Task 8.1 Compare: The Labour and Conservative Party 1979 Election Manifestos
Labour Party Manifesto (1979)
Now, more than ever, we need Labour's traditional values of cooperation, social justice, and fairness. This manifesto restates these Labour principles in an action programme with a strong sense of the future. They appeal to all our people - young and old.
The world is changing rapidly. New industrial nations are rising to challenge our key industries on which British jobs and living standards depend.
The Labour Government is taking firm action to equip Britain to adapt to these changes and to seize new opportunities. And we will take great care to protect working people and their families from the hardships of change.
But although the 1980s will present a tough challenge, this country will have many things in our favour. North Sea oil offers a golden prospect as do our reserves of natural gas and coal. We must use these resources wisely to plan our future to create new wealth, new jobs, and to look after the family, the elderly, and those in need (…)
The Government's industrial strategy is about how to create more wealth and more jobs through a constructive national partnership with unions and management. The Conservatives will not admit that nowadays governments must step in to help create employment, to limit prices rises, to assist industry to modernize itself. They are ready to gamble the people's future on a return to the nineteenth century free market' - despite its pitiless social consequences. They are as dangerously out of their time as a penny farthing on the motorway (…)
[N]obody who cares about Britain can rest satisfied until far, far more has been accomplished. As long as there are men and women struggling with low pay, mothers stretching the household budget to make ends meet, youngsters in search of a job, children learning in out of date classrooms, patients queuing for a hospital bed or families without a decent home - then there is work for a Labour Government.
Our purpose is to overcome the evils of inequality, poverty, racial bigotry, and make Britain truly one nation.
For these we need a Labour majority in Parliament. This manifesto sets out our aims for the next five years. Here are five of our priorities.
- We must keep a curb on inflation and prices. Inflation is our enemy because rising prices hit most hardly at the pensioner, the low paid and the housewife, and inflation causes loss of jobs (…)
- We will carry forward the task of putting into practice the new framework to improve industrial relations (…) [E]ach year there will be three-way talks between ministers, management and unions to consider the best way forward for our country's economy (…) [T]here is no sound alternative to working together. A Conservative free-for-all in pay and prices would mean endless pitched battles that would be fatal to the interests of all of us. The Labour way is the better way.
- We give a high priority to working for a return to full employment. A good job is a basic human right (…)
- We are deeply concerned to enlarge people's freedom (…) Industrial democracy (Industrialdemocracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace. It is an alternative to the capitalist way of organizing production, where ownership and the power to make decisions is in private hands.) - giving working men and women a voice in the decisions which affect their jobs - is an idea whose time has come (…)
- We will use Britain's influence to strengthen world peace and defeat world poverty (…) It cannot be right that 15 million children in poorer countries die before they are five (…) There is a compelling moral need to raise the standard of life of all the world's citizens - no matter where they live (…)
Conservative Party Manifesto (1979)
THIS ELECTION is about the future of Britain - a great country which seems to have lost its way (…) [T]oday, this country is faced with its most serious problems since the Second World War. What has happened to our country, to the values we used to share, to the success and prosperity we once took for granted?
During the industrial strife of last winter, confidence, self-respect, common sense, and even our sense of common humanity were shaken. At times this society seemed on the brink of disintegration (…)
We do not lay all the blame on the Labour Party: but Labour have been in power for most of the last fifteen years and cannot escape the major responsibility. They have made things worse in three ways.
First, by practising the politics of envy and by actively discouraging the creation of wealth, they have set one group against another in an often bitter struggle to gain a larger share of a weak economy.
Second, by enlarging the role of the State and diminishing the role of the individual, they have crippled the enterprise and effort on which a prosperous country with improving social services depends.
Third, by heaping privilege without responsibility on the trade unions, Labour have given a minority of extremists the power to abuse individual liberties and to thwart Britain's chances of success. One result is that the trade union movement, which sprang from a deep and genuine fellow-feeling for the brotherhood of man, is today more distrusted and feared than ever before.
It is not just that Labour have governed Britain badly. They have reached a dead-end. The [radical] nature of their Party now prevents them from governing successfully in a free society and mixed economy (…)
Our country's relative decline is not inevitable. We in the Conservative Party think we can reverse it, not because we think we have all the answers but because we think we have the one answer that matters most. We want to work with the grain of human nature, helping people to help themselves - and others. This is the way to restore that self-reliance and self-confidence which are the basis of personal responsibility and national success.
Attempting to do too much, politicians have failed to do those things which should be done. This has damaged the country and the authority of government. We must concentrate on what should be the priorities for any government. They are set out in this manifesto (…)
Our five tasks are:
- To restore the health of our economic and social life, by controlling inflation and striking a fair balance between the rights and duties of the trade union movement.
- To restore incentives so that hard work pays, success is rewarded and genuine new jobs are created in an expanding economy.
- To uphold Parliament and the rule of law.
- To support family life, by helping people to become home-owners, raising the standards of their children's education, and concentrating welfare services on the effective support of the old, the sick, the disabled and those who are in real need.
- To strengthen Britain's defences and work with our allies to protect our interests in an increasingly threatening world.
This is the strategy of the next Conservative government.
Task 8.2 Speech Analysis: Thatcher’s Economic Programme
During the 1978-1979 “winter of discontent”, Margaret Thatcher (then Conservative leader of the opposition) gave a speech to the House of Commons. In the speech, she provided documentation for the costs to society of the strikes, and she lambasted the Labour government for its handling of the situation.
Margaret Thatcher’s Speech on the Industrial Situation, The House of Commons, January 16, 1979. Excerpt.
“Whatever view the Prime Minister [James Callaghan, Labour]may take about the situation in Britain, the Opposition took the view that we were in a position of grave trouble of crisis proportions—I should have thought that that was no longer in doubt—that it was of such a nature and of such proportions as to be of great concern to the House, and that we should debate it at the earliest opportunity […]
Inquiries around the several organisations about the precise position have revealed a very grim picture indeed […] The Road Haulage Association confirms that picketing is affecting the supplies of essential goods. The Freight Transport Association also reports a new problem—shortage of diesel fuel, particularly in the South-West, because of picketing at the oil terminal at Avonmouth. British Rail reports quite simply: “There are no trains today” [...] The report from the Confederation of British Industry is that many firms are being strangled. There is a shortage of materials. They cannot move their own products. Exports are being lost [...]
What is our approach to this grievous situation? Unlike the Prime Minister, we do not go around supporting strikes when we are in Opposition. We never have and we never shall. These things are a weapon of the present Government party, and the nation is reaping the bitter harvest from the attitude and approach that they have taken.
We cannot have rigid pay policies forever. That is not a possible way of conducting affairs in a free country which has a great deal of varied industry and where industry must always be changing to keep abreast of the times and one step ahead of competitors if we are to survive. There is no way in which it will work […]
We have lived through a long period of increasing trade union power […] That time of mounting power for the trade unions has also been a period when we have seen increasing left-wing militancy in control of the unions. The unions have had unique power and unique power requires unique responsibility. That responsibility has not been forthcoming. That is the reason for the position in which the country finds itself today [...]
There is no right to stop a vehicle. There is no right to threaten loss of a union card. There is no right to intimidate. There is no right to obstruct. [E]very person in this country has a right to go about his daily work or pleasure free from interference by anyone else. That right is not being exerted or exercised at the moment [...]
One Reading feed firm was told its non-union driver would have to pay £16.64, a year's membership subscription to the Transport and General Workers' Union, before he would be allowed to collect animal feed at Southampton docks. Mr. Charles Cooper, a director of the firm, Walter Parsons and Sons, said: ‘I think it's blackmail. I thought this was a free country. If our chaps want to join a union, they can. We don't see why we should force a chap to join’.”
No union has any right whatsoever to do that. I believe that it is an offence against the law to do it. Action should be taken to ensure that lorry drivers are not threatened and to ensure that they are not told that they cannot get through unless they have a union card or take one out […] I believe passionately that no one should be compelled to join a trade union as a condition of keeping his job […]
We believe that this is a matter of great significance for democracy and a free society, and we will support [the Prime Minister] if he will take steps to deal with these problems. […] If he does not, I hope that he will step aside for a party that will.
Task 8.3 Speech Analysis: Blair’s Vision for the British Economy
In September 1999, Tony Blair gave a speech at the Labour Party’s annual conference. In the speech, Blair boasted his government’s political results and set out his economic vision for Britain in the twenty-first century.
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Speech to the Labour Party Conference, September 28, 1999. Excerpt.
Today at the frontier of the new Millennium I set out for you how, as a nation, we renew British strength and confidence for the 21st century; and how, as a Party reborn, we make it a century of progressive politics after one dominated by Conservatives.
A New Britain where the extraordinary talent of the British people is liberated from the forces of conservatism that so long have held them back, to create a model 21st century nation, based not on privilege, class or background, but on the equal worth of all.
And New Labour, confident at having modernised itself, now the new progressive force in British politics which can modernise the nation, sweep away those forces of conservatism to set the people free.
[T]he foundations of a New Britain are being laid. After decades of Tory boom and bust, it is New Labour which is the party of economic competence today and for that we can be proud […]
650,000 more jobs in the economy, long-term youth unemployment halved and – here’s one for us to put back down a few Tory throats – fewer days lost in strikes than any of the 18 years of Tory Government. Who says Labour’s not working now?
All employees with the right to a paid holiday. Leave for parents to take time off work for a family crisis. And after 100 years of trying, the right for union members to have their union recognised, not on the whim of an employer, but as a democratic right in a fair and free society.
Maternity grant doubled. 7 million families with the largest ever rise in Child Benefit Britain has seen. And I say to Britain’s pensioners: I know when you get an extra £100 for every pensioner household this November – not just those on benefits, everyone – it’s not the end of your worries, but it’s £100 more than you got under any Conservative Government; and they’d take the £100 back off you if they were ever elected again.
Half-way through one Parliament. Nothing like half-way towards meeting all our goals. And all around us the challenge of change.
A spectre haunts the world: technological revolution. 10 years ago, a fifteen-year-old probably couldn’t work a computer. Now he’s in danger of living on it. Over a trillion dollars traded every day in currency markets and with them the fate of nations. Global finance and Communications and Media. Electronic commerce. The Internet. The science of genetics. Every year a new revolution scattering in its wake, security, and ways of living for millions of people.
These forces of change driving the future: Don’t stop at national boundaries. Don’t respect tradition. They wait for no-one and no nation. They are universal. We know what a 21st century nation needs. A knowledge-based economy. A strong civic society. A confident place in the world. Do that and a nation masters the future. Fail and it is the future’s victim.
The challenge is how? The answer is people.
The future is people. The liberation of human potential not just as workers but as citizens. Not power to the people but power to each person to make the most of what is within them. People are born with talent and everywhere it is in chains.
Look at Britain. Great strengths. Great history. English, the language of the new technology. The national creative genius of the British people. But wasted. The country run for far too long on the talents of the few, when the genius of the many lies uncared for, and ignored.
Fail to develop the talents of any one person, we fail Britain. Talent is 21st century wealth. Every person liberated to fulfil their potential adds to our wealth. Every person denied opportunity takes our wealth away.
In the 18th century land was our resource. In the 19th and 20th century it was plant and capital. Today it is people. The cause we have fought for, these 100 years, is no longer simply our cause of social justice. It is the nation’s only hope of salvation.
For how do you develop the talent of all, unless in a society that treats us all equally, where the closed doors of snobbery and prejudice, ignorance and poverty, fear and injustice no longer bar our way to fulfilment.
Not equal incomes. Not uniform lifestyles or taste or culture. But true equality: equal worth, an equal chance of fulfilment, equal access to knowledge and opportunity. Equal rights. Equal responsibilities.
The class war is over. But the struggle for true equality has only just begun. [I]t is us, the new radicals, the Labour Party modernised, that must undertake this historic mission. To liberate Britain from the old class divisions, old structures, old prejudices, old ways of working and of doing things, that will not do in this world of change. To be the progressive force that defeats the forces of conservatism.
For the 21st century will not be about the battle between capitalism and socialism but between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism. They are what hold our nation back. Not just in the Conservative Party but within us, within our nation […]
What threatens the nation-state today is not change, but the refusal to change in a world opening up, becoming ever more interdependent […]
The Third Way is not a new way between progressive and conservative politics. It is progressive politics distinguishing itself from conservatism of left or right. New Labour must be the new radicals who take on both of them, not just on election day but every day.
People say in our first two years we ran a Tory economic policy. Nonsense. If we had run a Tory economic policy Britain would be in recession by now which is no doubt why they predicted it.
We gave the Bank of England independence. We cut the borrowing. We cut unemployment. We are at long last reforming welfare, making work pay more than benefit for hard-working families through the Working Families Tax Credit.
[I]f we carry on running this New Labour economic policy, I can tell you today we will continue to get more money into schools and hospitals in a way we can sustain year on year on year. We are rewriting some of the traditional rules of politics.
Now after a century of antagonism, economic efficiency and social justice are finally working in partnership together. We are demonstrating that it is possible to cut poverty and run the economy well. At last our historic reputation for compassion is being matched with a hard won reputation for economic competence. From now on people will vote Labour with their head as well as their heart.
Today we stand here, more confident than at any time during our 100 years, more confident because we are winning the battle of ideas; we are putting our values into practice; we are the only political force capable of liberating the potential of our people [...]
Let us step up the pace. Be confident. Be radical. To every nation a purpose. To every Party a cause. And now, at last, Party and nation joined in the same cause for the same purpose: to set our people free.
Task 8.4 Analyse: The Lost Decade
Read the article “The Lost Decade: The Hidden Story of How Austerity Broke Britain” by Polly Toynbee and David Walker (The Guardian, March 3, 2020).
