BRITISH voters may not be concerned with the details of Harriet Harman's childrens' education but they have a keen sense of humbug. Major tapped into it when Blair faced him across the despatch box last week "it is important to be tough on hypocrisy and tough on the causes of hypocrisy".
Blair was forced to defend Harman because his own personal credibility was staked on her survival. She is part of "the project"be discarded lightly.
But it was her misfortune to strike the leading edge of the iceberg that the good ship Blair will surely founder on.
Education is a crucial issuc-campaigns such as FACE have succeeded in mobilising a whole new constitu. ency. Eyeryone cares about the tuture of their children.
Assuming that Jack Straw is not caught house-breaking it is likely that Labour will win the next election. It is then that the real balance of forces in the Labour Party will come into play.
Blair knows full wet that bere is a substantial section of the Parliamentary Labour Party committed to the conception of the welfare state, and a free comprehensive and quality education system.
More importantly, people in Britain are strongly in favour of the welfare state.
The mythology of the modern British Labour movement, whatever its failines and fantasies, rests on a conception of a collective solution to the social questions faced by society. Universal and free health care, comprehenSaVe coucasion and—to extent-housing provision are all part of the package.
This is why Blair path is full of pitfalls. Harman has not been slow to take advantage of Tary-created educational inequality He aims to kill off any notion of collective provision and the responsi only of the state to its citizens. "Com munity" and "stakeholding" are the buzz words to cover the move.
So when Tony Blair talks about his vision of a stakeholder society he is really searching for a way to bluff through his plans.
The hypocrisy is there for all to sec. Despite an the talk or a moral commu nity". Harman has not been slow to take advantage of Tory-created educaBoat neway Not all stakes, it seems, are equal. volved, but most want the Labour Party to roll back the frontiers of the free market and reinstate some of the key welfare rights that have been undermined or withdrawn in the last 15 years.
The Labour Party is supposed to stand for collective social provision.
This explains the uproar over Harman's choice of school. If Harman does not have confidence in the future of comprehensive education then who does?
Blair understands that to deliver the government spending requirements for Maastricht means a massive attack on the weiare state and the coocaton sys tem.
As this is implemented divisions are bound to emerge between those who will want to prioritise the criteria for Puropean monetary union and those who want a free and comprehensive education system and free welfare state. It is not possible to have both at the same time.
Blair's attitude to the union leaders is instructive here. A few union bosses gullible enough to listen might have ¡Subscribe today! expected a bit of the stake themselves. BUT DO M When GMB leader John Edmonds interpreted stakcholding to mean ar improvement in workers' rights he was soon put in his place. Workers will only get a stake if they buy shares!
It is therefore reasonable to expect a divide to appear inside the labour movement once Blair takes office. British capitalism is in no position to provide for even a barely recognisable version of 1945.
This is why Blair is working to wards an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. Socialists must respond by organising alliances of their own to defend and extend the welfare state and the comprehensive education system from the bottom to the top of the labour movement.