SOCIALISM.

There, I’ve said it.

But what is a socialist? Believe it or not, in the 1980s, when I first joined the Labour Party, this was a question that comrades actually used to discuss seriously, earnestly and regularly. And in every local party there was never a shortage of individuals who took it upon themselves to judge which of their colleagues were and were not socialists.

Tony Benn, the font of all knowledge when it came to judging other people’s principles, once said that the Labour Party wasn’t a socialist party, although there were socialists in it, just as the church wasn’t Christian, although there were Christians in it. This struck a chord with me, because, as a young Christian in an evangelical church, I had all too often fallen into the trap of deciding whether others were “proper” born-again Christians or, as my friends and I very patronisingly caled them, “nominal” Christians. Essentially, if other people hadn’t shared in exactly the same spiritual experience that we had, then their faith was inferior to ours.

So yes — in response to that muffled comment from the back — I was even more arrogant and insufferable then than I am now.

I’ve since reconciled myself to the truth that it’s not up to anyone else to judge my own relationship with God, just as it’s not up to me to judge anyone else’s. As I’ve said on this blog before, I’ve always been a rubbish Christian anyway.

So what is it with the church and the political Left that it attracts people only too keen to judge others’ beliefs? I guess it comes from the fact that both Christianity (and any other religion) and socialism are based on faith — faith in God or, in socialism’s case, faith in the basic good of mankind, in moral absolutes and in economic concepts.  Once those beliefs are codified and acknowledged as The Truth, it becomes easy to identify those who stray from the One True Path.

The political Right is blissfully unencumbered by such rule books, preferring a more pragmatic approach to politics.

And even today, 15 years after the advent of New Labour, there are still those in my party who like to obsess about the “socialist” label. Among some, it is undoubtedly a cause of some resentment that it was Tony Blair who first inserted the word “socialist” in the party’s constitution, thereby redefining it in a broader, vaguer but more inclusive sense.

So the question is: do I consider myself a socialist? Yes, I suppose I do, but there are plenty of others who wouldn’t agree with that description of me. And maybe they’re right. Whatever.

Same goes for me describing myself as a Christian.

But if judging others’ definitions of themselves is your “thing”, who am I to tell you what to do?