AFTER last year’s election defeat, Labour is looking for new ideas and directions.

“Blue Labour” is a strand of thinking being put forward by academic Maurice Glasman, whom new Labour leader Ed Miliband has just elevated to the House of Lords.

Lord Glasman is rethinking what many in the Labour movement regard as the party’s greatest achievement: the creation of the welfare state in 1945. He argues that this has created top-down government which is now “remote, bossy and managerial”, and is against the movement’s founding ethos of cooperatives, friendly societies and mutual interdependence.

Returning to that ethos will help Labour re-connect with the conservative workingclass, argues Lord Glasman, and Mr Miliband, in writing the preface to Glasman’s new e-book, seems to agree. To some people, though, this just sounds like a leftish equivalent of David Cameron’s derided Big Society.

Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman has led the national attack on Blue Labour, with the publication of an epamphlet entitled Tradition and Change.

Here, Ms Goodman, a justice minister in the last Government, who was a keen supporter of Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership contest, argues that Blue Labour is not enough.

BLUE Labour’s hypothesis is that we should return to the ideas of our Founding Fathers in the 1890s – solidarity, community, reciprocity and mutualism in order to renew the Labour Party.

This approach strikes a real note of relevance, because many people feel their lives are insecure and that social ties and obligations have been undermined by globalisation.

Sometimes the state institutions set up to tackle problems descend into bossiness and bureaucracy, leaving people feeling frustrated and powerless.

I doubt, though, that this is enough – not least because the world has changed a lot in the past 120 years. But rather than simply dismiss it out of hand, I decided to examine it from the perspective of communities and people I know in and around my Bishop Auckland constituency.

First, the hill farmers of Teesdale. They have had common grazing rights for 600 years and the fact that everyone relies on a shared understanding not to overgraze means that the way of life has been sustained, but also that the biodiversity is excellent. Across the UK half the commons are sites of special scientific interest.

Under the last Labour Government, the Rural Payments Agency made farmers’ lives impossible.

But agriculture is an international trade and the economics of hill farming is marginal, so government is still needed to support and negotiate in the European Union on farmers’ behalf.

The second community I looked at was the miners. The Durham Miners’ Gala is a wonderful festival of trade union solidarity and it is threatened by the health and safety culture.

So that the parades can commence, a socalled expert is demanding expensive road closure notices.

The County Durham Association of Local Councils carried out a survey, which found that the costs ranged from £294 to a staggering £1,580, and 70 per cent of villages have said that the costs involved might dissuade them from holding an event in the future.

We are destroying not only enjoyable days, but communities.

Government needs to rebalance the rules to support ordinary people.

At the same time, economic development – which is essential for the former coalfields to flourish again – needs government action.

AN educated workforce, high-quality research and development, attracting inward investment, depends on government agencies looking ahead, co-ordinating partnerships and investing in the future.

We can encourage more co-ops and stronger industrial democracy as Blue Labour suggests, but government also plays a central role in ensuring full employment and providing the infrastructure needed for success.

Here in the North-East, our experience at Thorn Lighting in Spennymoor, NetPark at Sedgefield, Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe and the regional development agency, all demonstrate this.

I then looked at two other stories: the situation of a single mum with three jobs struggling to bring up three teenage sons, and a priest frustrated at being roped into Cameron’s Big Society because of the spending cuts.

Both stories illustrate the importance of the welfare state for providing security and opportunity.

The problems of impersonal delivery and unnecessary bureaucracy must be addressed, but the general criticism that Blue Labour makes of the 1945 settlement is very alarming, as a quick glance back to the Thirties makes clear.

For example, in the Thirties, my grandmother collected subs for a voluntary ambulance scheme.

After the National Health Service arrived, her role wasn’t necessary any more – and most people prefer to dial 999.

Charities cannot replace public services.

One of the most shocking things is that Blue Labour criticises women’s independence as a cause of social problems.

This – as the Archbishop of Canterbury has pointed out – is usually the politics of the Neanderthal Right.

They also seem nostalgic for the British Empire with talk of white people’s “entitlements” and “destiny”.

I believe we should be appealing to people, not their prejudices. Only last month, President Barack Obama came to Britain and said: “The longing for freedom and dignity is not English or American, it is universal.”

So as we develop our policies, community should be one value we promote – alongside equality, liberty and democracy.

When we look in detail, it is clear that government has an important role in economic development, providing security via the welfare state and opportunity via an education system which is open to people on the basis of ability, not money.

The Government also has an important role internationally in representing our interests and values.