by Joy Johnson
BLAMING Gordon Brown for all Labour’s woes is easy but wrong. The current economic crisis began in the United States – first with the war in Iraq and second with the subprime mortgage market. Getting involved in the first was within Britain’s control; becoming sucked in by the second was not. Without the catastrophic intervention in the Middle East, the Labour Government might have had the wherewithal to withstand the subsequent economic tidal wave.
A narrative without this fundamental perspective is a rewriting of history – however recent. Last year’s general election that wasn’t may have been a cracking good yarn of who said what and who intervened when. But it was a subject for entertaining journalistic prose, not a decisive moment in British political history.
While a blunder it was not remotely on the scale of the poll tax riots in London or when then Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont came blinking into the lights to tell the waiting press that Britain had pulled out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. These were two crucial moments, as was the winter of discontent in 1979 – a historical drama, if ever there was one. However, we should be wary of drawing parallels with 1979. Those politicians and commentators who are drawing them have self-serving motives.
They include senior Labour politicians who are increasingly reliant on trade union funds, as the party’s big business backers have made themselves scarce. These politicians fear their opponents will accuse them of being in hock to the unions. Other ministers reach back for templates to blame “greedy” unions for seeking wages that will cope with rising prices. These people are playing into the hands of Labour’s opponents who talk up 1979 with a propaganda campaign designed to pave the way towards accepting the inevitability of a Tory government to “sort out the mess”.
There may be a few similarities with 1979, but Larry Elliott, The Guardian’s economics editor, is right to say the problem is not that trade unions have too much power. The problem lies with big capital.
If we searching for are an epoch-making event, we only need to look as the illegal war in Iraq. That is when the rot really set in – a rot that has never been arrested.
Labour is damned with and by every opinion poll. Every by-election brings more misery for the Government. At the time of writing, the Glasgow East is in its closing stages. In a supposedly safe Labour seat, the result is too close to call in these days of economic wretchedness.
So what can Gordon Brown do? Instead of making presentational points, the Prime Minister should focus on fundamentals. He should attack the cancerous organs of the hedge funds before the poison eats away at whatever are perceived to be the weakest and most vulnerable points in our society. He should work to diminish the abomination of the wealth gap in this country where non-doms have their jets and helicopters to fly over the rest of us.
Unfortunately, over the lifetime of this Labour Government, we have seen a shift towards American-style pay inequality where bosses earn as much as 17 times more than their employees and where workers’ wages stagnate and even decline.
When Unite negotiator Len McCluskey was interviewed in the media to explain the tanker drivers’ recent pay claim, every viewer and listener understood what he meant by greedy oil companies. In the court of public opinion, the union won the argument.
This is not a story about “old” Labour versus “new” Labour. That always was a false dichotomy. “New” Labour was never more than a marketing device to represent the right in the party. But this is not even about left and right. In The Observer last month, Will Hutton outlined how hedge funds are making the lives of ordinary people increasingly difficult. He described the damage that those who manage hedge funds have done and are doing with their aggressive speculation on the oil market, the banks and property companies. The “cool face of capitalism” has surpassed the excesses of its unacceptable face. According to Hutton, the whole operation of capitalism is being reduced to that of a casino, while people’s lives are regarded as mere “chips”. But even capitalists realise that, in order for capitalism to save itself, changes will have to be made which make it harder for the very rich to get even richer. For instance, restrictions on organised labour should be lifted. Globalised trade unionism is required to combat the inequities of globalised capitalism.
If events in the US caused the present gloom, then events in that county may yet lift it. Barack Obama’s repeated commitment that American withdrawal of troops from Iraq will be complete within 18 months of his entering the White House offers real hope. Racism may prevent him from winning, but optimists will hope that the victory of the Democratic presidential candidate in November will constitute another truly epoch-making moment in history.
