A matter of timing (1987)

From the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

A long holiday on a remote island is recommended to anyone who is not obsessively interested in speculation about the date of the next general election. Until the Prime Minister ends the agony by naming the day we shall be harassed by political correspondents picking over the latest opinion poll, by the pollsters asking their irrelevant questions and by politicians whose speeches have taken on the urgency and concentration which was once supposed to influence the thoughts of prisoners on the eve of their execution.

No member of the Cabinet can relax for a moment because everything they say. everything they do. everywhere they go, will be minutely scrutinised for clues. The hysteria has already extended beyond the political field. Take, for example, the recent marriage of failed trainee accountant and rally driver Mark Thatcher to a millionairess from Texas. This union of two heavily-moneyed parasites. a boring and unremarkable event, could not avoid being an element in the speculation about the election. Had the rich and happy pair, it was asked, been rushed to the altar by Tory Party planners to soften Margaret Thatcher's image as the Iron Lady by making her a prospective grandmother?

Of course this might be all just clean fun, to keep the media hacks busy between the end of the Wapping dispute and the announcement of the next royal pregnancy, were it not for the reasons why the timing of an election is considered so important. Indeed, in some cases the outcome of an election is said to have been decided by the day chosen for it. In 1970, for example. Wilson's government was widely assumed to be on course for a third term of office. The original slim majority of 1964 had been enlarged in 1966, in an election fought on the slogan You Know Labour Government Works — which should have been enough to frighten away millions of voters. The local elections of May 1970 were encouraging for Labour and the polls predicted a victory for them at a general election. Apart from that, Ted Heath was some way behind Wilson in the grubby contest to appear as the sort of leader workers admire, to tell them what to do. to blame them for the politicians' impotence to deal with capitalism's problems and generally to exploit their political naiveté. Wilson's ambition to purge the Labour Party of its professed objective of social revolution and instead establish it as the alternative government of British capitalism, seemed close to achievement.

George Meddemmen

There had, of course, been one or two problems — like economic and financial crises — but these are faced by all governments. There had been battles with the workers — notably the seamen — over wages and conditions of work. Living standards had been persistently threatened through rising prices; but these had been prominent features of British capitalism since Labour first won power in 1945. The Wilson government had carried on with providing the British armed forces with the nuclear power of super-annihilation; they had supported the American government's ugly struggle in Vietnam and, aware that the British capitalist class had large investments in Nigeria, and got ten per cent of their oil from there, they backed the Nigerian government's genocidal war against Biafra. It was, as they say, not a pretty picture but neither was it untypical of the necessary actions of the governments of capitalism. The British working class, it was predicted, were satisfied enough with Labour s record to give them another spell in power.

But Wilson, who was supposed to be a master of timing, got it wrong, which led to three years of Tory rule under the despised and derided Ted Heath. At the time the surprise result was attributed partly to the publication, just before polling day, of some statistics which showed that British capitalism was not doing as well in competition with its foreign rivals as the Labour government had hoped. Few things are so likely to undermine the workers' confidence in a government as the suspicion that they are not looking after the interests of the ruling class as competently as they might. There were other factors, not the least of them the bewildered disillusionment which six years of governing capitalism had stimulated in the Labour Party. At times the Party seemed on the verge of disintegration, with the spectacular defections among leaders such as George Brown and Ray Gunter and with the Party at large rent apart over Biafra, Vietnam, nuclear weapons, the unions and so on. Under this pressure Wilson, who had once been lauded as Labour 's man of magic, became exposed as a trickster.

It was apparently even more difficult for the next Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, to fix the date for his one and only attempt to hold on to power. Callaghan's government had been in continual trouble, trying to hold down wages in a series of battles with striking workers — notably the firemen in the winter of 1977. In mid-1978 the unions gave notice that enough was enough, that the pressure from lower paid workers could not be contained much longer. The sewage workers, lorry drivers, local authority manual workers and hospital employees came out in a series of much-publicised strikes which ruined Labour's strategy of wage restraint through the co-operation of the unions. Some of the strikes were supported by workers not directly involved in a dispute but who joined a picket line anyway. How badly the government were shaken was evident when Callaghan — who had risen to power through the unions and who was once, briefly, regarded as a left-winger — said in the Commons:

 I assert very clearly that everyone has the right to work and everyone has the right to cross a picket line. It is not a sacred object and I hope they will do so. (Guardian, 24 January 1979). 

In the same speech he stated, no doubt to an appreciative audience of Thatcherite Tories, that the expenditure limits fixed by the government could not be exceeded and that for private industry the "ultimate discipline" was that workers could lose their jobs — which must have been confusing to anyone who took seriously his mouthings about the "right to work".

In October 1978, in a speech in which he was expected to announce the date of the election, Callaghan committed himself to hanging on into 1979. He must have been hoping that things could not possibly get worse. That was the time when the present economic recession was gathering momentum; under that Labour government unemployment went up — doubled — between 1974 and 1979, from about 600,000 to about 1,200,000 and their response was the established one of cutting back on investment. Labour's Chancellor, Denis Healey, thus gained the reputation as the originator of Thatcherite monetarism. Class society and poverty, after five years of Labour government, was as evident as ever. There were still, as Callaghan himself admitted:

   . . . men and women struggling with low pay, mothers stretching the household budget to make ends meet, youngsters in search of a job . . . patients queuing for a hospital bed or families without a decent home . (Foreword to Labour s 1979 election programme, The Labour Way Is The Better Way).

As it happened the choice of date was taken out of Callaghan’s hands when a defeat in the Commons forced him to call an election; for some time they had clung to power through sordid compromise deals, at first with the Liberals and then with the Nationalists. At least, he might have reflected, he could not be accused of turning victory into defeat through bad timing and the leader of so unpopular a government, which was duly cast aside by the voters, needed whatever consolation he could get.

It was simpler for the Tories in 1983, if we are to believe Cecil Parkinson, who masterminded their campaign. In an article in the Guardian (24 November 1986) Parkinson wrote that Thatcher chose the 1983 polling day after the Tory leaders had spent a day discussing the last local election results and studying two opinion polls they had taken in key marginal seats. It was, he said, a matter of common sense — and nothing is more beloved of politicians, for common sense justifies every human excess of capitalism, from nuclear annihilation to mass starvation. And of course Tory common sense paid off — in spite of millions unemployed and all that meant in terms of even more desperate poverty, in spite of the fact that the numbers living at or below the official poverty line had increased by millions between 1979 and 1983, in spite of the tightening of the screw on those still in work, in spite of the slaughter of the Falklands. . . .

George Meddemmen

It is, to put it mildly, depressing that millions of workers should vote for political parties who indulge in such blatant, cynical manipulation, whether Labour’s attempts at subtlety or Tory common sense. In 1979 Callaghan delayed polling day in the uncertain hope that workers were so foolish and irresponsible that only a few months were needed for them to blot out the miserable memory of his government and then, perhaps, be ready to fall for some vote-catching gimmick. Thatcher in 1983 should have been surprised that deeper poverty and the jingoistic hysteria of the Falklands had not destroyed her chances. But she saw that workers actually seemed hungry for more of her style of capitalism and she took the opportunity to exploit this.

If the analysts have got it right — if it is true that a few months' difference in polling day can affect how workers vote — the whole exercise is exposed for its futility and irrelevance. A working class who value their vote — their power to change society — so lightly will continue to vote for capitalism, switching from Labour to Tory and back again or even perhaps, to the Alliance. They are not about to make any fundamental change in society, to eliminate the disfigurements which capitalism brings. Such swings are brought about through the most trivial changes in capitalism, such as a set of trading figures; basically the system does not change. The problems we face now, which are the raw material of election promises, are those which have been faced by generations of workers and they will be eradicated only through social revolution.

Because capitalism does not change fundamentally. neither does the case for its abolition. We know why socialism must be established, and how, and who will do it. The one remaining question is: when.

Ivan

Running Commentary: Silver spoon (1983)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Silver spoon
Clean-cut prefect type that he is, the thought could never have entered the Brylcreemed head of Cecil Parkinson that he would one day be the subject of nationwide salacious jokes. As usually happens, there was much misunderstanding about the affair between Parkinson and Sarah Keays and the lucky child who as a result will find itself born into the British ruling class.

Parkinson's extra-marital activities were denounced as inconsistent with the Tories’ well-advertised concern for what they called Victorian values, particularly with the sanctity of the monogamous, nuclear family. Should he, repentant, leave the government? The party? The country? All of this on the assumption that politicians operate on consistent, absolute principles.

But of course the Thatcher concern with the capitalist family was designed as a vote-winner and in any case applied only to that class in society (which does not include Parkinson) which has a subservient role and must be disciplined into it, by one method or another. Now this is perfectly in line with the values of capitalism, whoever is on the throne. It was so in Victorian times and it is so today. Capitalism now, as then, is a society of two conflicting classes, one of them socially superior and privileged and the other socially inferior and disadvantaged.

Parkinson and Keays enjoy a life-style, and assumptions about their futures which result from the exploitation of the working class. It is instructive to compare the treatment of Keays with that of a working-class female who conceives a child without being married. Keays negotiated through her solicitors — which means with a lot of legal protection and comfort — for what Parkinson assured us would be an adequate financial arrangement for her and the child. A spacious cottage near the home of her rich family in the lush Cotswold countryside was renovated for her.

Meanwhile, in magistrates courts throughout the land unmarried female workers apply for maintenance orders against similarly impoverished fathers of their children. In most cases, the courts award them a few pounds a week — which is all the father can afford — which is promptly deducted from their Social Security "benefit”. The working class should attend to the repression and the indignity represented by that rather than to the personal peccadillos of their arrogant masters.


A black hope
Jesse Jackson is tall, handsome, energetic and he believes in the American Way, so nobody should be surprised that he is a possible candidate in the next Presidential election.

In fact, the mere possibility is driving thousands of American workers into a frenzy of enthusiasm because Jesse Jackson is not only tall, energetic, etc. etc, but also black. Even more; he says he was there on the balcony when Martin Luther King was shot and that King died in his arms; he kept on a bloodstained T-shirt for a highly-charged TV appearance soon after the assassination. American blacks love him; “Run, Jesse, run" they urge him onwards to the nominating conventions.

Jackson is being lauded, not just as the new hope of American blacks; he is said to have something to offer whites as well — an unprecedented insight into their problems and a unique ability to come up with the answers. “In America,” he said during a recent visit to Brixton, "our struggle has shifted from a focus on freedom to the drive for real equality”.

It would be most remarkable if a politician who aspires to power did not try to arouse passion and enthusiasm by claims to have a novel solution to the problems which have been troubling the enthusiasts for such a long time. It is only when the power is won and the reality of trying to run capitalism strikes home that the ardour dies and the hero wilts, sometimes into obscurity.

Even before he gets near the convention there are questions hanging over Jackson. In particular, his claim to have been with King when he was shot is denied by fellow black Andrew Young, who undoubtedly was on the balcony. But it is important to consider more than questions. It is time the workers, in America and all over the world, refused to be misled into hysteria by the promises, the deceits and the charisma of leaders. Real experience shows that capitalism cannot be other than a divided, repressive social system of impoverishment and fear. No leader can change that.

Run Jesse run? Where to?


Method unimportant
After their defeat in 1979 the Labour Party went through a Benn-inspired reassessment of their constitution which was supposed to make them a more democratic and more effective organisation. This was as agonising for them as a bad illness and after the treatment they decided, among other changes, on a new method of electing their leader. No longer would this be through the preferences of only Labour MPs; now the whole party, affiliated trade unions and all, would have a vote on the issue.

Triumphant left wing Labourites claimed that they now had a serenely democratic party, better fitted to take power and. in some unexplained way, to force socialism on us. Some of their leaders, on the grounds that too much democracy was a bad thing, left the party to take their place at what they hoped would be the foot of Labour’s death-bed. And out of this marvellous new method has emerged Neil Kinnock, who has not so far been justified on the grounds that he is the fruit of a more democratic method of election but because his party hopes that he has the formula to win them back into power.

Whatever system the Labour Party used, the leader who emerged would have carried the same hopes. Kinnock, for his youth and his carefully constructed reputation, would always have been a very strong candidate for the succession. Labour's new constitution, born amid so much pain and dispute, has really changed nothing.

Labour's elected leader is expected to be enough of a crafty opportunist to play the electoral game of deceiving the working class to such effect that it results in a Labour win. As long as the workers — who vote for Labour and Tory governments over British capitalism — continue to acquiesce in this cynicism the problems of modern society will remain. The method through which leaders emerge is unimportant; what matters is the social system which they serve and which they try to control — and the urgent need to abolish it.

Greasy Pole: In the chair (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wonder Boy William Hague is determined to make some changes in the party into whose leadership he was suddenly catapulted after the events of 1 May. "The Conservative party that I lead", he wrote in the Sunday Times on 5 October, “will be broad where it was narrow, young where it was old. caring where it was arrogant". Well he would say that, wouldn’t he? After the drubbing they got at the polls the Tories can hardly pretend that all is well with them, that there is no need to change anything, that they need only wait a while and the voters will obediently go back to supporting the Party of Gentlemen, the Natural Party of Government or however else it is known.

In any case Hague’s zeal to reform the party is a back-handed way of blaming their defeat onto his predecessor who apparently allowed the Tories to get narrow, old and arrogant. There is a snag to those tactics however. Why did Hague keep his enthusiasm for changing the Conservative Party in check for so long? Why didn’t he go for modernising it before the election, when he was busily playing his part along with all the other leaders telling us what a wonderful party they were and how lucky we were to have the chance of returning them to power yet again? It is rather late now. after the votes have been counted, to tell us that "the electorate believed we were arrogant and out of touch . . we were divided among ourselves . . . they questioned motives and sometimes our competence”.

Chairmen

One of Hague’s first acts, in this great age of reform was to appoint a new chairman of the party. Now this is not a job which invariably brings success and widespread esteem in the party. In fact some of the people to have held it in recent times have been, by the cynical standards of politics, disastrous flops. There was Norman Tebbit, whose reputation as chief organiser at Tory Central Office was not exactly glowing and who spent much of his time in the job locked in dispute with his deputy. David Young. There was Selwyn Gummer, whose inadequacies were the subject of widespread complaint, including among the 1922 Committee. The Major era brought in Jeremy Hanley, who quickly became famous for his hilarious gaffes, like describing a huge punch-up among the audience at a boxing match as over-exuberance. Hanley was followed by Brian Mawhinney. who is a doctor although not one you would be comfortable to have operating on you. Mawhinney’s arrogance went with an overbearing, browbeating attitude to his staff and a monumental incompetence in dealing with—by which we mean explaining away—the many crises which afflicted the Major government. Of course when he did try to explain them away he did not help matters by smiling—if that was what it was—like a piranha who has not had a square meal for a while. Inextricably linked as he was to the Tory collapse in May. Mawhinney had to be prised away from the chairmanship. He is now Shadow Home Secretary—which has probably converted thousands of prisoners, prison governors and prison officers to ardent Labour voters. So who should replace him? Well Hague was intending to make his party younger, fresher, looking to a rosy future untainted by a wretched past. So he chose Cecil Parkinson.

Immaculate

"Cecil who?" may have been the reaction of many of the young people Hague is hoping to attract to the Tory party, when the news broke about the new chairman. Well this Cecil once seemed to be surging irresistibly towards the Tory leadership and to being Prime Minister. In his entire life Parkinson made not a single mistake, nor a mis-judgement, nor was he ever responsible for any mean or selfish or underhand behaviour. He was. simply, immaculate—or at least that is the impression he gives in his autobiography.

Even the town he grew up in— Carnforth in Lancashire—was "surrounded by beautiful countryside . . .  almost totally devoid of pretentiousness and jealousy".There is the small problem about the young Parkinson being an active member of the Labour Party League of Youth, an enthusiastic admirer of Stalinist Russia and, when he was doing his National Service, "virtually a pacifist”. But these are glossed over as surprising rather than damaging. In any case it turned out alright in the end because young Parkinson saw the error of his ways in time to shin up the greasy pole of Tory politics, almost to the very top.

His climb was, in fact, almost what is now called seamless. At school he excelled in his studies and as an athlete. He went to Cambridge, did well as an accountant and then in the take-over business. In 1970 he was elected to Parliament, where his rise was again predictably smooth. It became rather faster when Parkinson caught Thatcher’s attention, until in 1981 she appointed him (no nonsense about elections) party chairman with a place in the Cabinet. In the 1983 election, when the so-called Falklands factor was supposed to have won another spell of power for the Tories, Parkinson was at the height of his powers, with even better to come.

Affair 

Except that he had had an affair with his secretary Sara Keays, who was pregnant by him and who was expecting him to do something about his stated intention to divorce his wife and marry her. It all came out, in the most damaging way for Parkinson, when he tried to backpedal on his promise and Keays made it obvious that she would not take this lying down. (The affair gave her an opportunity to see how ruthless the party she supported and wanted to represent in Parliament, operates when it sees its facade of genteel integrity under threat.) Parkinson’s response to this was to pass over some money and turn his back on the matter. Keays is now hedged about by restrictions Parkinson has put in place. For example, it is not possible legally to publish anything about the condition or welfare of her— and Parkinson’s—child. Which may serve Parkinson’s interests and those of his party but does not fit in with his image as the clean, caring and responsible exemplar of Tory morality. Hague’s appointment of a sleazy has-been as his party chairman says a lot about the Tories and about the other parties of capitalism and about the system itself.

Ivan

Caught in the Act: Goodbye To All That (1991)

The Caught in the Act Column from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tory hopefuls will have felt their pulse quicken at the news that many of the parliamentary storm troopers of the Thatcher revolution will not be storming after the next general election. The list of ex-ministers who will not be standing again reads like a Thatcher cabinet - Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson, Norman Tebbit, Cecil Parkinson, John Moore, Nicholas Ridley. It is even rumoured that Thatcher herself will soon announce her retreat from the battle for the triumph of market forces over soggy concepts such as social welfare. A tot of plum seats, with fat Tory majorities, will be looking for candidates.

This situation is given extra piquancy by the fact that many of the retiring ex-ministers were themselves once considered as future prime ministers. Howe’s claim to fame was that he spear-headed the drive to cut back government spending and establish the policy that any business which couldn't make a profit was thereby not worth saving with state money. Lawson was the yuppies' favourite Chancellor and in his heyday encouraged the illusion that through his budgets the British people were reaping the harvest of prosperity from the seed sown by the unglamourous, dogged Howe. Sadly for Lawson, he did not time his resignation so that his reputation remained intact. The chaos of capitalism was too much for even a smarty like him, reducing him to taking a few part time jobs in the City bringing in the odd £30,000 or so a year.

Morals

As recently as last November Tebbit was threatening to contest the premiership (and it would have taken some very brave men in grey suits to deter him) but in the end he deferred to Major. Perhaps he was hoping for a return to prime ministerial favour; in the event he showed what he thought of Major’s declared intention to fashion a more "caring" government by deciding that he needed to spend more time with his wife.

Cecil Parkinson paid the penalty for being one of Thatcher’s blue-eyed - at one time, indeed, the bluest of eyed-boys. Tory aspirants to the leadership must have watched, in impotent despair, Parkinson’s apparent inability to do anything wrong in Thatcher's eyes. He had, however, done wrong in the eyes of Sara Keays and no patronage could save him from the repercussions of this exposure of how Tory gentlemen behave when it suits them. After all, Tory moralists like to tell us that morals are, like Major's Britain, classless; they did not thank Parkinson for showing that they are supposed to apply only to the working class. When he eventually came back to office Parkinson seemed to have lost his touch; the past master of deception made a series of public relations blunders which were intended as shrewd, voter-attractive ruses - which did not amuse his anxious colleagues.

Another Thatcher favourite to plummet to obscurity was John Moore, who was once the subject of an enormous publicity exercise to convince us that he was an unusually capable administrator of capitalism's affairs. Moore basked happily in this praise and in Thatcher's admiration for his talents for assaulting working class living standards. It did not seem to occur to him, that so blatant a campaign carried its own menace. When events exposed him as a very ordinary sort of political blunderer there were no men in grey suits to save him from an especially humiliating demotion. He did make one last effort to claw his way back into favour by issuing what was supposed to be a serious analysis of the deeper levels of poverty in such a way as to suggest that it was all a product of over-excited imaginations. This latest blunder met with the contempt and derision it deserved and to no one’s regret - certainly not that of the very poor - Moore disappeared from the ministerial scene.

NIMBY

Nicholas Ridley for prime minister was a prospect supported by only a few of the stranger fanatics. Ridley has always conducted himself with all the arrogance and contempt of someone who has inherited a lot of money. As much of the wealth of this old Etonian’s family came from the exploitation of coal miners he was well qualified to help formulate the government's strategy against the miners during the early 1980s, which reached its ultimate triumph in the defeat of the 1984/5 strike and the subsequent run-down of the industry. On all this Ridley looked with a pitiless eye; this is, after all, capitalism under which wealth is produced, not so that people can hold jobs but for sale at a profit. He had a similar attitude to anyone who objected to what are politely called developments - factories, motorways, runways and the like which threaten to blight their living conditions - sneering at them as NIMBYS - one of those fashionable acronyms, for Not In My Back Yard.

It is not clear whether Ridley regarded himself as a NIMBY when he used his influence to obstruct the building of some houses which would have affected the view from his elegant, costly country home. The incident confirmed what was already known - that Ridley has an uncomplicated view of the world: capitalism is a class divided society in which he is in the right - the superior - class and he will take good care to assert his privileges and to defend them at whatever cost to others. It was a typical indiscretion about European unity which forced his reluctant resignation from the government; events had overtaken someone who did his best to live in the past.

So now we have a new set of politicians in charge, who claim they are inspired by fresh principles, new priorities and more humane ambitions. This change is personified by the greyer, lower-key manner of John Major. Perhaps there will be some minor and insignificant changes: Thatcher's stridency and obstinacy, and the sycophnacy of her cronies, were becoming so laughable that they were losing votes. And that is what it was - and is - all about.

Ivan