High Hopes
There is little doubt that the Labour Party’s mood of self-congratulation at what they see as their impending take-over of power is premature. Whatever optimism they can dredge from recent election results it would still need the kind of swing in voting preferences unknown in recent times for the Tory majority to be overturned. This last happened over forty years ago. after the exceptional intervention in capitalism's affairs which was the 1939-45 war. To begin with this postponed at least one general election and then wreaked havoc on Tory strongholds and on the complacency with which they had been defended. Even the most fervently deluded of Labour supporters is unlikely to think that it is worth another world war in order to get Neil Kinnock into Number Ten.
Another factor is that the recent rise in Labour’s electoral fortunes may be an effect of the Tories going through a bad patch; there is no reason to suppose that this will necessarily affect mass voting patterns at the next general election. Most governments in mid-term are assailed by doubts and desertions among its supporters. Trying to run capitalism, unpredictable and crisis-ridden as it is, means that every government upsets the people who have voted for it. However much these supporters may kick over the electoral traces, this is expected to be little more than a nudge of discontent which can be indulged in while there is no chance of turning the government out. It is a different matter, when a general election comes and the party faithful return to voting for the method of running capitalism with which they feel most comfortable.
To be blunt. this is all a matter of ignorance. Not that the people who vote Labour or Tory or SDP or whatever are unable to read or write or do their sums. It is a matter of failing to come to grips with the realities of capitalism. Class conflict, poverty, environmental pollution are typical of capitalism because they are rooted in the system's basis of private ownership of the means of production and distribution. That is why the system is out of control; no matter how fervently a government may wish to abolish social problems it is powerless to do so. Anyone who grasps that fact will almost certainly join the struggle for a social revolution. Those who—like the Tory doubters, like the Labour celebrants— have not grasped it will continue to misunderstand how capitalism really works and so will devote their time to a futile pursuit of the unattainable. In comparison, a kitten chasing its tail is a model of sanity.
Sellafield sex symbol
The Labour Party stand to gain, or lose, from that ignorance according to which direction the prejudices are pointing at any time. At present, for example, they are assuming that the growing Green vote can be persuaded without too much difficulty to switch to supporting Labour. If that were true it would indicate a serious lack of consciousness. not to say of consistency, among the Greens, for the record of Labour governments on the issue of pollution and the environment is no better than that of the Tories and should certainly not impress anyone with any concern about the planet and its survival. Indeed, when Labour was last in power there was a general failure even to acknowledge in any useful way that the environment was under threat. While the Labour government was obsessed with the more intense exploitation of the workers, the more efficient production of goods and the more competitive bid to capture markets, it was left to a few derided eccentrics to voice warnings about what all this was doing to the environment and to socialists to carry this case farther, to the conclusion that it was one of the counts on which capitalism stood indicted and one of the reasons for abolishing the system.
So the Labour Party—not for the first time—is in some difficulty over a matter in which human interests really leave no room for argument. Their problem is neatly encapsulated in the person of their Shadow Environment Minister, Dr Jack Cunningham. A few years ago. in a fit of desperation remarkable even for them, the Labour Party publicity machine tried to inflate Cunningham as a public persona with gusts of spurious glamour. Here, apparently, was Labour's next election winner In what was clearly meant to be its master stroke, the campaign described Cunningham as a political sex-symbol (Saatchi and Saatchi would have been aghast). The problem for the sex-symbol, however, is that while he is Shadow Environment Minister he is also the MP for the seat covering the Sellafield nuclear power station which, after its disastrous fire in 1957 and its consistent murder of the local beaches and of the Irish Sea, is not considered to be environment-friendly. As his job is to police the environment Cunningham might be expected to support the move to shut Sellafield down but to do so would assuredly cost him the votes of the workers there, who would have to find some other employer to exploit them if the plant shut. So Cunningham has to walk a thin, swaying tightrope on the issue—and, it must be said, does it with the kind of skill required for survival in the cynical and degrading art of deception Sexy Jack's job is to keep one eye on the environment and one on his votes and it is all too clear which of these has the higher priority for him.
Low Tories
While we are on the subject of sexual allure—or rather what passes for it—we might remember that it is not long ago (during the last election, actually) that we were being told about Thatcher's sexuality and how she applied it to get her own way. Those were the days when it seemed she could do no wrong in the business of capturing votes for capitalism, even lecturing the Russians on their own TV about how to run the system over there. Things have gone somewhat awry for the Tories since then so that their present preoccupation is with stiffening their wilting supporters, who suddenly have doubts about the glories of the Thatcherite paradise of privatisation. Thatcher's contribution to this process of stiffening has been, in spite of her reputation for being daringly innovative, rigidly traditional. She has. in other words, reshuffled her government, sacking a few ministers here, promoting a few there and stringing the process out over two days so that it got the maximum publicity. The idea behind this, apart from clearing away a few more dissidents, is to convince the workers that Downing Street has the situation under control and that whatever the current problems, it only needs some changes of personnel for them to be alleviated.
Also traditional is the Tories explanation for the reshuffle: that their policies remain effective but have not been properly publicised so that the people have misunderstood what is happening to them. The unemployed have been imagining that they are out of a job: people who depend on state benefits for their survival have not really experienced cuts in their income or found it even more difficult and baffling to get the money. The growing army of homeless workers are not actually without anywhere to live. It's just that the Thatcher government have been let down by their public relations. Now that bumbling Geoffrey Howe has been replaced as Foreign Secretary by thrusting, self-made John Major we shall all be consumed with gratitude for the bounteous age of Tory government
The ministers sacked by Thatcher went on their way in remarkably compliant mood. Not a hint of thwarted ambition nor of jealousy for preferred rivals disfigured the letters in which they grovelled in gratitude for being chopped. In reply. Thatcher wrote to them with great dollops of praise for their brilliance, their skill, their strength and deep regret at their departure from the government. It was almost as if Thatcher had not been responsible for them being sacked. And if they were so successful and indispensable, why were they thrown out?
In fact the letters were not written to the sacked ministers but to the millions of workers who are regularly duped into voting for capitalism and considered to be fit subjects for this kind of blatant deception.
Ivan
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