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'ROOTS IN THE MOVEMENT'
In an interview in the Labour &Trade Union Review (No. 23, May-June 1991), Eric Heffer suggested that the way in which Neil Kinnock has led the party, involving the comprehensive abandonment of virtually all the party's long-cherished principles and beliefs and the obsessive and ever recurring prosecution of a witch-hunt against Militant, is explained by the fact that "he is still involved in student politics. He surrounds himself with a team of people, particularly the younger ones, who were all involved in student politics." Heffer noted that Kinnock in earlier days had been "on the left, even, in a sense, on the ultra-left," but "then, of course, he began to move, and it indicated to me that he was not rooted in anything. You must have roots - real roots in the movement. And having roots in the student movement is not quite the same thing."
Most of this is true, and fair comment. But it does not get us very far. There are grounds for the view that Kinnock's leadership is indeed heavily determined by his background, and that of his closest collaborators, in the student politics of the 1960s and 1970s, and that his ascendancy has reflected the triumph of student politics within the Labour Party at the expense of other forms of politics. There are also grounds for thinking that this matters a great deal, that it has already had disastrous consequences for the Labour Party in opposition and has still more ominous implications for the Labour Party should it contrive to get into office. But this question deserves to be examined with some care, rather than dealt with in a couple of pithy remarks.
"Roots in the movement" is a stirring phrase. But what does it mean? Neil Kinnock is as much of working class origin as Eric Heffer was, and he was active in his local CLP from an early age, and made his living as a WEA lecturer before entering Parliament. Kinnock & Co. have self-evidently been doing unprecedented things to the Labour Party, but Kinnock's personal rootlessness is not at all self-evident, and in so far as it exists, it is not at all unprecedented.
It cannot be said without qualification that Attlee or Gaitskell or even Wilson had "roots in the movement". Neither Attlee nor Gaitskell was of working class origin, and neither came from the trade union wing of the movement, any more than Wilson did. Attlee's family background was upper middle class Toryism, Gaitskell's the Indian civil service, and Wilson, if of working class origins, came from a Liberal not Labour household. On the other hand, they had all served for some time as Labour MPs before becoming leader, and they had played various other roles in the wide array of activities that might reasonably be comprehended in the phrase "the movement" before becoming MPs. But the same can be said of Kinnock.
It is not self-evident that Kinnock's politics have reflected a lack of roots. What they have reflected is something else altogether, the expansion of student politics into the vacuum created by the collapse of the form of politics which previously oriented the Labour Party. In order to understand why this matters, it is necessary to consider what student politics are about.
The editorial in the issue of L&TUR which carried the Heffer interview referred to Eric's remarks on this matter with approval, and added: "Kinnock has elevated the inconsequential politics of the university debating society to the highest echelons of the Party." It has to be said that this misses the point. It is not the politics of university debating societies which have come to infect the party leadership. It is the politics of student unions.
It is entirely understandable that most of the people who produce L&TUR should be unaware of this distinction. L&TUR is produced by people who with only one exception have never had anything to do with student politics. It would not have its lucid worldview, its firm but unsentimental orientation to the working class interest, and its tenacious grasp of principles if this were not the case. But innocence of any experience of student politics is bound to limit the understanding of the politics which now rules the Labour Party. Which is why I feel I need to say something about the subject, since I am the exception I have alluded to.