Blair’s children
We are probably on the way to a Tory government. In the local elections on 1 May, not only did Labour do badly; the Tories did well. An opinion poll on the weekend of 7-8 May showed the Tories ahead of Labour by 49% to 23%.
Where working-class voters have turned away from Labour in disillusion, generally left or leftish parties have failed to gain. No-one should exaggerate the electorate’s shift to the right, or suppose that it is fixed in stone. Just one sizeable working-class victory in struggle might reverse it. But it is the culmination of a steady drift for the last ten years.
Many people talk of “Thatcher’s children”, suggesting that Margaret Thatcher, Tory prime minister between 1979 and 1990, shifted public opinion solidly to the right.
Thatcher did shift the political Establishment, Labour and Lib-Dem as well as Tory. But in the population at large, the story is more one of “Blair’s children”.
The British Social Attitudes [BSA] surveys have the limitations of all such opinion-poll sociology. What they show, though, chimes in with political experience.
After Thatcher defeated the miners’ strike, in 1985, the working class was intimidated. But you can be intimidated and still want to fight back against what you fear once you see hope.
In 1997, there was hope around Blair’s victory. Then Blair closed off the political channels in the labour movement. That smothered hope. That generated acceptance that grinding free-marketism is the way things have to be, whether the government is “left” or “right”.
The percentage saying that “working people do not get a fair share of national wealth” was pretty steady around 66% between 1986 and 1998. By 2006 it had sagged to 55%.
Should the government redistribute income to the less well-off? 43% said yes in 1983; still 43% in 1996. By 2006, it was down to 34%.
The BSA’s composite index of “left-right” attitudes was fairly steady up to 1996, and has drifted to the right since then. The percentage “strongly left wing” was 7.6% in 1986, still 7.6% in 1996, and 4.1% in 2006. Opinion has also become somewhat more authoritarian, somewhat more hostile to immigrants.
All Blair’s work, not Thatcher’s. Almost no-one under 32 today has any live political memory of Thatcher (they would have been 14 or younger when she left office). No-one under 34 has known a general election in which they could vote which Blair did not win.
It is not just Blair’s work. The shift to the right is partly also the work of the “awkward squad”, the new contingent of union leaders who took office in the five or six years after Blair took office.
Through all or most of the working life of people under 30, “the unions” have been defined for the broad public not by the old right-wingers but supposed left-wingers - Derek Simpson, Tony Woodley, Billy Hayes, Mark Serwotka, Paul Kenny and the rest.
Those union leaders have had economic conditions as advantageous for trade unionism as capitalism is likely to offer — until the current crisis, relatively low unemployment, and (much of the time) quite rapid job growth in their main area of strength, the public services.
And what image of unions have Simpson and Woodley, Hayes and Kenny, shown to workers? As “well-meaning”, but not as a powerful force. Gordon Brown raises taxes for low-paid workers previously on the 10% rate; he limits public sector pay rises to two-and-a-bit per cent when inflation for low-paid workers is about 10% — and none of the “left-wing” union leaders can be moved even to a rueful reflection that it was a bad idea to give up the unions’ right to challenge the Labour leaders on issues like that at Labour Party conference.
Despite everything, the unions are not just the wretched “left” leaders. Young workers can learn from examples in other countries, and in history, as well as from what they see directly before them. And the developing economic crisis will jolt many into new thought.
By 2005, according to the BSA, as few as 13% of people saw “a great deal of difference” between the Tories and Labour. For “Blair’s children”, there is a tremendous gap to be filled by explanation of how politics “a great deal different” from Thatcher-Blairism is possible.
And the answer is, through a drive to renovate the labour movement from below, and instill it with the will to fight for a workers’ government, a government based on, serving, and accountable to the working class.
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Occam's Razor
There is a method in logic known as Occam's Razor. It basically says that if you are looking for an explanation for something the most obvious is probably the correct one. I am afraid I have difficulty conceding martin's logic here on that basis.
"In 1997, there was hope around Blair’s victory. Then Blair closed off the political channels in the labour movement. That smothered hope. That generated acceptance that grinding free-marketism is the way things have to be, whether the government is “left” or “right”.
The percentage saying that “working people do not get a fair share of national wealth” was pretty steady around 66% between 1986 and 1998. By 2006 it had sagged to 55%.
Should the government redistribute income to the less well-off? 43% said yes in 1983; still 43% in 1996. By 2006, it was down to 34%.
The BSA’s composite index of “left-right” attitudes was fairly steady up to 1996, and has drifted to the right since then. The percentage “strongly left wing” was 7.6% in 1986, still 7.6% in 1996, and 4.1% in 2006. Opinion has also become somewhat more authoritarian, somewhat more hostile to immigrants.
All Blair’s work, not Thatcher’s. Almost no-one under 32 today has any live political memory of Thatcher (they would have been 14 or younger when she left office). No-one under 34 has known a general election in which they could vote which Blair did not win."
I think that the boat had long sailed in terms of the free market argument by the time Blair was elected, in fact even before Thatcher was elected. The dominant ideas of the age are those of the ruling class. For 200 years Capitalism, and its "Free" Market have ruled supreme. If the vast majority of workers hadn't come to acceept that ws the way things have to be they would have overtruned capitalism long ago. Workers will only be convinced that Capitalism and the free market do not constitute the natural order of things when they see for themselves that some other method of organising society is better. Their experiecne tells them otherwise. They look at Stalinism and say, "No Thank You." They look at the experience of state capitalist nationalised industries, their corrupt nature, their inefficiency, the way they oppress workers even more than private capitilist firms", and again said "No Thank You." That was why Thatcher was elected, its why Blair kept being elected. They even look at the NHS with its burureaucracy, its inefficiency and the effects of MRSA etc. and when given the opportunity to use the facilities of private hospitals for free, do so. Simply repeating the okld Fabian arguments, which now seem to be the stock in trade of the AWL, and other left groups isn't going to convince workers to go back to those failed forms, and perspectives. That's one reason the left did so badly in the recent elections.
The fact that those believing that “working people do not get a fair share of national wealth” was pretty steady around 66% between 1986 and 1998." and "by 2006 it had sagged to 55%." Is fairly self-explanatory, but not the explanation Martin gives. The fact is it is explainable by the simple fact that during that later period of Blair's Government huge amounts of money was spent on Health and Education in both nominal and real terms, and the large majority of workers saw living standrds rise quite substantially as wages rose, the Minimum Wage was introduced, and the eocnomy returned to full employment as the new Long Wave boom began. Yes, as Marx predicted at the bottom a sizeable group of the population became eevn more relatively worse off, but that certainly wasn't true of the majoruity of workers whose wages, rose, house prices rose and so on. That is why Blair not only won the elections but won with huge majorities, even the last majority was historically high, especially given the opposition to the Iraq war.
The same is true of the figure thinking the government should redistribute money to the less well-off. In 1983, at the height of the 80's recession with unemployment at 3 million in offical terms and probably closer to 5 million in real terms there were probably a lot of people who thought they fellinto that category themselves, or had some close relative or friend that did. Even in 1996, the economy was sagging, house prices had collpased by 40% in 1990, and still hadn't recovered in '96. Interest rates had gone up to 15% and stayed high, and so on. Unemployment was still high. But, by 2006 one of that was true, so fewer people considered themselves to be in that position. What is probably also true is that given the economic conditins and full employment, a lot of workers probably beleived that those that were unemployed or whatever were partly to blame, didn't take work they could have taken and so on. That is not an attitude socialist would want to put forward, but it is certainly an opinion that you frequently encounter when you talk to ordinary workers. That is probably tied up with the attitude to immigrants referred to.
So, if these findings can be put down to Blair, I would suggest that what Blair's real responsibility was here, was that of significantly raising living standards for most workers over that period, of bringin in full emplyment, and so on. In fact, of course none of those things are really down to Blair, the improvement in the economy in living standards, in employment levels is down to the fact of the beginning of a new Long Wave boom, not to Government policy. Blair might have used that in order to utilise resources to bring about the huge increases in investment in the NHS and Education, to have brought in the Minimum Wage, but without the current boom those things would not have been possible. The same is true of Thatcher, the viciousness of her class war programme was motivated by, and enabled by the period of Long Wave downturn from the mid 70's to the late 90's.
Ideas are as Marx put it a reflectin of material conditions, its certainly true thatthe political superstructure itself becomes an important aspect of those material conditions in a dialectical interplay betwen the base and superstructure, but its in those udnerlying economic conditions that the real explanation lies.
Brown is doing badly at the moment because of politicl ineptitude, and because the Financial Crisis through him a curve ball at the beginning of his term, but that financial crisis appears to be dissipating. It has hardly affected the real economy - growth figures for Europe showed remarkably strong growth earlier this week for the last quarter, in Germany the most important European economy up by a massive 1.5% for the quarter, the aggregate figure pulled down by Spain and Ireland that have grown rapidly in the past on the basis of cheap finance and excess liquidity - it looks unlikely that even the US economy let alone the UK or Europe will go into recession, and that means that the strong growth of the last few years at the commencement of the new boom is likely to resume by the end of this year. Under those conditions, Brown with two more years to go befoe an election is due, could easily turn things round. The condiitons which worked to raise living standards and got Blair elected with huge majorities - the same process actually which during the last Long Wave boom saw Tory Governments continually elected through the 1950's and early 60's - are likely to work for Brown too.
They should work for socialists if they begin to look to the opportunities for utilising workers strength during that period of the future where workers militancy rises on the back of their improved economic position. If they advance the economic and social ground on which the working class stands, by gaining control of workers Capital in their pension funds, use those funds to establish workers co-operatives, and introduce other forms of workers ownership and control. Only that material change in the eocnomic and social position of the working class can form the basis as marx said of changing workers conscioussness. Simply repeating all those old Fabian mantras about nationalisation and so on, will condemn workers to simply repeat history again. As marx put it, we have to give workers a real cause for their struggle and as marx argued only the extension of workers ownership in the form of co-operative enterprise can be the basis of that, only on that basis can workers see a real working alternative to the market is possible, only on that basis ois their class power and conscioussness advanced.
Arthur Bough