News in Review: Adlai Stevenson (1965)

The News in Review column from the September 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Adlai Stevenson

If Adlai Stevenson was truly the witty and learned man he was reputed to be, he would have been appalled at the mush of vulgar cliches served up as his obituaries.

All the obituarists were agreed. Stevenson had everything but success and the tragedy of his life was that he never made the White House, because he had so many good ideas, he was so liberal, so peaceloving, that it only needed him to become President for the whole darn world to be an unrecognisably better place.

This old, drab story is the basis of many of the obsequies of men who spend their political lives in opposition and never in government. We heard the same regrets when Hugh Gaitskell died. Apparently a cruel fate is always denying us the benefits of being ruled by humane and capable men.

It should surprise nobody that the journalists never ask why the supposedly humane men never get to the top or why, if they do make it, they always cease to be humane.

The truth is simple. Capitalism requires that its administrators comply with certain priorities and if humanity is among them it is a long way from the top of the list. If a man gets power—as often happens—on a plausibly humane programme he must quickly change his ideas.

This is why Johnson’s policies have changed, and why before him Kennedy’s changed and Roosevelt’s changed. Stevenson did not have to change his for the simple reason that he never got power.

And as for that, it was not so much a case of Stevenson having admirable principles which were never applied because he did not get to the White House, as of Stevenson not getting to the White House because his policies did not match up to capitalism’s needs.

Tucked away into a comparatively unnoticed job, Stevenson could look after his dignity. He could discreetly let it be known that he had his reservations on United States policy on such issues as Cuba and Vietnam. Nothing was changed by this, nothing was even disturbed. It was all very cosy, and it allowed a cultured man to live his life in peace. It also allowed those obituaries.

An insignificant corner is the place for such reservations, and for a witty and learned man—if indeed such animals exist in politic’s jungle world.

The brave ones

One essential for a successful politician is the ability to sell the electorate the old gag “heads I win, tails you lose.” And it is clear that the Labour Party, in the midst of the financial crises of British capitalism, are learning the truth of this.

It is really quite simple. If a Minister does something which he thinks will be well received among the voters (higher pensions, lower income tax, more houses) he claims that this is entirely the result of the government’s wisdom and ability.

Heads, in other words, they win.

If, on the other hand, the government imposes measures which are going to be unpopular (higher taxes, housing cuts, higher national insurance payments) their approach is different.

These, they say, are also a result of their wisdom and ability. Much as they regret having to bring in the measures, they do it all for our benefit; somewhere in the future which we never seem to reach, we shall gain a great deal from the privations which we suffer today.

Meantime, the politicians are quick to claim another sort of credit for their unpopular measures. Such things, they say, show that whatever else they may be none can deny that they are men of courage.

Thus Mr. Wilson, on Mr. Callaghan’s Budget last April 11th:

“He told a cheering audience that it was a courageous and purposive instrument designed to strengthen Britain and to strengthen the pound.” (Daily Telegraph 12/4/65).

Thus Lord Stonham on 10th July last:

“By courageous and decisive action we have weathered the storm we inherited, and as our policies bear fruit . . .” (Guardian, 12/7/65).

In other words, although it is tails it is we, and not they, who have lost.

This kind of two-timing propaganda, thrives on the short memories and the apathy of the voters. It thrives on their forgetting, for example, that however high or low taxes may be the condition of the working class remains the same.

This condition does not depend on the day to day financial juggling of capitalism’s latest set of administrators, but on the social situation—the class position—which the working class necessarily holds in capitalist society. Whatever government is in power, and whatever they do, has no effect on this.

When the working class have grasped this fact, they will have seen through the politicians’ deceits. As a start, they might realise that when a Minister says that he is going to do something courageous it is time for the rest of us lo run for cover.

Mr. Heath takes the Tory helm

Mr. Edward Heath, the new Conservative leader, is said to be a moderniser; a strange recommendation to a party which waited until 1965 to select its leader by ballot. Heath’s reputation is largely based on his forthright debating ability, his personality appeal, which Conservatives judge to be electorally attractive, and his determined application of policies which he conceived to be in the overall interests of British Capitalism without regard to sectional interests.

Mr. Heath was at the centre of controversies such as the abolition of retail price maintenance and the British application to join the Common Market. With bad luck, Mr. Heath’s part in these two issues may well have led to his political death. As it is, Tories are now pointing to them as examples of Mr. Heath’s courage, sincerity and modern approach. In fact, being modern or old fashioned doesn’t come into it. Whatever alleged doctrinaire differences are puffed up and attributed to various personalities in Government, actual policies largely arise from the economic requirements of situations that Governments find themselves in. The practical necessity of these policy demands are made equally on both grammar school bright boys and plus-foured squiredom.

In spite of the interest centred on the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party, and in spite of the avalanche of press comment and speculation that went on, the only new thing about Mr. Heath is his face. Of course new faces have their usefulness in creating the illusion of a fresh determination to grasp fresh opportunities. They provide the renewed hopes without which capitalism would be even more intolerable. For as many faces that become jaded in the depressing aftermath of anti-climax and failure, there is always a new one to replace it. Enter Mr. Edward Heath.

To say that Mr. Heath is a flexible realist whose mind is unshackled by doctrine is another way of saying that he holds no firm political principles. Indeed he is the administrator par excellence. It is not for Mr. Heath to question the basic drives and ends of modern society. The objects of profit and private ownership are accepted without demur. He is the business organisation man in Government. At their widest, his differences with Mr. Wilson or any other reformist politician boil down to a quibble over technique of administration and even these are largely contrived for electoral considerations. As ever the watchword will be mind public opinion, but administer capitalism.

Reformist parties like the Labour and Conservative parties consider that personalities in politics are important, and in electing Mr. Heath, conservatives were concerned not only to create a bright image for the future but also to provide a means of escape from the discredited past. From this point of view, Mr. Heath seems to fulfil requirements.

It seems probable now that in accepting the leadership of the Conservative party two years ago, Sir Alec Douglas Home played a stop-gap role on the promise that he would resign “as soon as the time was right for me to go.” At that time, the claims of men like Heath and Maudling were too weak to withstand the influence of men like Butler and Quintin Hogg, especially under the existing means of appointment. Yet in spite of their prestige, both Hogg and Butler were undesirable candidates, apart from other reasons, both wore the tarnished mantle of the MacMillan era.

During Home’s stop-gap term of office, the claims of Heath and Maudling to Conservative leadership became more credible, and at the same time, Conservative M.P.’s were given the means to elect their leader by ballot. In the meantime, the political fortunes of Butler and Hogg have evaporated. Conservative M.P.’s now have the man they want.

But this is politics carried on at a trifling level that is completely removed from serious consideration of the important social problems of the time. Though they command wide interest, these paltry manoeuvrings don’t begin to touch the problems of war, poverty and frustration that arise from world capitalism. The task is to abolish capitalism, not to appoint new office boys in the running of it.

Thomson erupts

In the House of Lords on July 21st, 1965 it became apparent that Lord Thomson, who owns a lot of newspapers and who has been on television and who is a very rich man, could contain himself no longer.

It was not that he had anything irrepressibly original to say—he was actually riding a very old hobby horse which is ridden a thousand times a morning on all the Tube trains going into the City of London.

It was that mangy old nag the selfish, lazy, stupid British working man who never puts his back into it, who is always on strike (but who seems to manage to buy a car and a washing machine and a television to watch Lord Thomson on his strike pay) and who is generally no good.

“In other advanced countries,” (Lord Thomson speaking) “business is highly professional, management is completely dedicated to success. It completely dominates the lives of the executives.”

Now anyone who has ever come across an executive who is dedicated to success, and whose life is completely dominated by his work, knows what a ghastly human being Lord Thomson was praising.

Some dedicated men have considered it part of their success to support dictators and others have done their bit to make our lives that much less tolerable by replacing something beautiful like an unspoiled coastline or a rolling valley with something ugly like an atomic power station or an underwear factory.

Others have dedicated themselves to convincing us that our troubles were due to night starvation or that the only way to keep our teeth was but brushing them with chlorophyll or that nobody is switched on unless they have a tiger in their tank.

What Lord Thomson’s standard of success amounts to is a ruthless, single minded drive for profit—for the scientific, technological exploitation of human beings, organised by machines and by dedicated sociologists, psychiatrists, technicians and any clean-collared graduate who falls for the patter.

We may be excused if we insist that human life should, and can, hold more than this.

As a matter of fact Lord Thomson did drop a hint, at the end of his speech, about his idea of a successful and dedicated man:

“I greatly appreciate the actions of George Brown. I think he is trying to do something in the interests of this country and he has my complete support in every respect. I regret that some employers and some trade unions are not co-operating with him.”

Yes!

I’m alright, Alec (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many ways, the selection of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as the new Tory Prime Minister made political history. What Macmillan called “the usual processes of consultation” will one day be the subject of countless essays, articles and hopeful theses on the techniques of political dealing. In the end, Home’s succession was a surprise to most of the observers who are supposed to be able to forecast such things.

But in one way—a way that will not be mentioned in the histories—Home’s appointment came up as expected. It was certain that whoever got the job would do so in a smokescreen of what can only be called nonsense. There was, in fact, a different sort of nonsense for each of the candidates. Hailsham was said to be tough, colourful, impetuous—just the man to give some stick to Khruschev or, darkly hinted the Labour Party, to press the button in a disastrous moment of irascibility. Butler was smooth, remote, soft on coshboys. And so on.

The nonsense which was put out about Home was influenced by his peculiar circumstances. There was the usual stuff about the new Prime Minister’s amiable manner, about his propensity for chatting with Foreign Office chars, about the way he eats his breakfast porridge. We have grown accustomed to such stuff and have come to assume that it is all meant to prove something.

What was unique about the Home propaganda revolved around the fact that he was the latest of a long line of Scottish noblemen. The first of these was created a peer by James III, although his gratitude at this was not enough to dissuade him from later joining a rebel movement against the king. That particular peer died in 1491 later holders of the title met a grisly end or figured in a long feud with another Border family. The amiability for which the last Lord Home was famous could easily be due to the serene security in which he has always lived and to the curious reasoning by which some aristocratic families convince themselves that they hold their superior situation in life as a favour to the less fortunate masses.

This, as we might have expected, was meat and drink to the Labour propagandists. Just as they were basing their appeal on a drive to modernise and stimulate British capitalism, just as Wilson was telling us that the future lies in a disturbingly scientific Britain, the Tories make themselves appear outdated, obsessed with the old school tie, by electing the inheritor of an ancient Scottish earldom as their leader! How can such a man, demanded Mr. Wilson, know anything about the problems of kids taking the eleven-plus, or of a couple who are paying the mortgage off their house?

How indeed? But then, even if we accept that Home does not know anything about these things, would there be any advantage for us if he did know? The Labour Party have always tried to present an image of themselves as men who have come up the hard way and who are therefore, familiar with working class problems. Today they may pose as the party for young graduates who are bursting to get their hands on a computer and start driving the deadwood out of the boardrooms; not so long ago they were full of ex-miners who talked about getting the bosses off our backs. Yet what happened when the ex-miners came to power? The 1945 Labour government had many men like James Griffiths and Ernest Bevin whose early lives had been of appalling hardship. Did that government run the affairs of British capitalism any more humanely for that? Did they ever shrink from taking measures which, although essential to the interests of the British ruling class, were harmful to the very people whose votes and work had raised them to power? They did not.

The humble beginnings of some of the Labour ministers did not prevent them running British capitalism in the established manner, with all that that means. Indeed, perhaps there were times between 1945 and 1951 when miners, or dockers, or some other group of workers, may have wished that they were being governed by people who did not know so much about their problems—and about their methods of trying to alleviate them.

For all that, Wilson’s thrust at the fourteenth Earl was typically shrewd and may have set the tone for Labour's future attacks on Home. The Tories’ reply was enough to show that they are as concerned as they need be about the aristocratic lineage of their new leader. Heralded by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservative machine set out to convince us that Home’s selection proved that a man can become Prime Minister on his own ability, and in spite of the fact that he is an Earl. This, in some peculiar way, is supposed to mean that we are developing a classless society in which all Britons are equal. Home himself made his own version of the point when he commented that the Labour leader is probably the fourteenth Mr. Wilson, which was joyously trumpeted by the Daily Telegraph as the best crack for a long time.

We can see, then, that the elevation of Home has released a flood of nonsense not just about the man himself but about the class to which he belongs and about the class division of society. Class, we know, is something of a dirty word, Every capitalist party strives to assure us that they do not stand for the interests of any one class and that their policies are designed to benefit us all. At the same time they work hard to convince us that their opponents' schemes are class-inspired. The Labour Party damns the Tories as the rich man’s party; the Conservatives sneer that the Labour Party is obsessed with class bigotry. That is not the end of the confusion. Some people think that classes do not exist, others believe that they do exist but they are not sure where the divisions between them begin and end. They talk about lower middle and upper-working class and other, equally meaningless, divisions.

Now the only way to clear up confusion is to present the facts. What, first of all, is a class? It has nothing to do with how much a person may earn, nor the sort of job he does, nor the school he went to. A class is a group of people who are united, whether they admit to it or not, by a common economic interest. This means that in modern capitalist society people are split into two classes, each of them with opposing economic interests. In this situation, it is nonsense to talk of a middle class—a class with “middle” interests somewhere between the two. The two classes which exist today are, on the one hand, those who have to work for a wage for their living and on the other those who can live without having to go out to work. The first of these—the working class have virtually no property in the means of producing wealth and for that reason are forced to rely on their wage to live. They sell their working ability to the other class —who, because they own enough stocks, shares, bonds, and so on, can live very well without having to work. The interests of capitalist and worker are opposed because one is a seller, and the other a buyer, of a commodity—the working ability of the worker.

It is a common fallacy that the gap between the classes is growing daily smaller. Yet there is obviously a pretty big gap between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the working people of Scotland—the miners, the dockers, the clerks, the farm hands and the rest. The evidence, in fact, says that the gap is as large as ever. The Ministry of Labour Family Expenditure Survey for 1962 gives some idea of what it means to be a member of an average working class family. In the year under review, the ‘families which had a weekly income of between £15 and £20 spent an average of £1 14s. 4d. a week on their housing, £5 7s. 10d. on food—and made what the Survey calls a “net loss” of 4s. 4d. on betting. We know, because these figures are pretty general for all of us, that this sort of expenditure does not allow a very opulent life. But that is all that the average member of the working class can afford.

On the other side of the gap it is a very different story. Last September a young heiress lost her life m a sailing accident off the South Coast. Although she was only 21 when she died, she left a net amount of £82,309—which is far more than any worker can ever dream of earning. A classless society? The Earl of Harrington recently put up for auction his family seat, Elvaston Castle, and the 4,500 acre estate that goes with it. This estate includes three villages. This sale, which was worth over a million pounds to the Earl, will not leave him homeless. He owns 5,000 acres and will be going to live in his other place in County Limerick. These are only two glimpses at life on the other side of the gap. We may not exactly know, but we can take a guess, at what that life is like and at the sort of expenditure the people, on that side can afford. It will not be anything like that of the average family under the Ministry of Labour's microscope.

It is obvious on which side Sir Alec is. He is a member of the capitalist class who also happens to lead a government which avowedly stands for capitalism. The Labour Party may not have many leaders to compare with Home's aristocratic background, but this does not alter the fact that they also stand for capitalism. In fact, what matters is not whether the men who run the private property system of society are blue-blooded or bear the blue scars which prove that they once sweated and suffered down a coal mine. Experience has told us that the ex-miner runs capitalism as ruthlessly as any Tory nobleman. The important thing is what each of them stands for.

Capitalism, by its class ownership of the means of living, its inequalities and its privileges, perpetuates the class system. It is hypocrisy for a party to say that they are opposed to class privileges while they stand for the social system which fosters them. And all the capitalist parties are guilty of this. All of them, in whatever accent, pay lip service to human equality. And all of them in fact support the world in which the masses are condemned to the paltry and the shoddy while a small minority own the land we walk over, the things we work with, almost our very lives themselves. This minority live, to put it mildly, very well off the masses. Perhaps, of a night, they offer up an extra prayer—I’m alright, Alec; do your best to keep it that way.

Douglas-Home has no proposals to alter this state of affairs and neither have his Labour and Liberal opponents. If class society is to be brought to an end, the first essential is that the nonsense has to stop. But capitalist parties thrive—indeed they live—on nonsense. If the working class were to see through it all—now that would really make history and Alec would no longer be alright.

Ivan

Who needs leaders? (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Major looks like he’s in deep trouble with his party. But what difference does a change of leadership make to the operation of Capitalism?

Who would you like to be Prime Minister of Great Britain? Or leader of the Labour Party? Of the Liberal Democrats? And when you have made your choice ask yourself why — not why you chose that particular person but why you bothered to make a choice. Ask yourself what persuaded you that whoever is nominally in charge of things makes any noticeable difference to what happens to us.

We ask these questions in response to the present void in both Conservative and Labour parties, in which they are wracked with doubt over whether their recent choice of leader was advisable. In both parties the doubts have triggered off the usual frenzied but surreptitious campaigning by aspirants to the leadership, while they all deny any such ambitions and profess undying loyalty to the leader.

This is especially noticeable in the Tory Party because, as the government, their mistakes, disputes and obvious impotence to control capitalism are so clearly exposed. This is not good for John Major, who came to be Prime Minister on the assumption — which he encouraged — that his government's style would be different from Thatcher's and that this would ensure it would be more successful in tackling current problems like unemployment, housing, shortage of medical services and so on. His lack of success makes it embarrassing for Tories to remember his promise in November 1990, to lead "a nation at ease with itself.

After nearly three years of his government whatever the nation is at case with it is not John Major, whose popularity is at the point where it causes friction in his and a campaign lo replace him much as Thatcher was replaced. One seasoned MP tells of the day when a senior Tory minister advised him never to forget that loyalty was the party's secret weapon. Of an enquiring mind, this MP soon realized that the opposite is the ease — that the Tories are as disloyal and ruthless when they decide their leader is likely to lose them seats in parliament. When it gets down to it that is why Thatcher had to go and why Major’s job is in jeopardy.

The relentless and fruitless search for the perfect leader is, like so many of the delusions which bolster the capitalist system, clearly influenced by prejudice. For example, nothing in a leader appeals to British people so much as an apparent firmness of purpose. But when that same characteristic is shown by an "enemy" leader — like Saddam Hussein, it is a very different matter. Saddam, says the prejudice was not firm and consistent in his policies; he was mad, just like all the other bogeymen of the Sun and similar papers.

In any case, how valid are the memories of Thatcher single-handedly beating off all those mad, grasping foreigners and doing something called "putting the great back in Great Britain"? The decline of British capitalism since the First World War has done much to fashion the political history of this country. In one way or another every government has had to accept, and work with, that reality. Some have done this more readily than others; some have skilfully practised deceit on the issue, so that the voters were convinced they were not doing what they were.

Part of this deceit has been in the speeches of leaders who have suggested that the decline in British power was avoidable and that they could reverse the trend. This posture has not been confined to the Tories; Harold Wilson, especially during his first spell in power, consistently talked about British power and the British economy forcing their way to the top in the world. At times he was so absorbed in this crazy notion that his voice lost its Yorkshire twang and took on a Churchillian growl when he spoke about it.

The idea is to conceal reality so that all those voters who are deluded into thinking that if Britain is a super power they will become super-workers will gratefully vote for a Wilson or a Thatcher. For her entire period in Number Ten Thatcher was one of the cleverest at hiding the reality and persuading British workers that it could be avoided. That was why so many of them voted for her. But the deception is self-perpetuating because it reinforces the notion that the decline — or the rise — of a capitalist power is not a matter of history but of political policy. The assumption is then that the collapse of the British Empire would not have happened had it not been for feeble egalitarians such as Clement Attlee is mistakenly supposed to have been. It is a delusion which does not help to understand the place and the function of leaders nor what happens under capitalism.

And that brings us to the crucial question of how useful are leaders. Do they really change the course of events? One field in which they are confident they have control is the economy. When things are going badly — when British capitalism is in recession or a financial crisis — the Chancellor of the Exchequer assures us that they have the remedy; trust them and all will be well. And when things are going well — when there is a boom — they claim the credit, saying it is due to their skill and intelligence.

About a year ago British capitalism went through a crisis which has come to be known as Black Wednesday. It was a day when a panic-stricken Chancellor (who, as one of those clever political leaders, is supposed never to gel in a panic) ended a succession of juggling with interest rates by withdrawing sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This was supposed to be yet another example of politicians’ skill but in fact it happened only a short while after the Chancellor — the hapless Norman Lamont — and John Major had lectured us on the theme that the only way to prosperity for us all was lo keep sterling in the ERM. They were in no doubt about this quite sure that sterling would not be taken out of the ERM. Now many Tory politicians are asserting that the withdrawal is an example of their cleverness and that things for British capitalism are better as a result. For example, Norman Lamont is now very clear on the issue, urging “the Prime Minister to stand up and say once and for all that Britain should never again have anything to do with a single currency. Then we could all sing in the bath" (Well he was writing in the Sun).

Parasitic minority

Different conclusions have been drawn from that muddle, as from all the other episodes of similar chaos which regularly burst on the scene, stimulating more speeches, lectures and promises from political leaders. But only one conclusion fits the facts. No matter how clever and learned leaders may be, they can have no significant effect on how capitalism works and how it affects us. This social system works to its own priorities, to the benefit of a small parasitic minority. It cannot be controlled or manipulated. The cleverer leaders may be able to conceal this for a time; the not so clever — like Lamont and Major — can’t conceal it and that is why they arouse such contempt. To choose one leader against another is to choose one style of futility before another. It would be better to abandon the whole sorry mess and opt instead for efficacy for our own ability to change society so that we operate it, trusting ourselves to run the world for ourselves.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Death of a Buffoon (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quintin McGarel Hogg, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone in the City of London, who was “a sweet, dear man” (Woodrow Wyatt); a “political genius” (Harold Macmillan); a “cantankerous old man” (Margaret Thatcher); “a gentleman” (himself) died last month. He was 94 years old and his life was richly productive of the kind of material beloved of fawning obituarists, who did him full justice. By the time we had absorbed that he was a kind, effervescent, clever, intellectual giant we could only wonder how the world would survive without him. Could it really go on, with its wars and disease and poverty, untouched by the death of one of capitalism’s more arrogant and volatile politicians? Should we not reproach ourselves for failing to value this paragon more appropriately when he was alive? Except that Hailsham, was not quite like his admirers make him out to be.

He came of a family of lawyers and politicians and ended his career in politics seemingly welded to the Woolsack, holding the job of Lord Chancellor longer than anyone since the days of Lord Halsbury at the end of the 19th century: “. . . he couldn’t go on being that for ever” said an exasperated Margaret Thatcher when she was contemplating removing him from that office. His father held the same job in the 1920s and was the MP for St. Marylebone. His son Douglas is an MP and has held some minor ministerial jobs – although not to wide acclaim or without controversy. A daughter is a High Court judge. The Hogg family looks likely to carry on into infinity, producing volatile eccentrics who are willing to play their part in running British capitalism in the interests of the class they are born into.

Eton and All Souls

Hailsham was educated at Eton; where else could a boy like him have gone to school? He was said to be the cleverest pupil there, too clever for some of the masters and he was fully aware of it, being known as “. . . a disagreeable boy, academically clever, but emotionally arrogant and extremely self-centred”. Of course he was elected to Pop, that self-appointed aristocracy above the aristocrats of the school. Members of Pop wore fancy waistcoats and walked about arm in arm, they were fawned on by many of the masters and feared among the other boys for their arbitrary powers of flogging and the enforced servitude known as fagging. Clearly, Eton had little to teach the young Hailsham (or Hogg, as he was then, before succeeding to the title) about asserting himself as a member of the ruling class. He was notorious for the gusto and frequency with which he beat other boys (his half-brother, Edward Marjoribanks, was “passionate” about it and had a reputation for sadism). It was a useful education in guiltless suppression of anyone classified as socially inferior.

After collecting a succession of prizes at Eton which proved how clever he was Hailsham went to one of the more traditional of Oxford colleges, got a first class degree and was accepted as a Fellow of All Souls. This is a kind of Pope of the university, although more sober and industrious. It was founded in 1437 with the main purpose of praying for the dead (part of its landholdings include Willesden Junction, a grimy part of North West London where the inhabitants need rather more than prayers to give them some hope). Hailsham began his time among the brains of All Souls as a “Screw”, whose job was to decant the after dinner port which was drunk in such quantities. Places like All Souls, with their exclusivity and their rituals, play a part in informing the working class that they must accept their inferior status in society, the running of which should be left to their betters. How reliable a concept this is can be judged by the kind of politician to have passed through those privileged doors – recent examples were Keith Joseph and John Redwood, who have gone down in history as eccentric blunderers. We shall see how Hailsham measured up to the popular expectations of him.

Suez

He burst onto the political scene as Conservative candidate in a bye-election at Oxford City in 1938, supporting the Chamberlain policy of “appeasement” of Nazi Germany against an all-party candidate. This took some living down later, when appeasement became a nasty word and Chamberlain was universally unpopular. Hailsham survived the war with a slight wound and continued as an MP with a reputation as a kind of verbal blunderbuss in his attacks on the Labour government. Some time after the Tories won power he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, which pandered to his need to behave like an attention-seeking adolescent. But behind his posturing the fact was that, although he was one of the Service ministers he was kept in the dark about the secret negotiations between Britain, France and Israel which laid the plans to justify the Suez invasion. Hailsham denounced the Egyptian take-over of the Suez Canal as “wholly illegal” (as if such concepts are of the slightest consequence in capitalism’s wars) and never doubted that Britain and France were right to “intervene” (as he called it) in the war between Israel and Egypt. It was not the most penetrating analysis of that sordid affair.

Under Macmillan’s prime ministership Hailsham, who succeeded to the title when his father died in 1950, was given the kind of jobs which could have paved his way to the top. Appointed party chairman, he seized the opportunity to engage hysterically with the membership. In 1957 at the Tory conference in Brighton he made his first appearance in the early morning on the beach, wearing baggy trunks and plunging briskly into the sea for a swim. It was not coincidence that he was accompanied (although not into the water – there are limits to the call of duty) by a posse of newspaper hacks. At the end of that conference Hailsham grabbed the chairman’s bell and rang it in a frenzy, declaiming the poet’s words about who the bell tolls for – meaning the Labour Party. The party faithful loved it, stamping their feet and cheering but others – particularly his rivals in the party – were sourly uneasy at his vulgar publicity-seeking.

Flat Cap

This behaviour was rewarded in 1963 when Hailsham was given not one, but two, jobs involving responsibility for sport and for injecting some hope into the North East, where unemployment was at 4.5 percent compared to 2.4 percent nationally. The region’s most important industries – steel, shipbuilding, coal – were in decline. Hailsham was not a sportsman – he regarded the very idea of a minister of sport as akin to fascism – and he was not an economist. This did not disqualify him from holding the jobs but it did make the appointment look like a typical piece of Macmillan gimmickry. Hailsham did nothing to dispel this by touring the region wearing the kind of flat cap usually seen in working men’s clubs, or the dole queues. Later he tried to explain this away as a matter of chance; he had left his bowler hat in his car in London and was offered a choice of a pork pie hat or the cap. He chose the cap because it would be useful when he was out shooting. But the impression endured, that he was either making fun of the hard-pressed workers there or was clumsily trying to convince them that in spite of his Eton education and his large house in Sussex he was really one of them. “I do not pretend” he wrote later “that the plan (which he drew up after his visit) succeeded to the extent that my visit to the North East permanently solved the chronic difficulties of the region”. Well no, it didn’t but at least he got a nice new cap out of it, for his times on the grouse moors.

Later that year his big chance arrived, when Macmillan decided to resign and the Tory party descended into the kind of frenzied back-stabbing which should have had no place in what was called, in the days before Thatcher, the gentleman’s party. It all happened at their 1963 conference where, after Macmillan’s announcement, the atmosphere was, according to William Rees Mogg, “ugly”. Hailsham was Macmillan’s first preference as his successor but he had to get rid of his title and return to being plain Mr. Quintin McGarel Hogg. Without following the custom of first informing the rest of the cabinet he launched his bid for the top job in a carefully stage-managed announcement at the end of an otherwise dull meeting, which erupted into hysterical applause at the news. Randolph Churchill roamed the conference pinning large badges with the letter Q onto anyone unwise enough to stand still within arms reach. Hailsham got himself photographed spoon feeding his one year old child in the hotel foyer. All of this was not to Macmillan’s taste and so from the chaos of ugliness emerged the unlikely figure of Douglas-Home. Hailsham had blown it.

Relief

Which must have been a relief to the many people who had him correctly summed up, not as a genius but an arrogant buffoon, isolated by his conceit from the real world around him. Throughout his life he was buoyed up by the assumption that he and the rest of his class were superior, born to rule in the best of all possible worlds which is capitalism. The rest of us should only be grateful that there are people like Hailsham who are willing to exploit, degrade and ridicule us. To anyone concerned for society and its people Hailsham will not be missed.

Ivan

Tories : No holds barred (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like someone picking at a scab, the Tories seem unable to forget their leadership controversy.

Even the declarations of unity—almost every weekend at least one Conservative M.P. tells a meeting somewhere what a sound fellow Sir Alec Douglas-Home is—only draw attention to the fact that the controversy is still going on. The most ardent of speeches merely succeeds in suggesting that, if Home were not under fire, there would be no need for such a show of loyalty towards him.

It is, in fact, an established tradition—and one with good political reason—in the Conservative Party always to do their best to present a united front against all comers. Sometimes, it is true, we get a glimpse of knives flashing in the background behind this front; but generally the Tories do not treat us to the spectacle of the glorious public rows which the Labour Party have indulged in.

The Tories have always posed as the gentleman’s party, implying that, whatever the difficulties, they know how to behave themselves. This should deceive nobody. Precisely because they are a political party aiming to run capitalism, and especially because they are never far from the seat of power, the Conservatives, collectively and individually, must be as ruthless as anyone else.

They have had their share of leaders who have filled this particular bill for example Stanley Baldwin, who played the political game with a relentless cunning under the guise of a pipe-sucking, ruminative, honest countryman. More recently, too, the gentleman’s party have had their tough infighters. There was a lot of truth in the crack from Harold Wilson (who knows a thing or two about this subject himself) that whenever Macmillan, when he was Prime Minister, came back from abroad, Mr. Butler hurried to the airport to grip him warmly by the throat.

At the moment there is obviously a bitter struggle going on for the leadership of the Conservative Party. From some points of view this may appear as a battle between Maudling, Heath and McLeod for the succession after Home has gone. Whether or not this is true, a battle to succeed Home may of itself be enough to unseat him.

Sir Alec, it seems, wants to stay, although some political correspondents whisper that he is weary of it all and is only waiting for his troublesome underlings to decide who is to take his place and then he will fade away into the substantial shadows of Coldstream. It is possible that Home’s hand was forced into agreeing to the new method of electing future Tory leaders—something unknown in a party which, as befits gentlemen, has always relied upon discreet soundings rather than an open vote.

Home assured us that, although he was very pleased with the new election plan, he did not think highly enough of it to allow it to apply to himself. He, who came to the leadership through the customary processes of consultation, was not going to risk losing it all in a vulgar, demotic election. Perhaps there is some political sense in this. If Home agreed to stand, and was opposed, the split in the Tory ranks would be revealed for all to see. If he stood and lost . . . but that simply does not bear thinking about, in the deep leather armchairs of the Carlton. Better to leave the whole beastly thing alone.

The election plan was conceded only after a long period of agitation. Men like Mr. Humphrey Berkeley were the frontrunners in this, but behind the scenes there must have been more powerful—and more hopeful—voices also pressing for the same thing. Of course, when it was all settled all good Tories made the best of it, claiming that they had found an ultra-democratic method of electing their leader. They forgot that they had always insisted that the method they were abandoning gained a far clearer assessment of opinion in their party, and was therefore more democratic, than any simple election.

They also forgot—or ignored—the fact that leadership has nothing to do with democracy. All capitalist parties agree that it is necessary to have a leader, and that it is his job to lead. But this means that the leader must often go against popular wishes, for what is the point of having a leader to take decisions if he is also supposed to take orders from the people he is leading?

The Tories clear up this point very simply, by making no secret of the fact that they intend to run—and perhaps reform—capitalism from day to day as they think fit, with no reference to their members. The Labour Party used to have a different line. Their members were supposed to have a voice in deciding their policy; some of them may actually have thought that the decisions of a Labour conference would influence a Labour government. There is no room for doubt on this score now. Labour has made it clear that they will govern as British capitalism requires, and not at the dictates of their members, who are liable to get all sorts of woolly and inconvenient notions about keeping out of wars and sticking by election promises. Democracy, in other words has been put firmly in its place.

Home’s sudden elevation to the Premiership was attacked by many people, especially of course the Labour Party, on the grounds that he is an aristocrat. These attacks were based on the argument that aristocrats are bound to govern badly because they are aloof from the great mass of honest, horny handed people. The corollary of this is that political leaders who come from the ordinary people are sure to govern us wisely and equitably.

We do not have to work very hard to dispose of this delusion. Labour governments have always prided themselves in having more than one son of the toiling masses among their ranks. Sometimes these men have held top jobs, yet they have done them in much the same way as any High Tory aristocrat.

There was, for example, Jimmy Thomas, who was so proud of his engine driver background that he went around mislaying and misplacing as many aitches as he possibly could, much to the amusement of the opulent circles in which he moved. (He once complained, at a glittering social gathering, of having “an ’ell of an ’eadache”, whereupon the late Lord Birkenhead advised him to “go home and take an aspirate.”) Then there was Ernie Bevin, who cultivated the same habit, allied to a fondness for blunt speaking which recalled his beginnings as a farm labourer.

Neither of these men, when they were in power, did anything to encourage us to elect their like to office again. The interests of the British capitalist class had no more zealous defenders than they. They walked with kings but made sure that they did not lose the common touch, which was so useful at election times and when addressing the TUC.

All capitalist parties are wedded to the lie that this is the age of the Common Man. It is true that the Common Man sometimes gets to power, but when he does so he runs capitalism as ruthlessly—and often with a sight more cunning —than any landed lord. The Labour Party has always set the pace in propagating the lie, although nowadays their favourite badge is not so much the cloth cap as the scientist’s white coat. The Tories, too, are in on the deception. They produce tame trade unionists, and give them hopeless seats to fight at election time. They announced that their new chairman, Mr. du Cann, is an ex-grammar schoolboy. This was meant to convince us that they had a leader who had battled through the eleven plus to the sort of school which our own kids might go to. In fact, they were stretching the meaning of the term grammar school; the places where Edward Dillon Lott du Cann got his education—Colet Court and Woodbridge—represent something much more expensive than is open to the average working class child.

Thus, in many ways the dice may seem to be loaded against Sir Alec. Any mistakes he might make will be blamed onto his blue-blooded origins. Tory publicists do their best to cover up his faux-pas—his confession to doing his balance of payments sums with the aid of matches, his “little donation" speech, his half-moon glasses. They assure us that although Home may not have a great deal of political cunning, he is possessed of abundant integrity.

Those of us with longer memories, or with a thirst for the facts, will know that Home was one of the supporters of the 1938 Munich agreement, and that he needed something other than integrity when he was defending that agreement in the House. We also know that he was Secretary for Commonwealth Relations from 1955 to 1960, which means that he is firmly identified with the Suez double-cross, the Nyasaland fraud and all the other dirty deals which were pulled off during that period and subsequently, when he held higher office. In fact, one of the first things a capitalist politician must discard is his integrity.

In any case, honesty will not rescue Home. His position is insecure, there are hungry men waiting to pounce, and his party is in confusion. Amid this chaos, it is appropriate to state the facts on the leadership issue.

Leaders, whoever they are and whatever their party, exist because of the ignorance of their followers. But at the same time their actions must be confined within, and must not offend, that ignorance. At the present this does not cause any upsets because the people who are content to be led are also content to keep capitalism going.

But this means that the leaders, who often get power on promises to solve certain problems, are quite unable to keep their word. They must promise to safeguard peace at the same time as they are assiduously organising the production of weapons of war. They must promise to conquer capitalism’s economic upsets when in fact they have not the faintest idea of what to do about them.

It also means that they must cheat and lie; they must wholeheartedly engage in the ruthless game of politics. They must shake hands with their deadliest political enemy while keeping the other hand firmly on the safety catch—and while knowing that their enemy is doing the same. And all this must go on while they are professing, if they are Tories, to being a party of gentlemen, or if they are Labourites, to being the party of common humanity.

Mr. Enoch Powell, an M.P. who has the endearing habit of often blowing inconvenient gaffs which his colleagues find embarrassing in the extreme, once wrote:

. . . political purposes . . . are concerned with public opinion and the persuasion of large numbers. The politician’s business is not investigating and expounding facts for their own sake. Facts become relevant to his job only when people are ready to lake an interest in them, so that they become potential instruments of persuasion and action.

Sometimes the politicians succeed in convincing the working class that they are effective. Then they are canonised as great men. Often they fail. Then one leader is deposed, as Home may be deposed, to be replaced by another. But the essential of the situation—the repressive and degrading capitalist system- remains. The majority of people continue to be exploited and harassed and, peculiarly, to opt to stay like that.

As long as they have their leaders to show them the way into chaos, the workers are content. Home may go but the set-up which bore him and finished him will remain. The roundabout goes on and on, round and round, up and down. Only the man who is in charge of the engine changes occasionally. The sickening motion of the thing goes on, and will continue to do so until the passengers who are suffering from it all decide that they have had enough.

Ivan.

Greasy Pole: Pornography and Politics (2002)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kenneth Clarke was a Front Bench star in the Thatcher and Major governments – Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and all that – but he has now decided that he does not like the members of his own party. A lot of them, he complains, are elderly people who never attend meetings and vote after reading the Daily Telegraph – as if that kind of political self-instruction had not always been worth a hat full of Tory votes. One of Clarke’s aides – Nick Kent – has been more explicit in his dislike of the Tory grass roots: “nasty old people” was his description of the party faithful (who) “cannot be reasoned with”. These outbursts are not accidents; they have been provoked by those nasty geriatrics electing Iain Duncan Smith to the Tory leadership in preference to Clarke and to the fact that Clarke now senses the time has come for him to make another bid for the top job – which cannot be unconnected with a dawning awareness in the party that by choosing Duncan Smith they made a mistake of historic stupidity.

The reasons for Duncan Smith’s victory will be a field for endless analysis, which is probably only waiting for the Tories to lose the next election as decisively as they lost the last one. Perhaps it was in reaction against William Hague, who was notable for what Nick Kent called “a teenage cocktail of tabloid populism and raving anti-Europeanism”. Perhaps it was because, although Duncan Smith had upset quite a few people (like John Major) in the party he had done so for what they considered the right reasons, in contrast to Clarke and Portillo. Perhaps they simply took to Duncan Smith’s soldierly stiff upper lip, his smart suits, his background as an officer in the Guards. They must have forgotten that political leaders are not elected to be well-mannered and expensively dressed. What leaders must be good at is telling lies, twisting arms, blackmailing their supporters, convincing the electorate that a calamitous past was not their fault.

Retreat 

Some months after he got the job, Duncan Smith is plainly failing to turn his party round. He is in deep trouble, with political correspondents openly musing on the likelihood that at the next election the Tories will be reduced the third ranking party, behind the Lib Dems. So Duncan Smith should be looking over his shoulder, organising his retreat, setting up his rearguard or whatever it is they do in the Guards at such times. And to make things a little more difficult there is Clarke in pursuit, declaring that he is reconsidering his refusal to accept a shadow post under Duncan Smith: “Never say never in politics” he said, ” It depends what job and depends on what he (Duncan Smith) expects me to say about the policy of the party”. It might be asked, how Clarke reconciles this with his previous assessment of Duncan Smith as a “status quo” politician, one of the “headbangers” on the issue of Europe, who would send the party into a “lurch to the right”. Politicians are of course skilled at forgetting their former declarations of immutable principle if it will help them get into power. Clarke is not offering to support his leader but to line himself up for the leadership if, with a little help from Clarke, Duncan Smith should be ousted.

Clarke will have learned from history that it will not be that simple, that there will be other hopefuls sharpening their knives, a few of them – like the oily, odious Michael Howard – already well known. Other possible candidates will have to work a bit harder to get themselves known but so did Margaret Thatcher when she beat Ted Heath in 1975, when few people expected a woman to come through to lead the Tory Party, especially one who had been jeered at in the media as the minister who snatched away the schoolkids’ free milk. So step forward, as they say in the gutter press, Theresa May, who sits for the lush Thames-side seat of Maidenhead. It is apparent that she is being groomed for stardom, if that is how to describe being leader of this political rabble. Her publicity drive may or may not be assisted by her having a name very close to that of a celebrated queen of porn. Get onto the internet and search for Teresa (no h) May and you will be viewing some lurid, unreal images of a female who does not appear to be taking part in a dreary Commons debate. As a result Theresa (with the h) May has been invited to participate in some raunchy TV programmes and has received some pretty forthright correspondence meant for her near-namesake. A typical letter ” . . . asked (her) to expose herself in public, to do things with men that most of us wouldn’t consider in the privacy of our own homes, and to force herself into weird, unnatural positions for the camera”.

Porn Queen 

This raises a few questions. How justified is the outrage at being confused with a porn queen and at Teresa May’s way of earning her living? One thing which can be said is that she is perfectly open about what she does, which is some way better than politicians who, if they are at all interested in hanging on to their job, cannot be honest about their work. If they were honest they would have to own up to a persistent catalogue of deception and failure and in the end to their own inability to control, or even affect, the social system which they claim to be able to fashion to our benefit. And what, after all, can we name as pornography and who are the pornographers?

Theresa May is the daughter of a clergyman. She went to Oxford (like Thatcher) then worked in a bank. Her ambitions were clear early on; she was a councillor in Merton, had to go through the mill of contesting some hopelessly solid Labour seats, like North West Durham in 1992 and Barking in a 1994 by-election before, against some strong opponents, she won the nomination for the rock-solid Tory seat of Maidenhead. “Very bright, hyperactive and witty” was how Andrew Roth described her in the Guardian. “Sloane with City flash” was another’s less kind assessment. The parallels between her and Thatcher have been noted; a Eurosceptic, she may see her road to power in carrying on where the mad handbagger left off. In the Tory leadership fight in 2001 she was careful not to be too prominent about her support for Portillo. In any case Duncan Smith did not hold this against her and gave her the shadow job of Transport and Local Government, belabouring the hapless, floundering Stephen Byers.

Bearing in mind that one function of the pornographer is the selling of talents for questionable purpose, how do we assess Theresa May? What does this supposedly vibrant and capable woman have to offer about this society and what it does to people? So far her comments have been preoccupied with blaming the Labour government for policies which are simply a continuation of what the Tories did when they were in power. On 7 November she spoke out about the government’s suggestion that people might be encouraged to vote if it was made easier for them, by having polling booths in places like supermarkets. Her comments were less than original. The way to get people to vote was not, she said, by “inventing new electoral systems or new types of politicians . . .The underlying cause of voter apathy is growing cynicism with the political process . . .” This banality does not even approach the question of why voters should be cynical. One obvious reason is that experience of a Labour government has made it clear to thousands of people that there is no difference worth influencing a vote between the big parties. People who voted Labour in 1997 under the impression that they were opting for social change are now realising that they were wrong but they have no idea of any other way. That is the root of their cynicism.

Bombs and Poverty 

There is a kind of pornography in this social system, which has nothing to do with a few women being paid to perform a variety of sexual acts for the entertainment of others. The kind of socially organised, premeditated state violence that has devastated the wretched country of Afghanistan in the interests of the oil industry is a kind of pornography; it excites all manner of morbid responses which are stimulated and exploited by political pornographers like Blair and Bush. It is a kind of pornography that in this country, which our leaders assure us is a model of civilised advancement, a third of the children live below the official poverty line. It is a kind of pornography that voters should be cynical about the political system when they have the power to use it to transform society, to liberate the human race into a society based on human needs.

Meanwhile we are left with the same dreary procession of impotent leaders who tell us, one after the other, that the way forward is to hand over to them our power to change society so that they can keep it as it is. Major for Thatcher; Hague for Major; Duncan Smith for Hague; perhaps one day May for Duncan Smith. And that is just the Tory Party. The other Teresa May, and those who do the same work, do far less damage.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Private (?) Lives (2005)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political nerds will have found some excitement in the Tories’ leadership election, if only because of the possibility that it would repeat the mistakes of the recent past – like John Major, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith. Spending so many years in opposition has caused the Tory membership to ask the unbearable question of whether they are any longer the natural party of government – a nightmare from which, many of them have been hoping, the new boy David Cameron will awaken them. Perhaps Cameron’s rise in the Conservative Party announces that they have moved away from the Thatcherite style, as the favourite of estate agents and car salesmen. For Cameron, like Carrington, Whitelaw and Hurd before him, is a toff; he is related to the 6th Duke of Somerset, the 7th. Earl of Denbigh, the 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury and others of that ilk.

With so much blue blood in his veins it was entirely natural that he should go to Eton and then to Oxford, to Brasenose College where they expect everyone to be touched by “the tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority” (which is not meant to include Jeffrey Archer, who was an undergraduate there). Perhaps being superior led Cameron to join the Bullingdon, a club of upper class yobs whose only reason for existence is to drink and eat to excess in some defenceless restaurant before they smash the place up. As might be expected, Boris Johnson was in the Bullingdon; recalling an evening of their typical revelry, he refers to his fellow members as a “proud phalanx of tailcoated twits”. The idea is that after the Bullingdon had had their fun they would evade being arrested by offering to pay generously for the damage – a tactic denied to working class rowdies causing problems in their local Tandoori, who have to pay for the damage as well as being arrested, fined or even sent into custody. There is no record of how active Cameron was in the Bullingdon; in any case he obviously devoted some time to work as he emerged with a first class degree in something other than Criminal Damage, which was his passport into a job in the Conservative Research Department.

Ascent

From there he ascended the greasy pole – although this was not always smoothly. He was a “special adviser” to Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont when the financial strategy of the Major government lay in ruins and Lamont had to make his wretched announcement that British capitalism was getting out of the ERM. Then he worked at the Home Office under Michael Howard who became memorable, not as an effective Home Secretary but for his regular defeats by the judges and for the memory of his minister for prisons, Anne Widdecombe, that there was “something of the night” about him.

After a spell in what he called “industry” – the TV company Carlton Communications – and after the obligatory contest in a safe Labour Seat, in 2001 Cameron was selected to fight Witney for the Tories and at the election romped home. He was then closely involved in writing the Tory manifesto for the 2005 election, which was widely blamed for their third defeat through its concentration on the many negatives of Labour rule without persuading the voters that the Tories would be noticeably different. On the now-sensitive matter of drugs that manifesto declared: We will stop sending mixed messages on drugs by reversing Labour’s re-classification of cannabis as a less serious drug, changing it from Class C back to Class B.

Well times have changed and with them Cameron’s ideas; he now refuses to commit himself about re-grading cannabis and his aides say he prefers a full debate of the issue involving academics and doctors.

Privacy

Of course drugs are a delicate matter for Cameron, made even more so by his refusal to give straight answers to questions about him using them in the past.” I did a lot of things before I came into politics that I shouldn’t have done” was one of his evasions. Another was “I had a normal university experience…We’re allowed to have had a private life before politics in which we made mistakes and we do things that we should not and we are all humans and we err and stray”. That may have convinced the more gullible among the Tory party but it is not good enough. Using any controlled drug is breaking the laws which Cameron and the other MPs have laid down. He may try to avoid the matter by calling it part of his “private life”, which in any case happened some time ago, but this simply does not answer the question.

All over the country, every day, members of the working class are arraigned in the courts for using controlled drugs, or stealing, or breaking other laws made by the likes of Cameron. They are not allowed to excuse their offences by referring to them as part of their “private life” and as an outcome of their being human and so liable to err and stray.

It is also noticeable that Cameron is capable of taking refuge in the concept of a “private life” only when it suits him. For example he makes a lot of the fact that he has a sadly disabled son, who suffers from epilepsy and cerebral palsy and who is unlikely ever to be able to walk or talk. Cameron has made references to this child in terms which his listeners have found deeply moving, so that none of them ever asked whether a disabled child was not essentially a “private” matter not to be used to boost a politician’s desired image as a caring father, a man fit to be a parent to the entire nation. Then there was the matter of Cameron’s pregnant wife and of the TV publicised act of him fondly placing his hand on her anatomical bump while the audience swooned and the votes in favour of him as party leader mounted up.

Arm Twisting

It says something about the Tories’ panic and how desperate they are to erase bad memories, that they should promote an MP as inexperienced (although practised in cynicism) as Cameron as the man to become prime minister in a few years’ time. It may also say something about arm twisting and bullying behind closed doors, about cynical deals done in elegant Notting Hill houses and discreet restaurants. Among all this Cameron strives to persuade us that he is a new style of politician – candid, trustworthy, sincere – even if this is just like Tony Blair and his “I’m a pretty honest kinda guy”. But Cameron’s character and his motivation have been shown up in his campaign for the leadership, in the attempt to stifle inconvenient memories and the fashioning and selective exposure of his “private life” while asserting a right to protect it. A Cameron premiership would have nothing different to offer from all those wretched failures in the past. The most we can expect is that his wife, who is said to be a talented designer, does something to spruce up the wallpaper in Number Ten.

Ivan

Clarification: 

In the November Greasy Pole column we stated that the men who threw Walter Wolfgang out of the Labour conference were “beefy, enthusiastically respectful, Labour Party members”. This was spin put on the incident at first – that the stewards were party members, so amateurs, so if they went a bit over the top it was understandable… It quickly came to light that in fact they were hired “stewards” from some “security” company (perhaps with a target for the number of people ejected?).

Greasy Pole: Howard’s Beginning (2003)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among what is politely called the cut and thrust of politics the Tory Party has always taken comfort from the notion that, when all is said and done, they have the priceless asset of loyalty as their secret weapon. Anyway that is the kind of nonsense they dish out to the grass roots party members, presumably because they alone are crazy enough to believe it. Consider, for a start, the case of Iain Duncan Smith. As it became more and more obvious that the Quiet Man of Chingford could not survive much longer in the hot seat into which those same grass roots had thrust him, he tried again and again to put off the inevitable by appeals to party loyalty. In this he was supported by the majority of MPs, including some of the more prominent in the Shadow Cabinet. At that stage only a few were ready to put their heads above the parapet. And among those most loudly protesting their unswerving loyalty to their doomed boss were Oliver Letwin – and Michael Howard.

So strongly were these two driven by the passion of their loyalty that shortly before IDS was shown the door by the parliamentary party they allowed themselves to be photographed standing in support of him outside Conservative headquarters. The question is, was anyone really impressed by this? The body language and facial composure of both men did not suggest that loyalty was in the forefront of their minds. And that was how it really was because directly IDS had been deposed Howard announced that he was ready to offer himself, with all due modesty, as a candidate for the leadership. But he did this with a speed not to be expected in someone still grieving loyally for the lost leader. At the same time Letwin was busily negotiating a deal between Howard and his only real rival – David Davis – to ensure that Howard would be the only candidate. It was, as you might say, political business as usual.

Guilt

If either of these men was troubled by feelings of guilt at their double standards (and there is no evidence whatsoever that politicians are ever vulnerable to such distractions) they could have consoled themselves with the memory that in his day IDS himself was not famous for being loyal to his leader. He was, in fact, one of John Major’s “bastards” – a group of swivel-eyed Tories who plotted relentlessly against Major and his policies. In fact there is a case that when the leadership was being contested in 2001 it was the very fact that IDS had been one of the “bastards” which persuaded the grass roots to vote for him. Then there is the fact that, in the previous leadership election in 1997, Howard was outmaneuvered (a rare occurrence for him) by William Hague going back on an agreement between them not to stand. And what about the disloyalty of the parliamentary party towards the grass roots membership – all those patient, unfulfilled blockheads who stuff envelopes and organise coffee mornings but who were denied their chance to vote for a new leader? It seems clear that the underhand operations to get Howard as the only candidate were designed to avoid giving the membership a chance to elect another IDS. So much for party unity. So much for trusting the party members. So much for democratic elections. Well, we did say it was cut and thrust.

One reason the Tories were so keen on Howard was that he was about the only one with a public image; the others, like Letwin, Fox and Davis, are hardly known outside the party rubber chicken circuit. Howard was different; after all he had been a Home Secretary. Which was part of the problem because if anything he was rather too well known in an undesirable way. If he is remembered for anything it is for the cruelty with which he pursued anyone caught breaking the laws which protect capitalism’s right to legalized theft. This made him hugely popular with the grass roots in their conferences but it had the opposite effect on anyone at the sharp end of crime and the legal system. “Michael, stand and deliver” was how Jeffrey Archer (before he began his personal experience of the punishment which Howard was responsible for) introduced him at one conference. In response to which Howard brought the faithful to their feet with a rousing stimulation of their most hardened prejudices and delusions on the theme of “Prison works… I know what causes crime: criminals”. And in case there was any doubt about his opinions he chose as his minister for prisons that strange woman Anne Widdecombe, who justified his confidence in her by overseeing the shackling of women prisoners while they were giving birth.

Smirk

Whatever protest was aroused by incidents like these left Howard unmoved, his oily smirk undisturbed. In the view of a fellow minister he was a Home Secretary whose policies were “largely determined by the Conservative Party Conference…may have been the worst Home Secretary in the two centuries the office has been in existence”. (Since then we have had experience of Jack Straw and David Blunkett, who have put in a strong bid for that distinction). The fact that Howard’s family came to England in 1939 as refugees from the intensifying repression of Jews in Romania did not persuade him to speak out against the anti-immigration policies of the Thatcher government; nor did it make him protest against Thatcher’s raging about the country being “swamped” by immigrants. In the 1997 Conservative leader election Campaign he said that “Tories should not believe in ‘one nation’ policies but in ‘one British nation’ policies. All of this was in the cause of helping his bid to be leader of his party, eventually Prime Minister.

Then came the New Beginning. The prospect of leading the Tories, with the golden dream of upsetting precedent and winning power at the next election, wonderfully concentrated Howard’s mind. Something drastic was needed to get rid of that unfortunate image as the slippery darling of the Tory grassroots. The first priority was to embrace the concept of renewal: “Of course we have got to change” he announced, “The world has changed, the country has changed and we have to change”. A few days later he was giving his party the bad news of what that change entailed: henceforth they “…must be a party broad in appeal and generous in outlook”. He might have put it more simply: “Trust me, elect me”. This all provoked unhappy memories of Thatcher and her reference to St Francis: “Where there is discord may we bring harmony” and John Major drooling about presenting us with “a nation at ease with itself”. History will record that Thatcher’s government did not set out to introduce us to social harmony, or any other kind of it and Major became infamous for presiding over a nation so disturbed with itself that they blamed him enough to eject him emphatically from office at the first opportunity so that his party could then eject him from the leadership.

Charm Offensive

A lot of work, some of it in unexpected quarters, is being put into recasting Howard, to persuade us to forget the memorable description of him by Anne Widdecombe – who should have known – that there was “ something of the night” about him. We are being informed that we have cruelly misjudged the poor man. We thought he was a slimy, manipulative conspirator – just the kind of person to survive in the adversarial world of barristers which he inhabited – when all along he was, as one of his admirers put it, “Warm, charming and witty”. Even worse, in the Daily Telegraph of 1 November Anne Robinson took time out from being – well, Anne Robinson – to reassure us that when he was at Cambridge Howard was “a very fine lover” and that he has now grown up into someone who is “shy, witty and clever”.

The Labour Party are banking on the voters being resistant to this charm offensive and preferring to live with, and to vote on, their memories of the Michael Howard of old. But this may not be the wisest tactics for them. Every capitalist party has a murky past, populated by leaders whose responsibility for asserting the primacy of the ruling class has made them widely hated. If the workers had voted in the 1997 election with proper recall of the experience of previous Labour governments they would never have put Tony Blair into Number Ten. In 1979, if they had remembered what their life had been like under past Tory governments they would not have put themselves up for another dose of it. The leaders of capitalism personify the fact that it is a vicious, murderous, repressive way of organising human affairs. And capitalism relies for its continued existence on the defective memories and responses of the very people who suffer under it. There is no reason for Michael Howard not to benefit from this; we might yet see him realising his all-consuming dream of going through the front door at Downing Street.

Ivan

Press Exposure: Oo dun it? (1995)

The Press Exposure column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

"It's The Sun Wot Won It" was how Rupert Murdoch’s finest, in a page one full-frontal, analysed John Major's victory in the 1992 general election. This was the latest in the Sun's history of brilliantly impactful headlines—cheeky, in words of one syllable, hitting you in the eye will a roll-your-own, crude concept of something which you might otherwise regards as serious.

That front page said a great deal about how vulnerable the working class are to inducements to grievously abuse their power to make urgent fundamental changes in society. It also contributed to the delusion.So persistent among the press, that it can influence—even decide—the outcome of elections. This delusion must profoundly boost the egos of the press barons and the editors and the cynical hacks who write up those items and compose those artistically misleading headlines. Perhaps that is what encourages people like Murdoch and Conrad Black, and before them Robert Maxwell, to shell out millions to buy the papers.

There are, however, obvious flaws in this concept. To begin with, the press in this country overwhelmingly supports the Conservative Party so if the voters always voted as the papers advised the Tories would never lose any by-elections and there would never have been any Labour governments to pick up where the Conservatives had left off and Winston Churchill may well still be prime minister. Not that it would matter if he were, except to the morticians, because the notion that the lives of people who have to work for their living are affected in any significant way by which party they elect to try to control capitalism is just another of those stories in the papers which should not be believed.

On your bike

The most recent example of the news papers kidding themselves that they control large political issues was in the fight for the leadership of the Tory Party though this time they were primarily attempting to influence the rather small electorate of Tory MPs. The greater— and certainly the more popular—part of the Tory press were firmly opposed to Major. The Sun, wot done it for Major in 1992, has now decided that he "has loser written all over him. He is damaged goods". A screaming page one headline drove home the point that Tebbit had come out against Major: "On Your Bike, John." The front page of the Daily Mail was devoted to a cartoon of a sinking liner—the Torytanic—and the advice: “Time To Ditch the Captain." In what preens itself as the quality press the Times and the Daily Telegraph were keen for a change, with the Telegraph condemning Major as unlikely to alter his policies so "as to give the Tories a realistic prospect of winning a general election". There is no equivalent in elections to the Trades Description Act, but if there were disgruntled voters would have had grounds of complaint about this apparent exposure as an incompetent wimp of the man the press were urging us to vote for so recently.

Only the Daily Star, the Daily Express ("the voice of reason in a cacophony of extremist nonsense") and the Financial Times supported Major but their combined circulation is little more than half that of the Sun by itself. So it turned out that the press campaign had little effect on what is surrealistically known as the most sophisticated electorate in the world. (Anyone who has observed Honourable members prancing and preening before the electoral hoi polloi in the lobby or behaving like empty-headed disruptives in the House must wonder why they call themselves sophisticated, but never mind.). Although the Tories voted to keep Major there were enough who did not support him to make a significant body of irritants which must be eager to exploit his problems in the future, with or without the approval of the press.

Losers

What decides how an MP votes in a leadership election is whether the leader is a vote-winner or a loser. That was why the Tories ditched Heath and then Thatcher. The voters did not reject Thatcher, she had led the Tories to victory in three successive elections but by 1990 enough MPs were convinced that the Iron Lady was corrosive of their majorities to overthrow her. She said it was a funny old world and she wept real tears as she left DowningStreet but someone should have told her that this was politics. If the Tory press had been asked they might well have wanted to keep Thatcher, who had seen off Callaghan and Foot and Kinnock not to mention General Galtieri and a few hundred Argentinean sailors on the Bclgrano. But reality—the Tory confidence that they are the great election winning machine—intruded in the persons of the men in grey suits and, whatever the papers said, her time had come.

However loud the Tory papers screamed, Major won because he was the safer bet while Redwood could not reassure enough Tory MPs that their majorities would endure and flourish with him as leader. It was, in other words, not the papers but the MPs—fearful, ambitious, calculating—wot done it. 

Ivan

Editorial: That’s not all, folks! (2022)

Editorial from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the world looked on with bemused fascination as the UK Tory leadership attempted to handle the economy the same way the iceberg handled the Titanic, reminding everybody once again, as if Trump and Bojo were not lesson enough, that it’s possible for people to get into positions of power who really have no idea what they’re doing.

The markets dived, pundits gaped and soberer heads than Liz Truss, like Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, scratched their heads and wondered if the British state had been taken over by Warner cartoon characters. An anvil dropped on the old Chancellor after he pulled the trigger on his Trust the Market bazooka, Keir Starmer rocketed like Wile E. Coyote into the stratosphere and the Tory PM ran out of road and fell off a cliff. The new Chancellor, who had been hastily whistled up to deploy an Acme Damage Limitation gizmo, started unpromisingly by conceding in his first speech that ‘governments do not control markets’.

We’ve been saying all along that governments can’t do this, although never underestimate their ability to make things worse (see Cooking the Books, this issue). Markets don’t deliver public benefit, they deliver profit for a few and cause misery for many and destruction for the planet. And if they deliver an earthquake, governments normally prefer to blame the opposition, or the unions, or latterly Putin, or their own staff. You can hardly blame the system one minute, and then ask people to vote you into office to control the system the next. The fact that Jeremy Hunt has admitted this shows you what a desperate hole they were in. The only thing they can hope for come next election is a large dose of public amnesia.

Most people will simply shrug and say, that’s what happens when you put criminals or idiots in charge. The next lot will be better, they say, because they couldn’t be any worse. Experience suggests otherwise. Whole government institutions, not just leaders, can display surprising levels of incompetence, as we discover with the British intelligence services (see Spycatchers, this issue). And why follow leaders anyway? Much better not to put anyone in charge, but instead take collective charge ourselves (see Pathfinders, this issue).

The alternative left-wing media outlet Double Down News provided some fun in the form of an exquisitely venomous take-down of Truss and Kwarteng by former Daily Telegraph journalist Peter Oborne, in which he argued that the vainglorious duo had sold out common sense and political reality in order to promote the interests of their favourite hedge fund managers and super-rich oligarchs. But one wonders what he thinks political leaders do the rest of the time. Serving the interests of the rich and powerful is what all governments do, no matter how progressive and reformist their speeches might look, because once they’re in power they have to run capitalism and that means doing what the rich want them to. And that’s not all, folks. Until we get rid of this system, the capitalist cartoon disasters will run and run.