Forward to the Past!

Uncertain times, such as the one we live in now, have a curious tendency to produce nostalgic social movements, a yearning for a return to an often mythical better yesterday. In these straightened, post crash times, I want to have a brief look at the history of these movements, and see what it can tell us about things which are happening today.

Strangely, the 1920’s are remembered as a time of plenty, when flappers danced the Charleston as the good times rolled. They weren’t really like that at all. Churchill’s disastrous decision to peg Britain to the gold standard caused a manufacturing slump in a country that had never recovered from the economic upheaval of the First World War. For a great many people, it appeared that capitalism was failing as a system long before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

In to this difficult era was born a movement called the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. They aimed, in their own words, to encourage open air education for the children, craft training groups and craft guilds, local folk moots (sic) and cultural development, and a brotherhood of man through the disarmament of nations. In reality this meant that they went camping in homemade costumes that resembled the clothes worn by Anglo-Saxons, and danced around elaborately painted tents. In the words of the founder, John Hargrave, the movement was based on the idea that “our great disorganised civilisation has failed” and that recovery necessitated a return to a more simple way of living. The movement petered out in during the more absolute time of the Second World War.

In a similar sort of way, the movement towards self sufficiency in the 1970’s, epitomised by the saccharine sitcom ‘The Good Life’, should really be understood against the backdrop of economic crisis, strikes and the painfully obvious absence of effective political leadership that characterised that era. Once again, as things appeared to fall apart, people wistfully yearned to be transported back to an imagined happier, simpler time.

Well, let’s face it; we live in uncertain times today. Can we see modern equivalents of the Kibbo Kift emerging? I would contend that we do. Consider the campaign to save traditional high streets. The idea behind it seems to be that faceless multinational corporations are forcing small, independent retailers out of business and homogenising all of our town centres, an argument summed up, inevitably, in The Guardian here. This basic contention is accurate. Small shops are disappearing, and we do buy most of our food from the big four supermarkets. So what? Supermarkets are cheap, and money is tight. The idea that people shop in Tesco because they choose to, rather than because they are somehow forced to is not even considered. Even more bizarre is the campaign in Totnes to prevent a large coffee shop chain opening a store in the town. If people don’t like mass-produced coffee they won’t drink it. Why is it right to stop them? Why is it even important?

All these campaigners claim to be progressives, fighting the march of the evil corporations. In reality they represent nothing so much as the howl of the petit-bourgeois shopkeeper, unable to comprehend that people other than themselves can exercise free choice, and that that choice may not coincide with their desire for merry England to remain unsullied by the modern world. There are plenty of good causes worth donating time and effort to. I cannot for the life of me see why this is one of them.      

Jimmy Savile and Us

As the trickle of revelations about Jimmy Savile becomes a flood, I want to pause and think about what they tell us about the society we live in, above all about the disgraceful way in which we treat the weak and vulnerable. For me, nothing epitomises this uncomfortable truth more than the fact that a pervert in a tracksuit, with no qualifications in the treatment of psychological disorders, was put in charge of our most secure psychiatric hospital.

In any society there are a small number of individuals who are considered too disturbed and too dangerous not to be incarcerated. We house these people in Broadmoor secure hospital. Its inmates have included Peter Sutcliffe, AKA the Yorkshire Ripper (pictured, on the left) and Ronnie Kray. In 1988, after a damming report identified severe failings in the management of this institution, the Department of Health took it upon itself to appoint Jimmy Savile to oversee the hospital, and even gave him the power to appoint its general manager.

What could possibly have been the justification for this decision? Even assuming that they hadn’t heard the rumours about Savile sexually abusing vulnerable people, the man was a children’s television presenter. What did he know about running a hospital, or for that matter a prison? Absolutely nothing. There is only one possible explanation for this disgraceful appointment. The government of the time did not take the responsibility of dealing with the criminally insane seriously, and we can assume that they thought appointing a popular celebrity would be a good bit of free publicity. More disturbing than this assumption is the fact that there was no public outcry. The Department of Health was right. We as a society did not take our responsibility seriously. One hopes that has changed, although there is little indication that this is true.

This unthinking respect for celebrity and disregard for the vulnerable goes a long way towards explaining how this disgusting man was able to prey on young girls for so many years. We have heard many stories about how people had ‘heard the rumours’ about Savile, but were never able to prove them. I suggest to you that this narrative is simply not credible. These rumours were not confined to a select group of media insiders. I remember receiving a Popbitch round robin email around 2004-2005 which explicitly stated that Jimmy Savile abused young girls, along with Paul Gadd AKA Gary Glitter (sadly I did not keep this email). I was not a media insider. At the time I was a window fitter. If I heard rumours, then I think that people who worked with Savile would have known a great deal more, and yet nobody stopped him. They just accepted that because he was a television personality he was allowed to behave in this way. Who cared about his victims? What could they do? This applies to me as well. When I received that email I treated it as a bit of risqué light entertainment. It doesn’t seem funny now. Ask yourself; would you have felt any different? What does that make us? It’s an uncomfortable train of thought.       

Alfred Nobel Dynamites Satire. Again.

In 1973 the comedian Tom Lehrer declared that satire was dead because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger, after he sent in B52s to bomb Cambodia. Today, the esteemed Nobel committee have finally proved him wrong, by awarding the prize to the European Union in recognition of its work in keeping the peace in Europe since the Second World War. We can only hope that Jon Stewart finds the strength to carry on.

We are told that thanks to the EU, France and Germany haven’t been to war for seventy years. When you think about it that’s not a very surprising observation. For most of that time Germany did not exist as a single country. The East was a puppet state of the USSR. The west was supported by NATO because it was the front line of the Cold War. It was the Cold War that kept the peace in Europe, because quite frankly the continent was nothing more than a venue for the superpowers to vie for global domination. Peace was a result of what happened in Washington and Moscow, not Brussels.

After the Cold War, the EU’s contribution to peace is at best questionable. A continent scarred by genocide sat back and watched ethnic hatreds ignite again at Srebrenica. Mass murder returned to the continent, and only the intervention of the USA was able to bring an uneasy peace. Hard to see what the EU did that impressed the Nobel judges there.

Perhaps we should look at the continent today, as maybe it is a monument to wise statesmanship guiding people towards a better and more peaceful future? Er, no. That’s not right, is it? The grand folly of the single currency has condemned the people of southern Europe to near permanent recession. Violence is breaking out on the streets of Athens and Madrid. Europe of all places should know the dangers of this type of crisis. People without hope will turn to extreme leaders in the desperate hope of salvation. What is the EU doing about this? Nothing. History can repeat itself as tragedy many times over. Yet despite all this, the leaders who have wrought this chaos on the continent deserve a Nobel Prize? No. They really don’t.   

David Cameron, Cocaine and the Modern Conference Speech

I was once told by a man who knows about such things that the principle effect of cocaine is to cause the user to say absolutely nothing of interest at great length and with total conviction. This is basically the objective of most party conference speeches, and the one David Cameron delivered today was a masterpiece in this respect.

Mid way through a parliamentary term he was not going to set out a new vision for the country, because he has already done that, and has spent the last two and a half years trying to put it in to practice.  His job today was to explain to the country what he is doing and to rally his party behind him in preparation for the next election. He probably made a better fist of the second task than the first.

For a Conservative in the hall there was plenty to be excited about. He attacked Ed Miliband directly, painting him as a naive man who did not understand how taxation worked. He attacked the wider left, notably the teaching unions, as being a roadblock to the reforms that the public want to see. As with Ed Miliband praising the NHS, this was a particularly easy way to get a round of applause from his activists. They will leave Birmingham happy.

For the country at large, the picture is less clear. Cameron himself correctly identified the ground on which the next election will be fought, namely education, welfare and the economy. Of these, it is the last which is causing the most trouble for the Conservatives. Just this week the IMF cut the UK growth forecast, calling the government’s economic strategy in to question. Cameron directly addressed this concern, arguing that although austerity is painful, there is no alternative. He must know that for this to ring true there must be some sign that the government’s policies are working by the next election. He gave a big mention to Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, which was something of a gamble, because the biggest reform of all, the Universal Credit, is still in the development stage, and doubts have been raised about its viability (this will be the subject of a future blog). At the moment, only the government’s education policy looks like a clear winner for the Tories. That alone will not be enough for them to win an election.

Above all, this speech was the epitome of modern professional politics. It ticked all the necessary boxes, it rallied the troops without being offensive to the wider public, and the man delivering it seemed plausible and relaxed in his role. There were no lines which will be remembered by this time next month, nor indeed were there supposed to be. That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with modern party politics. The conference season essentially aims to give activists the illusion of political engagement, while in reality a self-selecting professional elite governs both their party and their country. Cameron’s speech merely confirmed his place at the top of this elite. On its own terms it can therefore be judged to be a resounding success.       

The EU-It's Too Soon To Tell.

During the conference season, it’s easy to forget that really important things are actually happening in the world. From the perspective of these hallowed islands, the most important is the slow motion socio-economic implosion of the Euro-zone. You will hear noisy fringe meetings of Conservatives demanding that we withdraw from the European Union, but on the ‘progressive’ side of the divide, there is hardly a peep on the subject.

This is a rather bizarre omission. About half of Britain’s trade occurs within the EU free trade area, with the result that the British manufacturing sector is heavily dependent on our membership. Our defence policy, such as it is, is based on strategic cooperation with European countries, notably France. EU structures provide many smaller advantages to us, for example if a British teenager is abducted by her teacher and taken to Europe they can be returned with the help of a European Arrest Warrant. Yet the only case being put forward with any enthusiasm today is that we should leave the EU.

If we are to take a proper strategic decision about the future of Britain’s relationship with the EU, then we first need to seriously consider the situation on the continent as it stands. The Euro as it is currently constituted is a disaster. There is mass unemployment causing extreme social unrest in southern Europe. This is the result of those countries being unable to devalue their currencies to make their exports more competitive, and instead being locked in to a currency which basically favours Germany. This situation is politically unsustainable. In the end, one of two things will happen. Either the Euro-zone will become fiscally and politically a single entity, where money is transferred on a large scale from the core (Germany/Holland) to the periphery (most other places). Alternatively the currency will break up, because core countries are unwilling to take up this burden. In this case the move towards “ever closer union” is reversed, and Europe reverts back towards a looser federation, scarred by the memory of the economic pain that has been unleashed on it by the integrationists.

The time to make a decision is then, when we actually know what we are deciding to do. Choosing to leave the EU now would simply limit Britain’s available options later on, to little discernible benefit. A more closely integrated Europe would almost certainly require a blunt out, while a loose federation would probably mean a return to a sort of nineteenth century style of diplomacy, and being a member of the EU, with a place at the decision making table, would probably be much better than being locked outside. This will be an absolutely critical choice, and it must be done in the right way. It is hard to imagine a statesman like Castlereagh advocating a course of action which could so seriously limit Britain’s strategic options, and do so for narrow party political advantage, as some people do today. The decision must be taken at a time when the British national interest can be properly determined and proper arguments marshalled by both sides. Foreign policy is not some kind of party political game. It matters.   

In Defence Of Spin

“[A Prince] must strive to make everyone recognise in his actions greatness, spirit, dignity and strength” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.

A much lamented aspect of politics is the seeming obsession with ‘spin’, the desire of politicians to receive good publicity, both for themselves personally and for their actions. In recent years we have seen such indignities as spin doctors trying to launch vicious and untrue smear campaigns against their opponents, and in one case hounding an honest man to his death. Would politics not be better if less attention was paid to public relations, and politicians simply got on with the job of governing?

No, not really.

To understand why, you must appreciate that politics is about much more than the management of various government agencies. When we go and vote, we are not simply selecting the people who we think will give us value for our tax money. We are choosing our leaders. This means we must think about what we mean by leadership if we want to understand what we mean by politics.

Leadership is not something which can be done to people. It is about having a clear idea of what you want a group of people to do, then persuading them to share this vision and work with you to achieve it. To take a modern example, the last Labour government wanted to reform the school system by introducing a new type of school which would drive up educational standards. To do this they needed to convince new managers to open the new schools, teachers to work in them and parents to send their children to them. This act of persuasion required constant communication with all the various interested parties to keep them on board, and to explain why opponents of the scheme were wrong. Without this communication, the reform would have been impossible.

All political systems are dependent in some way on the process of constant communication between leaders and those they govern. Totalitarian regimes spend an inordinate amount of energy convincing their victims of the rightness of their leaders. That is the purpose of huge fascistic rallies and imposing military parades. The point here is obviously not that the use of spin is totalitarian, but that all leadership, and by extension all politics, is dependent on communication. The totalitarian examples show how the process can be used to corrupt and oppress. Perhaps I should leave you with an example of spin being used for something good.   

The Miliboy Comes Good (Maybe)

I, and I suspect most of the fourth estate, woke up this morning ready to give Ed Miliband’s conference speech a cruel and scathing review. Having watched it I can report to you that it was...pretty good. More surprisingly than that it was good in all the ways that I thought it wouldn’t be. It was warm, well delivered, and his jokes were actually funny. Ed spoke human, and more importantly he spoke it to the country rather than the party.

Gone was the sanctimonious agitprop which has characterised so many of his public appearances. In was chatting about the Olympics in the morning with your workmates (not exactly my favourite hobby, but I understand everyone else loved it). We learned that his desire is to be a ‘One Nation’ Prime Minister, and that he is quite serious about re-inventing the way the British economy works.

He pledged to introduce Glass-Steagall style legislation to separate retail and investment banking, and made the dubious claim that this would mean small businesses would get better access to credit. He also claimed that the practice of forcing companies to publish their accounts every three months encouraged short-termism in British industry, although he stopped short of saying he’d change it. It's hard to imagine any other contemporary leader saying these things. 

The speech did include some of the standard conference guff. Saying that the NHS is the embodiment of all that is good in Britain to the Labour conference is the equivalent of Led Zeppelin closing a gig with Stairway to Heaven. Effective, but it hardly challenges the audience. His pledge to repeal the latest NHS Act could prove a hostage to fortune if he has to go through with it. It will mean yet another huge reorganisation, and it does not address the cost problems that I have mentioned before. Demanding to know how many Coalition ministers will benefit from the top rate of tax is an open invitation for his opponents to examine the personal wealth of senior Labour figures. Remember, there aren’t many coal miners in the shadow cabinet.

The real trick that Ed Miliband pulled off with this speech was that he set out a soft left position, and made it sound acceptable to southern middle class voters (like me). For this to count for anything, the positions he has set out must stand up to serious scrutiny. I have already mentioned my doubts about his NHS pledge, and I would add that his new banking legislation would have allowed Lehman Brothers and Northern Rock to behave exactly as they did before the 2008 crash. Glass-Steagall is no panacea.  If the rest falls apart this easily, Mr Miliband will be left looking like an idealistic lightweight, not a potential Prime Minister. That said, today was the first time that you could actually imagine him walking in to Number Ten. Politics just got a little bit more interesting.