If Labour could recover after Ramsay MacDonald, we can do it again. But MPs must play their part

By Tony Benn

11/02/05 "The Guardian" -- -- I left parliament four years ago. Looking at it today, I now see it as the British equivalent of the Green Zone in Baghddad: heavily fortified and patrolled by police with submachine guns, with bulletproof glass separating the electors in the gallery from those whom they elected. But the press gallery has no such glass barrier, for there sit the embedded correspondents, as in Iraq, who are briefed every morning in Downing Street and emerge to tell us what they have been told, repeating the process under Big Ben after their afternoon briefing.

Inevitably, media coverage highlights the role of the prime minister, and his performance at the dispatch box on Wednesday becomes the headlines in the evening papers and the next day's press. Political commentators are forever analysing the thinking of Tony Blair and his clique as if their views are the only ones to matter. Whether it is about a possible attack on Syria or Iran, or the privatisation of public services in health and education, Labour MPs can be relied on to do what they are told. Those who try to think for themselves and take a different view are dismissed as unrepresentative troublemakers, as if service in parliament was like being a soldier, with an obligation to obey orders without question.

What we are witnessing is nothing less than the erosion of parliamentary democracy and its substitution by a near dictatorship, as in the House of Lords forever being topped up by the prime minister's nominees - some of whom, we are told, have contributed to New Labour's campaign funds. Lloyd George must be laughing in his grave. A parliamentary chamber chosen by patronage may even be the model of democracy that George Bush and Blair would like to enforce in the Middle East.

Even Blair's ministerial colleagues have been sidestepped - as they were when Rupert Murdoch demanded a referendum on the European constitution, something Blair had rejected. However, he reversed his position, announcing it without even consulting the cabinet. It is almost as if democracy has been thrust aside in order to fight the war on terror and preserve our values - values that now include detaining people for months without trial.

Walter Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany, was interrogated under the Terrorism Act after he was ejected from the Labour party conference for heckling the foreign secretary. His name - and offence - will be recorded for ever on his identity card and on the security services' database, to which the American authorities have permanent access.

It is no good putting all the blame on the prime minister; he cannot do what he wants unless the Commons votes for legislation he and his ministers introduce. Every single MP who has supported this legislation shares the responsibility. We are now told that bills announced in the Queen's speech for the present session have been drafted to form the prime minister's legacy; but his real legacy could be the destruction of the Labour party itself, for that could well be how history will see it.

As a five-year-old boy, 75 years ago, I met Ramsay MacDonald at No 10 when he was Labour prime minister. A year later he left the party, joining the Tories and the Liberals to form a national government, and Philip Snowden, his once Labour chancellor who followed him, actually described the Labour party as "Bolshevism gone mad" in an election in which only 51 Labour MPs survived.

Fourteen years later, in 1945, we won a landslide for the greatest modernising government in our history. If Labour could recover after MacDonald, we can recover from Blair. But Labour MPs must play their part, as we all must do before it is too late and we wake up and find that we are once again at war.

Tony Benn is the president of the Campaign Group of Labour MPs <[log in to unmask]>

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005