Victory of Tony Blair's Labor Party has some lessons for main stream politicians of Is it not a miracle Tony Blair performed to rout the long entrenched conservatives in Great Britain? 

In 1906 the Labor Party emerged as a mainstream rival party against the Tories. Labor Party it is a non-Marxist, socialist party. In no way it was like the Russian and the Chinese Marxist Leninist parties, it has offered an alternative ideology to the Italian, German and Spanish social democratic parties. In 1945, the Labour Party came into power and in 1951, its prime minister Clement Attlee had signed the Indian independence decree on behalf of British Govt. First time in the history of Britain, the big industries including steel, coal mines, road and railway were nationalized. It was in the perspective of China, Cuba and Russia where we see the advancement of socialism and in the third world the national liberation movements. Although France, Italy and Spain had coalition government , yet they introduced some sort of the socialist programmes in their respective countries. 

Irony of history is when during the 70s Zulifikar Ali Bhutto introduced the economic nationalization programme in Pakistan, the socialist world experienced the recession of nationalization, A new Scenario emerged in Great Britain. Tory Party under Margaret Thatcher gave the final blow to nationalization; thus giving impetus to privatization all over the world. 

The following three unrelated incidents on the world scene give the hint of the new trends emerging out of the debris of the old world economic order. First, in 1976, after the death of Mao Tse Tung, his successor Deng Xio Ping initiated the 'limited privatization' programmes against nationalization of land and industry. Second, in 1979, Margaret Thatcher came into power and introduced privatization successfully. Third, in 1985, Gorbachev rejected the traditional communism in the USSR as an ideology and adopted the policy of Perestrioka as a guiding principal for running the government affairs. Due to privatization throughout the world the New Labour Party of Britain opted to follow the privatization program introduced by Tory Party, without considering Labor's own nationalization agenda of clause four of its constitution. This was the reason why diehard trade union leaders parted way with Tony Blair, and the old Labour Party emerged as new Labour Party after the election in Britain. Thus we see the new Labor Party has given up the policy of nationalization in favour of privatization. And the Italian and the Spanish socialist having although coalition governments yet they have decided for privatization as an alternative for agenda for their nationalization programs. 

Can Pakistan's social democrats learn any lesson from the victory of Labour Party? How Tony Blair converted the old Labour Party into the new one and what measures were adopted for routing the old rivals --- Tory Party. No doubt in future the success of the People's Party depends on converting the old People's Party into the new People's Party but so far as Muslim League is concerned, it should do some 'research' to avert the fate of the Tory Party in Pakistan's next election. 

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E-mail: jrc@syberwurx.com