Rights and Duties  – UK Constitutional Law Association

Over the last three months, there has been a renewed interest in the concept and politics of ‘Blue Labour’—through media coverage, the formation of a Blue Labour parliamentary group, and the growing prominence of Blue Labour’s founder Lord Maurice Glasman. Blue Labour is somewhat amorphous, in that it tries to reconcile various strands of Labour Party tradition. It can be broadly understood as a post-liberal movement that is critical of liberalism, the negative impact it has had on society, and its commitment to individualism. According to Dr. Richard Johnson, Blue Labour is best described as a “melancholic” movement. One that bemoans the loss of past Labour traditions and rejects progressivism, capitalism, and globalisation—all of which has been destructive to the working class of Britian. Indeed, Glasman himself has written that Blue Labour denounces the “soulless utilitarianism” of progressivism. Instead, it believes, among other things, in the common good, that “human beings are not commodities” and long for “connection and meaning” through reciprocal obligations, the importance of democracy through a sovereign body like Parliament, and internationalism through democratic nation states (Maurice Glasman, Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good (Polity, 2022) at pages 3-4). 

On matters of the British constitution, Glasman makes traditional socialistic-political constitutional arguments. For example, he claims Blue Labour supports the legislative freedom of an elected majority in Parliament, rejects a written constitution or other forms of institutional impediments, and denounces supranational constraints on democracy (Ibid, at pages 3-4, 35, and 37-38). Of relevance to this post, Glasman also rejects a “rights-based politics” and the “abstract ideal of the individual” (Ibid, at pages 40-43)—which can be interpreted as a rebuttal of a society and constitution that emphasises individual rights. He then goes on to state his preference for democratic politics and the common law to negotiate and protect rights and freedoms (Ibid). Importantly, Glasman then argues that “democratic politics should offer solidarity and connection” instead of a “technocratic liberalism” that pursues a “vision of fulfilment outside of all relationships” (Ibid, 40-41). Indeed, scattered throughout his political writings and Blue Labour literature more broadly are ideas about “mutual flourishing”, “reciprocal obligations”, “contributions to society”, “having the capacity to live the good life with others”, and “fraternity”. There is a heavy emphasis on citizens’ obligations to others in order to constrain the pursuit of individual interests. However, Glasman does not explain what the implications of such arguments are for rights in a Blue Labour-inspired society and constitution.

Whether intentional or not, these ideas about society and reciprocity speak to an ethical socialist and communitarian tradition that developed within the early Labour Party from 1900 to 1929. This tradition saw the aim of greater societal cooperation being achieved through, among other things, removing the absolute nature of rights and, instead, reframing them as being linked to societal duties. The aim of this post is to provide a legal-historical account of rights and duties from 1900 to 1929—which might then be used to help shape debates within Blue Labour and develop its theoretical approach to rights. 

A Cooperative Society via Rights and Duties 

Influenced by an ideological commitment to ethical socialism and communitarianism, key figures in the early Labour Party believed that British society was atomised, individualistic, and dominated by the doctrine of laissez-faire. This was thought to have actively promoted a self-interested citizenry. In 1912, Ramsay MacDonald—the party’s chief strategist, intellectual thinker, and first Labour Prime Minister—claimed that the last century in England had been known as:

“the century of individualism because during its two middle quarters, in particular, the pendulum swung far towards the extreme of individual liberty of the atomic or mechanical kind.” 

Similarly, Geroge Lansbury, a leading Christian socialist and Labour MP, claimed he would yield to no one in his “hatred” of the individualistic social order he thought was built on “fraud” and “humbug”. 

These observations were correct, as most aspects of late 19^th and early 20^th century United Kingdom centred around freedom of the individual. From culture, religion, and the role of the British Empire, great emphasis was placed on non-interference, individual responsibility, and freedom of conscience. Moreover, 19^th and early 20^th century Whig and Gladstonian liberalism consistently supported a society and economy that were unregulated and self-correcting. R.H Tawney, a key intellectual contributor to the early Labour Party’s political thought, claimed that this type of laissez-faire thought had relied on a simple assumption: that individuals were isolated actors and calculated their social and economic means to insular ends. Consequently, any reciprocity or cooperation that did occur was only within the parameters of having something to gain personally from cooperation—this made it easier for citizens to exploit and undercut one another. MacDonald made similar observations and concluded that the economic model adopted and competitiveness within society amplified people’s base instincts instead of their moral ones. He used the example of individualism being embedded in factory laws and other statutes, claiming they were the imperfect realisation of the human ego.

What’s more, key figures in the early Labour Party also rejected the disproportionate emphasis and paramountcy given to natural (or absolute) rights, negative freedoms, and passive rights (like property) in the British constitution and, by extension, society. They understood the English constitution that had emerged after the Civil War and Glorious Revolution as having no conception of people being united by mutual obligations or encouraging structures that allowed people to work together towards the common weal. Instead, what remained were private rights and the state as the essential guarantor of those rights. Of course, across the 19^th century, an influential Whiggish view framed the English constitution as one that was fit for a quaint England full of robust individuals who enjoyed ancient common law liberties. This led to widespread support for limited government and incremental political ideas that aimed solely at enhancing individual liberty.

Of course, key figures in the early Labour Party had a desire to protect citizens’ “freedom to”, or civil and political liberties. But it was felt that the priority given to individual entitlements and spaces of freedom, by politicians and constitutional arrangements, fed into the possessive individualism that was already present in society. More specifically, the chief complaint was that such an emphasis on individual freedom resulted in claims, counterclaims, and the priority of private rights. As a result, social disunity was further exacerbated as people were pitted against each other. Leading figures in the early Labour Party also believed that the rights and liberties found in the British constitution had been designed anterior to any independent service. This meant that they were placed in a privileged position and trumped other communal values and societal obligations. For example, Tawney lamented the right to property that yielded reward without any service performed. He argued this type of passive and absolute right served as a principle of division and enabled people to resist obligations to others. 

With such societal and constitutional arrangements believed to reduce solidarity between groups of people, key figures in the early Labour Party began to make headway in advancing an alternative model of rights through ideas of organicism (organic society) and fraternity (fellowship or brotherhood). Both notions used rights and duties as a medium to achieve their aims.  

Organicism (Organic Society)

By the 1900s, evolutionary biology was being used to explain social issues by political theorists and academics. The organic society—which was said to be a product of the forces of biological laws—became a popular analogy for the social structure of society and the interdependence of human conduct. However, inherent in the discourse were Darwinian assumptions about the struggle for existence, natural selection, and survival of the fittest. As such, conservative theorists, like Herbert Spencer, used organicism to justify laissez-faire, reinforce individualism, and the competitive nature of society. But others began to recast organicism within a more collective framework. It was argued that while evolution did progress through natural selection and survival of the fittest, it did so within a framework of interaction and cooperation. On this account, those who survived were the ones who had become integrative and learnt to work with others. With this reframing, it becomes clear why the likes of Tawney and MacDonald co-opted organicism as a template for a society based on cohesion and interdependence—where each person was intrinsic to the well-being of others. According to Peter Clark, MacDonald harnessed the “scientific spirit to socialism”. While MacDonald himself claimed, “the reason why socialism and the scientific mind should be congenial to each other is not far to seek. The scientist loves order and is repelled by disorder”. 

We can summarise Tawney and MacDonald’s understanding of an organic society in three key points. First, they believed that individualism would become detached from the individual and would, instead, be repurposed to serve the interests of society. Secondly, there would be greater coordination among citizens in society. Finally, each person in society would work towards the common good. According to Tawney, people in an organic society were able to become more deliberate and purposeful agents. He argued:

“ideally conceived, society is an organicism on different grades and human activities form a hierarchy of function which differ in kind and significance, but each of which is of value on its own plane, provided that it is governed however remotely by the end which is common to all.”

Similarly, MacDonald was also committed to a model of social evolution, not just as a vague analogy but as a principle that governed day-to-day processes of society. He diagnosed society as having an incoherence to it, as if it were a “machine out of gear”. As such, he wanted society to be reorganised so that social functions could be performed by cooperating individuals. With this in mind, MacDonald disassociated atomistic individualism from individuality within a communal framework. He claimed that “our life is of value” where “… it has contributed to the fullness of social life and the development of social organisation and efficiency”. MacDonald used the concept of organicism to suggest that society’s respective parts could be reorganised into an ethical unit—one that moved towards a stage of structural organisation in which cooperation would displace the inefficiency of self-interest and competition.

At this point, we begin to see how Tawney and MacDonald incorporated rights and duties into their understanding of organicism and, importantly, as a medium to a more cooperative society. First, there was a rejection of the unconditional, absolute, or inalienable nature of rights. This was viewed as a deformity in society, one which created materialism and elevated possessive individualism over communal needs. The intention was to ensure no right would be placed in a privileged, untouchable, position over other public interests or needs. Secondly, after rejecting the unconditional nature of rights, attempts were made to prevent rights being anterior to, devoid of, and divorced from social purpose or function e.g., any form of productive contribution to society. Tawney and MacDonald went on to place significant emphasis on the value of duties in creating a more cohesive and cooperative society. More specifically, they both explained their preference for rights to operate within a right–duty nexus. First, MacDonald stated the individual was not an end in himself, but the means to an end; they were there to serve a purpose for society. A right was not something inherent in a person but was located within and corresponding to a network of social obligations. MacDonald explained this in a novel way. The state, he claimed, should “never recognise the existence of a ‘right’—say to get drunk—if it knows that that ‘right’ disables its possessor from fulfilling his duties”. For MacDonald, “the socialist state did not remove responsibilities from people… because it insisted on their participation…” and, as such, the state did not view the individual as a possessor of rights but the doer of duties: “a right is the opportunity of fulfilling a duty, and it should be recognised only in so far as it is necessary to the performance of duty”. Secondly, Tawney argued that the rights extended to citizens had to be tested against social justification and contributions to society. Because of this, there had to be a strong correlation between rights and duties:

“all rights, in short, are conditional and derivative because all power should be conditional and derivative. They are derived from the end purpose of the society in which they exist…if society is to be healthy, men must regard themselves, not primaryly, as pwners of rights, but as trustees for the discharge of functions and the instruments of social purpose”.

Overall, it was believed that this position on rights allowed individuals to meet their domestic duties (volunteering, employment, or public-facing services) and, more broadly, take a more active role in society or political and economic life.

Fraternity (Fellowship) 

Like organicism, fraternity was an ideal by which to reorganise society more cooperatively. However, it differs in that it focused less on the shape and structure of society and more on the internal realisation and ethic that causes people to be cooperative and carry out acts of service. A society based on fellowship looked to morally integrate the community by fostering a sense of belonging and shared fate among people.

Fraternity was predominately advanced by individuals of the Christian socialist movement. Those who provided substantive thinking on the matter—which found footing among key early Labour Party figures and MPs—included Charles Gore, Henry Scott Holland, and William Temple. Broadly, these figures rejected the evangelical Christian focus on individualism. For Gore and Holland suggested that the focus should, instead, be on the idealistic notions of self-sacrifice and cooperative community. Both believed fellowship was something which stemmed from spiritually cooperating with God, and was deep within human nature. To realise this innate characteristic, they encouraged people to join in with their community. For example, both Gore and Holland argued that people could not be indifferent to the fate of their fellows, with Holland claiming that people naturally desired to work together and “…every personal act is woven into the life of the community”. Temple also described fellowship in a similar way. He argued that people could not be separate or isolated from the company of others and, because of this, our interaction with neighbours did more than meet our own needs—it helped to bring about cooperation that served the health of society.

The ethic of fraternity led to a conceptual and practical preference for duties over rights among these figures. It was thought that the language around individual rights and absolute entitlements was of ‘mine and thine’, and of conflict. Duty, on the other hand, was a language compatible with cooperation. A fundamental outcome of this reorientation towards duties, according to Temple, was the recasting of a person’s relationship with others and society as one of obligation and service—as opposed to individual claims. This meant the first question people should ask themselves is “what do I owe this person” as opposed to “what does she owe me”. Considering this, Temple believed this maxim could be applied to work, leisure, economic systems, and management. Gore also claimed that rights were meaningless without duties, being inextricably derived from them. More specifically, rights only stemmed from the extent to which people fulfilled the terms of stewardship entrusted to them by God and the duties owed to others. Lastly, like Temple and Gore, Holland noted how certain entitlements, like the right to property, had been understood as individual possessions. This, he claimed, provoked the characteristics of individualism and thing-centredness in society.

Christian MPs of the early Labour Party were influenced by this type of thought and saw fellowship, duties, and human nature (social and cooperative) in similar terms. Many of them aimed to improve social relations in ways that allowed for human flourishing and harmony. John Wheatley, who was responsible for one of the few successes in the 1924 Labour government (the allocation of more state funding to municipal government for house-building via the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924), claimed that socialism was something that emanated from the spirit of brotherhood. He believed this ethic was ever-present in the hearts of people but was suppressed by the struggle that came about in the competitive environment of capitalism. In addition, Margaret Bondfield, the first female Cabinet member in the 1929 Labour government, was a congregationalist whose main aim was to see the golden rule of “thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself” being applied to both the economy and society.

Finally, like most Christian socialists, Lansbury believed that achieving brotherhood was inextricably tied to socialist ideas of bringing people together in systems of cooperation. At a meeting of the Christian Ideal of Brotherhood in 1911, he expressed his hope that Christian men and women join in with the Labour Party’s aim of creating a more fraternal society. Like his colleagues, Lansbury’s main aim was to arouse an effort within people that stemmed from a higher sense of their responsibility towards the well-being of others and the nation. Consequently, Lansbury advanced social policies that were rooted in service and neighbourliness. This was made clear when crafting social and redistributive legislation. Lansbury wanted social entitlements to be designed so that people were put in a position to undertake societal responsibilities. Because of this, he was often quoted saying that the early Labour Party’s motto should be “no rights or privileges without duties”. In 1909, Lansbury explained how his suggested Poor Law reforms, the extension of social entitlements to relieve poverty, aimed to foster reciprocal duties among citizens:

“our proposals have for their object the awakening in each of us a recognition of our duties towards our neighbour; and not merely my duty towards my neighbour, but my neighbour’s duty towards me. In these days it is rather important that the latter should be kept in view.”

Rights and Duties in Practice 

In practice, the  relationship between rights and duties varied from a strict one to a looser, less prescriptive, correlation. Secondly, there was a broadly equal relationship between rights and duties. By this, I mean rights would not be hierarchically superior to duties, duties would not precede rights, and the duties involved were not punitive, coercive, nor unfairly aimed at stigmatised sections of society. Instead, the duties were ethical in nature, applied to everyone regardless of background, and almost always were community facing or designed to evoke an internal desire to assist the community or nation. Lastly, it becomes clear that the deployment of rights and duties was genuinely perceived as a means or medium to achieving a more dutiful society.  

From his theoretical work, Tawney seemingly employed a strict relationship between rights and duties; a right could only be accessed with the simultaneous fulfilment of a duties. However, when translating this theoretical position into practice, Tawney was not as prescriptive in the correlative set of obligations that he suggested citizens were required to meet. Instead, citizens would be given the discretion and scope to determine how they undertook societal responsibilities. In other words, they would fulfil what they believed their duties to be. This is most evident in the education policy Tawney crafted for the Independent Labour Party in 1924. In sum, education entitlements were to be accessible for all children, result in citizens who could enhance society’s capacity to solve problems and, importantly, allow that child to carry out their societal duties later in life.

Moreover, leading figures in the early Labour Party also supported the idea of strict duties correlating to social entitlements. This was most evident when campaigning for the “right to work” from 1907. MacDonald suggested the proposals for monetary entitlements or placement in a public work scheme could not be given as a “mere palliative or as charity”—as this would simply perpetuate the evil of unemployment. Instead, those who received such entitlements had a duty to undertake educational training so that “surplus labour at one point of the market may be trained to be effective elsewhere”. This, he claimed, would result in a “new form of social organisation”, labour power being better organised for society, and ensured that “everyone who gives service to society shall receive from Society an ample measure of opportunities to live and enjoy living”.

Conclusion

This legal-historical post has attempted to outline a theory of rights that might align with a Blue Labour constitutionalism. It has done this by recounting the ethical socialist and communitarian tradition of rights and duties, as advanced by leading figures in the early Labour Party. Hopefully, this will be of use to Blue Labour as it looks to develop its theoretical approach to the British constitution and rights into more practical policy proposals.

Dr Sanjit Nagi, SOAS.

I would like to extend gratitude to UKCLA editors, Professor Se-shauna Wheatle and Dr. Paul Scott, for their extremely helpful feedback on previous drafts. Any errors in this post are my own.

Suggested citation: S. Nagi, ‘A Blue Labour Constitutionalism: Rights and Duties’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (17th April 2025) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))