoubtedly displayed personal qualities of tenacity by overcoming
    the obstacles inherent in blindness; but was that tenacity deployed in the
    interests of the working class?

    Left rhetoric

    On becoming active in the Labour movement, he soon recognised the value of
    left rhetoric in climbing the political ladder. Sheffield, with its steel and
    mining traditions and the struggles to defend them from Thatcherism, fuelled
    Blunkett’s radicalism in the early years.

    But, as Pollard says, while he was
    prepared to confront the Thatcher government,

    "Blunkett’s behaviour was always
    calculated…he was careful to provide himself with the means of backing down
    without losing face – and still gaining credibility on the Left as a national
    figure".

    Blunkett himself is quoted as saying:

    "Sheffield was unusual in that I
    believe we managed to be radical without the lunacy that affected some Labour
    councils. We were certainly distinct from Militant Tendency, which advocated
    old-style dictatorial policies, where voluntary organisations were persona non grata
    and decisions were made centrally and applied no matter what the local people
    wanted."

    That Liverpool council had secured the highest Labour vote ever recorded
    for doing precisely what local people wanted is ignored.

    His rank and file base, his prominent position in the rate-capping
    campaign, Neil Kinnock’s elevation as leader of the Labour Party, and the
    resignation of Frank Allaun which created a vacancy on Labour’s National
    Executive Committee, allowed Blunkett to be catapulted onto that body by
    Labour Party conference in 1983.

    He became a national figure of the Left who
    would subsequently be a willing collaborator of the Right. Acting on Blunkett’s recommendation, Sheffield Council abandoned the rate-capping
    campaign that left Liverpool and Lambeth, as Pollard concedes, "as the only
    two councils who refused to knuckle under".

    Betrayal

    A key section of the book regurgitates the distortion and outright lies
    about Liverpool. Blunkett claims he became convinced Kinnock was right to
    attack Liverpool council after they rejected the Stonefrost Report’s (a
    commission set up after the 1985 Labour Party conference to investigate
    Liverpool’s finances) ‘solution’ to Liverpool’s crisis.

    Stonefrost proposed a
    fifteen percent rate increase (in addition to the nine per cent already
    agreed), abandoning the housebuilding programme and a ‘small number’ of job
    losses.

    This was Blunkett’s excuse to throw in his lot with Kinnock. He describes a
    rally he attended in Liverpool on 4 November 1985 when he was going to ‘tell
    them straight’ to accept Stonefrost. Pollard quotes Blunkett:

    "I’m not susceptible to visual intimidation. It has to be verbal not visual
    to work on me and, since the cameras were there, they could not do that. But I
    could feel John Hamilton (then leader of the council) physically shaking next
    to me.

    It was one of those moments you never want to go through but it was
    seminal. It was when the left outside Militant decided that it was prepared to
    take them on."

    I chaired that rally of 800 in the Philharmonic Hall. I can’t recall any
    intimidation or John Hamilton shaking – in fact he received an ovation when he
    reiterated his determination to resist any cuts. Thus Blunkett relies on
    Salem’s spectral evidence: intimidation didn’t happen but, without the
    cameras, he knew it would have.

    Another working-class lad and leading witch-hunter, ex-NUPE (public sector
    trade union which merged into UNISON) official Tom Sawyer, is also resurrected
    to utter the same baseless charges.

    In a priceless quote he describes a Liverpool District Labour Party
    meeting: "In an atmosphere of intimidation fuelled by parading security guards
    and hundreds of non-delegates, NUPE reps were threatened and intimidated
    because they would not toe the Militant line. Some of the things I saw as a
    member of the Liverpool inquiry (the witch-hunt committee) have more in common
    with the extreme right in European politics than with the left."

    The only thing he got right was that it was a very large gathering of
    delegates and visitors. From the chair, I saw a number of static security
    staff who had came to the meeting straight from work and so were still in
    their working gear.

    He produces no evidence of intimidation, nor names any
    names. Sawyer went on to move the suspension of the Liverpool party, with Blunkett seconding the motion. He was duly rewarded by being interred in the
    House of Lords.

    Witch hunter

    At the NEC, Blunkett confirms Kinnock had already decided to go for
    expulsions. Tony Mulhearn was the first. Harry Smith survived because, in
    Blunkett’s words:

    "After agonising I decided that the real factor that counted
    in his (Harry’s) favour was that he was the only ‘accusee’ with a sense of
    humour."

    Kinnock concurred. Harry’s reprieve was the token symbol of the ‘fairness’
    of the kangaroo court. He continues to this day to be a vigorous supporter of
    the Socialist Party.

    Blunkett was metamorphosing into the finished article. Brian Gould, the man
    who ‘masterminded’ Labour’s catastrophic defeat in 1987, praised Blunkett for
    his ‘suppleness of mind’.

    He opposed selection in education, later to become a supporter; he opposed
    the plan to ditch Clause Four (the clause in the constitution of the Labour
    Party that committed it to fight for a socialist transformation of society),
    only to embrace its abolition immediately prior to joining Blair’s inner
    circle.

    The press praised him for his tough stance with the teachers’ unions.

    Resignation

    After resigning Blunkett complained that he was a working-class lad who had
    been brought down by the millionaires whose company he so eagerly sought.

    Not for the first time in history has the Labour movement spawned a
    ‘working-class lad’ who becomes seduced by the trappings of capitalist power,
    accepts their praise and eventually deludes themselves that they are in their
    exalted positions by dint of their own inborn ability and not because the
    Labour movement propelled them there.

    Socialists will not regret Blunkett’s departure, but it would have been a
    real victory had he and his cronies been removed by the mass votes of the
    working class and replaced by a leadership committed to socialism, rather than
    the consequences of a liaison with one of the glitterati.

    This biography reveals a man who believed himself untouchable, either from
    the Labour movement or from the press that, he believed, he could manipulate
    by relying on his network of ‘friends’ and contacts.

    Unusually it was not the tabloids which unleashed the pack, but the
    so-called quality press. However, the media did not universally welcome his
    demise. Already a press campaign is under way for him to return to the cabinet
    after the next general election.

    It is a matter of pride that similar sentiments were never afforded to the
    Liverpool 47 when they were surcharged and removed from office in 1987.