philistines? What is 'style'? And does the from? Does Neil Kinnock have it? To MIKE MARQUESE and TOM TREVELYAN the 'new look' Labour Party does not look that new at all. WHENTHE LABOUR Party changed its leader after the general clection debacle of 1983 it sought and acquired a 'new look'. The duffel coat in which Michael Foot had tarnished the memory of the fallen at the Cenotaph was consigned to the muscum of labour history. The new leader revels in his youthful image and his smart Mark and Spencer suits. Labour's image is being reshaped like a High Street window display - and public relations experts are brought in to manage the face-lift. They order a new colour for Labour's campaign (grey), a new generation of media-polished trade union caders, a new emphasis on professional presentation. Those who do not welcome this trend, they imply, will soon be joining the duffel coat in labour's museum.
In the May issuc of New Socialist, Robert Elms, associate editor of The Face, pilloried the left for its alleged indifference and even hostility to something he kept referring to as 'style'. Elms claimed that the labour movement, under the aegis of the left, had distanced itself from the aspirations of ordinary people by its puritan rejection of consumer values and its philistine contempt for 'presentation'. He dated Labour's decline from the late 1960s, 'when the radical wing of the Labour movement got hijacked by hippiedom'. Socialism in the '6Os 'stopped talking in the language ordinary people could understand', thanks to 'drab antimaterialism'.
Elms' vision is not burdened with any pedantic concern for historical accuracy. The industrial upsurge of the late 1960s and carly '70s was preceded not by a golden cra of proletarian radicalism but by decades of working-class passivity. The reviled youth rebellion of the 1960s was more than 'hippie' indulgence; there were little matters like a war in Vietnam supported by a Labour government, and an opposition to it which became world wide. And a minor upset in France in 1968 which threatoned the overthrow of the state. Elms' notion that hippies or revolutionaries ever dominated any part of the British labour movement or the working • class is quaint, to say the least.
Elms would no doubt take little interest in such quibbles. After all, his position has Socialist, it may appear little more than a bunch of inconsistencies, but it has been employed by opportunists to justify 1n increasingly élitist and in reality philistine political practice. Elms' article is symptomatic of a trend of thought which is currently serving as a figleat for a rightwardracing Labour Party and trade union leadership.
Much of the Labour leadership now insists on the pre-eminence of the media. We are repeatedly told that we must learn how to present ourselves and our policies on television and in the press. We must enter the magic circle and acquire the tools of the trade, the professional secrets known only to the few. Kinnock and those associated with him have relied heavily on this media obsession to justity themselves. The miners' struggle, for example, is criticised for bring old-fashioned, dreary, couched in a traditional trade union jargon which no longer appeals to a working class ycarning for flair,
you cannot adopt the campaigning style
without the campaigning
Politics' flexibility, fashion, as well, of course as freedom and fairness'
David Widgery has aptly labelled this trend designer socialism', and his contempt for its superficiality is well placed. However, it does raise a number of criticial questions for the left. What precisely is 'style'? And it it is something we need, where will we find it?
"Style as used in the Elms article and related picces appears to mean, first, public taste in consumer goods notably clothes, haircuts, records and films, household furnishings; and secondly, a less specific and more insidious notion of manner, vocabulary, personal or collective 'identity' increasingly reduccd to an inoftensive stamp like a corporation logo designed by an ad agency. In reality, perhaps, Elms' idea of style boils down to the mannerisms of a self appointed trendy milicu.
Style, however defined, is a complex social product, but a social product nonetheless, and one that is historically determined. It is not a thing in itselt, an autonomous entity,
F° which the labour movement can pick up or put down (or rather put on or take off) at will. In the world beyond the pop video dreamland inhabited by The Face and its proliferating lookalikes, style exists as a constantly shifting and overlapping multiplicity of choices available different measure to different people in different social groups.
Any serious consideration of the question of'style should begin by acknowleging that there are, in fact, many sevies current at any one tune, and shoukd go on from there to ask the crucial question: where do these styles come from? Arethey created out of thin air, as Elms scems to imply, to meet some natural pre-existing demand in a consuming public unaffected by historical change? In all the lessons now being read to the left. mention is rarely made of the huge economic forces involved in shaping the choices available to the consuming public, In restricting those choices and consciously creating demands tor styles that can be produced and retailed at a profit. There is no attempt to name, still less analyse, the manutacturing, financial, and commercial factors which determine what is on the market at any given time and to whom it is available. What we find when we scrape the surface of the new designer socialists — and their surface isn't nearly as beguiling as they think it is is a naive but sister faith in the natural operation of the marketplace. "Truc style. Rober Alms intorms us, 'is implicitly progressive. Asthe Tories say, the market is always right.
Underlying this uncritical idea of 'style' and indeed much of Kinnock's approach to marketing the Labour Party, making it
IN NATONA; No sAugust 1'98
palatable to the media, is a conception of the working class as merely individual consumers. People are sec! passive purchasers of off-the-peg identitics, not as possible participants in a genuinely creative and collective project. Under the guise of expanding the choices offered to people they are actually reducing them technique developed by capitalise marketing. More goods appear to be available in an ever increasing variety of packages, while the ability of people to choose for themselves he life and the accoutrements of hite whil they would like is increasingly scribed by economic and social factors.
Elms and others say that we on the left are hard, inhuman philistines who would begrudge the working class their washing machines and videos. Our objection to his consumerist approach to politics is other wise. By treating people as individual consumers of mass-produced goods you obscure the connections between them. When you introduce 'style' as a common denominator for a political constitucnes, you draw a veil over the social and economic relations which actually cople in this constituency live. 'The relation
etween exploiter and exploited, which is at the heart of capitalist society, cannot be seen; after all, both are wearing the same shades of pastel and white.
This is the politics of a new trendy chtism, dressed up in a garb as falsely democrate as the workshirts and overalls of the muchreviled 1960s. They offer the working class something ready-made and pre-packaged. even pre-digested, like Macdonald's, and just about as nourishing. The illusion they
eddle is that if only we step into the right
ancy dress, adopt what is deemed to be the INTERNATIONAL No. 5 July/August 1986
•l lux 11 an aggregate of PeTalli capitalise gilt men to The protonor oi wagon 111139 richilln! That in the 1.1 Indelani later then diamonds hemlige. up the lapdo campaigned 10 10n darkness and living done danil What prai determine how poster emps. werenot done in as knum. Ther times to plate a then then own heration. the campagning pagamg politics also to miss perhap of them engined rooms of mabelme
BLIT (ts, but howd lostrals. able cher were created in th Tha multi cultural cannot simple lo be. when would thes his trion de not ihe heritage the innager! these terms walks of a sategy adle od the moment thee a which moment?). common touch'. «i product .! me will with the miles ate shedd "ap? a sone. Their maine is irapule od be under tony upon. .!l: ritatio the non look. There has mom on the bind danted tolling one the polls ram l's populants. lamesome and ashes on trol agains the ternalison e right here stopped the done ot the dild In ended hard left drones of Labour Bretag: «ho placed a major role in selecting the endalues nho were to make administration and in mutating man of the policies on which it ronged to outer WIl. the labour Coordinning Commine Manism loxe. content: magers colone of substoner? The ClOs canisals were part olaprograname aimed a the disadrantaged and dispossessed and which on least tried at hands the lovers of deguises Livingstone himsel has rescue posed out, don cannot adopt without the cam li, redte the lessons of the most interesting facts abou these promotional devices. Many in the conterence agencies, nor in the
committee rooms of Count Hall barcau
the steels. plas grounds. contres, and pubs ed the op pressed these. Jare, recede, neighbour
Tand innumer the GL.( toots of diverse. urban They snap of Neil Kinnock's finge could theatron labour london milien in which these are also quite detenne in mandestations made the loun particular the toners lighting lo "omen's and black selt organision.
Velous hila king ol the dile of the phons populism wie charadense labour she" dok. I accopes the language at the meddle,
aertising, with all its warped inhumanic essa gisen which omnon he changed. le sors de mus communi de t
throng!: there toranis because no other solid ones and
Wto lot: establishmen forum Binock bees our lender becase heis good on dole he has
Here me alon the com mon to be defined lor a bee bonges media and public relations machiness which has its on spacitie intereses largels a redds with the economic and social interests of the majority of the populaion. The Son, the
'Elms' style boils down to
the mannerisms of a self-appointed trendy milicu' have this common the black doe enable chem do communicide with large numbers of working dass people, bot on "lose terma? Somcond become good on telle not because of some inherene aunbute deenbeausthe attend thenight maining coursestor PPes, bat because te mogulsot the media have allowed them to appear this
Where does this loga tabe us: In che Linited States much political commentar' now duelseseesives on eraluating not the policies or abilities of the politicians, but
their media image and its ups and downs.
Mondale loses to Reagan because he is nos
"telegenie. Reagan mad bea murderer bor he
is d'great communionor. Kinod appears
to wish to emmlate his success. This is to
Knot much to the lowest
common denominaos of public lile, but 1o
the sell-perpetuming lans and vales of
institutions creded be the bourgooisie 10
ensure its own survival.
The objection to this s hood of thought is
not the importance it aches to the media
or to the question of the "presentation' ot
Labourpolicies. Norisit an and culuraler
trom the workerist bringe of the movement.
It is precisely because we are aware of the importance of the media, because recognise the immense weight of cultural factors in shaping how people perceive the world — and the possibilities of changing it - that we reject the posturings of the designer socialists. The language of the mass media as well as its structure has to be challenged and changed. The dominance of the working class by capitalist institutions and ideas must be fought on the cultural as well as the political front.
What evidence is there that the designer socialists are prepared to take up such a struggle? They appear to believe that revamping New Socialist in the image of The face, or recasting Labour Party propaganda in the mould of a corporate retailing campaign represents some serious meeting of culture and politics. But is it any more than just a 'new look' philistinism? The power they ascribe to 'style' is principally the power of the marketplace. How much importance can they really give to cultural and stylistic concerns when they have divorced these concerns from any attempt to change the way people look at the world they live in? They have shrivelled artistic, cultural, and aesthetic factors into an easily manipulable lump labelled as 'style' — not a creative process in which the public par ticipates, but a uniform which politicians can don as a substitute for political debate and leadership.
All kinds of wild historical generalisations and inaccuracies are drawn into the designer socialist dressing room. According to Robert Elms, who follows the more sub-
'Reagan may be a murderer but he is a "great communicator", stantial but also ahistorical footsteps of Eric Hobsbawm, there was once a homogenous, united labour movement in Britain. The leaders of this movement addressed the working class directly and naturally because they all spoke the same language, dressed in the same style, shared the same culturc. In this rewriting of 20th century history, the many national, racial, sexual, regional, and generational differences which have always divided the British working class and its movements are sublimated. The long-term presence of variegated 'styles' and different cultures within the British working class is ignored. The undemocratic, collaborationist record of these leaders is shrouded in silence.
Now it is true that the composition and culture of the working class today, particularly in the big cities, is different from what it was in the past. It is also true that, despite the many divisions that did exist in the old days within working class culture (not to mention politics), there was a greater uniformity then than there is now. All the more reason, then, it would seem, to reject the prescription of a 'style for the labour movement' which is imposed from on high. The notion that we have 'lost touch' and can regain it by the adoption of the dominant 8 marketing techniques of the day shows scant
FICE Style — a multiplicity of choices regard cither for the current diversit of working class cultures, or for the capacity of those cultures to shape instruments of real social change.
Of course, the sources and subtleties of this cultural shift entirely escapethe designer socialists. They prefer the simplicity of a convenient scapegoat. Their assenion that the hard left is responsible ton the alienaion of large sections of the Monking class brom the labour movemen ludicroust overstaes its influence and says nothing of the detritus left behind be the Wilson and Callaghan governments. This has not kept it from becoming one of the great journaliste cliches of the mid cighties. The myth of the dogmatic, 'boring' hard lett cadre born of 1968 alienating the authentic, consumerist worker is usetul to the designer socialists, partly, of course, because such tendencies do exist on sections of the left. But it should be exposed as the luscorical fantasy it is. Elms' interpretation of the 1960%, which he defines as hippies spurning matcrialism, is unfor tunately inadvertendly supponed be David Edgar's apology for that deande carried in the same issue of Now Socialis. On an international scale, the 1960s were marbed by an upsurge in anti-colonialis, militarist and anti-racist struggles which had all manner of side ders, one of which nos the advent of the so called commer-culture and hippies. Elms' auck makes particularly unpleasant reading at a time when the Hippie Convoy some of whose members are the working-class survivors of this once largely middle class movement has ber come the latest victim of Thatcher's vendetta against the permissive society'. The irony is that the hippies of the sixties were in fact adherents of a 'stylistic' movement of the type with which Elms would replace mass political and industrial struggle.
And where did the anti materialism' oi
the dOs come trom? The espansion of higher education in northern Europe and North
America, which began in the carly 1960s and
which opened to the working class and lower middle class what had once been the near-exclusive privileges of their betters, had
contradictory effects, one of which was a
widening of the horizons of personal choice
which cast the old values in a new light.
When unemploymen did nos pose a
personal threat, who wanted to be dressed
up in a pin-stripe suit or channelled into professions policed by feudal establishments? When mum and dad were being told they'd never had it so good, could anyone blame you for throwing up when Coron.tion Street came on the box? If you were a woman, the new university place promised much, but rares delivered more than the same old submission when it came to the job market.
The illusions of that era vanished with the conditions which created them. In a colder delimate, spurning a carcer and the material § goods it brings no longer seoms such on ¿attractive act of rebellion. But this change itself shows that the choices we make pregarding our appearance and the whole › manner in which we choose to present
we are offered politics in
terms dictated by the media and the marketplace' ourselves to the world are of immense significance. As socialises we wish to widen and enrich these choices. Designer socialism would narrow them. Socialism must hold our the prospect of a transtormation in our lives, a realisation of the enormous crcative capacities sealed up by the concrete jacker of capitalism, however fashionably tailored.
Instcad of the involvement of people in movements which would actually change checonditionsolour lives, wearcoftered the passive consumption of a polities presented in tormes dictated be che media and the markerplace precisely the dorms which me must overturn if we are to raise the level of political consciousness. Instead of recognising culture in i its manifestacions es a butleground on which we challenge our opponens notions of the way things work in this society, it is relegated to pure surface, cloak we wrap round ourselves to hide the ugle bits from the masses.| Instead of revealing the truth abou the forers which shape people's lives including the style they choose to adopt — these forces are taken as given. Thes are unchangcable. Their products are endorsed.
Behind the snappy dress and sncering modishness of the designer socialists can bo detected the deadening hand of the old labour bureaucract. From them we can expect only a shadow of the excitement, diversity, and freshness with which we should present our ideas. The dutfel coat may have been discarded, but the politicians in the new suits are the servants of the same old forces.
I TERNAT ONAL I Dj: August 1986
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