This is a response to some of the discussion under Shouldn’t Parliament Square be for protesters?
I am afraid that my experience of various protest movements very much DOES suggest they are mainly composed of people from a social elite background, and many of those engaged in them do seem to me to be motivated at least in part by a sort of poseur mentality.
We are constantly being told by various commentators that protest movements are the modern thing, where the political activists go now instead of into political parties, and that this is a good thing. I say rubbish. What have these protest movements achieved? Throughout my adult lifetime, politics has been constantly shifting to the right. And where the do the poor, alienated and dispossessed go politically these days? Even further right, to UKIP. This indicates the utter and total failure of the political left, and I very much DO blame that on it being taken over by people from an elite background more interested in striking a trendy pose than actually getting real things done. The people who most need the left have been abandoned by these trendy poseurs because these trendy-wendies don’t know how to get through to them and don’t care.
I believe that we had it right with community politics in its early and most idealistic form. A key aspect of it was the dual approach. Yes, we would have imaginative events to attract attention, and work in the community to develop new ideas, but that went alongside electoral politics. We did not take the defeatist attitude that we are stuck with the politicians we have, no we reinvigorated the ballot box and showed people that, yes, their vote DOES count, and yes they CAN change things through it.We knew that we had to take the people with us, and that therefore we needed their political backing. Our effort was spent on getting it, and working with them in ways that would get across the underlying political message.
What is the point of these protests outside Parliament? If it is to change the minds of the politicians, well, how pathetic. It’s like peasants pleading at the aristocrats who ruled them, trying to tug at their heartstrings, but accepting they would always be there because they were put there by God. I’d rather change the politicians, and we have the ballot box to do that. And if we can’t do it that way, well doesn’t that suggest we are elitists poseurs who can’t get our message across to the people due to our stuck-up attitudes? And, no I don’t believe in The Revolution, because in practice that generally does mean some new group of elitists taking control for themselves and enforcing it on others without consent.
When I hear people like Russell Brand spreading the “don’t vote, it only encourages them” message it makes me sick. John Lydon had it quite right in his powerful dismissal of Brand recently. It may seem radical, but the underlying message “politicians are all bad, don’t get involved” is the same one as the Orange Bookers and the city fat cats pushing the right-wing message. Turn the poor and working class against politics, so leave it to the rich and elite to run it as they want. If politicians are all bad, so we have to have abusive protests against them outside Parliament, then that pushes the idea that we should have this “small state” to weaken their influence, and instead pass power over to the fats cats.
The idea that politicians are all bad, and that’s the underlying problem with society, so all we have to do is wave banners and have protests and that will make it all better is such nonsense, and damaging nonsense. It leads to the notion that there are easy-peasy solutions to difficult problems, maybe pulling out of the Union (EU or UK) or putting someone with silly blond hair and a posh accent in power, or whatever. If people believe there are easy-peasy solutions, they won’t accept the ones that would work but aren’t so easy-peasy. If people have been convinced that politicians are all bad people, so we have to have protests camps against them outside Parliament, when actual real workable solutions are proposed with the difficult things that are necessary, such as higher taxes, they get dismissed as “oh, those nasty politicians just doing that to be nasty”.
This is what I have been saying all along on things like the tuition fees. Oh, we’ve seen all the protests “nasty, rotten Liberal Democrats for agreeing to them”, but how many of these protests have been realistic about the alternative? How many have actually been willing to consider the taxes needed to pay for them? I rather suspect the elite trendies who run them would disappear if one suggested what I would like to see to get university tuition paid for – whatever is necessary in terms of inheritance tax, because they are all sorts that are expecting their great dollop of cash in times to come.
Protest group politics is easy-peasy because it just focuses on one thing without considering the balance. Real politics just doesn’t work like that. Even with the Iraq War, I felt there were arguments on both sides, and I did not like the simple-minded protests on one side which made it seem all easy-peasy. Well, now we have Syria where we did what those protestors wanted – no intervention to bring down the dictator. Did it work out any better? What I want to see is intelligent debate which recognises both sides, and I think the sort of protest being talked about here doesn’t achieve that.
Rosa has it quite right when she dismisses Occupy as having goal so vague and all-encompassing. If we want to move forward we have to have ways of moving forward, actual workable policies that will do this. So why is it that when even the hint of such policies are suggested, they don’t get popular support? If Occupy and the like are so right and so successful in getting their message across, why is it that when teeny-weeny measures a bit to the left that would reverse the growing inequality in our society don’t get cheered on with a great cry “more of that”? I mean like the “mansion tax”. The reason is that these poseurs are too busy posing than doing the real hard work of building real popular support for real workable measures that would reverse all the damage done to our society by the government we have been electing since 1979. Instead the “politicians are all bad” message they send out serves only to make much measures harder to implement, and supports the right-wing anti-democrats in what they are doing to make things worse.
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120 Comments
I am not a member of the Liberal Democrats and never will be, but I wholeheartedly agree. The idea that elections and voting can’t change the world is a fundamentally right wing message.
I think you misunderstand Russel Brand. Certainly the ring-wingers have been pushing a culture of political apathy, cynicism and dis-engagement in order to build a foundation justification for reducing the power of the state (a strategy pioneered by the Republicans in the US); if Brand’s message sounds similar, however, it is more because it is a symptom of this rather than a cause. Nor do I think that Brand desires true dis-engagement: his dis-engagement is with the current political establishment, not society as a whole.
And really, who can blame him? The LibDems presented themselves as an alternative to dirty Westminster politics, but look where they are now. Your words on tuition fees suggest you don’t wish to confront the depth of the betrayal many people feel towards the LibDems over this issue; you’d rather imply protesters are unrealistic about how to pay for them. But that is not the point: it isn’t the protesters who signed pledges and made promises, then broke their word. Dismissing or diminishing this anger because it re-inforces the apathy and cynicism that benefits the right-wing comes across as arrogant and condescending in itself, and does nothing to mark you out as an unifier and bringer-together of the left-wing.
That being said, I agree with you on one fundamental point — the left-wing needs to learn to re-engage with voters, because we have to win at the ballot box to effect real change. But that does not mean talking down to Russel Brand and those who feel like him. That means building bridges and trying to address their frustrations and concerns. Unfortunately , you are not currently going about it in a good way, in my opinion.
” the underlying message “politicians are all bad, don’t get involved” is the same one as the Orange Bookers”
Can you point to any evidence at all that any “orange bookers” have ever said this ?
Pretty much agree.
I think in politics there’s too much “rage against bad things” and simplistic “blame the bad people”, often without substance on how to actually change things.
Matthew Huntbach:
‘ Throughout my adult lifetime, politics has been constantly shifting to the right. And where the do the poor, alienated and dispossessed go politically these days? Even further right, to UKIP. This indicates the utter and total failure of the political left, and I very much DO blame that on it being taken over by people from an elite background more interested in striking a trendy pose than actually getting real things done.’
I couldn’t agree more. It is the failure of the the Left to offer a coherent narrative vision to the public over the last thirty years which in my view has facilitated a drift to the right and the fragmentation of protest into different and ultimately ineffective ‘ direct-action’ groups.
However, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with protest groups but whereas in my youth they were linked (even vaguely) to political parties like Labour, the Greens, Socialist Workers, now they seem to be actively anti-political, even nihilistic.
There are reasons for this. Labour’s long-running love affair with Blairism shot to pieces their claim to be an authentic party of the left. They are now nothing more than a party in search of a coherent philosophy – an empty shell.
Combine that with a media and media proprietorship which accepts and relentlessly promotes a right-wing perspective and finally, the perception of the British public that the Lib Dems sold out as soon as they had a sniff of the roses in the number ten garden in 2010. A more business-like approach from day one would have repaid dividends.
We must not underestimate the level of disillusion, even if we felt at the time we had no alternative but to go in with the Tories. We have been judged on our apparent cosiness at the top with the Tories and apparent failure to prevent top-down re-organisation of the NHS, Bedroom tax implementation, failure to achieve constitutional reform early on etc.. etc..
The left or progressive side of politics is meant to foster hope and optimism. The rise of UKIP is a clear warning sign that British people see no offer of hope from these progressive parties and are turning inwards.
Simon McGrath
Can you point to any evidence at all that any “orange bookers” have ever said this ?
As Michael Meadowcroft often points out, the Orange Book was a collection of essays coming from a variety of viewpoints, not a coherent manifesto. Nevertheless there was a strong theme in it of trying to push free market economics as essentially “liberal”, and its publication is widely seen as the turning point in which the Liberal Democrats joined in the consensus that market economics was the solution to most problems.
The point I’m trying to make here is that there is a dominant “anti-politics” theme in culture today which comes up in a variety of different ways. One of them is this keenness in pushing market-oriented solutions rather than solutions which involve direct political control. Another is the “Russell Brand” view. As with “Orange Book” I’m really using a convenient label here which I think people will understand, rather than particularly focusing on one individual or one publication. They are both an aspect of a wider theme – my point is that the two themes they are aspects of are really much closer to each other than they suppose, to the point where I see both as part of the same issue, both pushing the same way, which ultimately is anti-democratic.
I think, Matthew, that you’re falling into the trap of what Terry Pratchett memorably characterised as “believing that all the Orcs must come from Mordor” — in other words, that all your enemies are the same enemy and therefore must believe the same things.
There are plenty of people who push market solutions and favour reduced regulation and state spending without believing or claiming that “politicians are all bad, don’t get involved”. The great thing about people being wrong is that they aren’t necessarily all wrong for the same reason or even all wrong about everything.
I tend to agree with you both about the pointless nihilism of Occupy-style protests and the apoliticism of Russell Brands and Niggle Farages; and mostly I agree with you on the right-wing drift of economics and anti-welfare/social spending rhetoric that has been ascendant for many years. But ascribing to your opponents motives for which at best there is no evidence and at worst are directly contradicted by the evidence just undermines your argument and, ironically, feeds the beast of unreasonable partisanship and the cynicism of those who don’t share your particular blinkers.
I agree to an extent.
but I do wonder about the idea that the poor and disaffected react to the failure of the left by shifting ever further to the Right. A few years back when the BNP was being touted as the voice of the disaffected white poor I remember reading an article about how contrary to the myth the most common occupation of their membership was Shop Keeper and that their voter profile tended to favour relatively better off people in poorer areas. Their few electoral successes were largely the result of low turn outs rather than a surge in support. The point is that the endless coverage given to the BNP was usually in our right wing press and usually by writers who were simultaneously trying to push a racial agenda whilst claiming to speak on behalf of the disaffected poor and demonise them as the real racists at the same time. The other thing is that definitions of class are very flexible depending on the idea that is being forwarded, with income being used journalist want to talk about the rise of the middle classes or the dangers of an underclass and occupation coming to the for when, often, the same journalist want to make a point different point.
At the moment were getting the same thing with UKIP. The Righties want you to believe that UKIP is a revolution sweeping across the country that threatens the political hegemony of “the metropolitan elite” in every seat in every constituency, but the fact is they have taken one seat in a conservative area and replaced the Tories in a labour seat that had a pitiful turn out of 31% which in real terms means that UKIP secured about 9% of the total potential vote.. In other words the real problem isn’t a drift to the Right it’s a failure of politics to engage voters at all. The point is that people don’t vote on single issues whether it be Europe or immigration or anything else. So maybe the failure of the Left is their own drift to the Right Both Labour and now the Lib Dems have to various extents chosen to clobber their own voters in order to chase votes that barely exist and where they do exist aren’t going to go to them anyway.
Marc
Your words on tuition fees suggest you don’t wish to confront the depth of the betrayal many people feel towards the LibDems over this issue; you’d rather imply protesters are unrealistic about how to pay for them.
Far from not wishing to confront them, it’s an issue I have spent huge amounts of my time discussing in Liberal Democrat Voice.
Look, I wish you and others could see that myself and other Liberal Democrat activists are also victims of this tuition fees thing. We have given our lives over to building up our party to offer a political alternative, and now all we find is our life’s work destroyed and ourselves subject to endless personal insult over this issue.
When we campaigned in the May 2010 general election, we believed what we were told, that the manifesto had been fully costed, which meant there should have been tax proposals to meet spending proposals. Yes, activists in the party pushed for the tuition fees policy to be included, but we are realists, we appreciate the need to meet budgets. It was Clegg and those surrounding him who chose to single out this policy and make a “pledge” about it in a way (pledge to vote against) that only makes sense as a hard line in coalition formation discussion. Ordinary activists had no say in this. Had I been asked I would have cautioned against making it a “pledge” especially in an election campaign with the theme “No broken promises” unless it was absolutely certain it could be met under ALL possible election outcomes, the one we had was a predictable possibility, so that should have been taken into account.
I think this was basic incompetence, but I have said before how it should have been resolved. Clegg should have been permitted to propose whatever tax rises would be necessary to pay for full subsidy of universities, with this being a free vote so that the Conservatives would be free to vote against. This would have put Labour on the spot, and pushed this whole issue towards a much more realistic debate.
Malcolm Todd
But ascribing to your opponents motives for which at best there is no evidence and at worst are directly contradicted by the evidence just undermines your argument and, ironically, feeds the beast of unreasonable partisanship and the cynicism of those who don’t share your particular blinkers.
No, I’m not suggesting conscious motives. Well, actually if I found out that Russell Brand was being paid to say the things he says by fat cats as part of a general anti-politics drive whose long term consequences benefits them, I would not be surprised, but I don’t like conspiracy theory politics, so I certainly am not suggesting that’s what it must be. No, my point here is that what seem to be two opposites are, without realising it, both pushing in the same direction, and I think in terms of how it actually works out, it’s the fat cats who benefit the most from that.
It just isn’t true that politics hasn’t consistently shifted to the right.
When I first went to university there was a serious debate in the Junior Common Room about banning overseas students from the bar, fortunately defeated, but could you imagine anyone even proposing such a thing today.
When I was first elected a councillor 30 years ago, the council refused to employ gay people as swimming pool attendants. People like me who suggested a ‘no smoking’ rule in council meetings were branded health fascists. Overt racism in politics was more abundant, Tory councillors and MP’s got away with saying the sort of things that now regularly embarrass UKIP.
30 years ago we didn’t have Sure Start childrens centres, Nursery education was viewed us a luxury for the rich. The green agenda was viewed as a cranky fringe interest only to sandal wearing liberals, 0.7% of GDP going to overseas aid was another wild unachievable idea adopted only by the Liberal party. Apartheid was still being openly supported. People were prosecuted for blasphemy, while child abuse within institutions of church and state was commonplace and covered up, as we are only now finding out. We had a government that promoted selfishness and greed and created division, that pandered to the fears of immigration in exactly the same way that Tories and Labour do today.
We had a government that broke the link bewteen pensions and prices, only recently restored, that treated Scotland as a guinea pig for its hated poll tax and thought it could tackle terrorism by internemnt without trial and banning Sinn Fein spokepeople from the TV.
Maybe if your political life was double mine, say 60 years, you could say that in the30 years from the mid ’50’s to the mid ’80’s that there had been a relentless move rightwards, but not in the last 30 years, not even in last 10.
Marc
Dismissing or diminishing this anger because it re-inforces the apathy and cynicism that benefits the right-wing comes across as arrogant and condescending in itself, and does nothing to mark you out as an unifier and bringer-together of the left-wing.
I’m not intending or proposing to be such a thing. I’m simply expressing my own viewpoint. This is what I honestly think. Whether expressing it unifies or not, I don’t know and I don’t care. The political movement I have given my life to is being destroyed by both its leaders and its opponents, I have nowhere else to go, I can see no future in trying to push anything, I am tired and bored of trying, so all I can do is say what I HONESTLY feel. You can take what you like from it.
What I have written here was originally written to explain in more detail what some would have found surprising – people who I think thought I was on their wavelength on the left of politics saw me fairly emotionally attacking a band of fellow lefties. So yes, I needed to give more detail. There’s nothing here I haven’t said before, but the editor of LDV recognised this as a good summary of a lot of my own personal politics, and asked my permission to put it up as a separate article.
Helen Tedcastle
A more business-like approach from day one would have repaid dividends.
Yes, and that’s a point I have been making from day one.
@Matthew -thanks for your reply, which basically means ” orange bookers havent said this but i though i would throw in a bit of random abuse with no basis in fact”
@ MT – “There are plenty of people who push market solutions and favour reduced regulation and state spending without believing or claiming that “politicians are all bad, don’t get involved”.”
* Puts hand up *
I think its fair to say that I have never once shouted and screamed “betrayal” at the lib-dem’s, or cursed them as being as bad as all the other nasty politicians, or suggested once that politics is a fools game that merely justifies the existance of our leech overlords.
I just happen to prefer that society (and in particular; me), is governed with a negative liberty bent, accepting that greater suffering as well as greater freedom will accrue from not adopting a greater positive liberty influence on governance.
I hold the same view with RIPA; i accept that it will save lives, and prevent injustice, and I explicitly accept that loss of life and injustice in rejecting RIPA as acceptable.
I agree with Malcolm Todd. While there’s much I agree with in this article, your lazy dig at “orange bookers” detracts from your argument. I would add that there are plenty of people who push market solutions and favour reduced regulation and state spending without believing these to be ends in themselves, but a means towards greater economic growth, in turn allowing a fairer society to be paid for. Yes I understand that not all Lib Dems agree with this – but we’re a broad church party and belief in the power of free markets has a pretty strong history in our party and predecessor parties.
I think you’re bang on the money when you criticise the “politicians are all bad” message but I wouldn’t extrapolate from this and criticise all popular protest. Much popular protest has a very specific aim, the implication being that if politicians were to do x, then the protestors would be happy. I think popular protest certainly has its place and it can help change things. But you’re right to cricitise many – particularly on the left – whose protests are just all-encompassing and essentially anti-politics. Why is that? Part of the reason is that there are many on both left and right who rather than taking the time to understand, prefer instead to demonise. It’s far easier – and it’s true on both left and right. The targets are many and varied – immigrants, the EU, benefit cheats, single mums, bankers, fat cats, orange bookers, all politicians. Once you’re just demonising it’s very hard to engage with solutions.
I agree with Matthew Huntbach that political engagement with electors is essential to countering the nihilism of Russell Brand, and the various ad hoc protest movements which have attracted so much recent attention. However, protest groups have a history going back way beyond 1979 – CND is probably the most famous example – so I am not convinced that their existence today tells us very much about a lack of faith in the political classes. Moreover, in arguing that there are no simple solutions to many of the social, economic and political issues which confront us today, I think Matthew falls into the trap of believing that the simple left/right dichotomy which perhaps existed in the late 19th century, and throughout much of the 20th century, has any relevance today. His premise that somehow “left” is good and “right” is bad, or “small state” bad, and presumably therefore “bid state” good, is reminiscent of Orwell’s “Animal Farm” – “four legs good, two legs bad”. And we know where that ended up!
Are we seriously giving credence to this puerile rubbish by debating it?
Julian Tisi
your lazy dig at “orange bookers” detracts from your argument.
Well, please suggest another word to mean “people who are keen on promoting competitive finance-driven markets as the solution to most problems”. I didn’t want to use a phrase which was pejorative and I didn’t want to use a phrase which involved the word “liberal” as to use either would be to make a value judgement I wished to avoid.
Graham Evans
I think Matthew falls into the trap of believing that the simple left/right dichotomy which perhaps existed in the late 19th century, and throughout much of the 20th century, has any relevance today.
You think wrong. My definition of “right” in political terms is “the idea that those who have power and wealth now are the right people to have power an d wealth, and their power and the wealth that goes with it should be preserved because it would be dangerous to take it away”. My definition of “left” in political terms is “the idea that power and wealth are too much concentrated in the hands of a few, and active measures need to be taken to change the way things are run so that no longer is the case”.
In recent years we have seen a huge increase in inequality in this country. The richer have become richer and the poor poorer relative to each other. Under these circumstances it would seem to me to be absurd to suggest that concern over the concentration of wealth and power is less relevant now than it was a few decades ago when there was a more equal spread of it.
Julian Tisi
I think you’re bang on the money when you criticise the “politicians are all bad” message but I wouldn’t extrapolate from this and criticise all popular protest.
I’m not. Simply because I’m suggesting that some protest pushes this message (and I might question whether it is really “popular”) does not mean I suppose all protest does.
Martin Land
Are we seriously giving credence to this puerile rubbish by debating it?
It was written quickly last night to try and explain a short point I had made earlier in the day which I think had taken people who I am normally in agreement with by surprise. The context was largely to explain in more detail to those people what I meant by what I said. I had not intended it to be a considered article in Liberal Democrat Voice. It was the editor of Liberal Democrat Voice who asked me if I would agree to it being put forward as a separate article rather than just as a comment on another article. If I had the leisure to spend more time phrasing it more carefully, which I might have done had I been asked in advance to write an article, perhaps it would come across as less puerile. However, having been kindly asked if I would be willing to have it put up as a separate article, I felt it would be rude to say no.
I would love nothing more than seeing millions of students and low paid workers on the streets protesting their lot and forcing the government to listen to their concerns. In my eyes much better than voting UKIP which seems the only other way of getting a government to listen. .
Marketising a service is a way to take it effectively out of the political sphere and into a slightly different category of just so situations. If a market service is expensive, then that is just the way that it is, market outcomes reflect reality and one might as well waste time wondering why the sky should be blue as why your rail fare is high. It just is – if you really care then there are those who can explain the mechanism that leads to blue spectra or high fares but to address the core question of why is to wander off topic entirely. Hence powerlessness and nihilism.
Maybe that is what Matthew Huntbach was alluding to. Orange Bookers don’t advocate the rollback of democracy, there are few who do, but the end result of implementing their priorities without any input from the rest of the party is that democratic oversight is reduced and people’s confidence in the ability of a political structure to help deal with problems is reduced.
The Russel Brand effect is even more corrosive, though, as it takes people who by all rights should be energised political activists and brings them into the orbit of the fashionably nihilistic celebrity pundit. Nicely neutered, defused and made safe for the hard right. Problematic. So while I’d rather have the Orange Book crowd inside the tent pointing out, the likes of Brand are pretty much the whole reason to have a tent in the first place.
The question of where we go as a party is difficult, because although I agree with Matthew about issues like tuition fees, they hang around our collective neck like a millstone. I can only hope that we’ll decide to plough on ahead with proposals for graduate tax, inheritance tax increases and a broad shift of the burden of all tax from earned income onto assets and property. I’d want that alongside our longstanding commitment to electoral reform and federation, and along with our sometime position that employee ownership beats both shareholder capitalism and state socialism, of course. The voters mostly won’t believe in us, but we have to start from where we are and regardless of the outcome of the next general election, we will have chances to redeem and prove ourselves again.
Matthew
I agree with you when you say —
“…So we have been pouring enormous subsidies into nuclear power stations for more than fifty years and this week they were not as beneficial as wind turbines, which are cheaper to build, cheaper to run and are less likely to do a Fukushima when nobody is looking.”
But I think you are just factually incorrect when you sat —
Well I certainly agree that proper engagement in politics is better than single-issue protests – I so do I agree with much of this article. But if you want to understand the political failure of the left, that’s quite easy. It has no credible or coherent alternative vision to offer.
Just look at how this country as evolved since 1974, the year when I came to political consciousness as a teenager. In 1974 Britain was a miserable place, Terrible public services, lots of poverty, nationalised utilities that didn’t work without bribery, pollution everywhere, dirty coal power stations, and an uncompetitive economy. So since then politics swung to right. Top tax rates were slashed; utilities privatised. And the result? The state takes just as big a share of the economy, but the economy is bigger – so public services are correspondingly better. We whinge about utilities, but they are a breath of fresh air compared to what they were in the 1970s. There’s been a lot of industrial dislocation true. But name me a developed country where there hasn’t been. Are we really saying that things are better in statist France? Sweden has had to roll back its social democracy in order to survive. The fact is that changes to technology made the old industries unviable. So to the detached observer it isn’t that clear that the political swing to the right and the Orange-bookers were so wrong.
Now I would agree that the right is a busted flush. It has nothing useful left to say and their policies are leading to economic stagnation rather than growth. But all the left can do is whinge and hope that something will turn up. I wish all the energy that was put into protest and whinge could be deployed into working out how we can get from here to the balanced, sustainable and fair economy that we all seek. But I despair. So by rather a different route I have probably ended up by agreeing with you Matthew!
Protest politics is as legitimate a form of politics as making arguments door-to-door — and even if it is not effective at convincing politicians to change their minds (nobody expects a one-day protest to do that, and yet Mr Huntbach seems to find encamped protests especially objectionable) — it does increase coverage and awareness of the causes the protesters support, and may ultimately lead to the success of their cause.
If protest politics nowadays seems somewhat detached from electoral politics, this is the fault of the political parties for treating protest politics as something embarrassing, to be set aside in favour of more civilised methods. If Liberal Democrats want a more intelligent, more targeted, more electorally effective protest politics, then there is a simple method to do that: engage in protest politics yourself. Treat protest as one tool in a large and varied tactical tool box. Go out to Parliament Square and set up your own encampment. That is a legitimate, liberal way of countering what you might consider ineffective speech, or even bad speech. Condoning or being complicit in the arrest of peaceful protesters is not.
Matthew,
Apologies that last comment got whisked off before I had if finished. It should have ended
But I think you are just factually incorrect when you say some of the things you say about public protests.
In Scotland during the last couple of months there have been some very, very interesting events which included very large crowds turning out in George Square in Glasgow. Those Liberal Democrats in Scotland who have not transformed themselves in Unionists in the last four years will have been encouraged to see thousands of supporters for the YES campaign filling the City Centre in what were peaceful pubic protests.
You ask the question —- “And where the do the poor, alienated and dispossessed go politically these days?”.
In Scotland the answer would appear to be the YES campaign which reached people in some of the schemes who have not voted for anybody for a generation. Will they have been given more confidence to do so by TV reports of the public protests? My guess is that they were given that confidence. Did they take part in the public protests themselves? I am told that some of them did and it was the first “political” thing they had done in their life. I cannot speak from first hand knowledge as I was not there , so I am going on what friends have told me. What is incontrovertible fact is that the voting turnout was at a modern high. In addition voter registration was also at a modern high.
So it would appear that in 2014 in Scotland the poor, alienated and dispossessed have found a place to go, and that includes going to the polling booth.
Matthew Green
Just look at how this country as evolved since 1974, the year when I came to political consciousness as a teenager. In 1974 Britain was a miserable place, Terrible public services, lots of poverty, nationalised utilities that didn’t work without bribery, pollution everywhere, dirty coal power stations, and an uncompetitive economy
A lot of what you and others who say similar things are talking about here are more to do with technological developments rather than left-right politics.
As for other things, well, how terrible was it? You talk about “lots of poverty”, but did we have food banks and so many people living rough back then? No, I don’t think so. I was talking to someone just the other day about the care and attention that one got when having a baby back then – it was HUGELY more than now. People who worked in health and care then tell me how very much standards have deteriorated these days – I am talking, for example, about people who were nurses then and have been in hospital recently so do know what they are talking about.
Back then my family had a reasonable council house, it was the norm then, available to anyone who had kids. There’s no way the equivalent of my parents today could have had the family I grew up in then, there would be no housing available for them. Plus there was quite a bit of small industry round where we grew up, my dad moved around in various jobs in it. Most of it has now closed down.
Plus, of course, when I went to university in the 1970s it was free, and I got a grant enough to pay for me to live in London. The equivalent of me now doesn’t get that, does s/he? I got a lot of my education from public libraries which were hugely better stocked back then. I don’t remember my parents ever having to pay bribes for publicservices, so I do not know what you mean by that.
JohnTilley, I’m a Liberal Democrat in Scotland who hasn’t turned into a Unionist and I am not encouraged in the least by the way that the Yes campaign attracted support. I think that Matthew had it right when he categorised them in the easy solutions section.
I voted Yes because it was the only show in town and because the long term effects even of a Yes win were not credibly worse than the consequences of continuing stagnation. But the campaign behind it was selling green socialism paid for by oil exports and corporate tax breaks, with an undercurrent of anglophobia that’s put me off the Greens for the foreseeable.
The Yes campaign does offer a potential model for political parties uniting around a shared goal without necessarily losing their identities and for politics to return to mass engagement without necessarily requiring mass uptake of the political parties themselves. This is a positive development, and if these things could be brought into a genuine progressive movement that was taking aim at a serious problem with the country today, then I’d be encouraged.
Perhaps we need to be trying to get the other parties on board with some alliance for electoral reform? Maybe we could try to create one around maximum devolution and try to cooperate with the SNP for the time being? Or maybe the model only applies in certain totemic issues like nationalism. We need to find out though.
JohnTilley
So it would appear that in 2014 in Scotland the poor, alienated and dispossessed have found a place to go, and that includes going to the polling booth
Er, yes, but that was Scottish independence held up as a magic answer to everything, just as UKIP holds up exit from the EU as the magic answer to everything. I don’t think either is the case.
If Scottish independence is the answer to everything, then how can people in London and Sussex and elsewhere who think things have all gone wrong and politics is rotten join in? Maybe we should all vote to join Scotland. But then what? We’d be back where we started. So why can’t we all instead vote for whatever it is that the Scots think will be so wonderful once they have independence? Because there is no such thing, it was all will-o-wisp.
Now there was my point, put the real practical workable solutions to these things and suddenly they aren’t so popular. People start saying how terrible it is that those nasty politicians want to force little old ladies out of their houses with the sort of action that would actually be necessary to seriously tackle the housing crisis. Or how terrible it is that they want to build all over that nice green land. You and I may think scrapping Trident will save lots of money that can be used for other things, but try putting it in a manifesto and see the howls against. Try raising taxes to what would enable us to fully subsidise the universities and see the howls against.
The thing is, it ISN’T easy-peasy. And simplistic protest which suggests the problems are all down to nasty politicians and somehow if it wasn’t for them we could have everything we want, simultaneously housing for everyone and no building on green land, bigger pensions and more health care and lower taxes, controls on pollution and simultaneously everyone free to drive whatever cars they like and have cheap energy and no wind turbines in their backyard, etc don’t help.
T-J
But the campaign behind it was selling green socialism paid for by oil exports and corporate tax breaks,
In other words, playing to the fat cats’ divide-and-rule game. Can all of us do that, appease the fact cats, kow-tow to them by saying “Please, Lords and Masters, come to us and we’ll make life so nice for you here”? Can all of us grab the oil revenue and say “It’s ours, all ours, and we aren’t sharing it with poor people who live in other parts of the UK, let them rot because there’s no oil where they live”?
I don’t entirely buy the narrative that Matthew Green is advocating that , ‘ In 1974 Britain was a miserable place, Terrible public services, lots of poverty, nationalised utilities that didn’t work without bribery, pollution everywhere, dirty coal power stations, and an uncompetitive economy.’
That’s what Thatcher and Tebbit wanted us to think in the 1980s to shore up their ideological policies and general iconoclasm – which led to greater misery for millions of people – the smashing of the trades unions (the main voice of the working class) and the wholesale selling off of state utilities. Thatcher also led to Blair and the general incoherence we have now in the 2014 Labour Party.
Is material prosperity and a low wage economy more valuable than social cohesion?
No. Right-wing thinking is not the solution to our problems when the price paid is millions of people alienated from the political system.
Now I’m clear that the trades unions needed to be reined in – but they were smashed – and is it simply a coincidence that most MPs now come from backgrounds as political advisers, parachuted into northern constituencies from their London base, rather than rising up through the ranks of industry and the unions? Whatever one might say about these organisations in the 1970s, they gave a voice to those who we rarely hear from now. Is this progress?
@Matthew Huntbach
We can’t all have everything. But, the goal that I was looking at when voting Yes was the end of our centralised unitary state. Its not necessarily about getting more, but about getting what you need where you need it and having some accountability reasonably close to you for when you don’t get it or want to change priority.
It is impossible to run a nation as large and diverse as Britain as a unitary state. Devolution merely acts as a palliative that alleviates the worst of the effects across some of its most historically fraught divisions. England alone is still too populous and diverse to run as a unitary state.
It is my hope that the close call at this referendum, combined with initial positive signs from the Smith Commission and elsewhere, will let us begin to build a new political settlement for a modern country of sixty million Britons, rather than leave us stuck with the institutions and political structures meant to govern a nineteenth century nation of ten million Englishmen.
If it doesn’t, then breakup is inevitable and we’ll end up with new political units that more closely reflect our divisions, rather than a single old political unit that brings us together across those divisions.
The race to the bottom you allude to, where regions appeal to lords and masters to come and benefit from lower rates or whatever, should not be an issue, because things like corporation tax should be agreed at the transnational level to eradicate the tax haven entirely. Or at least, to build up a large enough bloc free from them that a tariff barrier to anyone domiciling in one becomes a serious proposition rather than mere posturing. That does, however, mean Europe, and we’re back to difficult answers to problems they want us to believe we can’t fix again.
The words “building bridges”, used by Marc, leap off the page as I read this. Because building bridges is what we fail to do.
What Matthew says about the limitations of protest politics and the mixed motives of its proponents is to a certain extent fair comment. Yet its overall impact is purely destructive and negative. What we should recognise is that the freedom to protest gives power to the enemies of totalitarianism, and that the police suppression of that freedom is a disgrace to the Coalition Government. To be diverted into arguing about whether or not some protesters are show-offs is a huge own goal. It’s what Monty Python sent up with their People’s Liberation Front of Judea sketch. It’s what we do all the time – fight internal conflicts with people who should be our allies, instead of building bridges. Then we wonder why we lose.
Cameron and Osborne, with or without their poodle Clegg, will cruise back into power in six months time. The reason is because of the unifying power of money, careerism, cynicism and ambition, which has served the Conservative Party so well. They will easily defeat their enemies, who are split between multiple parties with tribalist rivalries, and show a total inability to build bridges and unite.
Helen. My comments about 1970s Britain were from my personal experience at the time, and those of friends and family. I resent the implication that I swallowed a Thatcher and Tebbit narrative uncritically. The reason why those two got as far as they did is because what they said chimed with the experiences of so many, across many levels of society. The nostalgia I read about the 1970s by some on the left just beggars belief.
And Matthew, I think there’s a bit of rose-tinting in your memories. I do admit you have a point about housing, especially council housing. But even there I think there were wider demographic forces here too. In the 1980s (when I struck out on my own) almost in every way I was better off than my parents at the same age. Except in the housing I could afford compared to the 1950s. Meanwhile hospitals were very variable, and run by professional fiefdoms that would not accept criticism. There may have been some good hospitals, but there were lots of bad ones too – ones that you would be quietly told not to go to. And they were ludicrously inefficient – a situation that could only be sustained by underpaying the staff. And the state schools were terrible, unless you were one of the lucky few. And the only reason why university education was free was that it was open to so few. You were clearly lucky. So was I because I had relatively wealthy parents.
T-J 24th Oct ’14 – 4:13pm
T-J There is a great deal in what you say –I am in agreement with most of it especially —
“….The Yes campaign does offer a potential model for political parties uniting around a shared goal without necessarily losing their identities and for politics to return to mass engagement without necessarily requiring mass uptake of the political parties themselves. This is a positive development, and if these things could be brought into a genuine progressive movement that was taking aim at a serious problem with the country today, then I’d be encouraged.”
It is a positIve development. I was hugely disappointed that some Liberal Democrats seemed to miss that point and lined up at the conference in Glasgow to crow about “their victory” of staying in the Union. They seemed to miss the point that a political earthquake had just taken place and that at next year’s General Election our party is in danger of disappearing into one of the holes in the ground caused by that earthquake.
But to return to the positive elements, high turnout, high voter registration, greater involvement across the usual party and class divides.
You went on to conclude —
“Perhaps we need to be trying to get the other parties on board with some alliance for electoral reform? ”
Here in England that is exactly what we should be doing. The ridiculous AV Referendum which was plucked out of the air and so badly executed by Clegg was a real disaster because it did not grow out of a previously developed consensus. Of Thoseon the side of change.
It was also partly because, just like husnpersonal faiure on reform of the House of Lords, the rather arrogant Clegg did not realise that you do not build a body of support for a political cause by calling some of your most likely allies “dinosaurs”. Rather than insult the Labour Party, and the Nationalists, he ought to have been building bridges with anyone who would come together in the one cause. He started off with all three major parties committed in their manifestos to reform the House of Lords and he ended up with the most miserable defeat in constitutional history because he did not have the wit to make friends and influence people.
But Clegg seems, incapable of seeing any potential ally in the Labour Party, or even amongst most of the Liberal Democrats or the people who voted Liberal Democrat in the General Election of 2010.
He persists in chasing the mythical “soft Tories” which is why both north and south of the border we are in danger of disappearing next May.
To rebuild the party after Clegg, a political strategy that involves working with others in common causes would be a good step forward.
Matthew Huntbach 24th Oct ’14 – 4:18pm
Matthew, I do not for a moment accept your bracketing of YES voters in the Scotland Referendum with UKIP.
In fact rather than high voter registration and high turnout as in the Scotland Referendum, the benefit to UKIP came in the May MEP elections from a low turnout (33% if I recall correctly) of which UKIP got 33% of the vote. They have been portrayed since as being great victors and winning that election but they did so on the votes of a very small proportion of those registered to vote.
I also reject the easy coupling of UKIP and the SNP when there is virtually nothing in the political agendas of the two parties which overlap.
In the Scotland the SNP fought the Referendum from the position of having been in government in the Edinburgh Parliament. They moved from opposition, to minority government to a majority in government. A very different position from UKIP and a very different message from UKIP.
I am not a supporter of the SNP but I can recognise a political success story when I see one.
As T-J points out the referendum will be a step to independence if the Westmnster parties do not get their act together. All the signs are that they will not get their act together.
What David Allen said.
Tragically, there is much truth in what Matthew says; too many are content only to contemplate their collective navel and stay in a politically correct rut even though it has a long history of going nowhere. It might make them feel good but that’s all it does.
The left has indeed utterly and totally failed as per the title but it wasn’t always so. In the middle decades of the last century the left really felt it had THE ANSWER but it turned out it didn’t. Then Thatcher came along and the Tories in turn thought they had found THE ANSWER but it’s now obvious they hadn’t either. So what is the left going to do about it?
What the Left needs is to understand how the economy really works (hint: 99% of economics is right-wing political propaganda masquerading as a respectable subject) and, flowing from that, how the country should be run – if not old-style nationalised industries or new-style predatory privatised ones then what?
These are solvable problems provided we have a functional party capable of getting its act together – but we don’t and that is inexcusable. There can be no excuses about the unfairness of the voting system or the media; the one thing the Party does absolutely control is how it runs itself although an observer from Mars could be excused for thinking its organisation – chocolate teapot of a FE, baroque and out of touch policy making and the rest – was organised by the Tories to prevent any chance of a liberal challenge. A party that cannot run itself most certainly cannot run the country where the scale of challenges are orders of magnitude bigger.
The so-called leadership has in fact provided no leadership which is why there is so much sniping in the absence of shared purpose and vision that over-rides minor differences. It seems that in the long years in the wilderness the ambition has changed. Radicalism and integrity have gone, replaced by un unseemly scramble for titbits from the top table.
Matthew Green
‘ I resent the implication that I swallowed a Thatcher and Tebbit narrative uncritically. The reason why those two got as far as they did is because what they said chimed with the experiences of so many, across many levels of society. ‘
I did not argue that you had swallowed their line uncritically. However, I am sure you recall that their narrative about the 1970s was the launchpad of the restructuring of the economy, smashing the trade unions and so on. I would just point out that Thatcher only scored her landslides on around 42% of the vote – hardly an acclamation by the masses – though by today’s standards, not bad.
I’m not nostalgic for a bygone age but I do think there is a debate to had about the lack of political representation across the social spectrum and about the issue of that dirty word – equality. I use it, not in the sense of ‘social aspiration,’ as certain right-wing politicians mean it (in all three parties incidentally) – giving people the means to ‘escape’ from one class to another ‘better’ class – but fairness between social groups.
If that makes me sound like a dangerous leftie, it shows how far right politics has drifted.
I’m not sure what’s to be gained by knocking protestors.
The tuition fee demonstration were young people angry about having tuition fees tripled. There were to many of them to be dismissed as trendies fighting for an elitist cause. For their pains they got bottle necking and riot police not a sympathetic ear. A year or so later they got Nick Clegg’s half hearted non apology. This issue keeps coming back to haunt the Lib Dems because too many Lib Dems reneged on a very public pledge. It should have been a red line policy and It really is that simple. The sooner the Lib Dem stop raking over this misjudged mess the better.
The answer to gaining votes and keeping them is to put representing your own voters above all other concerns. If you have been elected on this or that platform those are the policies you pursue The problem for the Left is that they have people voting for them because they want to improve their lot and the Left keeps deciding that looking realistic on terms defined by the Right might swing votes their way.
John Tilley
I also reject the easy coupling of UKIP and the SNP when there is virtually nothing in the political agendas of the two parties which overlap
I am not saying that their political agendas are the same. As I keep saying, UKIP is thoroughly right-wing in every way, and it is just cruel trickery (in a great part due to the thing I was writing about in the first place) that they have managed to bet poor and alienated people on supposing they are on their side. I’ve no reason to suppose the SNP are like that at all, though that bit about cutting corporation tax is …, well, ok let’s forget that. I’ve nothing particular against Scottish independence either, to me that’s up to the Scots, I couldn’t care much either way.
However, I did pick up a bit of what was coming down from Scotland in the referendum of crude populism, which T-J here has alluded to. I’ve never liked the line that says we in England, especially southern England are all posh Tory types, and plays up a north-south or Scotland-England divide on that basis. Or actually, I find it deeply offensive as someone from a southern working class background as it tells me I don’t exist, or perhaps that people like me don’t matter, we can just be written off.
Where I think UKIP and the SNP are similar is whipping up a sort of sentimental feeling and profiting from that, and making out the independence they both want will be the answer to everything. I don’t think it is, and it think posing it as an easy-peasy solution to all the problems of the people works to shut down the sort of discussion that is actually needed. Just because the ultimate aim and underlying feeling of the SNP is less objectionable than UKIP’s does not stop them from having that in common.
Glenn
I’m not sure what’s to be gained by knocking protestors
The answer is in the title of this article (not my choice, the editor of LDV wanted it): “The utter and total failure of the political left”. What have all these protestors actually achieved in terms of building a political alternative that wins votes? Nothing.
@ Matthew Huntbach
“In recent years we have seen a huge increase in inequality in this country. The richer have become richer and the poor poorer relative to each other. ”
This is a gross oversimplification of the what has happened in the last 20 or so years, and underplays fundamental changes in the nature of the workforce which has affected the vast majority of the British population who historically were neither particularly rich but nor particularly poor. Once the workforce was characterised by a relatively smooth gradation of skill and pay – the bettered skilled, educated or experienced you were, the better you were paid, or for those with relatively low skills, such as miners, the more dangerous the job, the better you were paid. However, the majority of middle rank jobs in terms of skills have disappeared. For instance, no one now starts work as a clerk expecting to rise much up the chain. Instead we have a situation in the UK that mirrors the US – those with the highest skill, in greatest global demand, can command high wages, served by a multitude of personnel in low skilled service sectors, whose pay bargaining power is distinctly weak. Addressing this situation involves much more than simply mouthing platitudes regarding the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Countries such as Germany have largely avoided this sharp division between an extremely well paid elite supported by a relatively poorly paid service sector. However, this has much more to do with the structure of their economy than with their political setup; and changing an economy is much more difficult than changing politicians or political attitudes.
Glenn
The problem for the Left is that they have people voting for them because they want to improve their lot and the Left keeps deciding that looking realistic on terms defined by the Right might swing votes their way.
The unfortunate thing is that it does. When the Tories proposed tax cuts that would have hugely damaging consequences (as we have been told, we need a big enough tax rise to pay an extra £8 billion just to keep the NHS going) their share of the vote went up. When Miliband proposed a timid move the other way, figures in his own party attacked him for it. The leadership of the Liberal Democrats clearly seems to think that making tax cuts their main policy is what wins votes, and I don’t suspect that’s entirely without a bit of pollster work to say that yes it does.
We need loud voice on the left saying the opposite, but we aren’t getting them. It’s all very well you saying “nah nah nah nah nah nah, nasty dirty Liberal Democrats for what you did in tuition fees”, but neither you nor anyone else saying that is owning up to the reality if how full subsidy of the universities would be paid for. You are putting across the idea that it’s just a swish of the pen. It isn’t, it has to be balanced by big tax rises or big cuts in other things. The refusal to acknowledge that is the thing that makes it hard to fight for it and other policies against the right-wing. By making out it’s an easy-peasy thing, just a matter of the Liberal Democrats not being so nasty, you are making it much harder to get public acceptance for the balancing things in terms of tax that would actually be needed to make it feasible.
Graham Evans
“In recent years we have seen a huge increase in inequality in this country. The richer have become richer and the poor poorer relative to each other. ”
This is a gross oversimplification of the what has happened in the last 20 or so years,
In what way? It’s a simple fact. If you look at such things as the multiple of average wage of CEO compared to shop-floor worker, and many other such statistics it’s increased markedly. Why do you call it a “platitude” when it’s a fact? Arguing about what’s caused it and whether it’s inevitable or a side-effect of other things that are good does not stop it being a fact.
Given that the whole theme of my original article was that I was OPPOSED to the simplistic platitudes of these protestor types and suggesting they don’t help us develop the sort of proper discussion we need to have on these issues, perhaps you ought just to try reading what I wrote instead of jumping to conclusions.
Matthew Huntbach
‘ What have all these protestors actually achieved in terms of building a political alternative that wins votes? Nothing.’
The protest groups are a symptom of the problem not the cause. They reflect the failure of the mainstream left to construct an alternative vision to the current rightward discourse and importantly offer real structural economic equality not the timid tinkering we have had from both the Lib Dems (since 2010) and Labour since 1994. Identity politics is the only kind of politics where many on the left feel any kind of vindication but economic justice is what is really necessary to address social inequality and alienation.
The left is fragmenting because of a lack of vision and leadership and the only ones to benefit are the right, like UKIP. If the protest groups are pathetic, the root cause is worse.
@Matthew Huntbach ”
perhaps you ought just to try reading what I wrote instead of jumping to conclusions.”
I have, and do not disagree with much of what you have written. However, you undermine the more important point you make about political engagement by mouthing platitudes regarding the Orange bookers and the rich. For instance, the the differential between the average CEO and the shop-floor workers may have an impact on people’s sense of fairness, but has no economic impact – paying the CEO of a firm employing thousands of people less would not noticeably raise the pay of those on the shop floor. (It should also not be forgotten that the average FTSE100 firm now is much, much larger than was the case 20 years ago, and traditionally the CEO pay is linked to company size. For instance, in the 1980s, within the pharmaceutical industry there were four companies which would normally be regarded as British – Glaxo, ICI, Beechams, and Burroughs Welcome. Today there is one and a half – Glaxo having absorbed Beechams and Welcome, together with the American SKB, and the pharmaceutical division of ICI having merged with Swedish Astra. Similar considerations apply to many other large FTSE100 companies.) Likewise, arguments about a 45p or 50p income tax rate are a diversion (as in many respects is Labour’s proposal regarding a mansion tax), from the fact that if the Government is to raise the sort of revenue needed to meet a future shortfall in NHS funding, not to mention big infrastructure and public sector house building programmes, then it needs to impose significant tax increases on the majority of the population. But you yourself acknowledge that there is no evidence that this wins elections, which is why of course Gordon Brown preferred stealth taxes.
Matthew,
I agree with you in part.
The problem is, you are talking not about a single ideology, but a mish-mash of often contradictory belief systems. Some of these movements are clearly offshoots of the mainstream hard left which no longer has a Parliamentary voice. The Occupy Movement is a classic example of that. Others see an all encompassing enemy which is a shadowy cabal of elite forces that seeks to enslave humanity. People in that camp are often libertarians/anarcho-capitalists (Alex Jones, Luke Rudkowski, Foster Gamble), while others lack a coherent set of beliefs (most of the UK contingent). I always ask these people: “What is your economic policy?” That tends to disconcert them.
I disagree with you when you say that protest movements are made up of people from elite social backgrounds. Does David Icke come from an elite social background? Chris Spivey, Bill Maloney, Sonia Poulton, Brian Gerrish? Not one of those does. I agree that some of the commentators who posture in the “Grauniad” and “New Statesman” do (George Monbiot, Martin Amis, the late Christopher Hitchens).
I think the key is to emphasise that to have an economic policy that works and delivers benefits to ordinary people, it is necessary to have an elected government, because the elite acting alone sure as heck won’t give it to us.
And I should add that the reluctance of the electorate to support parties which propose large tax rises is one of the attractions for politicians of privatisation. Consumers may whinge about prices increases, but their anger tends to be directed as the companies, or the regulators, rather than the Government. Only rarely does the sort of attack Ed Miliband has made over energy prices have much political impact.
Matthew,
I #m a liberal. You do this “na na na nasty Lib Dem” response on auto polite. According to the election material the Tuition fee pledge was fully costed. It is not up to students or Joe Public to give politicians lessons on economics.
Now on the wider subject of the failure of the Left. Well, it depends how you define Left and Right. In truth the traditional parties are all in decline. The Conservative Party are leaking support even faster than Labour and Lib Dems have bottomed out. This is because they are failing to represent their voters which leads to voter apathy. It’s not actually the electorates fault that successive governments fail to do what they are elected to do. If I was a tory who voted for a reduction in immigration and the deficit I would be pretty annoyed to find out both were still rising. If I was a labour voter I would be pretty annoyed at the drift rightwards and the tendency towards running rotten boroughs and being told what to eat or drink. The point is that the political parties think voters will keep electing them no matter what and therefor they can get away with failing to deliver. The blind panic of the three main Parties during the Scottish referendum bares witness to this. They were scared enough of the result to capitulate. And by the way if I was a Scot I would have voted yes and I respect the fact the SNP do actually care about representing the people who vote for them.
Politicians need to respect the people who vote for them and the electorate should not be treated as mere voting block.
Ultimately I don’t care whether parties are leftist or rightist or centrists or muppets in suits. All I want is results. And the result I want, in this context, is the availability of affordable education, be it ever so humble. I would like people to embrace the honest reality about the ‘no money up front’ myth: many people are barred from education and many mature students have been deterred as a result. I would like somebody to stop spinning for long enough to admit that there is a problem and to reach out for a solution, which doesn’t sound like much to ask, frankly. Said solution does not have to involve giving large loans to mature students. Maybe it involves mail-order courses. Maybe it involves MOOCS. Maybe education really is too expensive and we need to wholeheartedly seek alternative delivery methods; frankly, if it is so unaffordable then perhaps that really is the best thing we can do. I have said this to you before (I teach a discount mail-order course myself); you became jolly indignant and insisted that such things are totally unacceptable. But I believe very strongly that there should not be absolute barriers. It does not have to be an *easy* path, but effort should be made to ensure that there *are* paths for people who need them. And as it is, what we have is an expensive path and no provision for an alternative, which is frankly embarrassingly poor.
Yet all I see is loads of people playing politics. Who cares about politics, ultimately? Russell Brand is the dilettante’s dilettante. Brand is a distraction. Forget politics. Worry about real issues (like the accessibility of academia to ELQ students…), not contrived personalities and party loyalties.
Go on, insult me, use the famous nah-nah-nah line, bug me again about what my gender is (because that’s totally relevant and not a creepy habit at all…). Maybe some of your friends would like to come around and internet-white-knight again on your behalf, because that’s not creepy either…
This is not the utter failure of the political left. It is the failure of politics, full stop.
daft ha’p’orth
Go on, insult me, use the famous nah-nah-nah line, bug me again about what my gender is (because that’s totally relevant and not a creepy habit at all…).
I am not sure what you are talking about here. Perhaps at some point I wrote something like Mr/Mrs/Ms ha’p’orth but that would have been to make a point about your use of a pseudonym; if you thought I was doing it to bug you about your gender, you are wrong, and I apologise if you saw it that way because it would not have been my intention.
An interesting piece, Matthew, and you make some valid points. Politics is at its finest and most noble when individuals come together in pursuit of a common cause, be it a policy or a philosophy. By fighting for what they believe in, they may gain respect for themselves and, ideally, their cause.
But, sadly, as our society becomes ever more complex, the certainties of philosophy fade, leaving the pressure groups and single issue campaigns to lay claim to that purity of spirit, deserved or otherwise.
That complexity, combined with the disparate nature of political parties – all of which to some extent are coalitions – means that there are very few simple answers any more, just more difficult choices, do A, achieve B but also C and D which might be harmful or problematic in different ways to other people.
And the only real answer is to front up about that, to explain the likely impacts in an honest, adult way and remain true to yourself. But the compromises inherent in being in a political party, combined with the cynicism and narrow-mindedness of our media and the almost nihilistic view of politics so widely held by the public mean that doing so in an organised way is virtually impossible. Small differences between party spokespersons are blown up into major rifts, leading to attempts to hold a line and manage the media.
It is grim, and I admire anyone who wants to engage, even as I fear for what their opponents and the media will try and do to them…
daft ha’p’orth
Said solution does not have to involve giving large loans to mature students. Maybe it involves mail-order courses. Maybe it involves MOOCS. Maybe education really is too expensive and we need to wholeheartedly seek alternative delivery methods; frankly, if it is so unaffordable then perhaps that really is the best thing we can do. I have said this to you before (I teach a discount mail-order course myself); you became jolly indignant and insisted that such things are totally unacceptable.
Again I am not at all sure what you are talking about. Did I at some point suggest that a lot of MOOCS and mail order courses are of low quality? I could say a whole lot more on that, but here is not the place.
Graham Evans
For instance, the the differential between the average CEO and the shop-floor workers may have an impact on people’s sense of fairness, but has no economic impact – paying the CEO of a firm employing thousands of people less would not noticeably raise the pay of those on the shop floor.
I quoted it just as an example because I happen to have remembered reading it recently. There are many different statistics that can be used to show that the gap between rich and poor has grown bigger. Yet by saying that the left/right idea in politics has no relevance now you are saying that this is something that is irrelevant. What you are saying makes as such sense as suggesting that as saying we should not talk about race as because race is irrelevant at a time when racism is increasing. Or we should not have a politics which is about money and economics at a time when there is a big economic criss because money and economics are irrelevant.
Now I’m actually agreeing with you that there are not simple solutions, there are not magic wands we can wave to solve the unhappiness that causes. But instead of you accepting that, you accuse me of saying the opposite. Why?
daft ha’p’orth
I would like somebody to stop spinning for long enough to admit that there is a problem and to reach out for a solution, which doesn’t sound like much to ask, frankly.
Yes and I would like the same, so why do you accuse me of the opposite?
daft h’p’orth
Yet all I see is loads of people playing politics. Who cares about politics, ultimately? Russell Brand is the dilettante’s dilettante. Brand is a distraction. Forget politics
As I have ALREADY SAID, I mentioned Brand just as a shorthand for the sort of views that have become characterised by him, not because I have any particular concern for him as an individual. He is saying no more than you could hear millions saying, perhaps just a bit more articulately, but not much more. Similar with the “Orange Book”, I used the term just as a shorthand for this general trend towards thinking that the solution to problems is putting them out to the private financial market and not in order to particularly single out the people responsible for the actual Orange Book as opposed to all the other pushing that sort of line.
Anyway, this is all fruitless because all that seems to be happening here is I’m getting attacked for things I did not say, while the actual point I was making is being ignored.
I just want to make a quick point that if you try to set up a business in some sectors then it really doesn’t feel as though the left has failed. In financial services, not only do we have a lot of regulation now, but also state run organisations to compete with. It’s become a lot more difficult.
I wish I had the time to read and tackle the broader issues you raise, but I don’t at the moment. I just want to make the above point.
Glenn
According to the election material the Tuition fee pledge was fully costed. It is not up to students or Joe Public to give politicians lessons on economics.
Yes, and I’ve already mentioned this and how I think Clegg should have handled it. I am not a Clegg fan, in fact I have expressed many times my feeling that the man is completely incompetent. So why do you address me as if I am a Clegg fan? Why instead of taking up what I’ve actually said do you think saying “Tuition fees, nah nah nah nah, nasty dirty rotten Liberal Democrats” is all that needs saying, the end to the debate, it can be taken no further?
Now I’ve tried to put this point many times, and the “nah nah nah nah nah” phrase comes from frustration that it seems impossible to get a sensible discussion on the issue. The Liberal Democrats did not win the general election. They won less than one in ten seats. Perhaps their tuition fees ideas were fully costed, but with just 57 MPs out of 650 they would need to find many others who would agree to go along with how they would have funded them. Why do you and others suppose that 307 Conservative MPs could have been so easily persuaded to abandon their own dearly held principles about the importance of keeping taxes low and instead move to the Liberal Democrats’ position?
It’s not actually the electorates fault that successive governments fail to do what they are elected to do.
Well, actually it is if being realistic loses you votes and making wild and unrealistic promises wins you votes. As we have seen, it is reckoned by those who have every reason to know about it that if we need to keep the NHS running, we need an extra £8 billion pounds for it. Yet the parties which proposed tax cuts saw rises in their poll support. The tax plans the Tories put forward at their conference cannot mean anything but disaster for the NHS, yet though people strongly say they want an NHS, it didn’t stop them putting the Tories ahead in the polls after their conference. So long as the electorate reward those who are unrealistic and punish those who are realistic, they DO get what they deserve.
The point is that the political parties think voters will keep electing them no matter what and therefor they can get away with failing to deliver.
I certainly have never thought that as Liberal and then a Liberal Democrat. Even during the times I was winning my council seat I knew full well the only thing that would keep getting me elected in it was constant hard work in the ward. The ward in Sussex I fought and came close to winning twice in the 1980s as a Liberal saw the Liberal vote plummet once I had gone and no-one else was left to keep the campaign running. What you write above may apply to Labour or the Conservatives, but it is complete nonsense when attempting to apply it to Liberal Democrats.
The blind panic of the three main Parties during the Scottish referendum bares witness to this.
As I have already said, I had no blind panic about it. I regarded it as purely a matter for the Scots and actually couldn’t care much which way it went.
Politicians need to respect the people who vote for them and the electorate should not be treated as mere voting block.
If I had not respected the people who voted for me in Downham ward I would not have got elected there.
Now I think you make my point very well. You may think your dismissive and cynical attitude towards all of us who have given our time and money into providing a democratic choice at elections is very wonderful and principled. But it pushes this constant message “all politicians are bad, politics is a bad thing”. That’s a message which is of great benefit to the political right and of great damage to the political left. The right don’t need mass membership in the way the left does. It suits the right very well to see the poor and dispossessed convinced that there’s no point in voting by people like you with your anti-politics message.
Eddie Sammon
I just want to make a quick point that if you try to set up a business in some sectors then it really doesn’t feel as though the left has failed.
As I wrote earlier, my definition of “right” in political terms is “the idea that those who have power and wealth now are the right people to have power and wealth, and their power and the wealth that goes with it should be preserved because it would be dangerous to take it away”. My definition of “left” in political terms is “the idea that power and wealth are too much concentrated in the hands of a few, and active measures need to be taken to change the way things are run so that no longer is the case”.
I fail to see the connection between what you wrote and what I was saying. You seem to be using the word “left” to mean something rather different from what I said I meant by it.
Mattew,
The lib Dems have lost more votes by trying to be “realistic” according to the prevalent political orthodoxy. The SNP in contrast continue to gain votes and membership.
I’m not dismissive or cynical at all. . I’m actually a true believer who just wants my representatives to hold to the values they put on the tin. I’m a liberal because I don’t believe BMI, what and people think or do in private are the governments business. Where as I do think how the fruits of ones labour get co=opted for the interests of a minority is governments business. I simply don’t believe that the freedom to exploit is a real freedom.
“………..I believe that we had it right with community politics in its early and most idealistic form. A key aspect of it was the dual approach. Yes, we would have imaginative events to attract attention, and work in the community to develop new ideas, but that went alongside electoral politics.
…. we reinvigorated the ballot box and showed people that, yes, their vote DOES count, and yes they CAN change things through it.We knew that we had to take the people with us, and that therefore we needed their political backing. Our effort was spent on getting it, and working with them in ways that would get across the underlying political message.”
Matthew
These words come from the beginning of our original piece above. I very much agree with them.
You also asked the question — “……,,,, And where the do the poor, alienated and dispossessed go politically these days? ”
When it is pointed out to you that in the last couple of months that question has been answered in Scotland you have either dismissed the facts as an SNP trick (saying that independence will solve everything being a magic formula according to you) or dismissing the subject entirely by saying that is a matter for the Scots, about who you do not really care because you are fom the South of England.
I would suggest your first responses factually incorrect. There is a grain of truth in it and a nationalistic solution can all too easily be presented as a panacea. But that would always have been the case since the SNP was formed before the second world war. It s illogical to say that the trick only started to work in the last couple of months. You refuse to see that some of the positive things you said about the dual approach might apply to what happened with the YES vote in Scotland, and might account for the high turnout and high voter registration.
I would also suggest that your second response is simply trying to avoid the subject because it does not fit easily into our overall argument. To say it is a matter for the Scots and that vou do not care is an evasion.
After the General Election in a few weeks time it is obvious that you do not want a continuation of the Conservative dominated Coalition, nor do you want a majority Conservative Government, nor even a Conservative-DUP coalition.
So even if you not care about independence for Scotland as an issue, until such time as they achieve that goal this is why Scotland is important to you in South London —
Current Scottish Representation in the Commons is :
Labour Party: 41
Liberal Democrats: 11
Scottish National Party: 6
Conservative and Unionist Party: 1
It does not need a lot of analysis to work out that the Conservatives are not going to get a lot of MPs from Scotland at the next General Election.
But the ability of the Labour Party to prevent any combination of Conservative carve up at Westminster depends on what happens in Scotland. One might add that the possibility of the Liberal Democrats retaining more than 30 seats in Westminster also relies on what happens in Scotland.
Johann Lamont has just resigned as leader of the Labour Party in Scotland as part of what seems to be a Labour meltdown north of the border in reaction to the political earthquake that was the referendum vote. You is ignore earthquakes at your peril, even if they happen four hundred miles away at the end of a long train journey from Euston.
Last weekend, former Labour first minister Jack McConnell described Scottish Labour as “a political machine that is angry about what has happened in Scotland in the recent past”.
Henry McLeish, another former Labour first minister, also said this week that Scottish Labour supporters no longer know “what the party stands for” and that it had given “enormous ground to the SNP unnecessarily”.
Shadow Scottish secretary Margaret Curran likewise argued that the party needed to return to its “socialist principles”.
In any proper discussion of “the failure of the left” in the UK you cannot pretend that Scotland and what is happening to the Labour Party in Scotland is no concern of yours.
You cannot evade the question or simply dismiss it by saying “nothing to do with me guy, I’m from the South of England”.
Huh. Yet it is the centre which is collapsing, judging by Labour’s polling lethargy and the LibDems polling disaster. Greens are growing rapidly. SNP are growing. Plaid Cymru is growing. Ukip is growing. I would say that it is the centre which should hold a torch-light onto itself, and ask itself “Why is it like this?”
John Tilley
Let me take what you are saying to an absurd limit. Suppose there was a political party which said the answer to all our problems was to erect a large statue of a pink elephant in all our major cities. Suppose it managed to convince a large proportion of the population that this was indeed something that was going to work. Suppose otherwise that its policies were centrist and unobjectionable, but otherwise unremarkable and lacking in the sort of tough actions which I think are really needed to reverse the growth in inequality we have had in recent years . I think you might indeed get people who feel all politicians are bad and the mainstream political parties are no good flocking to support the Pink Elephant Party. If a referendum was proposed in the question “Shall we erect pink elephants?” there would no doubt be a big increase in voter registration.
Now suppose I were to say “This is like UKIP, people are going over to it because they think it is something new, but its attraction comes from it having convinced people that it has a magic answer, and I fear that this is just a distraction from the serious debate that needs to take place on what really needs to be done”. You might say “That is unfair, the Pink Elephant Party is not like UKIP in terms of policies” meaning it doesn’t have an sort of underlying right-wing nasty nature of UKIP. That would be to miss my point. Pulling out of the UK is the pink elephant of the SNP. Pulling out of the EU is the pink elephant of UKIP.
Now I would far rather have a Pink Elephant Party whose policies were otherwise unobjectionable than a Pink Elephant Party whose general policy direction on all thing stank. That would not stop my concern about the pink elephants being a distraction. In fact the analogy does not entirely work, because pulling out of the UK and pulling out of the EU are not entirely token policies. I think pulling out of the EU would have disastrous consequences for us in our country, particularly as the real motivating factor of those pushing it from the top is that they dislike the way the EU acts as a barrier to the sort of far-right economic policies they wish to push even further on our country. I don’t think pulling out of the UK would be of economic benefit to the people of Scotland, and I think if it were done they would regret it in a few years after finding it didn’t solve all their problems and in some ways made them worse.
As I’ve already pointed out, even if one takes the most optimistic view of the SNP’s economic policies, they do not offer a solution to the rest of us in the UK. If there really are enough oil revenues now and in the future to make life very pleasant for the Scots if they are all kept in Scotland, doing that doesn’t make life more pleasant for us in England. The game of reducing corporation tax to attract the nominal presence of big business is a game small countries can easily play to the detriment of everyone else, reaching its limits in the brass plates of the Channel Islands. Well, breaking the whole of the UK into Channel Island sized chunks, each hawking its potential for brass plates isn’t going to solve our economic problems.
John Tilley
After the General Election in a few weeks time it is obvious that you do not want a continuation of the Conservative dominated Coalition, nor do you want a majority Conservative Government, nor even a Conservative-DUP coalition.
When I say I “don’t care” whether the Scots have independence, I mean it in the sense that I have no emotional reason why I as an Englishman want my country to be able to dominate theirs as the major part of the UK. I very much disliked the way we in the Liberal Democrats in England were urged to use that sort of line, making out that we would all be in tears if Scotland left the UK because we so much love the Scots. I don’t feel like that. I feel that whether Scotland is in the UK or not is a matter just for the Scots. I would love the Scots no more and no less if they were independent from the UK. I would wish to get the message across to the Scots that I really have no wish to stand in their want over independence if that is what they really want.
Of course I acknowledge what you say about the effect on the political balance of our national government if Scotland left the UK. But I think it would be selfish of me to urge Scotland to stay in the UK purely on that basis because I want them as my allies against other people in England with whom I disagree politically.
Colin
Greens are growing rapidly. SNP are growing. Plaid Cymru is growing. Ukip is growing. I would say that it is the centre which should hold a torch-light onto itself, and ask itself “Why is it like this?”
Because given a choice between pleasant fantasy and unpleasant reality, people will tend to vote for pleasant fantasy?
Glenn
I simply don’t believe that the freedom to exploit is a real freedom.
I agree, that is why I’m a very strong opponent of the “Orange Bookers” in the Liberal Democrats (and once again, I use this as a phrase most understand as meaning those who wish to push the party down the road of interpreting “liberalism” as meaning mainly keenness on free market economics; I take Michael Meadowcroft’s point about this being a bit unfair to some of those who contribute to the actual Orange Book, but if I were to call them by some sort of X-liberal name that would be to half accept their dubious claims against what you have written here).
However, when you write “I’m actually a true believer who just wants my representatives to hold to the values they put on the tin”, you are ignoring the point I was making about the Liberal Democrats having 57 MPs. Ever since the coalition was formed it’s been impossible to discuss this rationally because all we get is this response I call “nah nah nah nah nah”. The rational point is the extent to which 57 Liberal Democrat MPs can enforce their own policies in a Parliament with 307 Conservative MPs and not enough Labour MPs for a Labour-LibDem combination to have a majority. The “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks seem to assume the Liberal Democrats could get whatever policies they liked, and therefore it is a “betrayal” if they don’t.
Abolition tuition fees is not like gay marriage without anything in the way of balancing costs. It has huge balancing costs. The “nah nah nah nah nah” line ignores that it is not just a matter of convincing the Tory MPs to support abolishing tuition fees, it is also a matter of convincing them to support whatever taxation increases would be necessary to pay for it. That’s where the difficulty lies, and I’ve not seen any serious discussion on those lines.
So on reality there has to be some sort of compromise. Accepting the tuition fees but insisting that loans with generous repayments should be available to all so that no-one is actually barred from a university place, is one compromise. I can see that if this were were offered along with other unpalatable options it might be the best of the bad options. Another option, which I think many Tories would have supported especially as they could have used the line “the LibDems made us do it”, would be a massive slashing of the number of university places. Another would have been to have huge cuts in government spending on other things. Which of these would you prefer?
@JohnTIlley – Henry McLeish, another former Labour first minister, also said this week that Scottish Labour supporters no longer know “what the party stands for”.
And I have little idea of what Liberal Democrats stand for. We have this anodyne message about fairer/stronger economy/society that means anything and nothing. We have a leadership that has to be told when they are about to support illiberal legislation because they appear to be unable to recognize it for themselves. We have (according to the latest yougov poll) the on-going support of only 25% of those who voted for this party in 2010, compared with 36% who will vote Labour and 24% who will vote Con/UKIP.
This isn’t a failure of the political left. It’s a problem with our entire political system. The mainstream political parties are led by upper-middle-class men who look and sound alike; are represented by stuffed suits who talk in cringe-makingly on-message cliches; and exude a consensus that our economic model of increasing wealth inequality is an act of god over which they have no control.
Don’t blame the electorate. Blame the parties for creating at least the appearance – and probably the fact – of an oligarchy.
@Paul in Wokingham
“Don’t blame the electorate. Blame the parties for creating at least the appearance – and probably the fact – of an oligarchy.”
A recent academic study demonstrated that the United States is in fact an oligarchy, and I guess we are hot on their trail.
Teresa May is reportedly planning harsh measures against those who ‘plan to overthrow democracy.’ Will this also apply to anyone planning to overthrow oligarchy and institute democracy?
I agree, Matthew Huntbach. Protesting is obviously a waste of time; it’s clearly much more effective to spend one’s time writing long essays and posting them on LibDem Voice.
Paul in Wokingham
It will not come as a shock to you that I agree.
“…….This isn’t a failure of the political left. It’s a problem with our entire political system. The mainstream political parties are led by upper-middle-class men who look and sound alike…..”
Grayson Perry has it right in his portrait of Chris .
Paul in Wokingham
It will not come as a shock to you that I agree.
“…….This isn’t a failure of the political left. It’s a problem with our entire political system. The mainstream political parties are led by upper-middle-class men who look and sound alike…..”
Grayson Perry has it right in his portrait of Chris Huhne.
@Matthew Huntbach
“Because given a choice between pleasant fantasy and unpleasant reality, people will tend to vote for pleasant fantasy?”
A great confidence in the democratic process there… Silly voters, if they could only SEE the TRUTH and not believe those other parties…
I think the better explanation is that since politics has become professionalised the primary aim of participants in the political process is to be reelected. Thus any principle and ideological content must be scrutinised from what does minimum damage to the chance to be reelected. Thus, the main parties have become hollow husks that believe in nothing any more, except for that which polls and surveys shows will maximise the voter returns.
Now that there are organisations that profess to have content, voters flock to them, because that’s what they want. Not focus group policies, which have been washed and rinsed and scrutinised for anything controversial, but principle and solidity and a predictability they can’t get with professional politician whose only aim is to be reelected.
Paul in Wokingham
‘ This isn’t a failure of the political left. It’s a problem with our entire political system.’
The failure of the left since 2010 can actually be laid in part at the door of the Lib Dems in the way we handled the GE – sounding radical, making radical promises – instilling hope and then promptly sounding like Tories after going into coalition. Failure on the left can also be laid at the door of Tony Blair – another leader of a party who promised hope but delivered little actual reform ad simply went further and further to the right in power.
Those who vote for left-leaning parties tend to be driven by hope – hope that there will be change to the structures of power and governance, that there will be greater fairness between social classes and generations.
When these hopes are dashed time and again by right-leaning leaders pandering to the comfortable or solutions they give are timid and tinkering, it simply gives credence to our political enemies that indeed the right’s analysis ‘has something in it.’
It’s really no wonder that the left is fragmenting – both mainstream left-leaning parties at Westminster offer little hope just promises of competent management and a few crumbs for the NHS. Hence the Tory and Clegg attacks on Miliband… for being an incompetent manager…
UKIP and the SNP as well as certain nihilist comedians offer a clear way out of the timid, triangulating non-hope offered by the old main parties – but it’s another house being built on sand.
The key to real change is PR by STV and devolution to the regions and smaller nations. That way power is given back to the people.
Following the banking crisis and credit crunch and consequent debts, the failure of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath including ISIS. The left ought to me romping home The fact that it is not is a cause for concern today and the future of democracy.
Problem is, many of those behind the credit crunch are still in position and power, the media people who told us to borrow borrow borrow and insulted anyone who contested the Thatcherite/Reaganite deregulation consensus as long haired lefties, the politicians who turned a blind eye for nice directorships for themselves, friends and family , the banking institutions who carried on lending despite knowing there was a crunch on the way.
A horrible media campaign has been underway since 2008 to transfer the blame from those listed above to benefit claimants, public sector workers and immigrants calling them scroungers etc. This has helped the rise of UKIP. Sadly too many people have bought these lies (including those who voted conservative in 2010 for example) . There is a saying that if one tells a lie enough times, people eventually believe it.
The left however has been disorganised with Labour having to repair the damage from Blairism and the Lib Dems needing to compromise with the conservatives. The right wing media have fanned the flames at every opportunity, wanting to destroy any coherent force from the left.
The left have therefore been pushed out of main stream government and tend to be most active in pressure groups such as 38 degrees. This may be the best hope for the future, as IT technology is allowing more people to be informed and have a say bypassing the established media. The establishment are fighting back with the gagging law, TTIP etc. If the establishment win, democracy will be no more in a decade or so, we will be no different to the former USSR with perhaps a few illusory freedoms, but all the big decisions will be out of the reach of ordinary people and the freedoms we take for granted at the moment such as the freedom to travel, to work where we want, to purchase what we want, to protect our environment, to protect the sick will all gradually disappear.
As for the Lib Dems, we need to come radical again. Given the latest opinion polls, we have nothing to loose.
UKIP and SNP are radical in the wrong direction and gaining votes.
The Lib Dems should be promising a much bigger change to the tax system, looking to make serious reduction to the estimated £120 Billion PA of tax avoidance and evasion though a bonfire of tax reliefs and introduction of the land value tax. They should tell the truth about the NHS, that the most efficient way to fund it is as a collective through taxation and all the ludicrous internal markets and competition should be got rid off. We should return to an admin system like pre-1988 (for a start) when NHS admin costs were 5% of NHS budget compared to 14% now, this could save £10 billion paying for accountants and pen pushers. We should be working with our EU partners to manage human migration, again benefiting from economirs of scale rather than building more and more expensive border checks to keep those orrid foreigners out.
Andrew, so your answer to economic prosperity is to introduce a farmers tax? The LVT.
£120 billion of tax avoidance? Well, this figure isn’t true. You can quote it all you like, but it isn’t true.
The future should not be going back to the failed past with perpetually divisive policies. The best thing the left contributes to politics is innovation and it is the innovating spirit we need to retain from the left. The kind of thinking that comes up with ideas such as universal suffrage, gay marriage, the NHS.
Matthew Huntbach, ‘ What have all these protestors actually achieved in terms of building a political alternative that wins votes? Nothing.’
I don’t know whether Matthew saw my reply of 24th Oct ’14 – 8:55pm to the above question and answer.
It seems to me that protest is a legitimate if somewhat limited way of organising/acting in a system where there is a feeling of disempowerment and alienation. Remember the Greenham Common protests in the 1980s? The camp was populated by mostly middle class women but apart from the pro-Cruise establishment, not many on the left criticised their right to protest and put down a marker, even if it didn’t rid Britain of missiles It was the symbolism that mattered.
It’s the same with the anti-fracking lobby. These protest movements with a cause, are outlets for frustration yes but they feed into the wider discourse about priorities at party conferences, on the fringe and in the media.
However, it is obvious to them (and to ordinary party members) that party leaders do not listen to their own members. Indeed, the parties at Westminster are seen as the problem not the solution and our party has fed this perception since 2010.
So I don’t think it is entirely fair to condemn protest movements which are essentially spawned by the failure of political leadership and political priorities. They can see what is happening in the political parties.
An example: If pro-environmental parties such as the Lib Dems actually allow unlimited Fracking and some new nuclear build in Government; and permit companies to appropriate land without seeking the agreement of its owners, then somewhere along the line there is a mismatch between the aspirations of political parties (and their members) and their leaders’ decision-making .
The clearly demonstrable impotence of left-leaning parties in Government to stand up against powerful vested interests has led to the fragmentation of the left into protest groups. Protest was not just legitimate and understandable when Thatcher was in power.
Matthew has explained that his original piece in this thread was actually transferred from the Parliament Square discussion and given a different title by the LDV editor of the day. I am not sure who that editor was.
Some people seem to be accepting the premise of the editor’s title that there has been a failure of the left.
Is this actually true ?
Certainly not world wide. There is no doubt that in Latin America some countries that had been ruled by rightwing miitary dictatorships for decades have in the last twenty years had not just democracy but elected and re-elected left governments. Venezuela, Bolivia and others have made a point of their left wing governments and they have made significant steps forward in spreading wealth, education and health to the entire population.
In South Africa nobody would suggest that the move from Apartheid to democracy was evidence of a victory for the right.
Since the Berlin Wall came down (only twenty five years ago) democracy has grown in most former Warsaw Pact satellite states of the USSR. I would say that was a victory for the left not for the right – with the possible exception of what is happening in Hungary today.
In the last twenty years the social and cultural changes in the Irish Republic have moved the country from a bastion of Right wing Roman Catholic conformity stuck in the past to an enlightened modern European country, which in some respects is several steps ahead of the UK.
The UK itself is in 2014 full of examples of unspoken victories for the left. Even right wing parties fall over themselves to say that the NHS is safe in their hands. We do not believe them when they say it, but the fact that they say it at all shows a continuing victory for the left. The principle of treatment available free to all according to need is a victory for the left.
The much maligned Health and Safety at Work legislation is still there providing important day to day protection for ordinary working people reducing the number of deaths from workplace accidents and work related health risks. This is another victory for the left.
The sort of odious racist and homophobic attitudes that were all too common in the1970s and 1980s have to a great extent gone. There is still progress to be made. But nobody could claim that the changes of the last twenty years have not been moving away from rightwing intolerance.
I am not saying that there is any cause for complacency. Things that have been gained can so easiy be lost.
In 2014 the rightwing think tanks and front organisations, with the connivance of a media which is 90% in rightwing ownership, are well funded by oligarchs and corporate interests that push a rightist agenda.
I acknowledge that we have seen the capture of the leaderships of both Labour and the LIberal Democrats by rightwing cliques under Blair and Clegg. But there is no reason why this should be a permanent capture. In the Liberal Democrats we will have the chance in the weeks ahead to do something about that.
£120 billion figure comes from
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/06/28/if-the-hmrc-tax-gap-data-was-right-why-did-george-osborne-so-obviously-contradict-it-in-his-budget-speech/ and http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/sep/27/tax-evasion-how-much-does-it-cost-a-country says $100 is lost to the black economy. I accept its an estimate with a large error bar and probably on the high side.
The treasury estimate is £40 billion. Even this could do wonders for our finances.
In my view , a full public enquiry should be held to estimate the amount of tax lost through avoidance and evasion. Only a full public discussion of the facts with no opportunity for those with vested interests to hide or distort evidence will resolve this issue
Paul in Wokingham says, “And I have little idea of what Liberal Democrats stand for. We have this anodyne message about fairer/stronger economy/society that means anything and nothing.” I agree and that’s why the left generally and the liberal left specifically has failed.
Matthew defines the Right as being those who want to hoard all wealth and power for themselves while the Left are those that think power and wealth should not be narrowly and self-servingly controlled by a small elite and that active measures are necessary to prevent this happening. (I paraphrase – see his comment in reply to Eddie Sammon at 1:26 am on 25/10). I wholly agree.
But herein lies the rub. The study of how power and wealth work in society is economics but by and large liberals don’t ‘do’ economics. I remember being at a meeting many years ago where, after a talk by a leading political commentator, one of the older men asked plaintively, “What happened to political economy? Does it exist any more?” The answer is, of course, YES, but the liberal strand is gasping for life and almost extinct.
In the absence of it’s own thinking the Party has to import a bare minimum of economic thinking to create a manifesto or even assess the merits or otherwise of any policy proposal. For the ‘Orange Bookers’ (using the term as a shorthand) this means importing Conservative thinking more or less wholesale which is why the Cleggistas have to be told when a particular proposal is deeply illiberal because they can’t see it for themselves. The Conservative interpretation of economics is wholly at variance with observable facts; its purpose is not to be a respectable (in the normal academic sense) subject but to justify, excuse and dignify what is in reality a power grab for themselves and their sponsors. The freedom they claim is the freedom to be above the law (which is only for little people) and not the general freedom of a level playing field. It is the divine right of kings reinterpreted for an age of oligarchs.
And the Lib Dems have bought into that? Is it any surprise that the Party is unhappy or that national polls are dire? The vast majority of people are desperate for someone to represent their interests so they are casting around, hoping against hope that one or other of the varieties of political snake oil on the market will do the trick. They won’t – we need a liberal turn in our politics but how do we get that when there is no liberal party?
Helen Tedcastle
So I don’t think it is entirely fair to condemn protest movements which are essentially spawned by the failure of political leadership and political priorities. They can see what is happening in the political parties.
Helen and others – could you try reading what Giles Fraser is saying in today’s Guardian
here?
Do you agree or disagree with him? Because he is making EXACTLY the same point that I was making.
Matthew Huntbach
Giles Fraser is spot on. Anti-politics protest and nihilist figures like Brand do undermine politics and contribute to a cynicism and lack of trust – same with narrow nationalism. These figures and movements generally set up bogey-people/institutions who they can focus grievances upon and define themselves against. I made a related comment on those lines much further up the thread.
Having said that, there are issues around governance from Westminster and political parties (and how memberships/voting bases are often ignored) which contribute to these movements. I don’t buy the line that it was ever thus and that’s how it is in realpolitik.
My other point was that there is such a thing as legitimate issue-based protest – I got the impression you were lumping all protest camps/groups together as generally pointless.
Heken Tedcastle
Giles Fraser is spot on.
Right. So why are you attacking me when he is just saying the same as what I was saying.
My other point was that there is such a thing as legitimate issue-based protest
I was not saying there wasn’t.
GF
Matthew defines the Right as being those who want to hoard all wealth and power for themselves while the Left are those that think power and wealth should not be narrowly and self-servingly controlled by a small elite
No, I did not make the value judgments on either side that you make here.
Colin
I think the better explanation is that since politics has become professionalised the primary aim of participants in the political process is to be reelected. Thus any principle and ideological content must be scrutinised from what does minimum damage to the chance to be reelected.
What you seem to be saying here is that politicians are unpopular and people don’t want to vote for them because they do all they can to make themselves popular and get people to vote for them.
Thus, the main parties have become hollow husks that believe in nothing any more, except for that which polls and surveys shows will maximise the voter returns.
Do you think that’s why I spent thousands of pounds of my own money and thousands of hours of my own time on party political activity – just so for those years I was a councillor I could get the few thousands of pounds in allowances I got for it? In the meantime damaging my career prospects in my full time job to a level which has lost far more than those thousands of pounds gained in allowances.
Matthew Huntbach
Matthew, I am not attacking you. I respect your position and you have opened up a very interesting debate here.
My purpose was to look at what counts as protest ie: that which critiques policy direction with legitimate grounds such as danger to the climate or protest against total war and the deeply cynical us and them stuff we get from the SNP/UKIP as well as the nihilists.
However, I simply raise the point that wider politics has made some contribution to the current situation – and the nationalists anti-politicos feed off it.
I just wanted to contribute another angle to the discussion.
Helen Tadcastle
Much protest comes from people who do not want to make the effort to be useful. If one really wants to be be useful it requires obtaining a skill. Malaria kills more than anyone. The uproar over Rachel Carsons book means that DDT is not used to control malaria. The use of DDT to fumigate homes and mosquito nets would reduce deaths and reduction in fitness due to malaria.
The new Prime Minister of India wants to concentrate on lavatories. Constructing affordable clean water and sanitation in existing slums is technically difficult but would reduce death, illness and the squalor of poverty. Developing news strains of plants which contain more vitamins and protein and can grow in more saline conditions with less water and on lower fertility soil, requires advanced plant genetic skills .
It is much easier for a bunch of middle class arts graduates to protest than obtain the maths and science skills which would actually help the poor . As a medical consultant said , providing adequate amounts of clean water has done more for health than all the doctors combined. In fact when humans have adequate supplies of protein , vitamins and calories , combined with clean water, sanitation; homes which are not over crowded , dry and free from smoke; they can live long and healthy lives.
Patrick Moore , who was one of the founders of Greenpeace( the only one with any science training) has shown what many NGOs have become: a form of middle class whiners who lack the technical skills to actually improve the quality of life of the poor.
Ever since the archers became well paid, obtaining the technical skills which the market is willing to pay for is one of the best ways of creating upward mobile people.
As technology and trade evolves , what determines wealth are the skills. If one looks at the wealth created by computers , those who have benefited have largely come from middle to upper middle class backgrounds who have the academic ability to understand computers . In a similar manner it requires better academic ability to become a certified electrician than a bricklayer and it payers far better.
When it came to the Industrial Revolution it was created by and benefited the self f employed craftsmen more than the labourer. The blacksmith and those who built bicycles had the metal working skills to build motorbikes and then cars.
Modern day financial markets and much of the computing industry benefits mostly the people with post graduate degrees in maths, physics and engineering.
The Non Conformist set up Dissenting Academies to educate craftsmen in the academic skills required to run businesses which could operate in the Industrial Revolution. The problem for many protesters is that they lack the skills and therefore cannot provide those required by the poor with which they can improve their quality of life. Along with education people need vitality, initiative and drive in order to take control of their lives; the same way the craftsmen of the 18 and 19 C gave us the Industrial Revolution. The problem is that protesters lack the technical skills. initiative , drive and vitality of the craftsmen of the 18 and 19 C and therefore complain because if they had it they could set businesses and employ the poor .
Charlie
‘ Much protest comes from people who do not want to make the effort to be useful. If one really wants to be be useful it requires obtaining a skill. ‘
Nothing wrong with middle class arts graduates per se. The arts preserve us from the insanity of simply reducing the world to those who only see joy in mechanisms and quantifiable data.
There is a place in fact for both – for those who have ideals, who march for a single issue and whose purpose is to try to move minds and hearts through their witness and those who offer something practical. Often the two can go together.
An interesting article but I dont think British Politics has been moving to the right for the last 35 years; its actually much more complex than that. Certainly one wing of The “Left” has been busy dying – the Statist, Collectivist, Classist wing. They, of course define themselves as “The Left” & dont see any other tradition.
Theres been movement in all sorts of directions, a slow decline in Sexual, Class & Race prejudice for example.
As someone who was involved in “Left” protest movements of every sort from the 1960s to the 80s, I am unsure whether todays protesters are any more self-indulgent than me & my pals were back then.
Charlie,
How do you know “protestors” lack skill or are all art students. . Have you interviewed them or done a survey or something. Are they all middle class art students. No biologist or physicists? does no one with computer skills protest? Or mathematicians?
If protests now fail to have impact. It’s not because of the quality of the protestors. It’s because governments take no notice. How many people protested about Iraq. Were they all indulgent art students or whatever. Or did Government just carry on anyway!
Glenn
From my time at university and discussion with many charity /ngo workers. An example is golden rice which through genetic modification has much greater Vitamin A Content. Vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness yet this GM is opposed by some NGOs.
There is nothing wrong with middle class graduates , just those who pontificate on subjects when they do not understand the mechanisms and cannot analyse the data: the devil is always in the detail. The LSE pushed the ground nut scheme in E Africa , Unilever wanted a pilot project : this was turned down. Ports and infrastructure were built. The problem was that where the peanuts were to be planted there was a type of plant with very long tap roots which could not be removed in cost effective manner. The project was a failure.
Freeman Dyson was told by his grandmother that the greatest increase in literacy for the working class came from paraffin candles .The printing press enabled a massive increase in literacy.Freeman Dyson was told by his grandmother that the greatest increase in literacy for the working class came from paraffin candles. Another aspect that for much of the year it is either too dark or raining to read by natural light : tallow candles do not give an adequate light for reading , paraffin produce a bright enough flame.
The great architects such as Wren understood beauty . RJ Mitchell was inspired the beauty of the flight of bird when he created “The Spitfire”. The engineers who designed the great steam locomotives appreciated beauty as did the designer of the E-type Jag.
When one lies on rags , exhausted from a hard days labour, malnutrition and disease, in shack without much light: what will improve one’s life is clean water at hand , sanitation, vitamin and protein rich food, a dry smoke free home and to earn sufficient money to pay for education and healthcare for one’s family which occurs through technological improvement. It is much easier to harvest wheat with a scythe than a sickle and leaves one less tired at the end of the day. WHO says people need 20l of water per day , which weighs 20KG or 44lb. As women tend to collect water this means that many start the day having to carry 20Kg or more often100s or 1000s of metres at the beginning of the day. In some cases there is not enough water to wash hands after defecation. The rural water supply network have shown that 10 to 60% of hand pumps fail. During the 1980-1990 UN Decade of Water approximately 33% of boreholes drilled failed because of poor design and construction.
In summary ,improving the technology available to the poor will improve their lives: this requires technical skill not just opinions.
GF 25th Oct ’14 – 4:53pm
GF — sorry but I am catching up late on something you wrote yesterday afternoon, which I thought was very good —
I think you set out accurately how Liberals “don’t do economics” and as you put it —
“In the absence of it’s own thinking the Party has to import a bare minimum of economic thinking to create a manifesto or even assess the merits or otherwise of any policy proposal. For the ‘Orange Bookers’ (using the term as a shorthand) this means importing Conservative thinking more or less wholesale….”
I think this is quite correct. It might be worth thinking about why Liberals do not do economic. My knee jerk guess is that it’s because a Liberal sees the world as full of individual human beings not units of production, or markets for consumption. There is maybe also a reaction to the dominance of politics by economics in the twentieth century.
Perhaps the Liberal slogan in answer to Bill Clinton is that –“it is about more than just the economy, stupid.”
fully behind charlie on this one.
Matthew Huntbach 25th Oct ’14 – 5:25pm
Helen and others – could you try reading what Giles Fraser is saying in today’s Guardian
Matthew,
I do not disagree with Canon Fraser. I have spent my life saying that tax is a good thing, it is how us “little people” share our cash to pay for schools and libraries and doctors that we could not possibly afford if we were on our own..
I hope however that you will share my amusement about one incidental thing?
This is a discussion that started with you giving your less than flattering view of some protesters as middle class self publicists and “trendy wendies”. And now you call in aid an article in The Guardian by Canon Giles Fraser, the Uppingham School educated CofE celebrity vicar, who has had more BBC appearances in the last five years than most self publicists could manage in a life-time. He is Russell Brand in a dog collar.
OK he says very different things from Russell Brand but I hope you can see why I am amused ?
A couple of weeks ago a group of women walked from Jarrow to London to protest — I have no idea of their names, they were not celebrities and they would very much agree with Giles Fraser on taxation. I do remember that they wanted proper funding for the NHS.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/04/young-politicised-jobless-jarrow-march
Not all protesters are media luvvies.
Charlie
Where did I say anything about against technology at all? You claim that it was that it was “much easier for a bunch of middle class arts graduates to protest than to obtain the maths and science skills that would help the poor”. I how you knew that the only people protesting were middle class arts students! You haven’t got an answer to it because you are making generalisat6ion.
Mention R J Mitchel is not proof that protestors are all middle class art students. I know a lot about aircraft too. My Grandfather and a couple of uncles flew them when they were in the RAF! It is not relevant to the argument. As for the other stuff, let me suggest that it was in fact workers campaigning and organising to protest for better working condition that improved their lot rather than the paraffin lamp which was in fact one among many invention that improved their ability to do it. At no point did I say that technology does not improve peoples lives.
Read my post, I merely asked whether or not scientists and mathematicians ever protested. Lots of people protest about lots of things. For and against, Not just middle-class art students. That’s all I was saying and you just drag in irrelevant assertions rather than provide a counter argument or proof, which is by the way the antithesis of the logical reasoning that drives science and maths. The beauty of the spitfire or steam trains, what Dyson’s grandmother said about paraffin lamps and some stuff about water pumps are not arguments about the validity of protests or evidence of who is protesting.
Charlie
‘ There is nothing wrong with middle class graduates , just those who pontificate on subjects when they do not understand the mechanisms and cannot analyse the data: the devil is always in the detail. ‘
This comment seems to me to be a development of the exchange of views we had earlier… It seems to me to be a very narrow view of ‘usefulness’. Usefulness in your view (correct me if I’m wrong) amounts to ‘doing’ something practical.
There appears to me to be little space for exchanges of ideas, changing hearts and minds through argument or protest – which may then lead to practical solutions. Your view seems to be – ignore namby-pamby, airy-fairy arts graduates and listen to scientists – as if the two areas are completely separate – as if science graduates don’t get angry, don’t have ideals and as if arts graduates aren’t practical, don’t go to third world countries and help construct water wells in rural villages or set up projects to take emergency aid to war-torn lands etc… really? Do you have the quantifiable data to back up your assertions?
I’m not sure what to make of this comment…’ The great architects such as Wren understood beauty . RJ Mitchell was inspired the beauty of the flight of bird when he created “The Spitfire”. The engineers who designed the great steam locomotives appreciated beauty as did the designer of the E-type Jag.’
Can you clarify in the context of this debate?
John Tilley
On Giles Fraser: ‘ He is Russell Brand in a dog collar.’
The only similarity between Giles Fraser and Russell Brand is that they are both very opinionated.
They are worlds apart in the solutions they offer. At least Fraser offers something constructive and coherent (okay he went to public school but now he works in a deprived, inner city parish – hats off to him) – that taxation is a good thing in the context of paying for essential community services – things we as a society care about.
Conversely, Brand offers a cynical and nihilistic views which encourage people, particularly young people, to bury their heads in the sand, to not get involved in the messiness of political life. This is the antithesis of a political worldview – it is anti-politics politics and as such deeply corrosive to society, offering little hope, only despair.
In this sense, I think Brand’s intervention in the public discourse is worse than the grievance politics of the SNP and UKIP. At least with the latter they can be defeated at the ballot box.
Is it really wise to keep compairing the SNP to UKIP or to dismiss either as mere grievence politics. They couldn’t be more different. Scottish Independence is a cause that goes back hundreds of years and is the dream of a lot of Scots. It’s like saying Southern Ireland is the result of grievance culture or that any country seeking independent status is driven by grievance The SNP are actually the representative Government of Scotland, basically centre left liberal and pro EU.. It strikes me that the real grievance politics north of the border comes from the three old parties having their noses put out of joint. What do you expect the Scots to do? Just keep voting for the same thing forever without seeing anything in the way of social progress. always overseen by either a Labour Party that that treats its voters as a god given right or a Conservative Party that has one MP in the entire country.
The real problem is that we are trying to inspire people by offering them a temporary changes in management with political leaders reduced to nit picking inane and usually misleading arguments about competence. Well, is it really any wonder that people can’t be bothered to vote. Does anyone care who the junior minister for paper clips is or whether or not Miliband can eat a bacon sarnie properly or how red faced and flustered Cameron gets at P QT.
Glenn
Is it really wise to keep compairing the SNP to UKIP or to dismiss either as mere grievence politics. They couldn’t be more different. Scottish Independence is a cause that goes back hundreds of years and is the dream of a lot of Scots.
This completely misses the point I was making. I have tried to explain in detail, I don’t have time to think again of yet another way of putting it to try and get it through to you and others what I actually meant.
John Tilley
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/04/young-politicised-jobless-jarrow-march
Not all protesters are media luvvies.
Sure, and I am not saying they are. Neither am I saying that all protest is wrong. There seem to be a lot of people commenting on what I have said here on the misassumption that was what I was saying.
Mathew,
Sorry if you took my comment the wrong way I was actually just making a general observation in response to some of the other comments.
John Tilley
And now you call in aid an article in The Guardian by Canon Giles Fraser, the Uppingham School educated CofE celebrity vicar, who has had more BBC appearances in the last five years than most self publicists could manage in a life-time. He is Russell Brand in a dog collar.
Sure, but neither am I saying that everyone who is famous has nothing worthwhile to say.
My concern is over the way that involvement in protest has now come to be seen as a replacement for activity which is oriented around getting change implemented through democratic politics rather than as a supporting action.
I would hope that the aim of any protest action is to get things changed. But what are we to say about protest which simultaneously says “all politics is bad, don’t get involved in it” and “things must change”? Unless it really is going to inspire The Revolution, where is it going? Even if we are going to have a big collapse of party politics as it is now and something new arises, just exactly how is that something new going to work?
I am concerned that some forms of protest seem to be more about striking a pose than actually getting things done. And that some do seem, underneath, to be like peasants trying to tug at the heartstrings of the aristocracy, when I’d prefer to say our politicians are not an aristocracy: we can get change them through the ballot box.
paul barker
Theres been movement in all sorts of directions, a slow decline in Sexual, Class & Race prejudice for example
I disagree with the middle one of these. I don’t think there has been a decline in class prejudice. See, for example, how in the Liberal Democrats we are always going on about our concern for not having enough non-white or female candidates. But no-one seems bothered about the gross imbalance in social class that we have in our Parliamentarians and wannabe Parliamentarians. The line in the Liberal Democrats seems to be “we don’t believe in class, therefore we will pretend it does not exist”. It is as if we refused to talk about racial imbalance and racial prejudice because we thought it should not exist, and felt the best way to handle it therefore was to ignore it.
Helen Tadcastle
Nothing wrong with middle class arts graduates per se. The arts preserve us from the insanity of simply reducing the world to those who only see joy in mechanisms and quantifiable data.
One must see joy in mechanisms and quantifiable data in order to build a Spitfire, water and sewage treatment plants , or St Paul’s Cathedral . I say listen to engineers who produce cost effective solutions to problems. ” Opinions are like mouths , everyone has one “. The arts tradition in Britain means that people can argue very eloquently, be extremely articulate and be very persuasive yet be totally wrong -examples would be the left supporting Communism and even accepting deaths of 15-20 million as be acceptable . Hobsbawn and Sartre suported communism to the end.
As Orwell said ” The left wing intellectuals who had criticised physical courage, patriotism and the beliefs of the military middle class meant that fewer bright people entered the Army resulting in it’s chequered performance. Also many intellectuals could only spout their comments because they came from the rentier class, we lived in an island were protected by a navy.
The great advantage of the British training system was that bright young engineers and officers were placed alongside
highly skilled, experienced , tough and forthright working class foremen and sergeants who told them when their ideas
were utter rubbish. I would put all those protestors on a construction, farm, trawler or logging team and under the direction of a tough experienced working class foreman: then they would appreciate the massive difference between an opinion and a practical result..
I thoroughly agree with Matthew Huntbach’s comments below :
I am afraid that my experience of various protest movements very much DOES suggest they are mainly composed of people from a social elite background, and many of those engaged in them do seem to me to be motivated at least in part by a sort of poseur mentality.
I would suggest that many of the people Matthew criticises are very similar to those Orwell criticises in his Vol 2 1940-43 of collected essays.
The paraffin candle produces a sufficiently bright flame so that one read, tallow candle require many more meaning that light in a house was something the poor could not afford. Agitation did not create the Industrial Revolution , farmers and craftsmen did . The extensive increase in the growing of peas and legumes from 850 to 1000AD greatly increased the protein intake of European peasants which increased health and longevity. If farmers had not increased crop production and animal size , then there would not have been the people for the Industrial Revolution. Technology such as the steam shovel reduced the need for physically arduous and dangerous manual labour. The Davy Lamp reduced unbderground fires . The connection between a privy and the hand pumps caused cholera reduced disease. The discovery that fast and low sand filters could remove pathogenic bacteria meant disease free water could be produced . The use of railways and refrigeration meant cheap meat could be brought into the UK which reduced malnutrition.
Rather than posing , the protesters could design a hand pump which did not break down . The rural water supply network state that 10-60% of hand pumps break down , resulting in a waste of money and people using contaminated water!
@ Glenn
‘ Scottish Independence is a cause that goes back hundreds of years and is the dream of a lot of Scots. It’s like saying Southern Ireland is the result of grievance culture or that any country seeking independent status is driven by grievance The SNP are actually the representative Government of Scotland, basically centre left liberal and pro EU.. ‘
I don’t dispute that there is lot wrong with the current system but I resist the idea that nationalism of any kind is the solution to the problem. In fact Ireland is a case in point. Look what happened when Home Rule didn’t happen. The ‘ideal’ of nationalism fuelled the polarisation and division of Irish society – leading to the slide into violence and division; and the migration of thousands of families (including my own) from Ireland.
So far there has been no violence in Scotland but the ugly side of nationalism was on view in the referendum debate, as was the ridiculous idealisation of the concept of Scottishness, Scotland and who counts as Scottish. The same narrow viewpoint is prevalent in parts of Irish society too . It’s ugly and divisive.
Charlie
‘ The arts tradition in Britain means that people can argue very eloquently, be extremely articulate and be very persuasive yet be totally wrong ‘
I don’t doubt it. I’m open-minded that some people who have arts backgrounds can be wrong. Of course. Many speak truth to power eg: Orwell – he was rather good at writing (an art).
‘ One must see joy in mechanisms and quantifiable data in order to build a Spitfire, water and sewage treatment plants , or St Paul’s Cathedral ‘
I am sure there are engineers who find joy in building and designing. St. Pauls is awe-inspiring not just because it was designed by a world-class architect but because of the response it evokes. It might inspire an artist to paint or a poet to pen a poem…
I’m not anti-science and pro-arts. It’s both-and, not either-or. Every healthy society needs its poets, idealists and its engineers.
Charlie,
You still talking as if the only people who protest about anything are involved in the arts. And lots of people from all spheres supported totalitarianism in one form or another, The ability of invent things does not magically bestow a moral compass. For that matter not all protest is a pose.
Agitation might not have started the industrial revolution, but campaigns , organised protest certainly did play a part in ending slavery, getting women the vote, increasing wages and so fourth.
Helen’
Do you think if you asked the Southern Irish if they wanted to re-join Britain they would say yes or what about all those new Baltic nations. Nationalism is not innately bad and can exist within all kinds of frameworks. Unionists in Scotland aren’t all sweetness and light, you know. The SNP just want Scotland to be independent from England or the UK if you prefer, They’re not planning pogroms or anything. Plus is the quest to keep Britain together not a form of Nationalism and if it isn’t why should Scotland be anymore attached to England than it is to France or Norway. In truth the No campaign was as much about Nationalism as the Yes campaign was. It was not a referendum on whether or not Scotland cut itself off from the rest of the world it was about whether it should stay within Britain. An argument for a small national identity v a larger national identity.
Glenn
Wages are due to supply and demand. The best way of increasing income is to obtain the skills a society needs. In the 13-15 centuries, becoming an archer meant one could 2d/day , if one had armour 4d/day and if one provided a horse 6d/day . The ten years if training needed to become an archer were worthwhile and enabled freemen to become franklins, yeomen and even gentlemen( some archers were knighted).Women who learnt how to brew beer became wealthy in the late Middle Ages of England. Nowadays there are is no need for archers. In the 1990s , some computer staff earned £1000/day due to demand: as supply increased, incomes declined. African Americans moved from share cropping to working for Ford because they paid $5/week. In many ways the best way of protesting against share cropping was to move away and find better employment. As they say ” A king with no people has no country “. By obtaining skills and moving away from a bad employer and finding better paid work leavers an employer scrabbling to fill the jobs which benefits those who remain.
In the 20 C , in the coal mines . the electricians were skilled craftsmen which enabled them to travel overseas and obtain well paid employment when closures took place; the miners were not so fortunate. Modern mining largely started with the skilled Cornish tin miners who started many of the deep UK coal mines and then travelled overseas and developed mines. A time served British craftsmen, especially who had completed two years post apprenticeship training ( master training ) could often travel overseas and obtained well paid work: this was especially true of those who were trained in the railway workshops of Swindon, Crew, Derby, etc, etc.
If one looks at aid projects where people are provided with goats or cows, trained how to increase crop production or in fish farming s and basic water provision and sanitation, then they increase their technical expertise and become independent. Someone who develops the skill building basic water and sanitation schemes can set up a business selling their services.
As technology progresses , the skills vary: the skill is being able to develop skills and maintain or even increase income.
I would suggest that the worse thing to happen for middle class socialists would be for working class and lower middle class people to become highly educated, skilled and innovative such that they run their own businesses, have sufficient wealth to chose where to live , which schools their children attend and afford private medical care if they chose to use it.
Power to the people means that no longer will people have to endure the conceit and condescension from middle class socialists who say they know what is best for them.
“In truth the No campaign was as much about Nationalism as the Yes campaign was.”
Absolutely right, Glenn.
I am a Unionist because they are my ‘people’.
People with whom I choose to freely associate, in the hope that together our shared aims and expectations will prove more powerful in forming history in the image we desire it to take.
“The SNP just want Scotland to be independent from England or the UK if you prefer, They’re not planning pogroms or anything.”
Again, absolutely right, Glenn.
I have absolutely nothing against the SNP.
Just as I am free to choose free association with scotland other Scots are free to hold that their destiny is better without the rest of us.
The same holds true in europe; I have no problem with europhiles who feel Britain will achieve a better end as part of what they see as their european family.
I disagree, but I reserve my contempt only for those who see EUrope as a way of impose governance and societal norms on Britain that we would not otherwise choose for ourselves.
Glenn
‘… if you asked the Southern Irish if they wanted to re-join Britain they would say yes or what about all those new Baltic nations. Nationalism is not innately bad and can exist within all kinds of frameworks. Unionists in Scotland aren’t all sweetness and light, you know. The SNP just want Scotland to be independent from England or the UK if you prefer…
It’s not a matter of whether the Irish want to re-join Britain nearly 100 years after the Easter Rising – too much has happened – and that’s my point. Breaking up countries causes division, hatred and animosity.
The SNP are left of centre yes but it’s the nationalist element I reject. I think home rule within a federation is the most fruitful and productive way for these islands to be governed (and within a federal Europe). If home rule had been delivered for Ireland, we wouldn’t have had a violent ending of the union with Britain and the development of two discourses of hatred which still bubbles.
One only needs to listen to UKIP spokespeople and the SNP on nationalism to hear the same themes of division and over-idealised renderings of nations and peoples that has blighted Ireland for decades.
Helen.
I do not see how Scottish nationalism is a threat to anyone and I’m sorry but I don’t see how believing in a historically united Britain is not nationalism. There was a perfectly democratic vote on Scottish independence with no major problems. The SNP accepted the result in a perfectly reasonable way. There have been no threats and no bombs and no pitched battles between unionists and nationalists. If the Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories want to do better in Scotland then maybe they should offer more than fear mongering about the SNP and be less suspicious of the 45% of Scots who have accepted the election results with good grace.
I’m not a fan of UKIP, but instead of whining about how beastly they are why not offer the electorate a positive vision of what The Lib Dems or for that matter what The Conservatives or Labour want. The only real link between the SNP or UKIP or even the Greens is that they are picking up votes because the older Parties sometimes seem to see the electorate as an inconvenient obstacle to overcome in elections based around maximising percentage points rather than as the citizens who they are being elected to represent. Worse still they sometimes seem scared of and angry with the electorate for daring to vote in ways that may upset the results of this electoral percentage game, You get votes by representing the aspirations and interests of the electorate.
Charlie.
I think we’ll agree to disagree.
Glenn
I do not see how Scottish nationalism is a threat to anyone and I’m sorry but I don’t see how believing in a historically united Britain is not nationalism.
I don’t think Helen was saying that, and neither was I. When I said that I “don’t care” about Scottish independence, I was trying to make the point that my negative comments about some aspect of the “Yes” campaign did not stem from having any sort of emotional or political opposition to Scottish independence. Rather I was concerned that the “yes” campaign did seem to be holding out independence as the answer to all problems, building on cheap and rather negative sentiment rather than seriously discussing how we can build a better society.
So the result has been that the SNP has succeeded with an “all things to all men”image, simultaneously putting out a left-wing image in opposition to the current UK government, while proposing right-wing economic policies such as cutting corporation tax and nothing much else in the way of serious left-wing economic policies. It seems to think it can get away with this by using oil revenue as the answer to everything. I don’t think this is sustainable in the long-term. The way in which it won’t work was to some extent illustrated by the threatened flight of big business from Scotland if “yes” won.
On the Republic of Ireland, well, consider the “Celtic tiger” boom and subsequent collapse. It looks to me as if the SNP is pushing something similar in Scotland.
Glenn
Yes, the referendum campaign wasn’t violent and until recently, there have not been ‘betrayal’ calls by the SNP. Let’s wait and see what the Sturgeon leadership brings.
As I said earlier, nationalism (as in Ireland) has a habit of sowing division and hatred – it always has. The Baltic states example you gave is different to Scotland – they were under totalitarian rule from the Soviet Union. Conversely, Scots have run the British state with the English and Welsh for centuries.
Matthew Huntbach is right. The SNP have succeeded in portraying themselves as a real alternative in the system by demonising the other parties as the ‘Westminster elite’ – as ‘the Other.’ This strategy has worked despite the fact that the Better Together campaign was headed by Scots members of three national parties. It’s a classic nationalist tactic and is being used to great effect by UKIP too.
This does not mean I think that the status quo is the only alternative to nationalism – far from it.
Believing in a federal Britain is the opposite of nationalism – it’s about nationhood pooled for the greater good of co-operation and inclusion. It’s about putting to one side strong, visceral and notoriously unpredictable emotions and sentiments about individual identity defined as different to ‘others’, to identity in relationship with others – So I can be a Scot, Welsh or English but also British and European at the same time. This does not mean that Scots are less Scottish – if one is secure in one’s identity, one doesn’t need to define oneself against another.
The fact that the SNP plays on grievance and insecurities is one of it’s defining and least attractive characteristics.
Matthew,
I don’t agree with you, but I’ll leave it at that.
Helen’
The SNP do not define themselves as against Britain, they define themselves as pro-independence and 45% agreed with them. You are in fact defining the argument in antagonistic terms by scare mongering about things haven’t happened and show no sign of happening. As for your other point, if Britain is not in every practical sense a nation why do you think Scottish independence is any more dangerous or important than Australian and Canadian independence. In fact we’ve tended to have fewer problems with Nations whose independence we accepted with good grace than with those we fought to keep.