Harold Wilson’s Moral Crusade, Keir Starmer & the moral economy of capitalism
Keir Starmer’s speech on 17th February about the way forward for Britain post-pandemic referenced more Labour history than is usual in a Labour leader’s speech, at least since the arrival of Tony Blair.
He spoke a fair bit about the 1945 Labour Government and concluded with quoting a line that Harold Wilson made in a speech on the 1st October 1962 to that year’s Labour Party conference
Harold Wilson once said that the Labour party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.
He was right.
Our moral crusade now is to address the inequalities and injustices that this crisis has so brutally exposed – and to build a better, more secure future.
Keir Starmer 17th February 2021
Wilson is credited with being the founder of War on Want (the idea more than the organisational detail) after reading a letter from Victor Gollancz (a left-wing publisher) in the Guardian in 1951. The use of the term ‘crusade’ reads, at best, a bit oddly in 2021 but 60 years ago frames of reference and thinking were different. That is an historical point not a judgement.
I’m a socialist historian so obviously the history in Starmer’s speech and why he chose to include it interests me. In particular perhaps because one task an historian on the left and of the left has is to try and engage people with the ideas and activities of the left from previous eras. Its not too likely they will come across them accidentally unfortunately.
Anyone familiar with the Wilson Premierships (1964-70 & 1974-76) would probably struggle with a link between Wilson and morals and morality although as time goes on it might be argued his positive achievements- and there were some-do stand out more.
There is an argument that the left is after not so much industrial power (though some of us still are) but what the historian E.P Thompson called a moral economy.
That is a society where other things than profit and the market are the priorities.
The moral economy Thompson wrote about in eighteenth century England he described thus ‘ a popular consensus as to what were legitimate and what were illegitimate practices in marketing, milling, baking etc.. an outrage to these moral assumptions.. was the usual occasion for direct action’
Were judges involved at all in this? They certainly were and intervened from time to time to remind those who transgressed that a moral economy existed and should be observed. That is they simply tried to make sure that popular custom and will were actually the things that mattered most on the day.
When Harold Wilson’s early involvement with War on Want termed the Labour Party a ‘moral crusade’ it was not necessarily all that left-wing and certainly not revolutionary but it did suggest that there are other values than those of the market worth pursuing.
I’m not sure Starmer means to pursue that, but his speech at least raises the point.
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