“Rise like Lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew, which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.”
The words were adopted by Labour into the 1995 introduction to the constitution (although usually remembered as the rewriting of Clause IV).
“The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”
When Keir Hardie led the Labour Party, it’s main emphasis was ensuring working class representation in Parliament. The Constitution of 1918 contained the historic Clause IV (part 4) : “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”
That declaration formed the basis of Attlee’s commitment to public ownership which was massively endorsed following the end of the Second World War and his election victory of 1945.
Following defeat in 1959, Gaitskell attempted to rewrite Clause IV but was defeated by the left who then rubbed his nose in it by putting the clause on every Labour membership card. It wasn’t rewritten till that 1995 version.
Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald; Clement Attlee and Herbert Morrison, Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson; Denis Healey and Tony Benn; Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; Ed Miliband and David Miliband; Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer - all democratic socialists. Love them or loathe them (you can do a quick score in your head), they were or are Labour. We must try to accept all our leaders, representatives and members as fellow democratic socialists unless they choose to put themselves beyond the confines of the Party (which we hope they never do).
However, if we keep talking about ‘the socialists in the shadow cabinet’ we are never likely to get socialists where it really matters - in Government.