Tuesday 3 July 2012

Part 2: Electoral Challenges to Labor from the Left in Historical Context

The End of the Party? Labor History and the Rise of the Greens.

Electoral Challenges to Labor from the Left in Historical Context

The history of the Australian Labor Party is best understood as a history of a conflict between the forces of electoralism and the forces of ideology. From the earliest days of the Labor party, in the shearers camps around Barcaldine and the workers cottages in Balmain, progressives have fought over whether the proper role of the Labor Party was to seek Government or to promote larger scale change in society through the pursuit of ideological ends. Labor historian Denis Murphy has described this conflict as the clash between the ‘more immediate goals of the empiricists and liberals’ within the ALP and the ‘long term aspirations of the socialists and idealists’.[i]

The majority of the trade unionists who had sat under the Tree of Knowledge had their political enlightenment forged in the practicalities of wage negotiations. Having been under the jackboot of the Queensland Colonial Army and a hostile conservative Government, they understood the negative power of holding government. As a result, they had specific, practical policy goals for the Labor Party and they sought government to deliver them.
 
As historian, Ross Fitzgerald has written of this period:
“Labor electoralism, to which most Queensland unions remained loyal for so long, was based on the notion that manipulation of the state was the most effective strategy for labour advancement. The immediate goals of this strategy were at no stage more ambitious than the modest extension of state enterprise and social welfare services, and ‘socialism’ was consciously redefined to fit within these bounds.’[ii]
Murphy has echoed this view, noting that
“In the years when the Labor party was establishing itself there was little intellectual tradition in Australian society. Reflecting this, the Labor party placed a greater emphasis on practical political questions and, though there were some theorists among the socialist groups, the party was only marginally concerned with theories of politics.”[iii]
To this end, the early policy platforms of the ALP were focused on a limited number of objectives that were directly relevant to the lives of their potential constituents: increased wages; workers compensation; workplace health and safety improvements; protections for workers against sickness, old age and unemployment; and electoral reforms to give workers genuine representation (particularly universal, equal franchise, one vote, one value and the abolition of conservative upper houses).

However, as Murphy intimates, even in the late 1890s, there was a parallel, more ideological and militant stream of thought present in both the party and the broader progressive movement. This stream of thought rejected the incrementalism of the electoralists and advocated more fundamental political change.  Over the course of Labor's history, groups both within the Labor movement (eg the Socialist Leagues, the Industrial Workers of the World, the One Big Unionists) and outside the ALP (eg Lang Labor, the Communist Party) have continually emerged seeking to shift Labor from its founding electoralist objective.  

The degree of success that these groups achieved in influencing Labor’s political agenda has varied significantly. Their influence has generally been stronger in periods of extreme adversity for progressive voters, when more extreme policy prescriptions became more appealing to a desperate electorate (eg wars, economic recession or depression) or when the ALP was facing adversity of its own, generally in the form of internal divisions on unrelated matters (eg religious sectarianism, single issue policy divides eg conscription).

An early example of the dynamic of this conflict between the electoralists and the ideologues within the progressive movement can be seen over the push for the inclusion of the nationalisation of industry as the key plank of Labor’s policy platform. Driven initially by members of the Socialist Leagues (and later by the IWW), and opposed primarily by the Labor MPs and candidates who ultimately had to face the voters, the nationalisation objective divided and damaged the ALP for more than 20 years before the issue was laid to rest.

As Ross McMullin wrote in his centennial history of the ALP, the debate over the inclusion of the nationalisation plank in Labor’s platform caused divisions within the ALP across the nation. When the nationalisation plank was not included in the 1898 NSW Labor electoral platform:
"Many socialists resigned from the Political Labor League, including its secretary. According to one of them, the Labor Party had ‘degenerated into a mere vote-catching machine, doing no educational work, and generally following a policy of supineness.’"[iv]
The debate was even more rancorous in Queensland where in 1907 the Labor Premier Bill Kidston and the bulk of his Labor caucus split from the organisational wing of the ALP over the issue and the broader question of industrial control of the parliamentary party[v]. The split led to a decade of Opposition before a new leader, TJ Ryan was able to reunite the Party and return Labor to Government.

Ultimately, this early scene of conflict was resolved in favour of the electoralists at Labor’s 1922 Federal Conference. While the party did incorporate a ‘socialist objective’ into its platform, in light of the fact that as ‘Red Ted’ Theodore noted, ‘no two delegates would agree as to what socialisation of industry meant’[vi], a rider was agreed to the effect that the objective would only apply to the extent that it was necessary to ‘eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features’ - effectively rendering the objective moot.[vii] 

Viewed within this historical context, the rise of the Greens and their policy agenda can be seen as simply the latest manifestation of the challenge to Labor’s electoralist mission by ideologues within the progressive movement. In fact, the parallels between the rise of the Greens and one particular historical conflict of this kind are particularly striking.



[i] Murphy, D. (1990), “T.J. Ryan: a political biography”, University of Queensland Press.
[ii] Fitzgerald, R. & Thornton, H. (1989), “Labor in Queensland: from the 1800s to 1988”, University of Queensland Press.
[iii] Murphy, D. (1990), “T.J. Ryan: a political biography”, University of Queensland Press.
[iv] McMullin, R. (1991), “The Light on the Hill”, Oxford University Press Australia.
[v] Fitzgerald, R. & Thornton, H. (1989), “Labor in Queensland: from the 1800s to 1988”, University of Queensland Press.
[vi] McMullin, R. (1991), “The Light on the Hill”, Oxford University Press Australia.
[vii] McMullin, R. (1991), “The Light on the Hill”, Oxford University Press Australia.


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