Owen Hatherley shares his fascination of Hazel Blears with us:
Partly because of a history that would surely once have assured her of a place on a Smiths single sleeve, Blears, like Blunkett, Prescott, Caroline Flint, fascinates me in a way other New Labour politicians do not. James Purnell, Jacqui Smith, Blair himself, these are apparatchiks who would fit into any party at any time, but who historical happenstance, youthful leftism and ruthless careerism elevated to positions in what was apparently the workers’ party. Blears and her ilk are different, and more symptomatically interesting – the New Labour proleface contingent, constantly ‘flexing their roots’ (copyright Julie Burchill). I know people in the Labour Party like Blears, old friends of my Mum’s who junked every serious element of their politics, from the egalitarianism to the opposition to imperialism to the respect for something as basic and elementary as habeas corpus, but who retain their implacable hatred of the bourgeoisie, or at least the liberal segment of it; those who supported tuition fees and the abolition of student grants, because they didn’t see why people like their parents should have to pay taxes for the children of the middle classes to go to college (conveniently forgetting their own entirely free education and its place in their self-advancement). Perfectly prepared to defend alleged working class racism, if not working class socialism as anything other than a sentimental memory, she is a Burchill column made flesh, minus the wit or the excuse of coke-induced brain damage (presumably, although we can speculate about what made her Blair’s ‘ray of sunshine’).
My Prog Gold coblogger Palau hates Hazel Blears with the passion of a thousand burning suns, as she has firsthand experiences with so many of these New Labour mock-prole women desperate to climb the greasy pole of local party politics, with no other goal than their own advancement. She have seen what that attitude does to local politics, with desperately needed unemployement projects being destroyed because they were set up without them in control or being abused to provide “jobs for the sisters”. But she also knows how seductive it is to go along with the game and how quickly doors open if you have the right, vaguely working class background as long as you are properly middleclass yourself and you play along. Seeing Hazel Blears for her is like looking in a distorted mirror, somebody she could’ve been if she was slightly less self-aware and events had fallen out somewhat different.
The Hazel Blears approach to politicies, that is, the idea that “my dodgy policies and ideology are justified by my proletarian background” is of course not unique to her or even the Labour party. Having spent much of the current decade being involved in socialist politics and in discussions with socialists of all stripes, I’ve seen this idea coming up over and over again. If you can’t win a discussion, just accuse your opponent of being too bourgeois or too studenty and not “in touch” with the working classes; excuse your own casual racism/sexism with coming from a prole background, and so on, undsoweiter. It’s as corrosive an attitude there as it is with Blears.
And I may be mistaken but I think it’s largely a generational thing. In my experience it tend to be baby boomers and the generation just after them, those who got into politics from the late sixties up to the early eighties, who’ve largely drifted rightward over time but still have a sort of tribal nostalgia for their leftist/working class background. In the media Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch are classic examples of the type; Harry’s Place is thick with them.
