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

Caught In The Act: Politics and Sex (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politics and Sex

Where were you when you heard the earth-shattering news of Paddy Ashdown’s affair with his secretary? If you can't remember where you were, do you care that you can't? Do you care about Ashdown's affair? Or about all the others which politicians are said to be continually involving themselves in? Well, it's perfectly healthy, from the point of view of a rational attitude to politics, that you shouldn’t care, except that this should not blind you to some illuminating aspects of the matter.

To begin with, Ashdown's dramatic confession enabled him to pose as the kind of clean-cut, honourable person to be expected of an ex-officer in Her Majesty's Royal Marine Commandos who, as we all know, are a fine bunch of men who would never stoop to anything mean or underhand. The truth is rather less clear-cut. Ashdown owned up, after an unusually determined effort to stifle the news, only when he knew the game was up. If it could have been managed, he would probably have continued with the deception. What worried him was not the deception, or the effect of it on his family or his ex-secretary, but the possible damage to his political career.

Media

Then there was the indignation, so supportive of Ashdown, aroused by the activities of the media — in particular of the "popular" newspapers who rampaged on the ruthless intrusiveness which is almost instinctive to them. It was not a pretty sight but then neither is a politician exposed as a hypocrite. For news is what sells the papers and. however we look at it, Ashdown's private life — like that of any other political leader — is news. As a supporter of capitalism and its commodity economy he can hardly complain when he is inconvenienced because the sellers of one particular commodity jazz up their product with details of his sex life to make it more saleable, more competitive.

In any ease the media interest was that much more excited by the fact that they had uncovered a scandal involving the leader of a party which presents itself as morally superior to the others, as an alternative to the muck-raking, back-biting and blackmailing which is the very stuff of politics. A lot of Ashdown’s embarrassment was due to the exposure of him as really no different, no belter, than the others. Of course it would have been worse for him if the publicity had cost his party a lot of votes. But the anti-media campaign which instantly counter-attacked when the news broke seemed to have had the opposite effect and Ashdown's position as leader of the Lib Dems looks safe. At least, for the immediate future — which means until the general election results are in.

So how far should the media intrude into the private, family life of politicians? On this there is a large balloon of hypocrisy which needs to be pricked. Social attitudes being what they are — distorted by capitalism's property-based relationships — it is to the advantage of a politician to be married. Having a husband or a wife prevents awkward, vote-threatening, questions about any deviancy from what is defined as sexual normality. Constituency selection committees arc favourably impressed by a candidate who presents as someone with a stable marriage and two or three bright, well-groomed children. It is the image they are interested in, before the reality — the sort of image which can guarantee a sugary photograph of the candidate at home with the family which looks good on an election address. As often becomes apparent, reality can be rather less united. If politicians set themselves up in this way, using their family in order to win support, they cannot complain if the family — its stability and their loyalty to it — becomes an issue. So if there is a hint that all at home is less than idyllically happy it is not unfair for that to be used to expose the politician as a hypocrite who tries to persuade the voters to give their family the loyalty which they themselves don't give it.

Votes

What really concerns politicians in these situations — what really concerned Ashdown and his party — was what effect the news would have on the voters. For the Liberals, the memory of Jeremy Thorpe is too close and too damaging for them to take another scandal lightly. The effect of the exposure on the people concerned — in spite of the mock concern for Ashdown's wife takes a very low priority compared to the party’s preoccupation with what the voters may think. For capitalism's politics is not about consistent principles but about taking advantage, however and whenever it is on offer, and about stifling, as far as possible, any disadvantages. It is about ruthlessness before caring, about cynicism before sustainable standards.

To take this point a little further, it was reported that the exposure of Ashdown's affair brought a rush of support for the Lib/Dems. Could this mean that, as we approach a general election which threatens to be historically dirty and irrelevant. John Major and Neil Kinnock will try to attact the voters by bringing out some skeletons from their own cupboards — or, if none exist, manufacturing them? The mind, in an exceedingly unpleasant way, boggles.

Economy

More real than the Ashdown affair is the economy — or rather the current recession — which is likely to be a dominant issue in the election. Is the recession really the result of a deliberate policy by the Tory government? Could a Labour government cure it or should this be left to Major's crew, who say they are about to cure it anyway? In the Commons recently John Major, under pressure from Kinnock's argument that the recession is all the fault of the Tories, shouted that many other industrial countries are going through a slump at present. The Tories can hardly be blamed for that, can they?

Well no, they can't. But what they can be blamed for is the pretence, when it suits them, that there is something separate and unique about the recession in Britain so that it can be "cured" by some clever fiscal juggling by Norman Lamont or whoever happens to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. In fact Lamont has rapidly climbed to fame as a persistent exponent of false promises and quickly discredited economic forecasts. If the Tories refuse to accept the blame for the slump, on the grounds that it is a world wide problem, they can't claim the credit when, as world conditions change, the slump recedes to be followed by a boom.

But, of course, they will claim that credit; Lamont claims it now. even as all the economic indicators say there is no sign of an end to the slump. Because, as we said about Paddy Ashdown, politics is not about consistency of principles. And come to think of it, a few years back there was a flurry of scandal about Lamont and a disappointed woman . . .

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Tories In Trouble (1999)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was once a young Conservative MP who, when he arrived to take his seat, was taken aside by an elder statesman and advised never to forget that the party had a secret weapon, which was loyalty. For a very long time the Tories have traded on that impression—that they are a party which prizes loyalty and unity above all else. There is very little evidence to support this. Even when that new Member was being given that advice the Tory record on the issue was anything but unblemished. In fact their history is studded with examples of splits, intrigues, back-stabbing and manoeuvring to unseat the leader.

For example the 1922 Committee got its name from a rebellious meeting in that year at the Carlton Club which was responsible for toppling Austen Chamberlain from the leadership and thereby bringing down the coalition government under Lloyd George. In 1958 a huge rift opened up in the Macmillan government when all the Treasury Ministers, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, resigned—an event which Macmillan famously brushed aside as “a little local difficulty”. A few years later Macmillan showed what he thought about loyalty and unity when, in a panic about a little local difficulty at some by-elections he sacked a chunk of his Cabinet including his ever loyal, never complaining Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd who had always made it clear that he was ready and willing to any job, no matter how distasteful, required of him by the government of British capitalism. In more recent times there was the ruthless business of Michael Heseltine and the men in grey suits toppling Margaret Thatcher.

This fractious tradition is still going strong. It is arguable that the Conservative Party has never experienced such disunity and disarray as it does today. What is more it has had no compunction about revealing its splits to the voters at large.

Memoirs

Consider the matter of the ex-ministers’ memoirs. These are very often a welcome source of income and consolation for those who are no longer in the seats of power and who pine for their chauffeur-driven cars, the media attention and the other trappings of office. One difficulty is that the higher sales usually go to the more revealing—the more bitter, scurrilous and bilious—memoirs. If there was ever such a thing as a united government it would be unlikely that its ministers could write their account of life in the Cabinet with the desirable degree of titillation. Of course this is not a problem for the people who so gruesomely ran the government when Thatcher and Major were in Number Ten.

John Major has had his say about Margaret Thatcher, writing her off as a bossy, overbearing and stubborn obstacle to proper government. This is not an example of what is meant by Tory loyalty because Major was Thatcher’s favourite son—the man she wanted to succeed her in 1990. The same might be said about his criticisms of Norman Lamont, who managed Major’s 1990 campaign to succeed Thatcher as Tory leader. Lamont’s reward for this was the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer but unluckily for him this coincided with the kind of financial crisis which Chancellors are supposed to be able to cure but which are beyond them. The so-called Black Wednesday in September 1992 when the Bank Rate went soaring and Sterling was removed from the Exchange Rate Mechanism illuminated how powerless are the experts and the politicians in the face of capitalism’s crises. The decision to take sterling out of the ERM was in stark contrast to Major’s assurance that this would not happen because the solution to British capitalism’s problems was to be a member of it. So Lamont had good cause to be aggrieved, and even more after Major sacked him and now that Major is largely putting the blame for the crisis on his shoulders.

Black Wednesday

Lamont clearly thought that his efforts to get Major into the premiership deserved a more grateful response. Of course had he been practising that Tory loyalty he should have held his tongue, accepted his downfall and given his all in supporting the government, even if that did mean rewriting history a bit. In fact he has been busily engaged ever since in attacks on Major, of varying degrees of subtlety. The version of Black Wednesday in his memoirs differs from that of Major and, as might be expected, does not take the blame for it on himself. Cynical and bitter, Lamont is now a pathetic figure—exiled to the Lords, penning the odd newspaper article, trying to persuade us that Pinochet saved Chile for civilisation and that all those people who disappeared there at the time have gone missing of their own accord.

A lot of this disunity came bubbling sulphurously to the surface at this year’s Tory conference. Naturally they gave William Hague the customary standing ovation but this did not obscure the fact that his grasp on the party leadership is as precarious as ever. Almost as soon as he got the job Hague was under fire, as if the MPs who had voted for him suddenly woke up to the fact that they had made a terrible mistake. Hague has done all kinds of things to win a few friends—married a pretty blonde who smiles nicely for the cameras, eaten spicy Caribbean food in the street at the Notting Hill Carnival, been seen in public wearing a baseball cap, had a skinhead hair cut. No man could do more. But none of this has done him any good.

While attention has been diverted by these distasteful antics Hague has silkily got rid of most of the leading Tories from the days of Thatcher and Major. Clarke and Heseltine more or less deselected themselves and are now standing critics on the issue of Europe. Lilley was sacked after a typically clumsy attempt to discard his past reputation as the scourge of single mothers and benefit claimants. Michael Howard was persuaded that he should spend more time with his prejudices. The only remnants of those former days of power are Redwood and Widdecombe, neither of them completely in touch with the reality of vote winning.

Shadows

No doubt there are some fascinating reminiscences now burgeoning in the embryo memoirs of the likes of Lilley and Howard. Meanwhile Hague has a Shadow Cabinet whose public presence is—well, shadowy. They are unrecognised, almost anonymous. Hague will have a hard job to convince the working class that these are the leaders who should be trusted to run British capitalism, swamp world markets with British made goods, progressively enrich the British capitalist class while bludgeoning the workers into a docile acceptance of their role as the exploited wealth-producers. In this he will endure for as long as he may be seen as a vote winner. If that changes he will be ruthlessly discarded by this party which likes to boast of its unity and loyalty. If—or perhaps when—that happens it will be his turn to write his memoirs, to complain about an ungrateful party and of how he was, in effect, hoisted with his own petard.

Ivan

Caught In The Act: Monmouth and after (1991)

The Caught In The Act Column from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monmouth and after

Losing gracefully is supposed lo be something that all Britishers are supposed to be good at. It has something to do with being properly brought up, going to a good school, being keen on cricket — rather like John Major, who has the added advantage, when it comes to behaving chivaloursly, of being a Tory. So there was some surprise, notably in the newspapers which usually support the government, when Major’s response to the Tory defeat in the Monmouth by-election was to lead a verbal assault on the Labour Party on the lines of "we wuz robbed" — that Labour had won the seat by telling a lie about hospitals opting out of NHS administration.

In fact there was hardly any need for the Labour Party to lie about this or about anything else because the government is in such a mess at present that they don’t know whether to have an election this month, or October, or next May, or never again.

In Monmouth the Labour Party ran what is for them now a typical campaign, masterminded from headquarters with a candidate featureless enough to fade into the wallpaper. The new MP Huw Edwards set out his stall as a political puppet when, at a press conference during the campaign, he replied to a question about one aspect of Labour policy: it was still being worked out but as soon as he was told what it was he would support it. There was no sign, among the celebratory Labour supporters at Monmouth, that any of them were wondering whether their victory was more a case of cynical manipulation than political principles.

Desperate

Meanwhile the Tories have two choices: they can panic, as they did after Monmouth or they can silently grit their teeth and wait for things to get better. Their attempts to replace the ill-fated Poll Tax with what they hoped would be the voter-friendly Council Tax has flopped. Many votes are won and lost on the issue of the size of the bills sent out by local authorities, whether under the old rates system or Poll Tax or the promised Council Tax. In fact this is a non issue because whatever the level of these charges it is not of significance or permanent concern to workers. When they designed the Council Tax the Tories were hoping to exploit the widespread misconception that lower local authority charges are in our interests. But the memories live on how the Poll Tax was pushed through against so much sound advice and the Tories are branded now as a party of muddle needlessly caused by dogmatism.

This has also been their problem over the NHS which, after Monmouth, will almost certainly be a central issue in the next general election. In Monmouth the Labour Party shrewdly focussed on two local hospitals which are considering opting out while they publicised evidence that the recent changes in the NHS mean medical care is a matter of what people can afford. This was powerful stuff to voters who were raised on the fallacy that the NHS provides the best possible treatment, freely and equally to everyone. In fact medical service has rather more than the two tiers which Labour made so much of. At the bottom is the NHS with its straight-jacketed resources, its overworked staff, its wailing lists and its patients organised like tiresome cattle. At the top is the kind of attention provided in the world's exclusive clinics with their expensively discreet rooms, squads of doctors and nurses and their assumption that the customer is always right provided they can pay enough. The NHS was designed for the working class, as a co-ordinated and economical get-you-back-to-work service. At the other extreme is the medical care, far removed from the scope of organisations like BUPA, reserved for the ruling class — the class who can afford the best of everything.

Orthodoxy

In the past much has been forgiven the Tories because they were assumed to be the party who could be trusted to run the economy. It all went with playing cricket, behaving correctly to ladies and losing gracefully. This has meant that Tory Chancellors of the Exchequer, however muddled and panicky their responses to capitalism's upheavals, have had an easier ride than those in a Labour government. It made little difference, that Chancellors from both sides carried out roughly the same policies, failed to the same degree to solve the same problems, made similar speeches after similar budgets. But when the cosy assumption that all Tory Chancellors are in control of the economy comes under serious challenge the result can be a severe destabilising of support for the government.

For a long time it has been an orthodoxy of capitalist economics that a booming economy and low unemployment could stimulate inflations — rising prices. Another orthodoxy has been that "inflation" is the enemy of civilisation; John Major is on record as one who "hates" inflation rather as one might "hate" a disease or a vicious animal. In the House of Commons he proclaimed that reducing "inflation" is the ". . .only stable and sure way to create and keep jobs".

But on the same day the Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont was telling the Commons that lower inflation does not create and keep jobs but destroys them: "Rising unemployment is the price we have to pay to get inflation down, and it is a price well worth paying”. In fact both Major and Lamont have either misunderstood the situation or distorted it. And when all the speeches have been made and the votes counted it is clear that either way working class interests are not involved.

Arrogance

There are some striking resemblances between Lamont and Nigel Lawson of much cursed memory, not least in the arrogance with which he delivers his lectures on the economy. Like Lawson, he has the knack of spouting memorable phrases which he must instantly hope will be quickly forgotten. Not only the unemployed were outraged by this overfed buffoon telling them that their suffering was all in the good cause of keeping the Tories in power and advancing Lamont's career.

Monmouth was a typical episode in the politics of capitalism, a smokescreen to obscure the reality of the politicians' impotence to control a vicious and inhumane social system. It is all a grisly, farcical game in which the parties of capitalism make the rules, appoint the referees and change the scoreboard. When will we blow the whistle on it all?

Ivan

They Said It . . . (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

• I believe large wealth in private hands is only morally sustainable if it used to benefit people—The Duke of Westminster.
• We might execute a 12-year old. It depends on the case—US District Attorney John Holmes.
• The government deserves every sympathy in its present situation—Daily Telegraph leader on the sterling crisis. 
• We do not attribute emotions to Her Majesty—Buckingham Palace aide, on the Queen and the Fergie photos.
• The Quayle family believes in the power of prayer—Dan Quayle, to a Christian Coalition rally.
• A presidential campaign is not a democracy—Lyn Nofziger, Reagans political director, on the Bush campaign.
• I'm not an expert on the economy— Norman Lamont.

Lamont's long wait (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “We have already weathered the worst of the storm and signs of stability are already appearing".

So said Lamont on 6 December . . . 1930. No, not Norman, but Robert P. Lamont, President Hoover’s Secretary of Commerce. As Marx once remarked, when history repeats itself the first time is a tragedy, the second a farce.

Following the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 industrial production in America fell continuously until by the second half of 1932 it had dropped by nearly a half. During this period the politicians and economic “experts” regularly predicted that the bottom had been reached and that recovery was just round the corner:

1 January 1930:  “I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring and that during the coming year the country will make steady progress."—Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, in his New Year message.

15 February 1930:   “The bottom of the business decline appears to have been reached.”—Cleveland Trust Company.

15 September 1930:  “Business appears to be turning the corner, and industrial activity seems to be increasing."—Cleveland Trust Company.

5 November 1930:  “The prospect is that by March unmistakable signs of business recovery will be available."—Standard Statistics.

21 March 1931:  “The business decline, if not already ended will end in the present half year, and be succeeded by general business improvement."—Harvard Economic Society.

27 May 1931:   “We believe that the worst of the industrial depression has been witnessed."—Standard Statistics.

18 October 1931:   “The depression has been deepened by events from abroad which are beyond the control either of our citizens or our government."—President Hoover.

26 October 1931:  "Important forecast: During the winter and early spring, business will round out the U-bottom trough."—Babsons.

1 February 1932:  “In our opinion, evidence now at hand strongly suggests that business sounded bottom in the last quarter of 1931.”— Babsons.

As in Britain over the past two years, these predictions were worthless. And for the same reason. Capitalism is an uncontrollable economic system which will bend neither to the wishes of politicians nor to the opinions of experts. But Marx was wrong. Not about slumps being inevitable from time to time under capitalism but about what happens when the same event occurs twice in history. The predictions of Robert P. Lamont in 1930 were as farcical as those of Norman N. S. H. Lamont today.

(The source of the quotes above is Faith, Fear and Fortunes by Daniel Starch, published in New York in 1934.)

Caught In The Act: Future Uncertain (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Future uncertain

John Major is famous for being the nicest of nice guys so naturally his motives in timing the general election for April 9 were the purest of the pure. It was. he said, the "right time", the people wanted an election and of course "we will win the election . . . with a working majority."

It is not clear whether Major was suffering from the delusion that there were crowds swirling around the gates of Downing Street, clamouring to be allowed to choose between the Labour and Tory methods of trying to organise British capitalism. Nor was it clear whether he had forgotten that his announcement of the date came the day after the Budget, which was supposed to be so attractive to the voters that they would insist on showing their gratitude to Major and Norman Lamont by returning them in a general election as soon as possible. In the event the announcement of polling day effectively removed the Budget from the headlines.

But docs anyone, anywhere, really believe Major when he says that April 9 was the right date because that was what the people wanted? Doesn't everyone understand that the timing was motivated by the desire to get the biggest possible vote. And doesn't the fact that Major, like all the other leaders before him, plays the election timing game, expose the myth that the Nice Guy is better than the Nasty One?

Nice Guys, as they say. usually come second and Major, when all is said and done, is a politician which means that coming second doesn't interest him. After all.,what will happen to him if the Tories lose? It can't have been entirely coincidental that immediately after the election has been called the media were speculating on his likely successor. Naturally Michael Heseltine was involved in this, declaring bashfully that he had no intention other than giving Major the kind of support, that football managers get from their chairman just before they arc fired.

None of this was calculated to comfort Major, who recently told the Tory conference that he likes being Prime Minister and intends to stay in the job. Depending on the election result, there will be a few other people with a say in that.

Forecaster unsuccessful

Of course Major got a lot of advice on the best dale for the election, some of it from Norman Lamont the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now Lamont has the vital job of keeping control of the economy of British capitalism so that it runs as he wants it to. This sounds very impressive except that Chancellors probably spend as much time complaining that the economy is out of their control as they spend celebrating that it is behaving as they want.

According to press reports Lamont was pressing Major to postpone the election until May. His reason was that the brilliant remedies he was applying to the recession and the other current problems of British capitalism would need a little longer to take full effect. By May their effectiveness would be plain for all to see and the voters would gratefully and dutifully return a Tory government and Lamont's job in the Treasury would be rather more secure than the three million-odd people on the dole.

The snag is that Lamont's true claim to fame is his persistent inability to get his economic forecasts right — or rather to have the luck to do so. If Major had had any sense Lamont's advice to wait should have persuaded him to call the election as soon as possible, because as things are if Lamont says the situation is going to improve it's a fair bet that it's about to get worse.

Lamont’s style of assessing economic trends is not new. He is liable to interpret a slowing in the rate of increase in unemployment as evidence that unemployment is actually falling. He is also liable to assume that his forecasts are so reliable that industry and commerce can behave as if what was forecast has actually happened.

None of this deters Lamont from forging on, through the exposure of his bufoonery and his blunders, with even more assessments and predictions. There is only one way of taking him seriously — as the embodiment of capitalism's chaos, immune to the conceits of its politicians.

Millionaire unrepentant

Of all the MPs who will not be seen again in the Commons, because they are retiring, none will be missed more than Alan Clark, the Honourable Member for Plymouth Sutton, son of the famous art historian Lord Clark, millionaire owner of the splendid Seltwood Castle in Kent (and much more), disdainful racist and sexist bigot.

Clark made a name for himself through a succession of what may have been interpreted as indiscreet statements. Nobody seemed to consider whether what he had said was really perfectly discreet, in the sense that he was showing his boundless contempt for anyone whose skin is black, or whose sex is female or who is a member of the working class. Even his apparent disparagement of his old school had this edge to it. Only someone rich enough to have been a pupil there could afford to say that "Eton was a very useful lesson in human cruelly and deceit"

The same can be said about his sneer at those who, because they have to work for their living, were gullible to the Thatcherite dream of a land populated by mortgages: "It's not that one wasn’t scared of losing one's jobs, but at least one wasn’t scared of not being able to pay the, er, what’s it? . . . Yes, that's it, the mortgage!"

It is impossible to feel anything other than anger and contempt for his supposedly jocular — but actually bigoted and insulting — wish to send black people ". . . all back to Bongo Bongo Land" and for the arrogant sexism in his mock concession "I now realise that women can do all jobs better than men, except butchery and coal mining". This might have been a little more impressive if Clark had had the slightest acquaintance with butchery and mining as jobs.

His career — if that was what it was — in politics has yielded a rich harvest of such boorishness, yet there is this to be said for him. At a time when the Conservative Party is led by someone who thinks that capitalism can be a classless society it is not simply provocative to have a politician like Clark, who glories in the reality that this is a class-divided society of rich and poor, in which millions must be exploited and repressed. A politician who knows which side of the class division he is on and makes no secret of his resolve to stay there.

So that's alright then. We know where we stand; we should also know what to do about it.

Ivan

That was the annus that was (1993)

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

From the January 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We haven’t been reading papers like the Mail and the Telegraph all these years without getting to know that the Queen is a historically brilliant woman but, even so, it came as a bit of a shock to learn that, with all her other talents, she can speak Latin. Or at least she can make a rather feeble joke in Latin, complaining that for her 1992 was the Annus Horribilis (when it might have been the usual sort of Annus Mirabilis with lots of money being made for her, lots of sumptuous living and lots and lots of crazily adoring subjects cheering her).

Of course she still had all these things in 1992: what she was regretting was the exposure of her children's activities and relationships in a way which would not once have happened. But this is not 1936, with the press muzzling itself over Edward VIII dallying with Mrs Simpson; nowadays a fierce circulation war among the tabloids practically guarantees the quickest and most glaring exposure of any royal misbehaviour. And then a small bit of Windsor Castle caught fire which did not leave the Queen and the other Windsors exactly homeless but which might have been a public relations triumph until some rather nasty questions were asked about how much money the Queen has, and how many homes and whether she should pay to repair the Castle. But more about the royals later; at the moment we want to consider 1992 and just how horribilis or mirabilis it was and why and what about 1993 and the year after that and so on.

We should remember, first of all. that 1992 was supposed to be the Big One, the year "we" went into Europe, the year "we” joined the ERM as a start to solving "our” economic problems, the year “we" found a new prosperity by moving towards a single European currency. It was also the year when trifling difficulties like the recession, unemployment, bankruptcies, homelessness and increasing numbers of people losing "their" house because they can’t keep paying the mortgage would be solved at a stroke by a Tory election victory. In particular a Conservative win would be such a boost to business confidence that there would be a rush to invest huge amounts of money in industry, which would trigger off a stupendous boom and stimulate everlasting popularity for John Major and his government especially his Chancellor Norman Lamont.

Victory
During the election Major was quite clear about this. For example, at the beginning of April—just before votes were cast—he told fawning Jimmy Young (who else?) that economic recovery was already under way:

  We will not see the statistics to prove it until after the event but there is clear anecdotal evidence, clear survey evidence. that it has started.

Well, enough of the voters believed that to put Major and Lamont back in their homes in Downing Street and what is the situation now? Another kind of anecdotal evidence was provided by the Confederation of British Industry conference last November. This gathering was once a congratulatory jamboree for Tory ministers but this was 1992, the Annus Mirabilis turned Horribilis. One speaker after another blamed the government for the slump (which shows that ignorance about how capitalism works, and why, is not confined to the working class) and complained bitterly about falling profits and investment and mounting bankruptcies. One speaker thought it a criminal matter:

  If the (Conservatives) election manifesto had been a company manifesto it would have landed the entire Cabinet in jail.

The government’s response to this kind of assault is as predictable as it is feeble. Last September on Sky News, Major had some explaining to do about the financial crisis which threw the government into such desperate chaos, putting interest rates up and down several times in the same day and then abruptly taking sterling out of the ERM after they had been telling us for so long that keeping it in the ERM was the only way to save it as an international currency. Major said that the government had been “overwhelmed by circumstances that neither Mr Lamont nor anybody else foresaw or could have dealt with”. This is hardly good enough since Lamont, when it suits him. claims to be able to foresee circumstances—famously he once told us all about noticing the "first green shoots of recovery" and he has by now pretty well exhausted his stock of metaphors in making the same claim. Nor is it good enough for Major to tell as that “what actually happened was an irrational market movement of a size we have not seen before" because the Tories won power in 1979 on a programme based on the assumption that the market is the rational force in society which, left to itself, will sort out all economic problems. In fact the Tories never seriously adopted that policy; the latest proof of this is their intention to intrude in the labour market by trying to hold pay rises in public sector employment below 1.5 percent.

Rainbow
On the matter of economic forecasts and a Chancellor’s ability to control events, Norman Lamont has recently revealed the true limits of his talents to some obviously sceptical journalists:

  What you seem to be asking me is “Why don’t I press some button and the world will change overnight and we will look up and see a rainbow in the sky". I’m afraid that it just isn’t like that and there aren’t these buttons to press.

Well rainbows make a nice change from green shoots as metaphorical portents of economic boom but the message is the same: the experts who say they can control capitalism can’t do it. If their luck is in and they are in office during a boom they may take the credit for it and so become famously popular. If things go the other way they have a rather different attitude; they don’t accept any blame but pass it on to unforeseeable difficulties, or the underhand machinations of foreigners or intractably greedy workers . . . One whose luck seemed to be in, and for a long time, was Nigel Lawson but even he has little cheer to offer Lamont. even he thinks now that Chancellors can’t make any promises:

  I misjudged the strength of the boom. The official forecasts were all over the place . . .  there was this enormous climate of optimism . . .  on the whole a good thing, much better than pessimism, much better than gloom. But again things went too far. (To Terry Coleman. Guardian, 7 November).

So Lamont is the Chancellor for whom the bad things have gone too far and Lawson was the Chancellor for whom the good things went too far. This makes sense only when we realize that capitalism makes impotent all the experts, the economists, the politicians. It works—as it worked in 1992—to its own laws and to satisfy its own needs regardless of what Chancellors do or plan to do, regardless of whether they see green shoots or rainbows or other mirages.

Royal misbehaviour
At times of crisis—if it is appropriate to use such a word about capitalism's never-ending upheavals—the system’s figureheads come into their own, reassuring everyone that, no matter what evidence is before their eyes, all is well. In Britain at such times the royal family are expected to be more prominent, to make even more meaningless speeches, to force their company onto even more distressed people. The message is that, no matter how severe their suffering as loyal, patriotic British workers they will pull through. At least that is the ideal. Our difficulty now is that unemployed people, struggling along on state benefit, are not taking too kindly to hearing this sort of cant from a woman whose personal wealth amounts to anything between £50 million and £6 billion. No-one is exactly sure about the true figure. And then there is the embarrassing fact that recently the royals have been neglecting a most important part of their job—setting an example to the rest of us in the lower orders of society.

As their marriages collapse one after the other under the spotlight of some triumphantly scurrilous press coverage, it is blindingly apparent that this family’s supposed position as guardians of the repressions of Christian marriage—which is bad enough as it is—is pure humbug. After all, the royals are paid a lot of money to do the job of telling the rest of us to be docile, unquestioning subjects of capitalism, by not being sexual adventurers, by not having unstable marriages and by not getting divorced. To some extent the royal conditions of employment can be breached and the media bludgeoned into ignoring it. But the 1990s' Windsors have simply overwhelmed the customary official concealment of their misbehaviour. So they have had a very bad press; even the fire at Windsor didn’t help, raising more inconvenient questions about the extent of royal wealth and how it contrasts to working class hardship. If 1992 was a horrible year for the Queen it was because so many of the delusions on which her position depends became under such intense and hostile questioning.

Poverty
It is ironic that so many of those delusions fester so powerfully among the class whose suffering should compel them to deal only in reality. Unlike Lamont's forecasts, one which is well on the way to being realized is Shelter's estimate in December 1991 that over the next five years more than a million families would become homeless. At that time Shelter said there were nearly 3,000 people sleeping rough and 55,300 households in temporary accommodation. By June 1992 the figure for Greater London alone was nearly 43,000 representing over 100,000 people—an increase of 12 percent over the year. Shelter's director recently described what this means:

  . . . families in bed and breakfast are forced to live in often overcrowded, usually depressing and sometimes downright dangerous hotels for anything up to two years. Imagine what it must be like to have no privacy, for your children to have nowhere to run and play, to have to share a bathroom with an average of 16 other people and a cooker with 21.

It is not just the homeless who are destitute. In 1989—the last year for which official figures are available—12 million people were living below a poverty line of half the average income; by now. as unemployment gets worse, that figure will be much higher. And what does this do to human relationships, so often fragile anyway in capitalist society? The NSPCC lists unemployment and family debt as key causes of child abuse; Relate, the marriage counselling service, calls it all “devastating". Especially poignant is the fact that unemployment is now hitting those areas in which one seemed relatively safe from it, while Tory MPs sat on Gibraltar-like majorities. Among the leafy towns of the South-East and the Home Counties a bitter lesson is being taught—that economic booms are not everlasting, that workers who experience a brief, relative prosperity do not do so through their own ingenuity but because capitalism is then operating in such a way as to allow it.

The hopes that 1992 was to be an Annus Mirabilis were based on misconceptions encouraged by deliberate deceit. It has turned out to be a typical year, in which a huge burden of misery and fear has fallen on an enormous number of people. For those who understand capitalism, as a year it came up to expectations. So what about the New Year? It could see the start of serious work for a society free of delusions—a society without classes and their representatives whether royal or political. We don't need aristocrats and political confidence tricksters to run the world; we can do it ourselves for ourselves. And. yes, we can do it now. In 1993.

Ivan

Sting in the Tail: A dog’s life (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

A dog’s life

Points of View (BBC1, 26 March) dealt with a TV story about an unemployed man and his family in Barrow who were struggling to survive on state benefits. After paying the bills they were left with about £20 to feed themselves.

The man had said that they couldn't afford to feed their pet dog so it might have to be put down. The viewer reaction to this was amazing. The BBC was inundated with letters from people who offered to send food for the mutt or even provide an allowance to feed it!

“Tragically”, said Anne Robinson the presenter, no one offered the man a job. Of course the real tragedy is that people are prepared to accept a society which, even though it can provide an abundance of food, still condemns other people to feed themselves on the princely sum of £20 a week.

It’s official

After the fiasco of last October's Black Wednesday, chancellor Norman Lamont appointed seven of Britain's most notable economists, ranging from monetarist diehard to Keynesian blowhard, to give the government the benefit of their collective wisdom on the economy.

The press quickly dubbed them “the seven wise men" and they had their first get-together in February. Now one of them, Professor Tim Congdon, has given his verdict on the other six:

  It turned out that none of the other members of the panel had any clear notion of how the quantity of money affects economic activity and the price level (Guardian, 9 March).

The Prof waded into his fellow panellists and, according to the Guardian, concluded that “they did not have a clue about how the economy really worked".

Socialists are forever pointing out how little the bourgeois economists know about the capitalist system they so admire, but could we have put it more brutally than has one of their own number?

The money go-round

The budget's reduction of tax credit on company dividends could mean that 70 percent of shareholders can look forward to smaller dividends. This immediately caused share prices to fall by £5 billion while government fixed-interest bonds suddenly became more popular with investors.

Switching funds around to get that little bit extra is something investors, especially the big institutions such as pension funds, must constantly do. During the Gulf War vast numbers of shares were sold to buy gold, the old stand-by in troubled times, but when the war ended investors “sold huge quantities of gold yesterday to raise the cash needed to buy into the booming stock market" (Guardian, 18 January 1992).

When interest rates were sky-high in the early 1990s investors moved funds into bank deposits which were bringing them 15 percent, but once rates fell then those deposits were switched back into shares and this has helped raise share prices to record levels.

And so it goes on, with capital moving endlessly between shares, gold, banks, bonds, etc, and back again in the restless search for the highest possible return.

Happy Endings

Charles Dickens was forced by public opinion to change the ending of Great Expectations. Many years later Hollywood film makers learned the same lesson. Never mind the plot's progression, give 'em a happy ending. People like happy endings? How about this scenario then?

For almost 400 years the working class have been exploited. Our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and even worse our daughters and sons have lived in chains. Frightened and poor we have done as we were bid.

But change comes. The working class grows up. It learns of its great potential power. It organises and it abolishes the wages system. It brings about a new system of society based on common ownership.

Hey, Steven Spielberg, we'll give you the film rights for nothing!

Just in case

ICI has won the contract to re-cycle or destroy US Army surplus explosives held in one of the world's biggest munition dumps.

This is a real big deal. This INAAP—Indiana Army Ammunition Plant—is an 11,000 acre site containing 1,400 buildings. 1S5 miles of roads and 80 miles of railroad track.

It is always good to see the end of arms build-ups, but alas the story is not one of undiminished joy. According to the Independent on Sunday (21 March):

   The company gets to use a state-of-the-art. well maintained factory. In return, it will employ local people and keep the production lines warm—just in case the previous occupant needs to make a sudden return.

With memories of Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf, the US Army are merely putting INAAP in the back burner for future use.

Rejoice?

Mrs Thatcher's famous Downing Street remark at the end of the Falkland Islands conflict of “rejoice” seems even more inappropriate with the news that Scotland Yard are to investigate the claim that British soldiers shot Argentine prisoners.

Commenting on this, the Independent (27 March) reported:

  Investigations of war crimes perpetrated by the victors in a conflict are rare. “The victors can usually shut this kind of thing up", said a Ministry of Defence official. It was the publication in 1991 of Lance-Corporal Vincent Bromley's book, Excursion In Hell, with its account of the shooting of Argentine prisoners by British soldiers, that made these alleged crimes an exception.

Socialists are opposed to all capitalism's wars. To us they are all crimes. We will do our rejoicing when we get rid of capitalism.

How long will the slump last? (1991)

From the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite Chancellor Lamont's predictions, the British economy still shows no sign of recovery from the recession. Indeed, the picture is a gloomy one with world slump conditions becoming apparent as the economic downturn in Britain is mirrored in a number of other leading industrial nations. Among others, the United States, Canada, France and even Japan have all recently seen industrial production fall and unemployment rise.

In Britain, the CBI has been reporting falling confidence, orders and output. The construction industry is predicting a total loss of up to 250,000 jobs (Times, 5 August), and motor manufacturing—always a good indicator of the overall health of the economy—is in dire straits. Sales have fallen dramatically and there are widespread redundancies in the offing, with the large Ford plant at Halewood already operating a three-day week. Across much of the South the condition of the formerly booming high-tech “sunrise'' industries is more suggestive of a sunset, with thousands of redundancies and increasing numbers of factory closures. The official unemployment statistics, while grossly underestimating the real situation, are indicating that the 3 million figure will be reached before too long, possibly early next year. In the first quarter of 1991, capital investment in the UK was down by 9.8 percent (Sunday Times, 28 July) and there appears to be little sign of real improvement.

Bad though the situation is, it seems that none of the capitalist political parties think they have much by way of a solution. It now seems a very long time since the Labour Party advocated government intervention and large increases in state spending to create full employment, or since Mrs Thatcher promised the British economy a good “shake-out" after which it would be leaner, fitter and more successful for years to come. Indeed, while Keynesianism seems as dead and buried as its founder, the Monetarist doctrine which attempted to supersede it as the cure-all for the nations ills rarely now gets mentioned outside of the more eccentric university economics departments.

During the last slump in the early 1980s things couldn’t have been more different. Monetarism was in the ascendant, with the Prime Minister, Chancellor and their leading economic advisers all followers of this spurious faith, arguing that if increases in the price level could be kept to a minimum, then the market would deliver economic growth and increasing employment without too much assistance from the state.

Labour’s void

At the other end of the capitalist political spectrum, the Labour Party was showing a renewed faith in Keynesian-style expansion, while bitterly opposing the Tory governments attempts to cut government spending in real terms. Labour’s disastrous 1983 General Election manifesto (dubbed by Labour MP Austin Mitchell “the longest suicide note in political history") stated gloriously:

   We will expand the economy by providing a strong and measured increase in spending . . . more spending means that the economy will begin to expand: and growth will provide the new wealth for higher wages and better living standards, the right climate for industry to invest, and more resources for the public services . . . economic expansion will make it possible to end the waste of mass unemployment.

In one sense it was touching that the manifest failure of these policies when implemented in 1974-5 under Wilson and Healey did not deter Labour from promising to have another attempt. But by this time Keynesian nonsense about an increase in state spending boosting the economy and reducing unemployment (when representing in fact merely a re-arrangement of spending power within the economy between the state and private sectors) was unlikely to fool the electorate.

Though there are still some unrepentant Keynesians in the Labour Party (and some in the Tory Party, too) Labour has now moved away from such cumbersome commitments, content in its political void and happy to criticise the supposed failings of others without bothering to offer anything substantially different of its own. The Conservative Party, likewise, had already long abandoned any hope it may once have had of reducing unemployment and stimulating growth through its own efforts at manipulating the capitalist trade cycle. Now they can only hope that better days are around the corner, waiting for the turnaround in the economy like a beached whale waiting for the tide to come back in and rescue it.

No solution

The impotence of the various parties of capitalism when confronted with the system’s unpredictable trade cycle has been clearly exposed by a long scries of past failures. Faced with ever-recurring capitalist crises and slumps, they have tried protectionism and free trade, increased government spending and reduced government spending, fixed exchange rates and floating exchange rates, imperial preference and the Common Market, nationalisation and privatisation—and all to no avail. The underlying problem has remained—because it is built-in to the system.

The unplanned nature of its production means that capitalism will always periodically plunge headlong into slump. Over-investment in key industries inevitably occurs because of the never-ending drive towards capital accumulation, leading to falling rates of profit and overproduction of commodities for the market. As a result, the human miseries of redundancy and unemployment intrude into the lives of those most vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the market economy. They, of course, are the people currently paying a price Chancellor Lamont says "is well worth paying".

But it is not simply that the politicians are deliberately callous when some reformist solution to the problem is there for all to see and for them to take up. In reality there never has been a solution to capitalist slumps and, given the anarchic nature of the capitalist system, it would seem that the best Major and Lamont can presently hope for is that the recession is not exacerbated by the type of financial crash that occurred in 1929. But the recent scries of financial scandals coupled with the fall in the Nikkei Index in Japan from nearly 39,000 points to just over 23,000 in less than two years (knocking more than £1,000 billion off the value of quoted shares) suggest that things are not looking too good on that front either.

The capitalist system has always been at the mercy of such factors and only a fool could predict that “the resumption of growth should not long be delayed" (Chancellors Budget Speech, 19 March). Though the slump will end sometime—after which the cycle will come round all over again—it will surely have demonstrated once and for all the complete inability of the political parties and governments of capitalism to control their own economic system, and will have exposed the so-called “triumph of capitalism" for the hollow sham that it is.

Dave Perrin

Greasy Pole: No More Mister Nice Guy (1996)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like watching the sun rise, inch by inch, beyond a distant hill the idea is beginning to dawn that John Major is not, after all, the Very Nice Man he was once supposed to be. Not the simple, relaxed chap you’re pleased to have a chat with over the garden fence or a pint with at the local. Not the concerned family man with the homely wife and the nice kids who do well at school and who are always polite and respectful.

When Major first got the job of Prime Minister, after the men in grey suits had done their duty over Thatcher, it soon became apparent that his background was so obscured as to defeat the most penetrative of media hacks. We were told he came from Brixton, in those innocent days before it gained a reputation for hyperactive police and hyper-reactive rioters. He went to grammar school locally and then failed to become a London Transport bus conductor, which did not seem to have affected his later career at a bank, where he mysteriously scaled the promotion ladder. This must have stood him in good stead when he began to claw his way up the greasy pole of politics, from the local Young Conservatives to MP, to junior minister to Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister.

This was highly unsatisfactory to all those frantically excavating hacks. They could not exhume anything like a scandal about Major, except for still-born stories about a long past relationship with an older woman and a non-existent extramarital affair. Meanwhile Major made soothing declarations about the desire to build a classless society and to lead a nation at ease with itself. A bewildered population began to ask itself whether it could be true: were we about to be governed by a Very Nice Man?

Well, Major himself has answered that question, with evidence that he is as ruthless a political operator as he needs to be. He may lack some of the skills required for this—for example he has not mastered Harold Wilson's knack of never completely leaving all his boats burned—but he is trying hard. Any problem which attracts publicity is explained away as if the past sixteen years had been spent under some other party in government. If necessary ministers who get in trouble are sacked, after an initial period when Major ritually declares they have his complete support.

Poll Tax debacle
This would have been a shock only to those who had failed to appreciate the steely edge of Major's ambition. For example, when Thatcher was confronted with the ominous result of the first leadership ballot in 1990 she turned to the two most powerful people in her cabinet—Douglas Hurd at the Foreign Office and Major at the Exchequer—for support in the second ballot. Hurd agreed, according to Thatcher, "at once and with good grace”. But Major was different. This was the man clearly chosen byThatcher as her eventual successor; it might even be said that he owed it all to her. How did he respond to her, in her hour of need?

  “I asked John to second my nomination. There was a moment's silence. The hesitation was palpable . . . Then he said that if that was what I wanted, yes. Later, when urging my supporters to vote for John for the leadership, I made play of the fact that he did not hesitate. But both of us knew otherwise" (The Downing Street Years).

There are other examples of Major’s careful duplicity. As Financial Secretary to the Treasury and later as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was closely identified with the Poll Tax. From the outset this was a very unpopular measure; multitudes of workers saw it as a blatant attack on their incomes and they showed how they felt with their votes.

It was only when Thatcher had gone and the fact that the Poll Tax was a monumental vote-loser became obvious to all but the most stubborn or stupid of Tories that Major changed his line. During his campaign for the Conservative leadership—and this was partly to undermine Heseltine’s appeal—he promised to review the tax, which really meant to abolish it. It was as if he had never supported it in the first place, just as if the whole mess was someone else’s fault.

Lucky Lamont
That was how it was again over the issue of sterling and the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Again, Major was a supporter of this policy, arguing that it would result in lower interest rates, a stable exchange rate for sterling—and so a big political advantage for the Tories.

Well it didn’t turn out like that and it all came to an end on that September day when interest rates were raised three times within a few hours and the Chancellor of the Exchequer wearily told the assembled media in Downing Street that sterling had been withdrawn from the ERM.

This withdrawal was, apparently, in order to achieve the very conditions which membership of the ERM was to bring in the first place. It was such an abject collapse of a policy that it might even have persuaded some politician—the Chancellor, the Prime Minister—to confess their impotence to control capitalism and fall on their political sword. What happened was that Norman Lamont, who was Major’s choice as Chancellor, took all the blame. He it was who stood mumbling into the microphone in Downing Street and he, some time later, who was sacked by Major. Again, it was almost as if the policies had nothing to do with Major. Not surprisingly, Lamont now sulks on the back benches, sniping at Major’s Teflon-coated image.

So far Major has got away with such breathtaking betrayals of what he claimed were his principles. If the day comes when he is finally, unavoidably, exposed as yet another political trickster we may be sure that we shall be encouraged to believe it matters whether our leaders are nice or nasty. We will be told we can really have a classless society, at ease with itself, if only we have a nice, unassuming, sensible person in charge at Number Ten. When that happens we should remember the cynical, disreputable history of capitalism of which John Major is a part.

Ivan

Can the welfare state survive? (1992)

From the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the deepening of the world economic crisis and the inevitable increase in unemployment, homelessness and poverty, pressures on welfare agencies world-wide are increasing. Governments are being compelled to review their public spending budgets in an attempt to meet these problems.

Here in Britain the Chancellor, Norman Lamont, has emphasised the Conservatives' commitment:

to reduce the proportion of the nation's wealth pre-empted by the public sector . . . Recession inevitably makes that difficult for a while, as output shrinks while rising unemployment pushes up spending. So public spending as a proportion of GDP will rise for a couple of years. But as the economy recovers we need to get it back on a steady downward trend (Daily Telegraph. 24 July).

He went on to say that the "total level of public expenditure must be fixed on the basis of what is affordable".

This statement implies that, for the government’s plan to succeed, recovery must occur within two years. If the Chancellor's previous forecasts arc anything to go by— he announced in June last year that recovery had begun—then his pronouncement lacks credibility.

Same the whole world over

The strains on welfare budgets are not confined to Britain. In America the State of California is broke. For the first time since 1930 welfare cheques have been issued as lOUs and some banks have bounced them. In New Zealand, the National Party government of Jim Bolger has made a determined attempt to drastically modify the welfare state which has existed ten years longer than in Britain. Against a background of net debt ratio to public spending of 46.5 percent, compared to an OECD average of 33 percent, cutbacks have begun in earnest. Hospital charges for those on higher incomes have increased and are effectively means-tested. Retirement age will be increased from 60 to 65 over a ten-year period. There will be a surcharge for all tax-paying pensioners. Unemployment benefit for a single person has been cut by 10 percent in cash terms. It is now no longer paid to those below 18 and only at a reduced rate to those up to age 25 (Financial Times, 24 July).

Sweden, that shining example of a social welfare state according to many reformist Social Democrats, where prior to last year’s election public spending totalled 61 percent of GNP. has been forced to make reductions in social security spending. After nearly 60 years so-called “caring economics” has ended “in uncontrollable public spending and the highest tax rates in the world along with chronic wage inflation as workers tried to claw back tax increases through their wage packets" (Daily Telegraph, 26 March).

In Italy the public debt at a level of 105 percent of National Income is clearly out of control. The ratio of debt to GNP is growing faster than the economy. Endemic political scandals linking prominent government Ministers to corruption involving public works contracts and the Mafia have undermined confidence in the country’s finances. Privatisation plans, intended to reshuffle the states insurance, oil and electricity into two main groups in preparation for sale to the public, had to be modified as a result of the disclosure of huge debts owed by these institutions to foreign banks totalling £5.2 billion (Financial Times, 24 July).

Governments have no money other than that which they raise from taxation, direct and indirect, borrowing by issuing government stock, increasing the money supply and, in recent years, privatisation of formerly state-run industries. Ultimately this revenue must come out of the profit-making sector of the capitalist economy.

It follows that increases in public spending must involve a reduction of profit in the non-state profit-making sector unless the latter can increase its profits to a level that compensates for the increased public sector spending. This, however, is not possible when the capitalist mode of production. whose sole function is the accumulation of capital in order to realise a greater mass of profit, enters into deep economic crisis, as it has at present. Personal and business bankruptcies increase, unemployment soars along with homelessness resulting from repossessions, all increasing demands on the public sector. This in turn results in increased government borrowing.

In spite of their alleged differences, all the major parties at the last election attempted to outbid each other in their promises of increased public spending. The Conservatives claimed that better management and accountability would produce better value for money. Labour called for a more "caring society”, but the call from their deputy leader, Margaret Beckett, for the lowering of interest rates to revive the economy fails to account for the fact that the US has its lowest interest rates since the 1930s and yet still has no recovery.

More cuts to come

None of the catch slogans of either party address the fundamental contradictions contained within capitalism which are manifesting themselves in greater problems in the public sector. Having allowed public spending to increase, with the elections over, the Chancellor now has the task with Michael Portillo, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, of keeping public spending within the projected limits of £245 billion for 1993/ 94. While details of cutbacks have yet to be revealed, unemployment benefit is a likely target.

Some idea of the magnitude of the problems involved can be seen from the estimated costs of unemployment, income support and housing benefits which rise by about £350 million for every 100,000 unemployed above the governments projected forecast (Daily Telegraph, 24 July). The costs of long-term unemployment of 600,000 have been put at £4 billion by R. Layard (Employment Institute pamphlet, September 1991). The charity Relate has put the cost of single parent families to the public sector as £600 million (Daily Telegraph, 1 August).

And what if the long-promised economic recovery fails to materialise on time? Then the problems outlined above will increase to a degree that at worst could cause a collapse of the welfare state both here and abroad or at best result in a drastic cut back in welfare provisions as in the 1930s with its consequent suffering and hardship for members of the working class. The solution lies with those who are always on the receiving end. The class that produces the wealth—the working class. They and they alone can end this nightmare by establishing a society of production for use and the welfare of all humanity.

Terry Lawlor

Cooking the Books: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (2016)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is generally recognised that during the referendum campaign the Brexit side relied on lies – about how much Britain paid to the EU, about how the EU worked, about Turkey being about to join – over and above the usual empty promises of politicians as to how things would be better if they won. The Remain side relied more on misleading statistics.

In April the Treasury released a study purporting to show that a ‘Vote to Leave would make British households £4,300 worse off’ by 2030 (Independent, 18 April). The Remain side immediately translated this into a poster proclaiming ‘£4300 cost to UK families if Britain leaves the EU’. This figure was misleading because it was based on the assumption that Britain left the single market as well as the EU institutions; which does not have to be, and might well turn out not to be the case.

Also, the £4,300 did not represent how much households would lose, but how much they would fail to gain, the assumption being that if Britain stayed in families would be better off by that amount – an empty politicians’ promise as this is not something that the government has the power to deliver or even predict

Nobody knows what things will be like in 2030 or what will happen in between now and then. This allowed the Brexit side to score a point by ridiculing forecasts as to what things would be like as far as 14 years ahead.

Norman Lamont, a former Tory Chancellor, best known for having to manage Britain’s ignominious exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992, pointed out:

‘Few forecasts are right for 14 months, let alone 14 years’ (Guardian, 18 April).

Ex-Cabinet Minister Iain Duncan-Smith was even more scathing:

‘If anybody can tell me they know what the global economy is going to be like over the next year let alone the next ten years I have to say they’re either soothsayers or they’ve got some link with God’ (BBC, 16 May).

Both true. Capitalism is an anarchic system in which capitalist firms compete to make as much profit as they can, which leads to ever-repeating boom/slump cycles with the occasional big crash. Added to this is jockeying between states, in furtherance of the economic interests of their capitalists, over trade deals and access to markets and investment outlets, sometimes resulting in war either directly or by proxy.

Taken together, all this makes the course of global capitalism unpredictable and uncontrollable. Experienced politicians know this but still claim the credit when by chance things are going relatively well when they happen to be in office. When, however, things go badly they resort to saying that they were ‘blown off course’. This in fact is an apt metaphor as governments are like the captains of a ship, not just at the mercy of the weather but also having to navigate by sight. They can only react to what capitalism places in their path and which they cannot predict let alone control.

Governments do try to forecast what lies beyond what they can immediately see but, despite the sophisticated models and scenarios, these are essentially just guesstimates and not to be taken as gospel, as the Remain side encouraged voters to believe. According to Lamont, himself a one-time Chancellor, they don’t set much store by them:

‘Any Chancellor of the Exchequer who believes economic forecasts needs his head examined’ (City AM, 27 April).

Remember that the next time a Chancellor in his budget speech trots out statistics about what future growth is going to be.