Brave New Tory World? (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the General Election in May the voters, after five years of capitalism run by the Labour Party, decided by nearly 14 million votes to 11½ million that they prefer to have it run by the Tories. Who are these Tories? Peregrine Worsthorne, a Tory supporter, tells us:

 In terms of personal wealth Mrs. Thatcher’s government does not compare all that badly with pre-war Tory administrations, or even 19th century ones. It is quite marvellously well-heeled. Most of its members have either made, married or inherited splendid fortunes. Some are even the proud owners of great ancestral country estates. [It is] encouragingly full of hereditary peers, self-made and hereditary millionaires, wealthy landowners, scholarly products of Oxbridge, headed by a lady who has married money.

(Sunday Telegraph, 13 May 1979)

So what difference will it make to have a Cabinet full of rich people in place of the Labour Cabinet, which had only some rich and very rich men? To the living standards of the working class it will make no difference at all; what happens to them is the result of capitalism itself, not of the party labels of the ministers.

Right Policy
That is, of course, not the way the Tories or the Labour Party see things. They both believe that a government by adopting the right policy, can guide capitalism into a course of continually expanding production, low unemployment and a stable price level; where they differ is about what is the right policy.

The Tory line is to cut government expenditure (but not on armaments), reduce income tax, and increase VAT. The chief argument behind it is that manufacturers, retaining a larger amount of profit, will more readily invest, expand production and employ more workers. Sir Keith Joseph, Minister for Industry, declared during the election campaign: “Cut government expenditure by £400 million a year and unemployment will decrease.” On the other hand, the Labour Party believe that the way to reduce unemployment is to increase government expenditure. The TUC sent a deputation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer stating the case for the government to spend more. And the National Association of Local Government Officers published its own plan calling on the government to spend £7,200 million more in the next three years, which would, they say, reduce unemployment to 800,000.

The rival policies ignore past experience, which shows both of them to be a delusion. In the 19th century, government expenditure in relation to total national income was only a fraction of what it is now, but it did nothing to prevent continuing unemployment and periodical crises and depressions, with unemployment rising to peak levels. And under the recent Labour administration, government expenditure rose from £20,000 million in 1973-4 to £44,000 million in 1977-8. Unemployment did not fall; it rose by more than 800,000.

The only reason some governments seem to be more successful than others is that some have the luck to come into office when a depression is lifting. The unlucky ones come in at the start of a depression. There is, however, one thing governments can control — inflation. Liberal and Tory governments ran capitalism without inflation for a hundred years before 1914, and some of the Tory ministers have said they intend to get back to that state of affairs. It remains to be seen whether they will have their way. The Tory leaders arc not united on this, and every government since World War II has started off with promises to curb the rise of prices. At the October 1974 election, the Labour programme said: “The first priority must be a determined attack on inflation”, and the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had explained in his Remedies for Inflation how he would do it. Hie method, he said, was to have a balanced budget, obviating the need for government borrowing. In the event, the Labour government in 1978 borrowed about £8,000 million. The new Tory government has, however, ended the farcical attempt at holding down prices by the Price Commission. Its total effect was estimated to have been to keep the price level one-half of one per cent lower than it would otherwise have been: this after the same government had put up prices by over one hundred per cent in its five years of office.

Conflict
Cutting government expenditure rests heavily on reducing the size of the Civil Service and local government services, bringing the government into conflict with all the unions involved. Another area of conflict with the unions is the government’s intention to tighten up the law on picketing, outlaw the closed shop, and require unions to pay more towards the maintenance of strikers' families instead of relying wholly on Social Security.

The Thatcher government is also giving prominence to an attack on the Labour Party’s sacred cow, nationalisation, and intends to sell off parts of the nationalised industries and some of the government’s shareholdings in private companies, including British Petroleum. It will be a rallying point for Labour Party and trade union opposition to the government, but it contains nothing of concern to the working class. Nationalisation — or state capitalism — does not alter their position in capitalist society, it is immaterial whether they are exploited by private companies or government-appointed boards.

The outgoing Prime Minister warned that the Tory government will be a “national catastrophe”. Capitalism is always a catastrophe for the working class, and how will the Tory variety differ from the Labour one? Will employers, with government backing, try to keep wages as low as possible and only employ workers when they can make a profit out of it? But so they always did. Will the Tory government try to smash strikes by invoking emergency powers and using troops as strike-breakers? But so did the Callaghan government. Will ministers cross picket lines and encourage others to do so? But so did Callaghan. Will unemployment increase by hundreds of thousands as it did under the Labour government? Will private companies and nationalised industries close down unprofitable sections of their industries and make workers redundant, as they have done in the past five labour-governed years? Will the Tories propose amendments of trade union law against the interests of the unions, as did the Wilson government with its In Place of Strife Bill in 1970? Will the Tories ‘confront’ the unions, as did Callaghan in the massive strikes of the early part of 1979? Will the Tories inspire a 'wage freeze’, as Mrs. Thatcher says she may do? If so, they have the precedent of the Wilson six-month freeze of 1966. Will the Tories manage to keep wage increases below the rise of the cost of living so that the workers’ standard of living falls, as happened in the years 1974 to 1977 under Labour?

Nothing that can happen under the Tories will be new: it has all happened before under Labour government.

Edgar Hardcastle