How Labour can learn from Roy Jenkins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/how-labour-can-learn-roy-jenkins

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Roy Jenkins, who died 10 years ago on 5 January, remains a formidable inspiration. As a social reformer, and in his relentless campaign to build a "one nation" social democracy, he is a radical model for today's left. Jenkins changed the face of Britain with the liberal reforms of his two stints as home secretary in the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. The legalisation of abortion and homosexuality, no-fault divorce, the abolition of theatre censorship, the end of flogging in prisons, and effective laws against race and sex discrimination, constitute a record of transformation matched on the 20th century left only by Lloyd George, Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan. It is in stark contrast to the failure of Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems to achieve much with the levers of power.

Jenkins is a model not only in what he achieved but in how he did it. All governments are coalitions. There was little support in Harold Wilson's first cabinet for Jenkins' agenda, least of all from Wilson, who was no social liberal. Yet in an astonishingly short 23 months at the Home Office, Jenkins implemented his programme through careful prior preparation, bold leadership and brilliant political strategy, particularly his deft mobilisation of backbench bills to whose promoters he gave decisive support, notably to the future Liberal leader David Steel on abortion.

Clegg is not remotely in his league. But Labour can learn too. Without a credible reform plan ready to roll as soon as office is gained, power dissipates and reform momentum is lost. Those of us conducting Labour's policy review have a continuing job of work to make "responsible capitalism" and "active industrial policy" more than slogans akin to Harold Wilson's promise of a "white hot" technological revolution in 1964.

Jenkins was a non-sectarian leader who sought to broaden Labour's appeal to the middle class as much as the working class, and to liberals as much as socialists. When Labour retreated to a sectarian, extreme left after 1979, he founded the SDP with its mission to create an "open, classless and more equal society". For all the provocation, splitting Labour was a mistake, breaching Jenkins' own political injunction to build alliances, not tabernacles. Jenkins himself became a strong supporter of Tony Blair and the New Labour project.

Labour has thankfully avoided internal strife since 2010. Its quest now is to broaden support, including business and third sector leaders disillusioned with Osborne's failed austerity, yet anxious for a plan for growth and jobs that is more credible and progressive than simply "reversing the cuts".

As chancellor after devaluation in 1967, Jenkins acted decisively to stabilise the economy without deflation or a social crisis. Looking back in 1997 he said the besetting weakness of Labour governments lay in getting into a fiscal crisis in their first years of office, then needing to dig themselves out of it – usually with a new chancellor – in what time was left to them. Labour learned this lesson and there will be no return under Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to the stop-go of the 1960s and 1970s.

Jenkins saw his greatest cause as the development of the European Union with Britain a key member. As commission president he sought to widen and deepen the EU, including new members and steps towards monetary union. I have little doubt he would have continued to support the euro and deplore loose talk of Britain "renegotiating" or "reaffirming" its EU membership.

Jenkins resigned as Labour's deputy leader in 1972 over Harold Wilson's volte face to support a referendum on the decision to join the "common market". Yet he went on to help lead the successful yes campaign three years later and regarded the referendum in retrospect as a democratic necessity.

Shortly before his death, Jenkins wrote a surprisingly positive reassessment of Wilson, praising the wily tactician's success in "keeping the train on the track through rough terrain". Similar skills will be needed once again to keep Britain in Europe.

However, to my mind Roy Jenkins' unique contribution to the modernisation of Britain lay not in his pro-Europeanism, where he was in plentiful company, but in his vision and plan for social reform, which would not have happened as it did without him. The lesson: rebuilding Britain starts at home.