Turn left for the people's election: Voters will be unable to resist a Labour Party that is radical, Mark Seddon tells its would-be leaders

THINK about it. Some five million people will soon choose the next leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party. This is quite the largest and most comprehensive election of its kind ever to be held by a political party. Its importance has added significance, as millions of trade unionists who pay the political levy but who may only take a passing interest in Labour's affairs claim a stake in the party's future. Having voted for new leaders, they will take a strong interest in what those leaders say and what they have to offer. In short, this will be a people's election.

But it will also determine what sort of party Labour is to become. Will it try to ape the American Democrats and adopt an increasingly presidential style of politics, pitching for the centre ground? Or will Labour use this great opportunity to develop radical policies to tackle poverty, unemployment and poor health, reaching the millions of mainly working-class voters who didn't vote last time? This is our chance to shift the political ground leftwards. And despite attempts by a handful of Westminster commentators to bounce the party into a quick election without proper debate, there will be a real choice of candidates and a real debate.

Times change but the leadership contenders might do worse than to remember how and why Labour won power in the past. Twenty years ago the party won two general elections in the space of a year. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from those victories, for although Labour is well on course to win the next General Election, losing the past four has severely knocked our collective confidence in arguing for socialist policies.

The most common question posed to Labour canvassers is 'But what will you do?' It is not only voters who want to know, but party members as well. For while they see their party constantly out-manoeuvring the Tories, they want to know what Labour's vision of Britain is for the next century and how the party intends to go about redistributing both power and wealth.

Some members argue that people 'won't be taken in by politicians bearing gifts or offering visions'; instead, they would offer a managerial pact with the electorate, a prospect of a Labour government which could organise things better and win people's trust by not overburdening them, come election time, with detailed manifesto commitments.

This is a spartan view of what Labour stands for and what the movement is capable of delivering. Public opinion is moving sharply left, and Labour risks missing the boat if it fails to articulate policies for a minimum wage and tax increases on the wealthy to fund extra health and education spending. For there is a realisation that Britain's economic and social problems are so severe that a party which offers radical and socialist solutions can't fail to catch the national mood.

At the moment broad-brush statements about Labour's commitment to freedom and fairness, modernisation and improvement, laudable as they are, lack both bite and pulling power. They fail to enthuse because they are too bland and not specific. Labour's leaders must concentrate on the bread-and-butter issues which matter to ordinary people.

Back in October 1974, Harold Wilson's Labour Party was quite clear about what it wanted to do. Here was a party that had already, in six short months of power, increased pensions, frozen rents and allocated pounds 350m to local councils to build more homes. It had cut VAT from 10 to 8 per cent and subsidised basic foods. As Wilson sought to strengthen his parliamentary majority, Labour presented a manifesto that promised to introduce an annual tax for the very wealthy and stated unequivocally that taxation 'must be used to achieve a major redistribution of both wealth and income'.

The manifesto also pledged the introduction of a capital transfer tax and an estate duty on inherited wealth. Labour promised and delivered a pounds 10 bonus to pensioners at Christmas. It increased family allowances and introduced an Invalid Care Allowance. What is more, that October manifesto pledged to get rid of private pay beds from the National Health Service and continue to eliminate prescription charges. It promised an end to the 11- plus and direct grant schools, 'as a first step towards our long-term aim of phasing out fee paying in schools.'

Labour's October '74 manifesto was interventionist and expansionary, packed with commitments and only 30 pages long. It came at a time of economic crisis and a massive increase in energy prices. What is more, the Harold Wilson of the 1970s was no Tribunite. Labour won that election. We have lost every one since.

Of course we now live in different times. Britain is industrially weaker, her fortunes tied more closely to Europe. But the inequalities and injustices that Labour set about tackling in the 1970s are much more severe today. The welfare safety net is in tatters, there are thousands living on the streets, mass unemployment has returned and with it mass poverty. In many parts of Britain this impoverishment has led to social upheaval and disorder. The Tories' free-market experiment has created a frightening new world where the fear of losing a job stalks every worker, where low pay and lack of union rights have created a new army of part-time workers and industrial gypsies. Shipyard workers become security guards, miners work in McDonald's: all badly paid, frightened of defaulting on the mortgages that they were persuaded to take out, fearful of old age and desperate about the prospects for their kids. What a transformation, and yet the Tories got away with all of this by persuading enough people that detail didn't matter. They will not get away with it again.

In putting the arguments for a minimum wage, for public investment in housing and hospitals, for public control of the utilities and a redistribution of wealth, the party would not only begin to provide a vision, but would attract enormous public support. Why? Because most ordinary people don't need to be reminded that Britain is an unequal and unfair society, they want to know what Labour is going to do about it and they deserve proper answers. Over the next two years Labour's new leadership will have to provide them.

The writer is editor of 'Tribune', Labour's independent weekly newspaper.

Hamish McRae is on holiday.