FORUM: The Miliband who was a true inspiration

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Published: 9 September, 2010

As brothers David and Ed Miliband go head to head in the Labour leadership contest,  Jeremy Corbyn recalls another Miliband, their father Ralph, and Sunday evening debates where latecomers had to sit in Keir Hardie’s chair 

THE Labour leadership election is now at the crucial voting stage.

The candidates who provide fascination for their apparent differences yet shared upbringing are the Milibands, Ed and David.

I knew Ralph, their Marxist father who has been an inspiration to generations of socialists.

In the 1980s he was a key figure in a group I belonged to which would meet on Sunday evenings, usually at Tony Benn’s house in Holland Park and once at my then flat in Turle Road, Finsbury Park.

It was an eclectic mix of Tony Benn, Ralph Miliband, Hilary Wainwright, Tariq Ali, former party general secretary Jim Mortimer, Leo Panitch, Perry Anderson, Andrew Glyn and others from time to time.

Tony saw his role as convener, which included lengthy tea-making and bringing of cups and kettles into his book-and-banner-laden living room as we perched on aged settees or chairs.

Tony took notes of the meetings and on another pad pencilled scrawls for later dictation into his diaries.

The feature of the room is Keir Hardie’s chair, which was given to Caroline Benn after completing a biography of Labour’s founder.

While of great historical symbolism, it is extraordinarily uncomfortable, a cross between a hard chair designed for a primitive Methodist chapel and the sort of dining chair one would keep “for best”.

Because it is flat one was forced to sit up straight to avoid sliding off, but leaning back brings you into direct contact with a wooden decorative boss that ensures there is no danger of snoozing.

After a few meetings this once-sought-after spot became the place for latecomers.

In this atmosphere we debated the miners’ strike, economic directions and party structures.

I once gave a report of a visit I had made to trade unionists in war-torn El Salvador.

The unifying theme was about bringing together radical traditions in and out of the Labour Party.

Everyone there was either in the party, had been or been expelled, in the case of Tariq Ali.

The feeling was that the party was becoming too accommodating of the whole cultural shift that Thatcherism had brought about.

Ralph, having been in the party in the 1950s, then very sceptical about its ability to bring about socialism, was excited by the left and in particular Benn’s role.

As ever, it was the issue of the economy  that created the most discussion – nationalisation and state direction of a mixed economy or living with capitalism and the market.

To move the ideas on to a wider stage we organised the enormous Chesterfield conferences in Tony’s then constituency to bring together all left groups and unions.

These were enormous affairs, but treated with scepticism and hostility by the party leadership and suspicion by many left groups happier in a smaller, more ordered, world of their own.

They nevertheless did help to develop debate on the eve of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the command economy model.
After the shock of the 1992 defeat, Labour turned in hope to John Smith, who sadly died.

Tony Blair followed and brought in New Labour, top-down, democracy and at times a love affair with market economics.

The free market and bankers’ free rein have more than run their course as the coalition government savagely smashes into the social spending that keeps many from destitution.

It is up to Labour to find an alternative.

I hope a socialist one that values all humans and environment and a party that is proud of its depth, breadth and variety.

Sadly, Ralph Miliband died in 1994 and we only have Socialism for a Sceptical Age to fall back on.

Bizarrely, David Miliband is quoted in the New Statesman as saying Anthony Crosland was his hero – the absolute bête noire of the Bevanites in the 1950s.

As for Ed, we can hope.   

• JEREMY CORBYN is Islington North Labour MP