Ministers in the current Labour government have famously found it difficult to talk about economic redistribution. While the Blair-Brown administration has consciously set about engineering significant improvements in the incomes of the working poor, it has struggled to communicate this commitment to the electorate.

As a result, there is low public awareness of one of Labour's central achievements in office, and the government's use of fiscal redistribution looks vulnerable to right-wing counter-attack. Perhaps more worryingly, Labour's strategy has left untouched the deep economic inequalities created during the 1980s. The latest figures show that income inequality in Britain is currently at its highest level since comparable records began in 1961 and that around 18 per cent of the population (and about 22 per cent of children) currently live below the poverty line. Social policy experts and political commentators alike have pointed out that, if Labour genuinely wants to tackle poverty and to shift British society in an egalitarian direction, then it will be necessary for the government to pursue more openly redistributive policies and consequently to speak directly to the electorate about the justification for these initiatives.

But how should left-wing political leaders go about making the case for redistribution? In answering this question, one instructive source of information is historical. After all, at certain times in the past radical politicians have actually managed to articulate and win arguments about economic redistribution. I have written a paper which sets out how this was done, and which has just been published on the History & Policy website. I look in particular at the powerful, election-winning case for social justice made by David Lloyd George in Britain in the early years of the twentieth century; by Franklin Roosevelt in the United States in the 1930s; and by Labour leaders such as Clement Attlee in Britain in the 1940s. These were the builders of the welfare state, and they knew how to sell social justice to the public.

Their presentation of the case for redistribution undermines contemporary stereotypes about classical social democratic electioneering. In particular, present-day ‘modernisers' often argue that ‘old' social democratic language is unnecessarily alarmist to middle-income voters and premised on an anachronistic appeal to an ever-diminishing working class. But this misses the core rhetorical strategy of these politicians. Far from preaching a leftist fundamentalism explicitly targeted at the working class, leading radical politicians in fact employed a moderate discourse of the public interest that appealed to national rather than class identity. They crafted a language of economic populism and patriotism that was designed to mobilise low- and middle-income citizens in a political coalition against the economic interests of the rich. The economic programmes of progressive parties were therefore presented as advancing the interests of the typical citizen and the nation against the selfish desires of a super-rich minority.

In his scintillating acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination in 1936, for example, Franklin Roosevelt drew on the struggle for American independence to establish a parallel between the British royalists who had tried to deny American democracy and the ‘economic royalists' who now threatened economic and political life. He argued that the wealthy, ‘the privileged princes', were ‘thirsting for power' and trying ‘for control over government itself.' This ‘small group' had ‘an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labour - other people's lives.' In short, the United States faced ‘economic tyranny' from ‘the forces of selfishness and of lust for power.' Roosevelt later also linked the American Revolution, a struggle for ‘democracy in taxation', with the introduction of a more progressive income tax structure during the New Deal. Taxation according to ability to pay, argued Roosevelt, was ‘the American principle'; the New Deal had ‘Americanised the tax structure.'

By invoking the nation, progressive politicians spoke about a shared identity that transcended class loyalties and contrasted an inclusive community with the exclusive privilege enjoyed by a minority. The speeches of Roosevelt and others did not disparage the ambitions of working families who sought to improve themselves. On the contrary, they spoke in terms designed to construct a political coalition between low and middle-income voters.

The new American ideal, announced Roosevelt, was not ‘the dream of the golden ladder - each individual for himself', but rather of ‘advancement ... along a broad highway on which thousands of your fellow men and women are advancing with you.' Redistribution was presented by these politicians as a majoritarian project that improved the economic position of the typical citizen and was opposed only by selfish interest groups pursuing a narrow sectarian agenda.

In the paper, I give further examples of how this economic populism drew upon and radicalised familiar values such as opportunity, security and fairness, and sought to inspire confidence in the capacity of the state and collective action to resolve social problems. Taken together, the evidence I have assembled should dispel some misconceptions about how left-wing politicians talked about redistribution in the past and may even offer inspiration for any politician bold enough to begin the much-needed debate about economic justice in contemporary Britain. A fair and democratic society, the builders of the welfare state argued, should ensure economic security and opportunity for all; adequately reward the contribution made by the low-paid; and restrict the economic and political power wielded by the wealthiest. Who will make these arguments today?

‘How to talk about redistribution: A historical perspective' is available at: http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-76.html

Ben Jackson is Fellow in Modern History at University College, Oxford. He is the author of Equality and the British Left (2007)