Future of the Labour party | Labour Party | Neil Kinnock | Thames Debate | 1980

A DEBATE ABOUT THE STATE AND FUTURE OF THE LABOUR PARTY / HOSTED BY LLEW GARDNER FEATURING DR STEPHEN HASELER OF THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE AND THE FUTURE LEADER OF THE LABOUR PARTY NEIL KINNOCK MP
Filmed in 1980
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Quote: VT22495

[@majic12]

Wow, when television tried to appeal to people with brains

[@simonking2869]

Well... Socialists, so not THAT clever :D

[@stevebobhorace]

this is one of the best channels on KZbin

[@MrGranfield]

This could be a TV programme in made in 2021.

[@petermutua9838]

I can't believe how lucid and relevant these thoughts are now to the world in general and to the UK specifically where the UK's Labour Party's future seems to be based "entirely on [imaginary] yesterdays" [36:30] and its people are now reduced to "fighting over the carcass of the nation" [39:30]... Can't believe how true these thoughts are 41 years later... Love the quality of the debate...

[@syedadeelhussain2691]

the standard of discussion is very good indeed! nowadays we don't do this anymore. I guess the standard of education has declined or the level of public awareness in the sociology of both politics and economics has changed?

[@daviedovey]

people are better off

[@Odysseusf]

I used to have a theory: it is not that people today are more stupid, but that stupid people are more interested in politics now. Evidence can be found in the rise in voter turnout en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections However, this theory would predict a similar trend in UK. I have found that the statistics for UK does not confirm the prediction. Therefore, I don't think this theory is very good.

[@iainmclaughlan1557]

@@daviedoveythat is a very valid point. The country was a lot poorer and we were all trying to make it richer, I was a kid in the 80’s and very interested in politics.

[@daviedovey]

@@iainmclaughlan1557 thank you, Iain

[@markwatkins8309]

MORI rep dismissing a new centre party, which came to pass the following year, SDP in 1981.

[@That_Random_Bloke]

What date was this?

[@LuchaLibertaria]

11:23 - A chilling glimpse into the future, Neil Kinnock talks about what would later be known as New Labour.

[@daviedovey]

the same New Labour which won the two biggest landslides in British Electoral History and a third election to boot, wait a minute, it was Tony Blair that won them not the scabby Labour Party

[@kailashpatel1706]

@@daviedovey New Labour had less than 4 million votes in 2005 then it bagged in 1997...My mum would have won the 1997 election standing on one leg..

[@daviedovey]

@@kailashpatel1706 white van man in the Medway Towns and Essex loved Blair and quite rightly didn't give a cunt about the Iraq War - Corbyn pretended white van man in the Medway Towns and Essex didn't actually exist - if you poop out your shit on voters they tend to return the compliment

[@kailashpatel1706]

mb @@daviedovey 'quite rightly'..a war that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, millions uprooted, ISIS running amok...do they give a 'cunt' when suicide bombers detonated themselves in London in 2005, or Manchester in 2017..?..i don't agree Corbyn pretended white van man did not exist..

[@kailashpatel1706]

@J LD It sounds like you have not moved on from the middle of the 19th century, all our major regional and global competitors have State led Industrial polices..if anyone is living in a parallel universe its not Corbyn...

[@liamfoley9614]

Kinnock was a quick thinker but it would be three years before Tony Blair would even be elected for the first time.

[@1ramises]

Blair would have been seen as a right winger and rightly so ,of course he won 3 elections !

[@CashelOConnolly]

It’s 2024 and it looks like Labour will win the biggest majority in history and of course will be the next government. This has aged like milk 😂

[@sanddancer1951]

Watching and listening to Stephen Haseler reminds me of Peter Shore at his most passionate and eloquent. Much of Kinnock's address is insults.

[@grahamwalker3819]

Wow... I was 17 at the time and was just about to become politically active. It was never clear to me, even as a socialist, that the debate about the Labour Party at the time, though it was portrayed as a difference of view, was, was in fact, a difference of class, as personified by the accents of the combatants. I’m glad I was on the right side (the left) and I’m glad I remain unchanged.

[@BossySwan]

Most grow out of those views.

[@th8257]

Nothing whatsoever to do with class. You need only look at the millionaire son of a lord and realtive of the Wedgewood family, Tony Benn to see who was pulling the strings of the left. Middle / upper class private school boys, completely detached from the realities of the working class. The 1983 election, and indeed the 2019 election, demonstrate how wrong you are.

[@MrDustpile]

Remain out of office too.

[@KimPhilby203]

Back when we had intelligent debates...

[@spartacusforlife1508]

The first speaker wanted " new labour". He got it under blair. The left was sidelined and the labour party " economically" became a pseudo centrist conservative party. They left behind their core vote to chase the centre ground and look what happened. Under blair we saw a continuation of wage stagnation. A continuation of soft touch policies towards the financial sector. Politicians became technocrats and constituencies where stopped from electing their own candidates by having to select from a list provided by the labour party central office

[@spartacusforlife1508]

Was militant a party within a party? Yes. Should it have been ejected? Yes but decent labour party leftists where also blocked from becoming m.p's.

[@kailashpatel1706]

Haseler loathed New Labour..he wanted a social democratic party which he thought at the time wrongly was becoming a semi communist party..I did not agree with Stephen on his stance but he was no Blarite..he was to the left of the New Labour project..he was also a great teacher and a friend and I will miss him..I'm a socialist left winger by the way..

[@spartacusforlife1508]

@@kailashpatel1706 i'm sure he never imagined the labour party, under blair, becoming what it did but that drive to seperate the broad church that the party was, led to new labour. I was a young activist at that time in liverpool. Had many friends in the tendency but always saw them as a separate party. They were able to gain support because working class people , then, wanted a class struggle but the party was unwilling to go that way. When i look back at the various debates of that time the party rot set in with the defection of the gang of four. It kept labour out of power and led to the party becoming unrecognisable just to gain power. If the tendency infiltrated the party so did new labour

[@kailashpatel1706]

I had a row with Stephen about this in a seminar and obviously he had to justfity what he did..in fact the evidence showed that his claim that Labour was unelectable in that 1979-81 period is not borne out by the Opinion polls..Labour was only behind in two polls taken between Post thatcher victory of 1979 and the formation of the SDP in 1981..Stephen's mistake was to think that the changes in the Labour party in this period were permanent..Wrong, by 1982 the shift was going back to the right in the party..People like Kaufmann and Hattersely grasped that...Stephen did not..The public hate a divided party..also the Gang of four (like the Blarites today) saw the left as the problem not Thatcher and the Tories..

[@spartacusforlife1508]

@@kailashpatel1706 thatcher, without the falklands war, would have lost the election. That "patriotic fervour" saved her. The 1922 committee was looking to replace her. I like to listen mark blythe on this era especially over the demise of keynesianism and the rise of friedmans trickle down. Where stephen pointed out the working class was conservative with a small c, he was correct but the working class, in that period of the late seventies early eighties was as militant as it had been since the general strike. The labour divisions made the party unable to capitalise on that similar to now when the right wing of the party continually try to destabilise corbyn thus making it unelectable again

[@sionsmedia8249]

This debate was a year before the Liberal Democrats formed.

[@timg5tm941]

Social democrats

[@th8257]

You mean the SDP. The liberal democrats came about as a merger between the SDP and liberal party ten years or so later.

[@rongraves6885]

I always had great respect fro Tony Saunois, and none for Kinnock.

[@markmeade2937]

Labour has learnt nothing from 1980, the world has moved on but not in a good way. To me good education, training and producing things in this country is what counts. All politicians today seem to be there for themselves alone , and not the common good for the whole of the country. It’s sad but that’s the way of the world and we have seen the long term damage to both this country and the rest of the world

[@1ramises]

Being out of europe doesn't help that it makes it worse !

[@markmeade2937]

@@1ramises And you think European politicians are any better. They have there fingers in the trough deeper then most . If I seem hateful of politicians it’s because I am , they have all sold out there people and that’s why I will not vote . Europe saw us as no better than a cash cow and the way they treat our country in general should add to your concern . Brexit was a wake up call for years we have not invested in training and technology and now we can’t get drivers for lorries to deliver our food . Whether Labour , Conservative or whatever else I no longer trust them and have contempt for the lot of them

[@daviedovey]

Labour has learnt nothing from 1955

[@kailashpatel1706]

Between June 1979 and the Lime house Declaration of January 1981, Labour was never behind in the polls, after the SDP defection it began to drop...even during Benn's deputy leadership, the party was still ahead..

[@briandelaney9710]

Well you also had the Falklands Factor

[@timg5tm941]

The falklands transformed thatchers fortunes

[@th8257]

Benn was never deputy leader. Did you mean to say Benn's deputy leadership bid?

[@daviedovey]

if Denis Healey had been Labour Leader, Thatcher would have been a one-term wonder

[@kailashpatel1706]

@@daviedovey That discounts the role of oil in the 1980s UK economy..and that Healy was himself seen as a divisive figure in his own right, key Labour MP's also voted for Foot who then went on and formed the SDP..(this might have been to wreck the party but even Labour right wingers viewed Healy in a negative light, he was no bridge builder..How would Healy have turned the tide back on the Falklands war..?

[@daviedovey]

1980, 2020 in 2060 the Labour Party will still be riven by left and right

[@johnyogaatthemovies]

educated populace!

[@rogercliftonville-acton1574]

Kinnock had the same shifty mannerisms of his bliarite son!

[@th8257]

And you have the same cranky language as most tankies

[@wilsonfisk6626]

Kinnock was Blair before Tony Blair

[@1ramises]

It's good to be Blairite at least we win !!!!

[@pov_music]

@@wilsonfisk6626 that's ridiculous, for a start unlike Blair he spoke from the heart and had real principles. Just had to preside over a shitty and divisive period for the party.

[@wilsonfisk6626]

@@pov_music Neil Kinnock threw away his principles once he became Labour leader in order to make himself "electable." He backtracked on Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Europe. To his credit he was much more of a decent guy than Blair.

[@benjaminprentice7186]

You can smell him from here.

[@stevenperren6364]

Kinnock is so verbose it’s unbelievable. He is so in love with his own voice he never gets a simple message across. He was a disaster as a potential PM against Thatcher. Totally out of his depth.

[@andrewrobinson8305]

Disagree, I thought he got his message across perfectly clearly. Which bits didn’t you understand?

[@stevenperren6364]

@@andrewrobinson8305 The bits where he took 20 minutes to answer what anyone else would distill into one minute. If you don’t recognize that Kinnock is verbose then you have no judgment

[@wilsonfisk6626]

@@stevenperren6364 Comrades, we're alrightttttt we're alllllrrrrriiiigggghhht we're aaaallllrrrriiigghhht!

[@wilsonfisk6626]

@@stevenperren6364 Comrades, we're alrightttttt we're alllllrrrrriiiigggghhht we're aaaallllrrrriiigghhht!

[@stevenperren6364]

@@wilsonfisk6626 indeed one of the most embarrassing moments in recent history

[@kailashpatel1706]

God bless Stephen..

[@maximoo9861]

I bet they would've had no problem defining what a woman is

[@wilsonfisk6626]

Not Kinnock. His granddaughter transitioned into a grandson.

[@philiphenshall1555]

L

[@moran68]

Millionaire Neil Kinnock , sorry millionaire Lord Kinnock a true socialist ! 😂 .

[@AC-SlaUkr]

jam 68 what’s Corbyn worth? Look it up. Lipstick Communist.

[@mindblast3901]

@@AC-SlaUkr Spot on Fake Labour

[@daviedovey]

anyone with a flat in Inner London is a millionaire

[@moran68]

A C 4 million .

[@daviedovey]

nothing wrong with aspiration

[@ysgol3]

Kinnock was absurd, so so poor, and he had no self awaremess did he?

[@andrewrobinson8305]

In what way?

[@ysgol3]

@@andrewrobinson8305 The thimgs he said, the things he did, and the grinning arrogance he always presented.

[@67Parsifal]

He liked words far, far too much.

[@ysgol3]

@@67Parsifal And not necessarily (or, rather, ever) in the right order 🙃

[@callumhardy5098]

Who voted for kinnock even though he was a pillock! Certainly not me!

[@daviedovey]

I did although I'd have preferred that it was Roy Hattersley

[@jasonsmith1158]

KINNOCK ............. *** THE WELSH WINDBAG ***. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣