Pat McFadden MP: 100 Years Since The First Labour Government, The Party Is Ready To Serve Again

Writing for HuffPost UK, Labour's national campaign co-ordinator says the party can "break the pattern of repeated defeats and write a new chapter" in its history.
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Vote Labour board on Cambridge street in England, UK. (Photo by: Andrew Michael/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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One hundred years ago today the first Labour government was formed.

Headed by Ramsay MacDonald, it managed to increase unemployment benefits, increase access to pensions and most significantly, pass a Housing Act driven through by Health Minister John Wheatley, which resulted in the building of over half a million new homes over the next decade.

The lesson isn’t hard to find - a government in office for only 10 short months achieved more than Labour has in fourteen years of opposition. MacDonald would turn out be one of very few Labour leaders to hold the office of Prime Minister. 

In the 100 years since he first did just three more would be elected as Prime Minister – Attlee, Wilson and Blair.  And only the last of those was born in the last 100 years.

In governmental terms, it has largely been a Conservative century. On those occasions when Labour has won power, it has significant achievements to its name – the creation of the NHS and the broader welfare state, the introduction of the national minimum wage, the Good Friday Agreement, expansion of university education beyond the better off and much more. 

It is an honourable past. But it is the past.  The task facing Labour now is to break the pattern of repeated defeats and write a new chapter of Labour history in power, to renew the country once more after years of chaos and Tory ideological obsessions.

If winning was easy, more Labour leaders would have done it.  Time after time, leaders who thought they had the answer have seen their hopes dashed on the rocks of electoral rejection and ended up achieving nothing.

To be considered by the electorate for power, Labour has to pass two essential tests: can it be trusted with the public finances; can it be trusted with national security.

These are not nice to haves. They are inescapable, essential duties.  Ignoring them is a dereliction of responsibility. 

With Keir Starmer, Labour is passing these tests in a way that has not happened for many years. And they are not the only changes he has made. Culturally, the Labour Party been transformed.

The awful anti-semitism which crept in to the party under the previous regime has been rooted out and, where necessary, kicked out. Labour has rediscovered its job description of service to the British people, moving on from being a party of protest. And more fundamentally, with each question it faces, it puts the country first before any party faction or internal pressure group. It even now has that “putting the country first” message on its membership card. 

These changes do not of course guarantee Labour will win the election. That will be a tough battle against a Conservative Party that will use every weapon it has - including deciding the timing of the contest - to maximise its advantage. 

But in four short years since he became leader, and 100 years on from its first government, Keir Starmer’s Labour can look voters in the eye in this election years and say that once again it is ready to serve.

 

Pat McFadden is shadow minister for the Cabinet Office and the Labour MP for Wolverhampton South East.