by Kevin Meagher
You probably need to have clocked-up a half-century to remember what the shock loss of the April 1992 general election felt like. Labour was desolate. An unprecedented fourth election defeat in a row.
Already thirteen years out of power, with the prospect of another five drifting aimlessly in the political wilderness. (Depressed by the result and indignant that I was marginally too young to vote, I officially joined the party the next day).
Some thought it really was now curtains. Labour couldn’t win the south. The famous ‘C2s’ – skilled manual workers – were still refusing to switch. While memories of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1978-79 were still hurting the party a political generation later.
Many accused Neil Kinnock of ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.’ Some also blamed his shadow chancellor, John Smith, for his pre-election ‘shadow budget,’ which promised to hike the higher rate of tax from 40p to 50p and frightened off middle-class switchers.
Nevertheless, Smith would emerge as Kinnock’s successor, following a low-fi, Buggins turn, leadership contest against the pro-Keynesian, Eurosceptic shadow cabinet minister, Bryan Gould. It failed to excite a moribund party and Smith walked it, winning by 91%-9%.
Both Tony Blair and Tony Benn voted for him, which tells its own tale. Smith was less tribal and more conciliatory that anything we have seen in Labour politics since. Yet many on the party’s right still worried that he was too cautious and unambitious. He lacked reforming zeal, went the criticism, and thought ‘one more heave’ would get Labour across the winning line next time.
Alaistair Campbell, then of the Daily Mirror, said the division at the top of the party was a contest between ‘frantics’ and ‘long gamers.’ The latter believed that Labour had ‘time on its side,’ while the former worried that ‘the party does not know what it is for, other than to oppose the government.’
In his biography ‘John Smith: A Life’ author Andy McSmith, described the difference in style between Kinnock and Smith thus:
‘…in contrast to Neil Kinnock, Smith was not the man to involve himself in inter-party controversy where he believed it could be honourably avoided. It was an eighteenth-century Scot, Sir James McIntosh, who coined an epigram about the “wise and masterly inactivity” of the House of Commons. Such was Smith’s style of leadership.’
In contrast, young modernisers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (outed by Campbell as ‘frantics’) went over to the US to observe Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign at close quarters, picking up ideas that would later assist New Labour’s 1997 landslide victory.
