Was Starmer’s ‘anti-Westminster’ speech making a nod to the ‘Provinces and Tom Maguire’?
Keir Starmer made a start of 2024 speech in Bristol today. One phrase was that people were right to be ‘anti-Westminster’ and suspicious of politicians who loved power for its own sake.
Modern labour politics started 131 years ago. Not in a London HQ but in ‘those shadowy parts known as the provinces’
The Independent Labour Party was formed 131 years ago meeting in Bradford Labour Institute from 14-16th January 1893 Keir Hardie was elected as the first Chair.
The point about where power in the labour movement has been historically was made by EP Thompson in his 1960 essay Homage to Tom Maguire. Maguire was an ILP activist who died too young.
It appeared in Essays in Labour History, but is quite difficult to come by now (it was recently reprinted in the collection EP Thompson and the Making of the New Left edited by Cal Winslow).
Thompson makes the point that ‘provincial events are seen as shadowy incidents or unaccountable spontaneous upheavals on the periphery of the national scene’. But, Thompson counters ‘the ILP grew from the bottom up, its origins were in the shadowy parts known as ‘the provinces’.
Thompson was no huge fan of London, but argued that from the 1950s it had irreversibly won out over the provinces in terms of political power. Recent events suggest that this was far from the whole picture, Thompson the political activist had fed back into Thompson the historian on the point.
Whether Starmer’s anti-Westminster comment was a nod to the importance of grassroots politics or a wave to supporters of Reform UK might usefully be debated.
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