I have over a year or two ruminated on the need for a manifesto setting out what in current terminology is termed a ‘road map’ leading to a ‘better’, if not the proverbial ‘good’, society. Given that my own writings over the years – decades – have been oriented to fellow academics rather than to those for whom transformative social change is most urgent, the UK working classes, I have largely disqualified myself from venturing such a text.
I am in the process of reading Tariq Ali’s expose of Winston Churchill and came across a few paragraphs on the Chartist Rebellion that spanned the years from 1832 to the early 1860s. It surely was, as Ali claims, ‘the most impressive organisation ever created by the British working class’. It was, as he asserts, a movement rather than a party, but it established a close link between its supporters and its leaders. But its supporters were a heterogeneous bunch with varying beliefs and attitudes, aims and objectives. Critically for this blog, Ali writes: ‘the only real agreement was on the Charter itself. Its language seems moderate now – the aim was reform, not revolution – though talk of radical upheaval was always in the air.’ Crucially however, virtually all were agreed on the six demands in the Charter, the implication of which was clear. Male adult franchise without any restrictions would transform Parliament and end oppression, corruption, the stranglehold of the Tory oligarchy, and the unfettered rule of property owners.’ The six items were as follows:
- A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
- The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
- No property qualification for Members of Parliament, to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
- Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
- Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
- Annual parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in every twelve month.
My purpose here is not to analyse these six demands, which were of course ‘of the time’. My purpose in citing them is to emphasise: (i) that they commanded widespread consent, and (ii) that they were, using a terminology I have employed for a while, ‘attainable’ rather than ‘aspirational’ (that is, they reformist rather than overly radical or revolutionary).
The Left in the UK remains factionalised, intellectually and organisationally. No viable Socialist Party emerged following the coup against the Corbyn leadership and the consolidation of a ‘Tory’ (New New) Labour Party under the expedient but probably temporary management of the ‘useful idiot’ Starmer. (I am on record as arguing that the time to form a new Socialist Party was early 2020 when 200,000 members were more-or-less guaranteed to make the switch from Labour). What we have now is a plethora of initiatives, none of them impacting on either the electorate or ‘the people’.
My suggestion in this short piece is that there is a lesson to be learned from the Chartists. Ali again: ‘the Chartists agreed to restrict their demands to issues on which there was total agreement, and for the publication of which they could not be prosecuted and imprisoned or charged with high treason and hanged. Any other decision would have been irresponsible.’ Importantly, this did not mean that those arguing for more robust, even transformative, social change had abandoned their aims and objectives. Another way of articulating this approach and programme for change is to call for what I have labelled ‘permanent reform’, which announces campaigning for ‘attainable reforms’ as a means of making progress towards more ‘aspirational reforms’.
What might the demands of a disparate Left (and other) groups coalesce around? People will have their own items. I would merely suggest that they take seriously the strategy that proved efficacious for the Chartists (for all that the powers summoned against them were only too symbolically and coercively decisive).
I tentatively propose six demands that might win popular assent:
- The ‘slimming down’ of the Monarchy, abolition of other hereditary titles, and abolition of the House of Lords in favour of an elected second chamber.
- The introduction of a written constitution to underwrite citizens’ rights, and to limit the decision-making and potentially repressive powers of executive action on the part of governments
- The closing of UK-governed tax havens, a clamping down on tax evasion and avoidance on the part of individual and corporate bodies, the introduction of a wealth tax, and upping the rate of inheritance tax for the wealthy.
- The instigation of a genuinely Green economic policy.
- Returning current for-profit utilities and services like water, energy and transport to the public sector.
- Bringing all primary and secondary schools into the state sector and abolishing constraints on education via reliance on targets and metrics.
These are of course mere examples of aims that might feature in a new Charter. Others will doubtless come up with different and better items. I have argued in my Healthy Societies (Policy Press, 2024) that many of the preconditions for accomplishing significant social change are actually in place. Maybe a ‘modest’ (neo-Chartist) Charter with widespread appeal would set the scene for a ‘utopian realist’ narrative insisting on the need for, and possibility of attaining, a better society.