The former Deputy Prime Minister weaponised his northern roots and trade union affiliations to enable neoliberal Labour and its wars
~ Uri Gordon ~
John Prescott, the plainspoken northern bruiser who riled upper-class Tories while loyally advancing the New Labour project, has died. For many anarchists, the former Deputy Prime Minister embodied the grim transformation of Labour from its flawed but working-class-oriented roots into the hollowed-out machine of neoliberal opportunism that Tony Blair engineered. Prescott, for his part, played his role with gusto, casting himself as a champion of the common people while enabling policies that dismantled working-class solidarity.
Prescott’s public persona was crafted around his origins. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, and raised in working-class Yorkshire, he became a ship steward and union activist before moving into politics—a trajectory that, on paper, seemed to mark him as a man of the people. Yet, once he ascended the ranks of the Labour Party, Prescott proved himself less a representative of working-class interests and more a willing enabler of Blairite capitalism.
Prescott leaned into his northern roots and trade union affiliations with unflagging zeal. It is easy to see how, for the mainstream media, his unvarnished accent and sometimes mangled syntax made him a convenient foil to the Conservative Party, playing into the narrative of Labour as the party of “ordinary people”. Yet Prescott weaponised this image to give the Blair government a free pass for mass privatisation, devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a surveillance society at home.
The infamous “Clause Four” moment, which symbolised Labour’s abandonment of its commitment to common ownership, defined the Blair years—and Prescott’s complicity in that shift was undeniable. He presided over massive council housing demolitions under the guise of urban renewal, gutting working-class communities and enabling private developers to seize prime land. It is little wonder that anarcho-punk veterans Chumbawamba famously doused Prescott in water at the 1998 BRIT Awards. Their act, they declared, was “a metaphor for the underdog pissing on the steps of Downing Street”.
To his credit—or perhaps by sheer chance—Prescott occasionally found himself out of step with his New Labour colleagues. He reportedly harboured doubts about the Iraq invasion, calling it “Bush’s war”, but dutifully fell in line when the time came for Blair’s government to sell its lies to the public. He also expressed regret for Labour’s support of private finance initiatives (PFIs), which saddled the public with debt while lining corporate pockets. Yet these moments of self-awareness came long after the damage was done, and Prescott’s loyalty to the party always trumped any pangs of conscience.
As anarchists, we might sympathise with Prescott’s moments of raw defiance—against aristocratic sneers or flying eggs—but they remain empty gestures when set against his political record. His career reflects the broader failure of social democratic parties to resist the pull of power and privilege. When confronted with the choice between serving the working class and serving capital, Prescott—like Labour itself—chose the latter.
So farewell, Johnny Two Jags. Your bluster will be remembered, but so will your embodiment of Labour’s final divestment of its socialist pretences. History may afford you a small place in its annals as the man who punched an egg-thrower, but it will not be kind to your political legacy. For the working class you claimed to represent, you were not a champion but a cautionary tale.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
