Tim Luckhurst: The darkest hour before the New Labour dawn

Winning a confrontation with Saddam may equip Blair to win the ideological war within his own ranks

At the 1935 Labour conference, Ernest Bevin's ferocious speech calling for British rearmament prompted the pacifist George Lansbury to resign as party leader. When Mr Bevin's friends told him he had been too harsh he replied: "Lansbury has been going about dressed in saint's clothes for years, waiting for martyrdom. I set fire to the faggots." These days it is Labour's pacifists who are in opposition to their leader, but there are in the modern party some courageous spirits who wish Tony Blair would say something similar to Clare Short and her posturing collaborators.

The last six months have been miserable for those who understand that deposing Saddam Hussein is the moral equivalent of backing the Spanish Republic in 1936. The grass roots are hostile and the Cabinet is split. Talk of Labour after Blair is widespread. Few predict an immediate contest, but Ms Short has offered hope to the Prime Minister's internal enemies. Their certainty that internecine feuding is Labour's true mission is back on show.

Despite all that, Labour's progressives sense that their leader's position is similar to Bevin's in 1935. He, not Ms Short, is due to be proved right. They are confident that civilian casualties will be few and the fighting brief. With or without the fig leaf of a second resolution Mr Blair can expect to be a hero again soon. The likelihood is that he will emerge from his stiffest trial with greater credibility than at any time since May 1997. Then all things will be possible, even the removal of Gordon Brown from the Treasury.

Those who oppose Mr Blair on Iraq never embraced New Labour philosophy. They did not want to confront teachers in order to improve schools, or reform the NHS to deliver effective health care. Many are hostile to British membership of the euro. They have stymied reform of the public services and they celebrated when the Chancellor implemented the tax-and-spend strategy the IMF now insists he cannot afford. They only tolerated Mr Blair because he was a winner. It does not cross their minds that his dedication to the consumer is sincere and that their adoration of the producer interest is what made Labour unelectable for two decades.

Progressives consider the Iraq crisis in Labour's own ranks the darkest hour before dawn. They predict that the liberation of Baghdad will allow Mr Blair to appoint new ministers in his own image and promote those like John Reid and Charles Clarke who have never confused the possession of a social conscience with the discredited ideals of pacifism. There is even talk of a return for Peter Mandelson, who is suddenly ubiquitous on television in support of Mr Blair and resolution 1441. Labour's thinking classes are optimistic that victory will make a euro referendum possible. They talk of a vote in May 2004.

The thought that winning a confrontation with President Saddam will equip the Prime Minister to win the ideological war in his own ranks and advance his own agenda is anathema to a third of the parliamentary Labour Party and most activists. These old-left reactionaries are right to be scared. They know that voters who have been terrified by apocalyptic warnings of tens of thousands of dead civilians and regional crisis in the Middle East will swing behind Mr Blair if conflict ends in jubilation and a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Then the Prime Minister will be ideally placed to marginalise his critics and advance the domestic agenda on which he won power. The belief in equality of opportunity (not outcome) that made him popular has been blocked by internal resistance. Labour has forgotten what made it electable. It may soon get a forcible reminder.

Throughout the years when I worked for Labour's Shadow Cabinet and stood as a Labour candidate, I fought for policies that could make the party dynamic in government. Mr Blair articulated them. Specialist schools, foundation hospitals, graduate taxes and realistic tuition fees are not reactionary. They are the practical means by which social progress, freedom and responsibility can be made real.

Mr Blair has been opposed from within every time he has attempted radicalism. The party has neutralised his innovative instincts. There are in his Cabinet ministers who share Ms Short's faith that the old, unthinking left is about to have its day. The likelihood is that they will be proved still more wrong than they were in Kosovo and Afghanistan. If that happens, Iraqis will applaud, but they will not be alone. Progressives believe that New Labour will realise its potential when it applies to domestic concerns the confrontational courage the Prime Minister is displaying on the world stage. That is no reason to fight, but if fighting a just war gives new impetus to a progressive agenda at home, it will be an additional reason to rejoice.

TimLckhrst@aol.com