Tony Blair & the old Battersea Chartists of the 1880s
Tony Blair has been making another of his rare but regular political interventions. This time he was praising Henry Kissinger who has died at 100. Many regard Kissinger as one of the most significant post-1945 warmongers which no doubt is why Blair is praising him. Of course other perspectives on Kissinger are available and no doubt Blair has these in mind too,hoping eventually to be seen as a great statesman
Another recent intervention, in discussion with the Financial Times in September saw Blair reassuring that he was not Keir Starmer’s back seat driver. He went on to argue that Labour seemed like a failed political project given how many years it had not been in Government since 1900. Even so he argued, again, that elections are won from the political centre, and his perpetual favourite that technological innovation is the way forward. He means ID Cards although we await his X account still.
The phenomenon of the perpetually reappearing ex-leader is not unique to Labour. A whole chauffeur driven car,or perhaps a helicopter, full of ex-Tory leaders is available for comment.
However there is also a place in labour history for historical hangovers.
Some of the Chartists of the 1840s were still to be found active in a revived socialist politics in the 1880s. They were primarily followers of the Chartist Bronterre O’Brien who believed that currency reform was central to a fairer society.
W S Sanders in his book Early Socialist Days, recalled branch life in the Battersea branch of Britain’s first Marxist organisation the Social Democratic Federation in the 1880s. The demands of the People’s Charter of 1838, suitably tweaked, were very much part of the SDF’s politics. The O’Brienite currency theory much less so.
Sanders notes that the old Chartists were seen as survivors from another age, listened to with interest by some, with frustration by others, but ultimately an anachronism.
Blair in 2023 is heading to the same place. Hopefully the track record of winning elections is not.
I remember dark mutterings about Henry Kissinger from when I was a child. Although, of course, there are other perspectives. I’m certainly not a Blair hater and I thunk the opprobrium heaped upon him has done no one any favours.