John Prescott’s journey from trade union militant to establishment fixer left little room for any genuine commitment to working-class politics, argues John Westmoreland

John Prescott’s death at 86 has uncorked gushing praise from his Labour colleagues. Prescott was a ‘Titan of the Labour movement’, said Gordon Brown. Keir Starmer also spoke up for Prescott’s sizeable proportions as ‘a giant of the Labour movement’. Angela Rayner, as Deputy PM, invoked Prescott as ‘her inspiration’.

However, Tony Blair offered by far the more accurate assessment of Prescott on Radio 4, ‘the truth is, none of the reforms we brought in would have been possible without John Prescott’. In other words, abandoning Clause 4 and any commitment to working-class politics, or privatising education through academies, or waging wars in the Balkans and the Middle East – these things would have been much more difficult without the support of Prescott.

In fairness to him, John Prescott did have impressive roots in the trade union movement. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he failed the eleven-plus exam that he wanted to pass to get into grammar school. He left school without qualifications and got a job in the Merchant Navy, working for Cunard.

His experience at sea pushed him towards trade unionism. He became a leading militant and was a shop steward in the Seamen’s Union. During the Labour government of Harold Wilson, Prescott spearheaded a strike that Wilson said was ‘Communist-led’. From this engagement with politics, he went into higher education via Ruskin College, Oxford and the University of Hull, from where he gained a degree in economics and economic history.

During his time as an MP, Prescott was often mocked for his word salad presentations that mushed together facts and ideas in paragraph-long sentences. He took it in good part, but he was dyslexic, and someone who had gained an education the hard way. When called upon to take on the Tories in the Commons, he led with a pugnacious style that endeared him to Labour stalwarts. However, Prescott, like so many who start on the left and end up on the right, was unable to match his trade union principles with his parliamentary ambitions. He was slowly absorbed into the Westminster culture and often became firm friends with Tory diehards.

Prescott’s role as Blair’s Deputy PM is being mythologised by media commentators. Prescott, they say, was a ‘bridgehead, bringing together Labour’s warring factions’. Blair spotted Prescott’s talent for this in 1993. The then Labour Leader, John Smith, was trying to bring in reforms to Labour that Blair would take through to completion. One of these was to take down the power of the trade union bloc. Smith came under criticism from trade union leaders and those on the left who could see where this was going. 

Bridgehead Prescott got up to make ‘the speech of his life’ in defence of Smith and against the left. He said that Smith had been courageous, ‘putting his head on the block’ and the conference should ‘give him a bit of trust’. Credited with saving Smith’s neck, Prescott was appointed Deputy by Blair and continued to play the role of selling right-wing policies to the trade unions and party members. This included the abandonment of Labour’s commitment to socialism embodied in Clause 4 of its constitution.

Blair’s stooge

Prescott never confronted any of the reactionary policies brought in by Blair. He either abstained or voted to support crucial policies that betrayed the working class at home and abroad. Like voting in favour of Blair’s ‘War on Terror’ that has fed Islamophobia, and devastating war. Like voting to increase Britain’s ‘nuclear deterrent’. Like voting in favour of PFIs that have left public services such as education in debt to the City; voting for tuition fees, Post Office privatisation and more.

All the way through the Blair and Brown years, Prescott championed neoliberal policies with a faux working-class no-nonsense style that even an accomplished actor like Blair couldn’t pull off. Even his feeble punch, which landed on an egg-throwing Welsh farmer, was blown up by Alistair Campbell and Labour’s media team to show Prescott’s working-class manner. But by this time, it was just a well-spun fiction.

In Westminster, Prescott was very much at home rubbing shoulders with the Tory toffs who treated him with amused condescension. Nicholas Soames liked to tease him by ordering a gin and tonic, reminding him of his time as a waiter on Cunard ships. William Hague claims to have got on famously with him, sharing moments of gruff, ‘plain-speaking Yorkshire banter’ with him. These Tories were hardly living on the edge when they were in his company. Prescott was happy to abandon his working-class roots, happy to be referred to as ‘Two-Jags’, happy to say, in response to questions about his allegiance to the workers, ‘we are all middle class now’.  And he was happy to enter the House of Lords at the end of his career.

Corrupted by the system

By all accounts, the people who knew John Prescott found him witty and charming, intelligent and well read. He wasn’t the originator of Blair’s neoliberal policies and he put some effort into some good things, like the Kyoto Protocols and the validation of climate science.

However, John Prescott failed to resist the pull to the right that neoliberal policy demanded, and therefore we shouldn’t celebrate his life as a ‘Titan of the Labour movement’, but remember him as the fixer for Blairite policies. In this, he has played the same role as others such as Jimmy Thomas and Earnest Bevin. It is the same role his ‘best mate’ Angela Rayner is playing today.

Remembering John Prescott’s working-class roots cannot wipe clean his role in Blair’s government. Our judgment of him cannot be made based on where he came from, but on where he ended up. Shop steward John Prescott ended up as Baron John Prescott, and therein lies the whole story.