PARTIES IN POWER rarely interrupt the business of government to debate the best way ahead. But in this, as in much else, new Labour intends to be different. A rational discussion would begin with an attempt to define the basic principles of left-of-centre politics and then move on to examine the policies by which theory could be turned into practice.

If anybody in Labour’s leadership is interested in the ideas on which “renewal” could be built, Tony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism, published 50 years ago this month, provides the classic formula for relating the ideals of social democracy to the realities of the modern world.

Blairites need not fear that Crosland advocated the sort of programme that, a quarter of a century ago, made Labour unelectable. His view on Clause Four of the party’s 1918 constitution differed only from Tony Blair’s in that he disowned it for reasons of principle rather than electoral convenience. “If Socialism is defined as the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, we produce solutions which deny almost all the values that socialists have normally read into the word.”

Even when he regarded public ownership as desirable, he thought of it as no more than the means to an end. For Crosland the goal was greater equality. Not “equality of outcome” — if defined as “drab and colourless” uniformity. The Future of Socialism expresses equal horror at Sydney Webb’s endorsement of Soviet Communism and Beatrice Webb’s boast that she and her husband had been too busy to waste time on art, music and literature. One of the complaints against Crosland was that he rejected the disciplines of socialism’s brave new world. “The time has come for a greater emphasis on private life, on freedom and dissent, on culture, beauty, leisure and even frivolity. Total abstinence and a good filing system are not now the right signposts for a socialist Utopia.”

Being in Crosland’s company always improved my spirits. A couple of weeks before he died, I joined him at Dorneywood for what, although he had been Foreign Secretary for eight months, was his first visit. My task was to share his irreverent enjoyment of what he regarded as the absurd solemnity of an “official residence”.

As always, most of the laughter had serious echoes. Much to our amusement, some of our Cabinet colleagues were arguing against making rear seatbelts compulsory — and pretentiously quoting John Stuart Mill in their support. We both agreed that the Labour Party was in desperate need of a consistent ideology with which to guide its programme. It still is. The Future of Socialism met that need then. It meets it still.

Crosland’s undisguised impatience with the Labour Party’s contempt for ideas caused regular offence to his colleagues — particularly those he called “the conservative Left” who were happy to be in power without being sure why. And he reacted, with a combination of irritation and hilarity, to the notion that, because he believed in collective security and the mixed economy, he was on Labour’s “ right wing”. But politicians do not become radical just by affirming their radicalism. Crosland had no doubt about what was the litmus test of genuine progressive opinion.

“From a socialist point of view, the limited goal of equality of opportunity is not enough . . . (It) needs to be combined with measures, above all in education, to equalise the distribution of rewards and privileges so as to diminish . . . the injustices of large inequalities and the collective discontent which comes from great disparities of wealth . . . By equality we mean more than a meritocratic society . . . in which the greatest rewards go to those with the most fortunate genetic endowments and family background.”

This required Crosland to speculate about “what definite limits exist to the degree of equality which is desirable”. The Future of Socialism was written before John Rawls had published A Theory of Justice and formulated “the difference principle” — the extension of equality to the point at which the section of society that is said to benefit decides that it has had enough. In 1956 Crosland took the view that there was so much inequality in society that socialists could work for years and then pause to see how much further they should go. There still is.

The poverty of the “excluded” minority will never be remedied in an unequal society. And the case for equality does not rest on the alleviation of poverty alone. Crosland — who, in 1956 rejoiced that “half the population now leaves home for at least a week’s holiday” — did not argue for the redistribution of wealth because it was “necessary to deny the rich man caviar in order to give the poor man bread”.

Greater equality was essential for “the diminution of social antagonism, the extension of social justice and the elimination of social waste”. The need is just as urgent today as it was 50 years ago. How many young Muslims are alienated from British society because of their upbringing in the deprived inner cities?

We should not pretend to know what dead heroes would think about what has happened since they died. So we can only describe how Tony Crosland (as Secretary of State for Education) put his commitment to genuine equality into practice with his campaign to abolish selection for secondary education — the epitome of meritocracy’s shortcomings.

Selection provided a prime example of the “social waste” that The Future of Socialism said was the product of inequality. And the 11-plus, had an unavoidable class bias. Crosland wanted “an equal start as well as an open road” — the elimination of what he called the “distance factors” that divided society. His policy is, however, remembered for a more pungent expression of his opposition to the grammar schools.

Tony Crosland would not have claimed that his book offered a detailed prescription for a Labour Government today. He wrote that “the whole argument will have to be restated by a generation younger than mine”. But he provided the party with an ideal that can be realised, a goal that can be achieved and an aspiration that is both noble and within our reach. That is exactly what the Labour Party needs as it begins to rebuild itself as a party of principle.

The Future of Socialism is republished next week by Constable

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