The Chumocracy (2022)

Book Review from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chums. By Simon Kuper. Profile Books. 2022. £16.99

Simon Kuper is a writer and columnist for the Financial Times, specifically the FT Weekend magazine. He was also the co-author of Soccernomics, which analysed the finances and tactics of modern football as they have emerged in western Europe in recent decades.

Kuper is an excellent writer, arguably one of the best, and while his politics is not ours, he is a provocateur who thinks seriously about current affairs and trends, always looking for unconventional angles to analyse familiar issues. And in Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, he has done it again.

For a start, 11 of the 15 post-war Prime Ministers (at the time of writing) went to Oxford. And five of these went to the very same school, Eton. In the 1980s and early 90s a group of politically minded students were at Oxford at similar times and Kuper – who was at Oxford himself then – has dissected their influence, political trajectory and growing power.

The incubating role of the Oxford Union debating society for toffs and aspiring toffs is paramount, the infamous and élite Bullingdon Club that Johnson, Cameron and Osborne were part of arguably less so, but Kuper chronicles it warts and all. His key insight is about Brexit, because in many ways it was at Oxford at this time that Brexit was conceived. Patrick Robertson, the founding secretary of the Bruges Group, was prominent at Oxford in this period, as was fellow Tory and later MEP Daniel Hannan, who set up a similar organisation of his own and was also to help Michael Spicer found a grouping of anti-EU MPs that became the European Research Group. Alongside these came Dr Alan Sked’s Anti-Federalist League, the forerunner of UKIP – and hence an entire Brexit ecosystem was formed.

The later role of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in Brexit has been well documented and Kuper does not spare them:

‘Brexit was the sort of grand cause that Johnson and Gove had lacked all their political careers. It would give them a chance to live in interesting times, as their ancestors had… It would be a gloriously romantic act, like the Charge of the Light Brigade, only with less personal risk. The Oxford Tories would reclaim parliamentary sovereignty, the birthright of their caste, from the Brussels intruders. In private, they understood that Brexit might not work out brilliantly, but Britain had no natural predators and would survive even a blunder’ (p.160).

Whatever we may think of the Brexit/Remain debate and its ultimate futility, Kuper spots trends that others have missed here. Fascinatingly, there is a close alignment between the subjects that Oxford politicos studied and their subsequent position on the issue. Of the prominent Remainers that were at Oxford nearly all studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) – Cameron, Hunt, Hammond, Hancock, Truss, etc as well as the Milibands, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper and in an earlier period, Mandelson. Yet as Kuper explains:

‘By contrast, all the leading Tory Brexiteers studied backward-looking subjects: classics for Johnson, history for Rees-Mogg and Hannan, and ancient and modern history for Cummings. Gove’s degree was English, which mostly meant the canon’ (p.40)

The overwhelming sense here is of a group of privileged Tory students who thought of themselves as rule-makers not rule-takers, and who were looking for the next grand project once Thatcherism was complete, and one that could hopefully restore their birthright and entitlements. That they succeeded as much as they did is a remarkable testament to the UK’s enduring class system and its networks into business and the press. But as they say, all political careers ultimately end in failure – and this cohort of political careerists has clearly been no exception.

Dave Perrin

Cooking the Books: Levelling Up (2022)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Introducing the government’s Levelling Up White Paper in the House of Commons on 2 February, Michael Gove declared that it ‘sets out our detailed strategy to make opportunity more equal and to shift wealth and power decisively towards working people and their families’.

Steve Baker, the Tory MP for ‘Singapore-on-Thames’, denounced the White Paper as ‘socialist’ and as a policy ‘that would not be out of place in Labour’s manifesto’ (bit.ly/3Ls1r6f).

Actually, it had already appeared in a Labour Party manifesto, that for the October 1974 general election, which ended:

‘We are a democratic socialist party and our objective is to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families.’

So Baker had a sort of point, except it is wrong to describe either Gove’s White Paper or the Labour Party as ‘socialist’. The Labour Party may stand for political democracy (though it is not organised democratically internally) but it has never been a socialist party. It used to once stand for nationalisation but that was only state capitalism. It has always talked about standing for redistributing wealth to working people but that’s reformism as it assumes the continued existence of the rich, and has never worked for long as the operation of the capitalist economy reverses any moves towards this, geared as it is to continually bring about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few.

Labour won the October 1974 election but, capitalism being capitalism, they were unable to deliver on that declaration. That was a year after the post-war boom had come to an end and the Labour government’s attempt to spend its way out of it led only to stagflation. Far from redistributing wealth in favour of workers the government tried to impose an incomes policy to keep wages down.

What Gove proposes is all smoke and mirrors. Shifting power to working people turns out to be giving local politicians more say in how central government money should be spent in their area, while shifting wealth to working people is not putting any money in their pocket but spending more on infrastructure, education, health and housing in the chosen areas instead of in London and the South East (whose ‘working people’ are presumably considered to already have enough wealth and power). Anyway, it’s not supposed to happen until 2030, by which time it will be only be remembered as another broken promise.

It is hard to believe that Gove, who had been a well-informed political journalist before becoming an MP, did not deliberately choose to use the phrase ‘shift wealth and power to working people and their families’. This would be to rub in the Labour Party’s face that the present Tory government had stolen their clothes. Already in an article in the Daily Telegraph on 1 January last year Johnson himself had praised the discovery of the AstraZeneca vaccine as an example of a successful collaboration between ‘state activism’ and ‘free market capitalism’. State activism is what the likes of Baker oppose (and mistakenly regard as socialism) but it’s traditionally been Labour Party policy.

As, having abandoned state capitalism as their long-term goal, Labour now accepts that the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ should remain in the hands of private corporations, it too accepts the operation of capitalist market forces. So, it really is ‘Labour, Tory, Same Old Story’. No wonder the Labour Party has nothing much else to do than criticise the Prime Minister’s personal behaviour.

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his first speech as president of the Worldwide Wildlife Fund UK, Prince Charles has warned that he is an “endangered species” and that so is the rest of mankind:

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YOU reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things. Good. Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action:

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He [John Bird] sums himself up: “I am a self appointed grandee of the poor. I am one of them who got out and got into a position to help, so I will mollycoddle Lord Mandleson, Cameron, Blair, and Brown, anyone if it helps.” He remains refreshingly critical about the magazine: “I don’t want to read The Big Issue and read how miserable it is living under capitalism. I want to know what you’re going to do about it, how you going to dismantle it:

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Michael Gove slackens rules on use of physical force in schools. Education secretary seeks to stem ‘erosion of adult authority’ by recruiting former male soldiers to the classroom:

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It will take another 98 years for women executives to reach equal pay with men at the current rate, the Chartered Management Institute reports. Men are paid on average an extra £10,546, although women saw pay rises of 2.8 per cent this year compared to men’s 2.3 per cent, and women are now securing equal or higher starting salaries:

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When we decided to keep Hirohito on his Japanese throne, we winnowed down the number of Japanese war criminals to be hanged. Oddly, it was Churchill who wanted the worst of the Nazis to be executed on the spot; it was Stalin who wanted a trial. It all depends, I think, on whether criminals are our friends (Stalin at the time) or our enemies (Hitler and his fellow Nazis), whether they have their future uses (the Japanese emperor) or whether we’ll get their wealth more easily if they are out of the way (Saddam and Gaddafi ). The last two were or are wanted for killing “their own people” – in itself a strange expression since it suggests that killing people other than Iraqis or Libyans might not be so bad:

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Three hundred and fifty thousand: That’s a conservative estimate for the number of offenders with mental illness confined in America’s prisons and jails. More Americans receive mental health treatment in prisons and jails than in hospitals or treatment centers.

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Ester Abeja has experienced both physical and emotional atrocities. She was captured by Uganda’s feared rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and was forced to join them. But not before the soldiers made her kill her one-year old baby girl, by smashing her skull in, and then gang raped her:

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Voice From The Back: Youth Unemployment (2012)

The  Voice From The Back column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Youth Unemployment 

The economist Paul Krugman paints a frightening picture about youth unemployment. “In Spain, the unemployment rate among workers under 25 is more than 50 percent. In Ireland almost a third of the young are unemployed. Here in America, youth unemployment is “only” 16.5 percent, which is still terrible — but things could be worse” (New York Times, 29 April). Supporters of capitalism often laud its “efficiency” but it is difficult to think of anything more wasteful than debarring young workers from taking part in the production and distribution of wealth. Half of all young Spanish workers on the dole? Some efficiency!


The Plight Of The Elderly

It is only one case amongst thousands of how elderly men and women of the working class are treated, but it highlights the daily experience of workers everywhere. “A health board has been ordered to apologise to the family of an elderly man sent home from hospital in winter in his shirt, trousers, dressing gown and one slipper. David Spelman, 85, had hip replacement surgery at the Southern General in Glasgow after a fall in February 2011. Days after being discharged he fell again and died shortly afterwards” (BBC News, 8 May). An apology from the health board may satisfy some jobsworthy official.


The Pay Rises That Aren’t

One of the illusions beloved by supporters of capitalism is that while the system isn’t perfect at least there is a steady improvement of conditions. The Income Data Services has come up with figures that prove that is complete nonsense. “Of Britain’s 29.1 million-strong workforce around 80 per cent, or 23.1 million, work in the private sector. The vast majority of these received a pay rise which failed to keep pace with inflation, said the report by pay experts, Incomes Data Services (IDS). It said the average pay rise between January and March was 3 per cent, compared with inflation at 3.5 per cent. And 8 per cent of workers, typically those working in the manufacturing, construction or not-for-profit sectors, saw pay frozen” (Daily Mail, 8 May).


The Uncaring Society

As the government looks for more and more ways to cut support for the sick, the elderly and the disabled, recent figures show how it is affecting voluntary carers. “Almost six in 10 admitted that taking care of vulnerable family members had put them under so much stress and strain it caused depression, anxiety and nervous breakdowns. The same number said their caring responsibilities had harmed their careers, research by the newly-formed Carers Trust found. There are about six million unpaid carers in Britain looking after older parents or disabled children” (Daily Express, 8 May). Capitalism always seeks to cut overheads to increase profits and caring is just not one of its priorities.


Another Cunning Plan

In the BBC TV comedy series Blackadder one of the characters keeps coming up with a “cunning plan” that always turns out to be completely useless. The present government has a cunning plan to deal with the economic crisis. Cut the workers’ wages, increase their pension contributions, slash their pension’s benefits and increase the pension age to sixty-eight. This has led to hundreds of thousands of public sector workers taking part in a 24-hour, UK-wide strike in a dispute with the government over pension changes. “Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude said pension talks will not be reopened and “nothing further will be achieved through strike action”. Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union – which estimates that an “overwhelming majority” of its 250,000 public sector members are on strike – said the UK would have “the highest pension age of any European country” (BBC News, 10 May). The truth is that inside capitalism slumps and booms are part and parcel of the system and there is no cunning way to plan it despite the efforts of Baldric or Francis Maude.


A Rare Flash Of Truth

Occasionally politicians have been known to tell the truth. This is such a rare occurrence that we feel we have to record it for posterity. “Education Secretary Michael Gove has attacked Britain’s class divide between rich and poor children, branding the split ‘morally indefensible’. In a speech at private-school, Brighton College, Mr Gove told teachers and pupils that Britain ‘has failed to tackle’ the widening parameters between the country’s social classes” (Daily Express, 11 May). “Morally indefensible” it may well be but as an out-and-out supporter of capitalism, an Old Etonian and a Conservative MP he has aided the day-to-day running of this “morally indefensible” social system.


Piety And Poker

It should come as no shock to socialists to learn that outwardly religious devotees are often dreadful hypocrites. We have, after all, had plenty of evidence of the Vatican covering up child abuse cases. The following news item nevertheless is an extreme example of religious hypocrisy. “Six leaders of South Korea’s largest Buddhist order have been forced to resign after being caught on video drinking, smoking and playing high-stakes poker at a memorial event for a dead Zen master” (Independent, 12 May). Well, at least they didn’t interfere with young children and unlike the priests they did resign.


National Ill-Health Service

Capitalism rewards the exploiting class and victimises the working class. A case in point is the treatment of the sick and the infirm. “Patients are being left lying on trolleys for up to 24 hours because hospitals are alarmingly short of beds, the union representing Britain’s nurses has claimed. Pressure on beds is so great that some people end up being treated in corridors, especially in A&E departments, according to a survey of 1,246 UK nurses and healthcare assistants belonging to the Royal College of Nursing who look after some of the sickest patients” (Observer, 13 May). This treatment only applies to the working class; if you can afford it you will get the most expert care quickly and efficiently.

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Leicester secondary school headmaster was under fire last week for mounting an 88mm howitzer on the roof of the school hall during the annual school egg and spoon race. Local parents complained that their children were being enlisted as gun crews when they had only volunteered for the 100 metres hurdles, and councillors expressed alarm at the unprecedented cost of ramping up school security. The headmaster, Mr Geoffrey Barking, said in a statement: ‘It’s a rough area. If it’s good enough for the Olympics, it’s good enough for us.’

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Education Secretary Michael Gove is to examine claims the Gay and Lesbian Teachers Association broke impartiality rules on the topic of Catholicism. It emerged this week that the GLTA wrote to nearly 400 state-funded schools inviting them to back a petition against Catholics.  Schools and teachers are forbidden to promote one-sided political arguments. The GLTA has denied breaking any laws, saying gay views on Catholics are personal, not political: ‘It is central to gay culture to treat everyone with respect, even people who commit unnatural acts in churches.’

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Labour is demanding that David Cameron makes a Commons statement on the row surrounding the Transport secretary, Jedi Walker. There have been calls for Mr Walker to resign after it was revealed that he appeared not to be doing his job properly. Mr Cameron told Newsnight last week that: ‘It may be true that Jed has not been taking bungs from BSkyB, that he has no special advisor working with the Murdochs, that he has never been to one of their parties, that he has no directorships in Murdoch-controlled companies and that he has never in any way been dishonest in the Register of Members’ Interests. However, I wish to put on record that in spite of this I have every confidence in him as a politician of my own calibre.’

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It was announced this week that the Home Office was to simplify the induction process for new members of MI5 and MI6 following an internal survey that revealed that recruitment was dropping because the BBC series ‘Spooks’ is not on anymore. A spokesman said: ‘We now ask applicants if they want to join the secret service, and if so, whether they can lock themselves successfully into a hold-all while lying in a bath. If they can do that, they’re in.’

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James Naughtie the Radio 4 presenter who famously introduced the culture secretary during a coughing fit in 2010 as ‘Jeremy Cunt the Hulture Minister’ has publicly apologised to listeners for publicly apologising to listeners. Mr Naughtie, 60, is seeking to assure Radio 4 fans who may be annoyed at his gaffe: ‘I wish to reassure readers that I was right in the first place. I hope nobody was offended by my unforgivable retraction’.

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Business Secretary Vince Cable has condemned proposals to make it easier for firms to sack under-performing staff as “the wrong approach”. Mr Cable told reporters: ‘There’s no sense scaring the pants off workers when they can’t afford pants. Besides, we don’t want to go round saying that incompetence is a sackable offence. People might get ideas.’

Snorts of derision (2019)

From the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the papers had a field day with Michael Gove’s scandalous confession (forced by a new tell-all book) that he had done multiple lines of coke while as a journalist writing an article demanding tougher laws to stop the cocaine trade. The sheer Class A hypocrisy of this got right up everybody’s nose, as you would expect, so it seemed like poetic justice that he should be hoist on his own petard. It is truly a shocking thing to discover that politicians say one thing and do another. Who would have guessed?

But soon it emerged that virtually all of the Tory leadership frontrunners had indulged in one or more illicit drugs. Bojo snorted coke, but said he thought it might be icing sugar (imagine having a Prime Minister with his hands on nuclear codes who can’t even tell cocaine from icing sugar). Matt Hancock, Esther McVey, Andrea Leadsom and Dominic Raab all smoked weed although presumably not all at the same orgy. Jeremy Hunt had a cannabis lassi (jeez, what Indian restaurant does he go to and how can we book?). Not to be outdone on the exotic stakes, Rory Stewart smoked opium at an Iranian wedding. Most people would have settled for a slice of cake, Rory.

The fact that to date eight out of ten Tory leadership candidates had done illicit drugs tells you everything you need to know about how the ‘war on drugs’ is really progressing. Nobody, not the press, not the police, not even the Tory bigwigs who have imposed it on the rest of us, takes it seriously anymore.

Of course they all swore they hated the experience and that it was a terrible mistake. But this is surely wrong. Taking a drug is just a lifestyle choice. Taking a drug and then turning into Boris Johnson, now that’s a mistake. But then again, just look at the politicians who (claim they) haven’t taken drugs. Mark Harper anyone? Who he, you ask? Exactly. Sajid Javid? Well, the mesmerizingly handsome Home Secretary will only admit to the odd cigarette, but nobody could be that urbane, charming and charismatic and not be on something. Nigel Farage? He’s enough to make you take drugs.

When rapper Professor Green went to the House of Commons for a BBC documentary and asked former LibDem leader Nick Clegg why politicians never wanted to discuss drugs and legalisation, Clegg responded that the matter wasn’t deemed important enough (LINK). Doubtless the LibDems didn’t think it was important either but, desperate for any stray votes, Clegg happily spoke in favour of legalisation. Now that they’ve had something of a renaissance in the Euroelections owing to being the worst major political party in the UK apart from all the others, they might decide to roll back on that particular commitment.

Nowadays you can hardly walk through any inner-city street in the UK and not smell weed blowing in the wind. This will be all the young people trying to get high and forget how their future is being wrecked before their very eyes. Or else it’s young people doing what it takes to be the next local Tory candidate. Skin up, anyone?

PJS

Greasy Pole: Not Another Maggie Thatcher? (2013)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the Iron Lady dissolved into ashes, something similar began to happen to her reputation, so lovingly nurtured, for strength, courage, honesty and humanity in her promotion of Britishness against any threats from without and within. First there were the biographies, in particular Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography by ex-Sunday Telegraph editor Charles Moore, the publication of which was always intended to be delayed until after her death. This was as she had ordered: the co-operation Moore received was unusually generous on condition that her wishes in this were obeyed (in fact he was – still is – too ardent an admirer of hers to even dream of going against her wishes).

Then there was the TV programme Young Margaret: Love, Life And Letters, to which Moore was an important contributor, if an apparently embarrassed one. This revealed a rather different character with a talent for cynical manipulation when it came to human relationships. For example among a succession of unsuspecting man friends she at first cultivated a relationship with one she described as displaying ‘…the kind of naivety only a Scotsman can have’ but who owned a fair bit of land and profitable shares in industry. When Margaret had more promising prospects in sight, the farmer was briskly passed on to her sister Muriel who was thus made (we believe) happy ever after.

Such discriminatory skills were also applied in the matter of some other holidaymakers in Madeira who are derided as ‘…rather tatty tourists, Jews and novo rich.’ And rich among the examples of cold, calculating tactics is her view of her father, Alf Roberts the grocer from Grantham, once credited, as she worked her way up to the top of the Greasy Pole, as an enduring, invaluable example of parental guidance for a supremely ambitious daughter. After her mother died Thatcher had Alf move in with her but this did not yield the kind of advantages she had planned: ‘He is eating the most enormous meals and doing absolutely nothing except reading’ she complained to Muriel, telling her she intended to ‘shunt Pop off … will this be all right with you? Otherwise he will just hang on and on and not take any hints.’ A month or so afterwards Alf was writing to Muriel that he never heard anything from Margaret: ‘in fact I don’t think I know their new phone number.’ And then, unremarked, he died.

Tory MP

A spin-off of the post-mortem reverence for Thatcher was the requirement that any aspirant successor would have to be, apart from female, as scabrous as the Lady herself. It seemed a promising time for the emergence of Liz Truss, MP for South West Norfolk and recently promoted Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education. Although new to the game of Westminster politics – she was first elected in 2010 – she quickly attracted some notice, for example the assessment of her boss Michael Gove that she was ‘a minister to watch,’ and then the calculated flattery of Labour MP Sharon Hodgson that she had the ‘common touch of the Iron Lady about her …she may take it as a compliment.’ Truss could describe her parents as ‘to the left of Labour.’ As a child she was taken by her mother to CND demonstrations and one of her school essays was an anticipatory piece on the fall of Margaret Thatcher. At Oxford she joined the LibDems, making something of a name for herself with an anti-monarchist speech at their 1994 conference. It was a couple of years later that she found her true place in the Conservative Party and, after the usual couple of abortive efforts, as the party’s parliamentary candidate for South West Norfolk, where at her first election in 2010 she had a solid majority of over 13,000.

Reform

She had been a Deputy Director of Reform, a ‘think tank’ which calls itself independent and non-political but which was founded by a Tory MP and a former head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department. Its declared aim is to promote what it calls a ‘better way’ for public services and economic success through private industry and market de-regulation. It also works for the abolition of ‘pensioner gimmicks’ such as free TV licensing and the winter fuel payment. So when Truss was promoted to Gove’s team she was well placed to implement Reform’s ideas on ’higher standards’ in schools. For anyone with any doubts on the issue there was her paper Britannia Unchained which denounced British workers as ‘…among the worst idlers in the world’ with too many of them who ‘…prefer a lie-in to hard work’. A ’key plank’ in her intentions for nurseries is to work the staff harder by increasing their allocation of two-year-olds from four to six. At the same time she has been free with strictures on those workers because when she had inspected nurseries here ‘I have seen too many chaotic settings where children are running around. There’s no sense of purpose’.. Among the response to these comments, from parents as well as experienced child-care practitioners, the arguments against stricter discipline for children were flavoured with reminders that the level of morale in nurseries would be associated with low wages, poor working conditions and a lack of expectations for the future.

Affair

And it must be said that Truss has not always been so strict in applying sound principles to her own behaviour. After her adoption as the candidate for South West Norfolk there was a move to reverse the decision when it became known that some years before she had had an affair with Mark Field, the Tory MP for Westminster. Some of the local Tories, dubbed The Turnip Taliban, led by former High Sheriff of Norfolk, Sir Jeremy Bagge, argued that Truss was unsuitable as their candidate because she had chosen to conceal the matter, leaving them to find out through a Sunday newspaper article. In the event, the rebellion failed and Truss continued on her way to emerge as a hopeful to be the new Iron Lady – who might in fact have taught her of the necessity in politics to be ready always to suppress the truth while energetically promoting falsehoods.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: European Union? Civil War? (2016)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have Your Say was the advice we were bombarded with from both sides in the European Referendum. Meanwhile the argument which raged between the factions Remain and Leave was not just between the main parties; in the case of the Tories the internal rift was sufficiently bitter to be dubbed a ‘civil war’. There was no concealing the fact that the conflict was central to the competing ambitions of Cameron and Boris Johnson, with the prize being Number Ten Downing Street. In a TV clash between a group of Front Bench MPs, Labour’s Angela Eagle blasted Johnson that his group’s campaign bus was touring the country flying a slogan that membership of the EU involved a British payment of £350 million a week, although a clutch of financial experts were definite that this figure was an exaggeration. So Johnson should ensure, Eagle raged, that it was removed from the streets. Another participant helpfully suggested that the figures Number Ten, illustrating Johnson’s inflating ambition, should be on the bus in place of that £350 million. Johnson’s response was to slip his hand into his breast pocket.

John Major

At the same time Cameron condemned the Tory Brexit argument about the cost of EU membership as ‘…perpetuating an economic con-trick on the British people’, part of an intention to be ‘reckless and undemocratic in failing to outline an economic plan for Britain outside of the EU’. On the matter of tricking the voters, Cameron should be reminded that from the security of his personal wealth he has led a government which will go down in history for its policies of depressing the living standards of masses of desperately impoverished people – a reality which justified a Eurosceptic MP in his party describing his latest move as ‘crass’ and ‘a slap in the face’. A similarly gruesome incident in the civil war was when ex-Prime Minister John Major, who occasionally appears in public exuding a sleek self-satisfaction, sneered at Johnson as a ‘court jester’ who was running a campaign which in its false claims about the levels of immigration was ‘squalid… deceitful… depressing’ - adjectives which could well  have been applied in relation to the policies of the Thatcher government of which Major was so prominent a member that Thatcher favoured him  as her most favoured successor.

Meanwhile there was no need for concern about Boris Johnson’s ability to defend himself in the Brexit trenches. On one of the main matters of the Referendum he warned that David Cameron ‘…can’t be trusted on immigration’ and that his regular promises to cut immigration were ‘deeply corrosive of popular trust in democracy’. This attack on Cameron would have been more impressive if Johnson had been able to support it with an explanation of why, and how, he had so recently been so firm a supporter of him from the vantage point of his Mayoralty of London and as a Member of Parliament.

Erotica

Among the less publicised supporters of Leave was Andrew Rosindell, the Tory MP for Romford. This is a seat he first took in the 2001 election – one of the few to be won back after the 1997 Labour landslide. Part of his campaign then was to parade Spike, a Staffordshire bull terrier, wrapped up in a Union Jack. During the next three elections, with the help of Spike, he increased his majority. Rosindell is one of Parliament’s natural Right Wingers. Among other things he was a member of the Monday Club, until Iain Duncan Smith forced him to resign; he is a supporter of the death penalty;  he  expressed  ‘huge admiration’ for President Pinochet;  in 2015 he introduced a Ten Minute Bill aimed at enforcing control over British borders with the European Union. A less publicised feature of the career of this ‘flag fanatic and super patriot’ was in 2010 when he sponsored a fund-raising dinner at the House of Commons  for what was known as Erotica House – an ‘adult entertainment show’ – followed by a dinner when it was obligatory to wear ‘kinky fancy dress’ (it is not known  whether this requirement extended to any of Spike’s friends). Erotica Ltd is based in Romford and is owned by one of Mr Rosindell’s wealthy supporters.

Michael Gove

Less arousing than Rosindell and his dog was Michael Gove, Minister of Justice, one-time close friend and neighbour of Cameron, who took a key role in spouting the case for leaving the EU, spiced with some typical Gove phrases. For example, he condemned Cameron and his supporters for ‘scaremongering’, of treating the British people like ‘…mere children, capable of being frightened into obedience by conjuring up new bogeymen every night’. Gove has had a varied career; there was a time when he might have been within reach of the party leadership but a very public clash with Theresa May caused him to be pushed down the Greasy Pole until his promotion to the Justice Ministry, which led to him becoming one of Boris Johnson’s leading supporters in Leave. He was so keen on this that he was encouraged to reveal that he came from a family of North Sea fishermen, with all that implies by way of hard work in tough conditions. In response a leader of the Labour Party Remain group, Alan Johnson, blasted Gove’s speech as ‘bluster’, part of his need to ‘…wish away reality but the truth is very credible’. Alan Johnson is no stranger to the stresses of politics; at a time when the Labour Party was in one of its spells of deeper disarray he was unwise enough to take on the job of Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer only to be rapidly removed from it. He is however a renowned electioneer, which gave a particular force to his dismissal of Gove.

Have Your Say was the official advice from both sides in the Referendum. A hopeful change from the usual electoral dictate amounting to Shut Up, Believe What We Say And Vote Likewise. Which missed the fact that in this matter as in all others there was nothing to choose between the variously competing groups, even when they themselves were in such confusion. Why should anyone have supported any of them? The EU battle exposed the essential cross-party unity of capitalism’s politics, designed to defend and promote this class society and its inhumane divisions.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: In Europe or Out? Do You Care? (2016)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The events of this not-so-merry month of May have filled quite a few pages in quite a few diaries. There was the opportunity to juggle with the names of a ragbag of claimants to be Representatives of the People about the varying styles of organising local councils. Which led on to The Big One – the June Referendum to decide would British capitalism grope more fluently as part of a European combine – calling itself a Union even when unity is clearly absent from the relationships within it. This dispute has been bubbling along for some time, fertilising a number of groups such as Remain (for the Union) or Leave (against).

Pamphlet

In time for the Referendum the government produced a 14-page pamphlet which, apart from its absorbing photographs of things like a full supermarket basket and an untidy kitchen table, set out a case for Britain remaining within the EU (which Cameron is always careful to insist will be a ‘reformed’ Union). This was an official publication, carrying the government crest and it was delivered to every household in the country at a cost of 34p each and some might have thought that this was a very reasonable price to pay for so comprehensive an exercise in falsehood. The official excuse for the cost and the work involved was that the leaflet was in response to the results of a recent survey in which some 85 percent of the public expressed a need for the full facts about the Referendum. On the other side of the argument Boris Johnson blabbered a protest much as expected from him: it was, he said, ‘crazy’ that the government should spend such a lot of money in such a cause: ‘Given that I think it’s very likely it will be very biased and hysterical and warning unnecessarily about the risks of leaving the EU, I think it’s a complete waste of money’. Which might have been more convincing except that Johnson is always liable to promote his political ambitions by speeches which can most suitably be pigeonholed as biased, hysterical and a waste of valuable resources. In any case the leaflet states a case which in many respects he should agree with: Britain will not join the Euro; will keep its own border controls; will impose tough new restrictions on migrants’ access to the welfare system.

Leak

Meanwhile a well-publicised example of the propaganda style and tactics at work in the current dispute emerged from the other side – the so-called Brexit camp. This was in the form of an email from one Cleo Watson which saw the light of day through being leaked by, it was rumoured, Michael Gove, close ally and friend of David Cameron who once consoled him by naming him Lord Chancellor and Minister of Justice. But now Gove is opposing Cameron, he is among the Vote Leave camp and notoriously alert to involve himself in any act of ungrateful subversion. Cleo Watson asked senior NHS staff to support a letter, to be published a few days later, which argued that while the NHS is ‘a great British institution that families rely on …it is being asked to make huge cuts at a time of rising demand. Patients are having to wait longer for treatment, hospital deficits are increasing and doctors are on strike after being told they must take a pay cut …’ To stay in the EU would be incentive for the government to ‘starve the NHS of its necessary financial support’ – as Cameron and Hunt have done in the past. There is in this episode more than a suggestion of irony. But it cannot be ignored that members of the Vote Leave group who rely on the current NHS crisis for ammunition were recently on the other side, arguing that a sustainable Health Service demanded deeper cuts, restricted service, fewer doctors and nurses and longer waiting lists.

PFI

Cleo Watson presents herself as having skills in Strategic Communications in political campaigns which she has applied in jobs such as her recent – very brief – period as an intern for Michael Gove (whether that included responsibility for leaking documents is not known). Her boss at the Vote Leave campaign is Matthew Elliott, a regular advocate of cutting government spending, including those which he agrees would entail ‘…a painful process for public service workers’. A previous practitioner of this policy was the Blair government which applied the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) policy of encouraging private investment in, among other concerns, the NHS. In 2001 Jon Sussex of the Office of Health Economics recalled that in May 1997 the Blair government ‘enthusiastically advanced PFI in all parts of the public sector’. Between then and 2001 some 85 percent of the funding of major NHS capital projects came from private sources , with PFI expanding from new hospital buildings to services such as information technology, scanners and so on. This policy was carried on by the Tory government under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, so that in April 2015 the Minister of Health Jeremy Hunt signed a deal worth an estimated £780 million with a number of private firms to take over work done previously by the NHS. But there were serious questions to be asked about some of those firms. Vanguard had been in trouble over a programme of ‘rushed’ operations with serious complications for the patients. In one of the last PFI decisions by Labour’s Health Secretary Andy Burnham the Hinchinbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire was handed over to Circle Healthcare, which in January 2015 was trying to withdraw after being assessed as ‘inadequate’ and itself rating the deal as ‘no longer financially viable’.

The present Referendum about European Union is not the first. In 1975 the Wilson government organised one which resulted in a 67 percent vote in favour of membership of the European Economic Community. But since then enough problems have accumulated to cause another vote. Which should encourage all who participate to reflect on the mass of evidence about the persistent chaos of capitalism in Europe and across the world and to consider some response other than obediently opting for one side or the other in a contest between two disasters.

Ivan.

Greasy Pole: Ouch! What A Lovely War (2014)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the pitiless military killers of World War One there was reputed to be a German General who named one of his problems as the determination of British soldiers to 'fight like lions'. But then – 'lions led by donkeys'. More recently there has been a Minister of Education in a British government who scorned anyone who sympathised with that German assessment: '...an unhappy compulsion ...to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage', regarding the war '... through the fictional prism of drama such as Oh! What A Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths'.

Centenary

To put the matter into perspective – Michael Gove is the MP for the rock-solid Tory seat of Surrey Heath and the Secretary of State for Education. As a key member of the Cameron government – and of the Notting Hill Set – he has lived up to his reputation for managing education not as some kind of personal encouragement to develop but as formal discipline towards a designed conclusion. In this way Gove has provoked the anger and despair of committed teachers but has recommended himself to his leader. After Cameron recently announced that the centenary of the start of the War would be distorted into a celebration of allegedly unique British courage and humanity, Gove was quick to approve: 'The ruthless Social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified'.

Errors

But this misbegotten view of an historical event which cost the lives of tens of millions and left the world even less secure than before contains some crucial errors. The persistent denunciation of the war, of its bungling leaders and swamps of casualties, is by no means exclusively the work of 'Left wing academics'. Among the most publicised of critics was the late Alan Clark, whose book The Donkeys was a bitter exposure of the generals who ordered the British Army into so many historical calamities. But Clark would have been contemptuously amused by the idea that he was 'left-wing'. He inherited, apart from much else, the mediaeval Saltwood Castle in Sussex. At first he was rejected by Conservative Central Office as too 'right wing' but he eventually became a Tory MP, at first for Plymouth Sutton and then Kensington and Chelsea. He was a keen admirer of both Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher.

Diplomacy

Another example which undermines Gove's slapdash thinking is Niall Ferguson, whose opinions on the War were markedly controversial – for example he argued that in 1914 Germany was forced into a preventive war by the pressures of British diplomacy which encouraged a regional war to develop into a world conflict. In detail Ferguson has many differences with Gove's crude acceptance of the official Tory line but he is far from a 'left-winger' for he consistently describes himself as 'a Thatcherite'. It is useful also to mention a man who actually endured the trenches and all that followed. Harry Patch died in July 2009. He was known as 'The Last Fighting Tommy' – a lone survivor of the war during which he endured, apart from others, the Battle of Passchendaele. A patriotic Tory, his opinions on his time in the trenches are all too clear: the war was 'not worth one life'; the generals and politicians were 'organising nothing better than mass murder'.

Battlefields

Among the events to mark the centenary will be organised visits by school parties to the battlefields, to see where the trenches were, clamber into the dug-outs, stand in the graveyards, look up at the massive memorials ...There has to be some interest, accentuated by Gove's speech, about these visits. Will the children be free to make their own judgements about what they see, about the war and what came out of it? There is nothing in Gove's record to encourage any confidence that the visits will not be heavily stage-managed to ensure the right – from the point of view of the government – outcome. Consider that one of the first actions of the Ministry of Education when Gove took over was to provide every school with a copy of the King James bible inscribed with the message 'Presented by the Secretary of State for Education'. Before that he had unwisely trumpeted his version of the outcome of the war in Iraq: 'The liberation of Iraq has actually been that rarest of things – a proper British foreign policy success... now a fully functioning democracy with a free press, properly contested elections and an independent judiciary'.

Adoption

When he was still a baby Gove was adopted after his mother could not cope, in the stresses typical of the year 1967, with the demands of looking after a child. Gove's adoptive parents were caring and supportive but he admits to always being 'noisy by nature'; he later wrote to some of his school teachers to apologise for his disruptive behaviour. Importantly, Gove's adoption was rated as a success, enabling him to attend private school, to graduate at Oxford and to hold down jobs as a journalist with The Times, followed by his first steps up the parliamentary Greasy Pole. But his progress has been notable for a succession of manufactured crises. In February 2011 a judge ruled that his decision to abolish the Building Schools For The Future programme amounted to 'an abuse of power'. In March 2012 he and his staff were said to have destroyed email correspondence to frustrate Freedom Of Information requests. In addition to such examples Gove has been the subject of an extraordinary number of protests of No Confidence from various teachers' organisations including one in May last which drew complaints about systematic bullying, fear and intimidation - and this by the Minister responsible for overlooking children's education. But there is nothing to indicate that there is likely to be any change. Gove's response to it all – and to the appalling misery and bloodshed of the First World War – means that the only proper response to him and his kind is, in a word which every teacher will understand – exclusion.

Ivan

What is History? (2014)

From the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism, Historians and the New History Syllabus in the National Curriculum

In February 2013 the National Curriculum Consultation Document was published and capitalist ideologue and Tory Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove made a statement to the House of Commons about the new history syllabus: 'in history there is a clear narrative of British progress with a proper emphasis on heroes and heroines from our past' (Daily Telegraph 7 February).

Earlier at the 2008 and 2010 Tory Party Conferences Gove had complained that 'our children are either taught to put Britain in the dock or they remain in ignorance of our island story, education has been undermined by left wing ideologues, the under-appreciated tragedy of our time has been the sundering of our society from its past and the current approach we have to history denies children the opportunity to hear our island story. This trashing of our past has to stop' (Guardian 30 September 2008, Daily Telegraph 5 October 2010).

When the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government came to power in May 2010, Gove invited historian Niall Ferguson to advise on the development of a new history syllabus for the National Curriculum, 'history as a connected narrative' (Daily Telegraph 30 December 2012). Later in 2010 at the Tory Party Conference Gove announced historian Simon Schama as the new 'History Czar' to ensure pupils learn Britain's 'Island Story', and review the curriculum. Schama responded 'without this renewed sense of our common story, we will be a poorer and weaker Britain' (Guardian 5 October 2010).

Conservative historians

Schama is well known for his 1989 book Citizens; A Chronicle of the French Revolution where he defines the 'Revolution' by the Reign of Terror. Historian Eric Hobsbawm described the book as a political denunciation of the revolution, a continuation of a traditional conservative view of the revolution started by Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, and continued in Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. Gove called Edmund Burke 'the greatest Conservative ever' at the 2008 Tory Conference (Daily Telegraph 30 September 2008).

Niall Ferguson is a conservative historian who cites as influences Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. His 2011 six-part Channel Four TV series Civilization: Is the West History? is a hymn to Western capitalism, global free trade and bourgeois liberalism. Ferguson identifies the 'six killer apps' of competition, science, rule of law, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic as keys to the dominance of western capitalism. Hobsbawm has called Ferguson an excellent historian but a 'nostalgist for Empire'. He is also a historian of financial capitalism having written The House of Rothschild and a biography of a merchant banker High Financier: The Lives and Times of Siegmund Warburg. His magnum opus on finance must be the publication in November 2008 of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World which unfortunately for Ferguson was overtaken by the events of September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the resulting global financial crisis. In this book Ferguson penned a hymn to global financial capitalism whereas we agree with Marx that 'money is the universal whore, the universal pimp of men and peoples'.

The Department of Education stated that 'our approach to the history curriculum has been supported by some of the country's most eminent historians' (Guardian 13 May). But the new history syllabus was immediately criticised by the President of the Royal Historical Society, the Historical Association, the Higher Education group History UK, and senior members of the British Academy.

The overall aim of the new history syllabus is 'a knowledge of Britain's past, and our place in the world helps us to understand the challenges of our time' with supporting aims to be to 'know and understand the story of these islands; how the British people shaped this nation and how Britain influenced the world'. The syllabus will attempt to cover the Palaeolithic era to the fall of the Berlin Wall in seven years. Even at Key Stage 1, ages 5 to 7 years, children are expected to understand terms such as 'civilisation', 'parliament', 'monarchy', 'democracy', and the 'concept of nation and of a nation's history' (Department for Education: National Curriculum Consultation 7 February).

At Key Stage 2, ages 7 to 11 years children will be taught 'the essential chronology of British history sequentially' from the Stone Age to the 1688 bourgeois 'Glorious Revolution'. This is history as a story, chronology, narrative, dates, events which makes Henry Ford comment 'history is bunk and just one damn thing after another' quite apt. Professor Jackie Eales, President of the Historical Society said 'intellectually, it is exactly what 1066 and All That was designed to lampoon. It is a trawl through history, one damn thing after another, in a very superficial way. It's a very old fashioned curriculum' (Guardian 16 February).

One of the recommendations of the 1999 Macpherson Report was a 'National Curriculum aimed at valuing cultural diversity and preventing racism' but in April 2013 History teacher Katherine Edwards pointed out that 'the new curriculum is very likely to alienate and disengage children and young people, especially those of black and Asian origin. Black and Asian people are excluded completely from the primary history curriculum and, apart from the token inclusions of Equiano and Seacole they only feature as slaves in the secondary curriculum until the arrival of the Windrush generation' (Guardian 19 April). Later in June children's laureate Malorie Blackman added 'if children are not taught about black historical figures along with heroes such as Lord Nelson, they might be turned off school altogether' (Guardian 4 June). In fact Olaudah Equiano, freed African slave who campaigned for abolition of the slave trade and Mary Seacole, Creole nurse in the Crimean War, were only introduced into the National Curriculum in 2007 but it was announced in 2012 they were to be dropped in the new syllabus. This prompted Operation Black Vote to gather 35,000 signatures on a petition to Gove, and American Democrat Reverend Jesse Jackson to write a letter to the Times. Gove conceded and Equiano and Seacole stayed in the new syllabus. But Martin Luther King and the US Civil Rights movement have been dropped from the curriculum.

As for the role of women in history there are no women at all mentioned in the Key Stage 2 syllabus except for two Tudor queens. In Key Stage 3, ages 11 to 14 years, Mary Seacole, George Eliot and Annie Besant are grouped under the heading 'The Changing Role of Women'.

China is not included in the curriculum but is only mentioned as a loser to Britain as a result of gunboat diplomacy, although the OECD stated in March 2013: 'from a long-range perspective, China has now overtaken the Euro area and is on course to become the world’s largest economy around 2016, after allowing for price differences' (forbes.com 23 March).

‘Great Man’ Theory

The syllabus focuses on kings, queens, and the lives of great men which is part of the bourgeois 'Great Man Theory of History' which has its origin in Thomas Carlyle's 1840 book On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1840) where he writes that 'the history of the world is but the biography of great men'.

Do 'Great Men' impose themselves on history? Marx wrote in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past'. It appears that Napoleon Bonaparte perceived this truth when he wrote in exile 'I found all the elements ready at hand to found an empire. If I had not come probably someone would have done like me. A man is but a man, but often he can do much; often he is a tinderbox in the midst of inflammable matter, his power is nothing if circumstances and public sentiment do not favour him' (The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from His Written and Spoken Words edited and translated by J. Christopher Herold. Columbia University Press: New York. 1955).

Peter Mandler, Cambridge professor of Modern Cultural History said of the new syllabus 'we need to know the history of family life, economic development, class formation, not just a list of prime ministers, admirals and treaties. And when the curriculum talks about the rise and fall of Empires it still only means the Roman Empire' (Guardian 16 February 2013).

History from below

The antidote to bourgeois 'Great Men' history is 'History from below' (the term coined by historian George Lefebvre) which is people's history, the history of the working class, everyday history or even micro-history. A good example of 'history from below' is The Crowd in the French Revolution by George Rudé where he points out that 'those who took to the streets were ordinary, sober citizens, not half-crazed animals, not criminals' in contrast to Carlyle, Dickens and Schama.

E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is a sweeping people's history of the English proletariat but his book Whigs and hunters: The origin of the Black Act is a great example of micro-history. Following the collapse of the 'South Sea bubble' in 1720 there was an economic downturn and groups of poachers appeared in forests in Berkshire and Hampshire stealing deer from the aristocracy. The Whig government responded with an Act in 1723 which introduced the death penalty for over fifty offences. The Act would not be repealed until 1823. The Act can be seen as an example of 'bloody legislation' against the working class. In 1688 there were fifty capital offences on the statute book but by 1800 there were 220 capital offences mainly concerned with the defence of property. Between 1770 and 1830 35,000 death sentences were handed out with 7,000 executed.

At present capitalist ideologists are engaging in a type of 'historical revisionism' in relation to the First World War. In The Great War was a Just War published in History Today in August 2013, Gary Sheffield writes 'Britain’s First World War was a war of national survival, a defensive conflict fought at huge cost against an aggressive enemy bent on achieving hegemony in Europe. If the allies had lost, it would have meant the end of liberal democracy on mainland Europe'.

Prime Minister David Cameron's speech in October 2012 at the Imperial War Museum announced that there would be commemorative events to mark the First World War. These would include the outbreak of war, the naval battle of Jutland, Churchill's disastrous Gallipoli campaign, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Passchendaele, and the Armistice.

The Socialist Standard of November 1914 pointed out that the Sunday Chronicle of 30 August 1914 had identified that it was a capitalist war when they wrote 'the men in the trenches are fighting on behalf of the manufacturer, the mill owner, and the shopkeeper'. In August 1919 the Socialist Standard concluded that 'while competition between capitalist groups for routes, markets, and control of raw materials exists, the cause of war remains'.

In capitalist society the working class are educated to identify their interest with the interests of the capitalist class and identify with the nation state not with our interests as a class. As socialists we believe 'the working class have no fatherland'.

As well as commemorating the First World War, the capitalist state  has also allocated £1 million to restore the battlefield of Waterloo in Belgium ready for the 200th  anniversary in June 2015. There is even talk of commemorating the 600th  anniversary of the battle of Agincourt. All this is done to bolster nationalism and ensure that the working class identify with capitalist history.

The new History Syllabus in the National Curriculum demonstrates the truth of what Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology: 'The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force'.

Steve Clayton