Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
It makes the case that an important part of the Labour tradition doesn’t start with the state, but with individuals and communities and the way we build our lives together. It shows that it is wrong to say that Labour is historically a statist tradition.
R H Tawney, The Attack and Other Papers.
The Attack is worth reading just because Tawney is such an amazing writer and uses words better than anyone in British politics that I know of. But I also love this book because it makes the case that an important part of the Labour tradition doesn’t start with the state, but with individuals and communities and the way we build our lives together. Tawney is a good complement to Sen, actually. There is an essay written in 1944 called ‘We Need Freedom’ in which he is trying to persuade Conservative Britain not to worry about a Labour government. He argues that only Labour can provide real freedom because freedom is meaningless if it is just that nobody is going to stop you dining at the Ritz when you can’t afford it anyway. Freedom is the ability to dine at the Ritz.
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James Purnell, Labour politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Stalybridge and Hyde from 2001 to 2010, is currently the head of the Open Left project at the left-leaning think tank Demos. He has previously served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; he resigned from the government on 4 June 2009, criticising the leadership of Gordon Brown. He says power with no ideas is hollow, and ideas without power are irrelevant and a betrayal of the ideas themselves.
