Foreword
At the heart of our current cultural muddle lies a paradox that far too few people seem to have noticed. All sorts of intellectual disciplines, from neuroscience to literary theory, have in recent decades questioned the idea that the ‘starting position’ for human identity is a solitary, speechless individual who moves out from primitive isolation to negotiate cautiously with other similar creatures, and learns to use language as a tool for labelling objects that can be variously managed and utilised. This powerful myth cannot credibly survive the analysis of how language and consciousness actually work: we ought to be more than ever alert to the fact that our self-awareness is shaped by the inseparable awareness of other subjects, that projection into the life of the other is there from the start, that how others speak to us, imagine us, nurture or fail to nurture us, is not an ‘extra’ to our sense of who or what we are but completely woven into the very idea of being a ‘self’.
Yet so much of our public rhetoric and popular imagination is still clinging to the myth. Self and other is a zero-sum game for many; it shows up in attitudes to foreigners and migrants, in the world of finance, in demands for more explicit teaching about a single dominant national history to be defined over against others. The language of human rights – an essential moment in the development of a critical and humane politics – has encouraged some to speak as though the self-evident needs I identify for myself have an intrinsic authority. We are fast losing, as many commentators have pointed out, a solid idea of public service and public good – the idea of universally shared responsibility for shared well-being, and the idea that there are some goods for human beings that are necessarily held in common and achieved by collaboration. And that is to say that we are losing the sense that there are other kinds of relationship between people than the exchange of commodities.
There is nothing new in this reading of our situation; what needs to be brought out a bit more clearly is that there is a contradiction between this powerful cultural myth and the way in which sciences and humanities alike are describing us. In other words, we need to wake up to the fact that a lot of our politics assumes various things about our humanity that are not true; that we are being actively encouraged to lead lives at odds with what we actually are, with how our minds and feelings actually work. The challenge to conventional politics at the moment is the question of what the political world might look like if it tried to work with rather than against the grain of our humanity. This collection of essays seeks to meet that challenge.
These essays do not represent a simple argument for the priority of ‘community’ over ‘individualism’. That can too easily become another zero-sum exercise. The difficult and necessary job is to do with rethinking what we mean by an individual – not lobbying for some sort of subjection of person to collective. Can we build a realistic political platform from the vision of persons always in relation, not just ‘entering into’ relation? A political platform from which our dependence and indebtedness to one another and to the entire material environment we inhabit can be acknowledged in a way that lets us live within our limits and attend to one another’s well-being with a measure of grace and generosity? In short, can we make politics a ‘humanist’ affair, in the proper and wide sense of the word that has to do both with the thick fabric of civic solidarity and with the opening up of imaginative and intellectual horizons to all citizens?
Any political agenda that reflects this ‘humanism’ needs to think hard about the state and its task. As several contributors stress, we cannot be content with views of the state that see it either as the sole and all-powerful provider of values and solutions or as a residual guarantor of legal stability and not much more. We need to think through what a moral state looks like: not an authority that imposes values but one that gives due weight to supporting what is already supportive, nourishing what is already nourishing, in the primary communities that make up society. Such a state will be robustly capable of challenging localism when it becomes defensive and exclusive, but not afraid of building local capacity and trusting local perception. And, as we know all too well, it is not good enough to express aspirations about this without doing what is needed for that building work. The state as ‘community of communities’ is a frequently quoted formula, as relevant now as it has ever been: it takes for granted that the state will be holding the ring in serious and demanding discussion about resources and plans and relative needs among the diverse communities and localities of a society. And it takes for granted that participation at local and wider levels can happen and is effective.
Again and again since the financial crisis of 2008 onwards, people have said that we cannot go ‘back to normal’, if ‘normal’ is a world dominated by the artificial manipulation of financial exchange, the massive inflation of uncontrolled credit and the assumption that a virtual economy is more important than the business of making things and maintaining public well-being. Thus far, relatively few political voices have offered a persuasive way of turning our backs on the seductions of this bizarre ‘normality’ in the name of what I earlier called political humanism. Now, if ever, is the time for more voices to be raised. I hope that these essays will speak effectively to those on all parts of the political map who want to see a programme that has something more to do with the real processes of human growing, maturing and flourishing. We cannot indefinitely go on planning against our own nature – not to mention the nature of what lies around us.
Acknowledgements
The idea for this book originated during a car journey from the Cotswolds to south-east London on a beautiful summer’s evening in June 2010 when Paul Bickley encouraged Ian Geary to compile an essay collection on Blue Labour as a vital component for the renewal of the wider Labour movement. Ian began to assemble a group of contributors, and after a dinner at the home of John Milbank in November 2011 he invited Adrian Pabst to join him as co-editor.
In addition to Paul, many friends and colleagues have helped us with advice and encouragement, notably Maurice Glasman, Dave Landrum, John Milbank and all the other contributors to this volume: Luke Bretherton, Jon Cruddas, Rowenna Davis, Ruth Davis, Frank Field, David Goodhart, Arnie Graf, David Lammy, Michael Merrick, Tom Watson, Ed West, Rowan Williams and Ruth Yeoman. We thank them for their generosity and patience.
We are also enormously grateful to John Clarke, Andy Flannagan, Dan Leighton, Patrick Macfarlane, Jonathan Moules, James Mumford, Matthew Rhodes, Martin Robinson, Richard Robinson, Jonathan Rutherford and Nick Spencer.
Our warmest thanks go to all those who have supported the Blue Labour Midlands seminars since 2012. We received much encouragement and stimulus from the conversations and debates. A special word of gratitude to Simon Oliver of the University of Nottingham for his extraordinary efforts in hosting the seminars on campus.
Our great thanks also go to Alex Wright and his colleagues at I.B.Tauris for their enthusiastic backing and superb work in publishing this book. We owe a debt of gratitude to the School of Politics and International Relations and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Kent for the award of two grants without which this collection could not have progressed to completion. In particular, we would like to place on record our appreciation to Feargal Cochrane, Richard Sakwa and Richard Whitman at Kent for their support and wise counsel.
Finally, we express gratitude and love to our wives, Susan Geary and Elena Lileeva, and our children, Joshua, Samuel and Martha Geary, and Alexander Pabst.
We immensely enjoyed working together. The regular conversations over coffee in Portcullis House were always a great source of inspiration and delight. This book has been a long time coming, and it would not have been possible without our collegiate cooperation and friendship.
We dedicate the book to Reverend Dr John Hughes who was killed in a car accident on 29 June 2014, aged 35. John was a dear friend, trusted colleague and a fine Christian socialist. His earthly life was short, but his legacy is a grace that will endure and help sustain us.
Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst
Contributors
Luke Bretherton is Professor of Theological Ethics and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University. His most recent book is Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life (2015).
Jon Cruddas has been Member of Parliament for Dagenham since 2001 and for Dagenham and Rainham since 2010. In May 2012, he was appointed as Policy Review Coordinator for the Labour Party.
Rowenna Davis is the Labour parliamentary candidate for Southampton Itchen in the 2015 General Election and a former Labour Councillor in Southwark. She is the author of Tangled Up in Blue: Blue Labour and the Struggle for Labour’s Soul (2012).
Ruth Davis is Political Director of Greenpeace UK.
Frank Field has been Member of Parliament for Birkenhead since 1979 and is a former Minister of Welfare Reform (1997–8).
Ian Geary is an executive member of Christians on the Left and Co-Convenor of the Blue Labour Midlands Seminar. He was a Labour parliamentary candidate and has worked in public affairs.
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill, is a Life Peer (Labour), and author of Unnecessary Suffering: Managing Market Utopia (1996).
David Goodhart is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the think-tank Demos, and author of The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigration (2013).
Arnie Graf is an American community organiser. He is currently working as an independent consultant for the Industrial Areas Foundation and for the Labour Party.
David Lammy has been Member of Parliament for Tottenham since 2000 and is a former Minister for Higher Education. He is the author of Out of the Ashes: Britain After the Riots (2012).
Dave Landrum is Director of Advocacy of the Evangelical Alliance.
Michael Merrick is a teacher and commentator. He blogs at http://michaeltmerrick.blogspot.co.uk
John Milbank is Professor of Religion, Politics and Ethics at the University of Nottingham and Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy. His most recent book is Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People (2013). Currently he is writing (together with Adrian Pabst) The Politics of Virtue: Post-liberalism and the Human Future (2015).
Adrian Pabst is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Kent. He is the author of Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy (2012). Currently he is writing (together with John Milbank) The Politics of Virtue: Post-liberalism and the Human Future (2015).
Tom Watson has been Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East since 2001 and is a former Minister in the Cabinet Office. He is the co-author (together with Martin Hickman) of Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain (2012).
Ed West is Deputy Editor of the Catholic Herald and a blogger for The Spectator. He is the author of The Diversity Illusion: What We Got Wrong About Immigration & How to Set It Right (2013).
Rowan Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is the Master of Magdalene College in the University of Cambridge. From 2002 until 2012, he was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury. His most recent books include Being Christian (2014) and Faith in the Public Square (2012).
Ruth Yeoman is Research Fellow, Mutuality in Business, at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Meaningful Work and Workplace Democracy (2014).
And the Lord said:
Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.
Jeremiah 6:16
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget, For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.
G. K. Chesterton