MEMOIR: The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New LabourBy Peter Mandelson, Harper Press, 512pp. £25
HERBERT MORRISON, the architect of Clement Attlee and Labour’s famous victory over Winston Churchill in the 1945 general election when he drafted the party’s manifesto, “Let Us Face the Future”, was a man for whom politics meant all: family suffered, so, too, did friendships.
He was prepared to put aside old enmities in the naked pursuit of power, as he showed in 1945 when he drafted into Labour's campaign a man he once nearly had jailed, the left-wing cartoonist Philip Zec – who drew the famous Here You, Don't Lose it Againcartoon used in the Daily Mirroron VE Day.
Equally, he yearned for the Labour leadership, though Attlee, who never trusted him, stayed on until it was too late for Morrison, who was cast aside in favour of a younger generation. Even then, he had to face the ignominy of finishing last in the election race before quitting.
Blessed with organisational skills, he led the efforts to keep London working during the Blitz and linked all of London’s transport systems – the Tube, buses and trams – by forging the fore-runner of London Transport.
Tough in his dealings with both colleagues and enemies, he was often misrepresented, as shown in recent days in the UK press when he was accused of being the Labour chieftain who told defeated Conservatives, “We are the masters now’. He did not: Hartley Shawcross uttered those words.
But Morrison also had a sense of style, as he showed when he led the campaign to have a Festival of Britain in a dreary, ration-fed London in 1951 on the grounds that the British needed “a pat on the back”.
Finally, despite his humble roots, he became a member of the House of Lords.
Traits and talents pass through the generations. Now Morrison’s most obvious claim to fame is that he was the grandfather of Peter Mandelson, former First Secretary of State; Lord President of the Council and Labour’s “Prince of Darkness”.
When he was a young boy, Mandelson idolised his grandfather, though he realised in his teens the cost Morrison’s ambitions had imposed on his family, particularly his own mother. Then, Mandelson proceeded to repeat many of his grandfather’s mistakes.
Turning the last page of Mandelson's political memoir, T he Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour,which is nearly 600 pages long, one wishes that he had written a very different kind of book.
The volume has infuriated colleagues: some of the criticism is justified; some not. Certainly, it is self-serving; it displays his gargantuan ego but, also, his more deeply-hidden insecurities; his desire to be loved. Most of all, it displays his desire to be needed by those more powerful than he.
But it is well-written, contrary to the charges levelled by bilious opponents who are unhappy that he has re-opened old sores in Labour by writing about the dysfunctional relationship that existed between Blair and Brown and those surrounding them during all of their years in power.
However, there are no sensational revelations: Brown was poisonous towards Blair for becoming leader in 1994 and, subsequently, Prime Minister, thus denying the Scot the job he believed it was his life’s mission to hold.
Equally it shows the failings inherent in Brown’s character that meant that when he finally did take over from Blair he had neither the temperament nor the skills necessary for the job of prime minister.
Most importantly it shows that much of the reporting of the Blair/Brown years – which highlighted the problems in the pair’s relationship – was right from the off, even though Mandelson and his ilk were the ones who denied this, and who were quick to punish those who said otherwise.
But it fails to show why Mandelson is Labour. His background was comfortable; his association with those on the lower rungs of society’s ladder was slender and became even more so as the years progressed.
He understood full well that the Labour Party of the 1980s could not win an election unless it changed fundamentally and reflected back the sense of aspiration felt by many of those who used to be Labour, but were no longer so in the days of Thatcher. But, too often, this comes across as strategy, rather than belief. His opponents in Labour believed the party should never bow to the electorate. Mandelson believed political parties should do exactly that, and keep on doing it until the keys of power were won. Instead, his beliefs, though wrapped in a cloak of “progressive politics”, often seem little more than tribalism, along with an ability to read political winds and a desire to belong. If he had not been born into a Labour family he could just as easily have carried another political standard.
His account of his relations with his Hartlepool constituency never displays an understanding of the ordinary lives of those who have trooped into polling stations for generations to make their mark against the name of the Labour candidate. He says he understands, but it does not convince. But his book does display his love of intrigue and subterfuge, his brilliant organisational skills, as well as his penchant for “dazzle”, which he revealed when he took over the plans for the creation of the Dome in London’s docklands.
For now, Mandelson’s stock with his own – which had risen so high following his emotional speech to the party’s conference in Brighton last year – has fallen back, though his party would do well to study much of the book closely. In particular, he is often revealing – accidentally, one suspects, much of the time – about Labour’s complete lack of realisation of the damage that was being done to the UK’s national accounts by Gordon Brown during the years of plenty.
The UK’s national debt had nearly doubled from the time Labour took over to the early days of the 2007 crash, while most other countries had used the increase in revenues. Instead, the UK entered the crisis already weakened. Somehow, given the often infantile level of debate taking place in the party’s leadership campaign to replace Brown, one suspects that Mandelson’s lessons – deliberate, or otherwise – will not be learned.
Mark Hennessy is London Editor of The Irish Times
