The End of the Party? Labor History and the Rise of the Greens.
- Introduction: The End of the Party? Hysteria and History
- Historical Context: Electoral Challenges to Labor from the Left
- Historical Context: A Direct Historical Parallel - The Lang Labor Split
- Lessons from History: The Limited Scale of the Threat
- Lessons from History: The Risks of an Ideologically Isolated Labor Party
- Lessons from History: The Risks of a Divided Progressive Movement
- Responding to the Challenge of the Greens: Political Philosophy And the Case for Government
- Responding to the Challenge of the Greens: Progressive Policy Making in the Real World
- Conclusion
The End of the Party? Labor History and the Rise of the Greens.
- Introduction: The End of the Party? Hysteria and History
- Historical Context: Electoral Challenges to Labor from the Left
- Historical Context: A Direct Historical Parallel - The Lang Labor Split
- Lessons from History: The Limited Scale of the Threat
- Lessons from History: The Risks of an Ideologically Isolated Labor Party
- Lessons from History: The Risks of a Divided Progressive Movement
- Responding to the Challenge of the Greens: Political Philosophy And the Case for Government
- Responding to the Challenge of the Greens: Progressive Policy Making in the Real World
- Conclusion
A Direct Historical Parallel to the Challenge of the Greens: The Lang Labor Split
For the pessimists,
the ALP’s collapse in surveyed primary support since the 2010 election is
frequently cited as the most compelling evidence of Labor’s impending demise. In
the past 12 months, Labor’s surveyed national primary support has fallen as low
as 26% and has generally struggled to lift much above 30%. This is truly a
disastrous situation and would result in the wholesale rout of the party should
it be reproduced at an election. Many have speculated that such a rout would
leave Labor vulnerable to being overtaken by The Greens. However, those with an
eye to history will know that this is not the first time Labor’s primary
support has been this low, nor is it the first time Labor has been electorally
challenged from the Left.
At the 1931 Federal Election, the Labor Government led by
Prime Minister James Scullin suffered a swing against it of -22%, leaving the
ALP with a primary vote of just 27%. Labor MPs of the calibre of John Curtin, Ben
Chifley and ‘Red Ted’ Theodore all lost their seats in the ensuing rout. While
this result occurred in the throes of the Great Depression, Labor’s
catastrophic performance was not merely a function of economic circumstance.
Instead, more than half of the collapse in Labor’s support was directly
attributable to the emergence of an opportunistic Left wing challenger to the
ALP; the Australian Labor Party (NSW), more popularly referred to a ‘Lang
Labor’.
Lang Labor was a splinter group of left wing Labor MPs loyal
to the New South Wales Premier Jack Lang who triggered the 1931 election by
voting with the conservative Opposition against the Government on a confidence
motion. Lang Labor MPs advocated the adoption of the Lang Plan in response to
the Great Depression, a populist left wing programme which called for a
repudiation of Australia’s foreign debt (what we would call ‘default’ today) and
the abandonment of the gold standard in favour of a goods standard that would
significantly increase the monetary supply. While Conservatives and moderates
were aghast at such an extreme proposal at the time, Lang Labor was able to
capture around 10% of the national vote in the 1931 election. As its support
was largely concentrated in NSW, it was further able to convert this support
into four seats in Federal Parliament (including the infamous hard left MP
Eddie Ward, who would go on to become a constant thorn in the sides of both
Curtin and Chifley). At the subsequent
election in 1934, Lang Labor increased its support to 14% and its Parliamentary
representation to nine seats. Meanwhile Labor’s primary support fell even
further to just 26%, consigning the divided progressive movement to continued Opposition.
The similarities between the circumstances in which the
progressive movement found itself in the early 1930s and current electoral
environment are significant. In both cases, the progressive movement is deeply
divided. On one side is an insurgent minority group supported by 10-15% of
voters and advocating an extreme policy agenda to which the majority of the
electorate is actively hostile. On the other side is the bulk of the
progressive movement, weakened by internal conflict and external vicissitudes,
fighting a war on two fronts and losing the vital middle ground necessary to
form government.
So what does history tell us about the prospects for the
Greens and the ALP within this context?
No comments:
Post a Comment