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How the US Government Helped Kill the Labour Party's Left

In the 1980s the US government made the UK Labour Party more right wing.

Tony Blair and George Bush

When Labour leader Ed Miliband met Barack Obama in July, you can imagine he was pretty chuffed to be seen with someone who has some charisma, and probably hoped that he'd gain some of it by osmosis. But publicly at least, Ed emphasised the political necessity to meet the US President, more than the PR potential. "I am going because I want to be prime minister of Britain in less than ten months and because it is incredibly important - and it is what I think the British people would want - to have a prime minister who works closely with the United States," he said.

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A close relationship between the Labour Party and the US hasn't always been a given. While historically, the party perused what is known in political jargon as "Atlanticism" - trying to coordinate UK and US foreign policy - in the 1980s that policy was on shaky ground. It was being pushed back by anti-nuclear thought influenced by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and by disgust on the left about US support for Latin American dictators and Apartheid South Africa.

That feeling subsided, leading to the pinnacle of Labour cooperation with the US - the invasion of Iraq leading to Tony Blair being caricatured as George Bush's poodle.

That transformation didn't happen for nothing. The Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training, an academic institute supported by US establishment types including Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger, compiles oral histories of all US Embassy staff. Their interviews with London Embassy staff, which have been made available on the web over the last two years, show that the US was unhappy with the way the Labour Party was going and tried to change its direction. The interviews contain rich detail about the involvement of US diplomats in the origins of "New Labour". It's difficult to tell how much influence they really had - there are plenty of domestic factors which caused the Labour Party to move to the right in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the interviews make fascinating reading and it seems hard to deny that the US embassy would have had an impact.

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In particular, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were "quite accessible" to American Embassy staff in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the interviews. US diplomats say they were "using" the New Labour leaders in a "plan" to make Labour both more US-friendly and to encourage the party away from "Socialist" thought and back to the "centre".

Miles Pendleton was the US Embassy's "Political Counselor" in London, in charge of their "political department" in the late 80s. He talks about "a continual dialogue" with Labour's leaders including "Tony Blair, whom the embassy spotted as a comer very soon after he was elected" as an MP in 1983. Lynne Lambert, an Embassy "Trade Policy Officer" from 1987 to 1990 also says that, "people like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were quite accessible to the embassy".

Strikingly, the Embassy-cultivated links affected areas well beyond foreign policy. This was about more than rescuing "Atlanticism". It was about changing the party's entire philosophy. They brought new ideas into the centre of Labour politics - ones which were completely alien to the party at the time. "Triangulation" or "the third way" moving Labour to a completely pro-market position.

Admiral William Crowe, who was US Ambassador from 1994 to 1997, makes clear that the Embassy were very interested in Blair moving Labour towards the right. Admiral Crowe says, "we were wired into both the party in power and the opposition. I saw a lot of Blair before he ever came into office."  Crowe speaks admiringly about Blair, not only because he was US-friendly but also because he defeated the left - in Crowe's words, "Blair literally took the Party by the neck and wrung its neck" to break the "socialist" side of the party. Crowe was happy that, with Blair in the driving seat, Labour's left wing "were getting run over right and left to make a pun" - referring to the way the "New Labour" brand had been created to paint the "Old" left as dinosaurs.

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The most revealing interview covers the preceding decade. Robert Hopper was the US "Political Officer" in London from 1982 to 1986. The American State Department says a "political officer" is a diplomat responsible for "developing foreign contacts in and out of government to advance US political interests". Hopper describes the intense cultivation of future "New Labour" leaders. He recalls, "Tony Blair I picked for an international visitor's programme, and sent him to the US. I worked with Gordon Brown… It was clear that he had a seat he could keep for a long time, but he was also a pretty undisciplined young fellow. I had him go to the democratic convention in San Francisco, kept using him a lot."

Hopper was bringing Blair and Brown to the US long before they became Labour's top boys: Blair did not join Labour's shadow cabinet until 1987, a year after Hopper left London. Hopper explains that ,"I actually had a plan and implemented it bit by bit" to draw Labour to the centre.

Hopper was working under a Republican President, meaning that he was manipulating the UK's left wing party under a party further to the right that anything in the UK mainstream. But interestingly, he used people from the Democrat Party to do this. He says, "I stumbled on it, but the most wonderful thing which helped me in the long run, and also the State Department, was my decision to try to find similar middle-of-the-road US Democrats who were patient enough to have a relationship with the Labour Party and who would see them when they came in. That worked out really well. A number of the Democrats were about a year ahead of the Labour Party on the same curve of having been in the wilderness, and a little bit toying with strange ideas and sort of coming back to the centre."

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The kind of US Government sponsored events and the traffic between Labour and the US Democrats encouraged by the Embassy continue to this day. In fact they are now so routine that they are barely commented on.

In the current Register of MPs Interests, Labour's Shadow Defence Secretary, Vernon Coaker admits to a £2,587 trip to the US funded by the US Embassy in London, which he calls a "US government sponsored programme" to meet American politicians. Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls describe recent trips to spend time with American "think tanks", which are reminiscent of Blair and Brown's Embassy-encouraged relations with the US Democrats of the 1980s. Alexander had a £3,606 trip to the Aspen Institute in Colorado, a "bi partisan group" looking at the "challenges that the US faces". Balls spent some of July on a £4,000 trip to the US to "meet administration and other officials" paid for by the Center for American Progress, a Democrat-oriented group.

These trips to the US by leading Labour figures now seem completely routine. But according to the reminiscences by former diplomats from the US Embassy, they began as part of a conscious - and apparently successful - strategy to drag the Labour Party to the right.

@SolHughesWriter

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