Thread by @labour_history

#OTD 1993. Tony Blair tells the World this Weekend that Labour would be ‘Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime’.

Coming months after the party lost a fourth election in a row, it was a soundbite that put Labour on course for Government

Thread:

In 1992 Tony Blair became Shadow Home Secretary. Traditionally a graveyard position for Labour politicians, ‘it was not a job with many applicants’

Blair observed that ‘Labour people were really anxious about law and order issues and were far more likely to be tough than soft’

He later claimed that:

‘I hated the liberal middle class attitude towards it. Usually they weren’t the victims, but the poorer people – the ones we said we represented – were’

Blair visited the US in January 1993 with Gordon Brown and Margaret Beckett to observe the US transition and met with Democrat strategists.

Bill Clinton offered a blueprint for centre-left success having framed crime as an issue for the Democrats.

Crime had become the number one issue in the UK tabloids.

At the beginning of 1993, the Sun – which had claimed the Tory victory as its own a few months earlier – was now writing of the breakdown of society and of 'Violent Britain'.

The paper put crime - particularly youth crime at the centre of the agenda in early January 1993

In a New York café Blair and Brown sat discussing the state of the Labour Party.

Blair told him ‘we have to be tough on crime itself’. Brown replied ‘you mean tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime?’

Blair subsequently used it on the World at Weekend:

‘Friday nights made absolutely impossible for people; old people afraid to live within their home never mind go out on the streets; young people often intimidated by other young people; these things are wholly unacceptable’

He continued

‘There are two sides to this, there's the side of personal responsibility, which we must enforce against those that are committing crime, but then there are deeper underlying causes which we’ve also got to address.

The media continued to focus on crime.

The Sun wrote of a 40 year crime wave that 'shames us all'

Blair pitched his message to the Sun newspaper – a place where few Labour politicians had ventured during the 80s:

‘It’s a bargain, we give opportunity but demand responsibility. There is no excuse for crime. None.'

‘It is parents who bring up kids, not governments’

He also pitched to the New Statesman

‘We should be tough on crime & tough on the underlying causes of crime. We should be prepared and eager to give people opportunity. But we are then entitled to ask that they take advantage of it to grant rights and demand responsibilities'

‘Our approach is rooted in our belief that society needs to act to advance the interest of individuals. For crime, ultimately, is a problem that arises from our disintegration as a community, with standards of conduct necessary to sustain a community.

‘It can only be resolved by acting as a community, based on a new bargain between individual and society. Rights and responsibilities must be set out for each in a way relevant for the modern world. The longer we leave it, the harder the talk will become.’

Then, the murder of James Bulger shocked the nation.

At the heart of the story was a moral panic and intense discussion about the ‘breakdown’ in society, of a new underclass emerging from the poverty of the 1980s.

Blair addressed a shocked and grieving nation through a speech in Wellingborough:

‘The news bulletins of the last week have been like hammer blows struck against the sleeping conscience of the country, urging us to wake up and look unflinchingly at what we see’

‘A solution to this disintegration doesn’t’ simply lie in legislation. It must come from the rediscovery of a sense of direction as a country and most of all from being unafraid to start talking about the values and principles we believe in’

Whilst it gave Blair his biggest media profile and amount of public support to date. Labour took a poll lead on best party to manage crime.

Not everyone on the left was pleased.

Labour leader John Smith was wary that he may have overstepped the mark, starting to sound too Conservative and adopting too much Clinton rhetoric

In the Guardian, Will Self wrote

‘I don’t want some pol like you telling me that I represent social disintegration because I’m separated from my wife and children’

By September, just over a year on from a fourth election defeat in a row, Blair could confidently claim Labour was ‘the party of law and order’ at Party Conference.

‘We will put the victim at the heart of our criminal justice system. The hooligans who call themselves football supporters and inflict terror and violence upon a neighbourhood on a Saturday afternoon….

the muggers who beat up pensioners in their own homes; the perverted men who rape and beat up women; the place for these people is out of society until they learn to behave like human beings…’

‘Labour is the party of strong communities. And that is why Labour is now the party of law and order in Britain today.

Tough on crime – Tough on the causes of crime’