History repeats itself not only when those in power are ignorant of the past but also when the victims of the past forget what happened to them during it. How else to explain the arrival of the coalition? How many of those who suffered under Thatcherism voted for another dose of it in May of this year? How many Liberal Democrats of today were former Labour or real Liberal supporters who railed against Thatcherism then but, unconsciously or inadvertently, supported its re-emergence? Enough to have swung the result of May’s election? Probably.
An appalling deficit, pyramids of debt, unemployment rising while bankers waxed on their greed and gathered up their bonuses, menacing inflation, a squeeze and freeze on wages, savage cuts in public spending, riots in the streets, and the threat of industrial action by trade unionists not knowing what else to do.
Not today’s crisis, but a long ago yesterday’s, the era and the conditions which gave a name to what was conveniently labelled Thatcherism but more accurately should be called Lawsonism. Those of us who, misguided or not, have spent our working lives reporting or practising politics have seen before what is happening now. But a reminder is useful.
Which is what makes Nigel Lawson’s Memoirs so intriguing. It really is the case that if you want to know what may happen in the near future you should look at what happened 20 to 30 years ago – old problems, old solutions.
Macaulay once wrote of a book he was reviewing that it contained much that was good and much that was new. The pity was, he said, that the good was not new and the new was not good. It would be unfair to say that “not good” applies wholly to the new and final chapter here – after all, the most economically literate of all Tory Chancellors does say in it that “the root cause of the [current] crisis lay in the greed and folly of all too many bankers” – but “not relevant” would be more fitting. In any case, it only amounts to 21 pages of a 645 page book with an uncomfortably small typeface. The original version, published in 1992, was more than twice this length and rightly praised by those with stamina enough to read it and War and Peace in the same lifetime. It is this edited version, however, which is, in its timing, relevant and holds a fascination for the present day.
he theory and principles of politics stretch back to ancient Greece, wending their way through Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence to the present day and inspiring countless philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries until being mired in the cynicism of modern voters who rarely give a cuss for the abstract.
Rather than an Edmund Burke or a Walter Bagehot, they look for a new Prince Monolulu, someone who offers a good return on little expenditure and less effort, even if the form book tells them not to touch his recommendations with a stolen credit card.
Older, even much older, readers may remember the time when Epsom Downs on Derby Day was enlivened by the presence of the Ethiopian Prince Monolulu, a splendidly caparisoned character who, imbued with optimism, would proclaim he had the certain winner of the great race, an optimism, unfortunately, which he rarely transmitted to the animal or jockey concerned. The fact that his real name was McKay and he was a West Indian, more likely to be found in Petticoat Lane on a Sunday than in any regal drawing room in Europe or Africa, only shows he would have made a good politician. After all, what’s the difference between a Tory promise, a LibDem pledge or a Monolulu tip?
Monolulu had a slogan for those waiting to be conned: “I’ve gotta horse,” he would shout, just like David Cameron and Nick Clegg would shout “We’ve gotta policy” though, to be fair to him, unlike the coalition, he didn’t change his tip once the result had been declared. Though the princely tipster has long since departed the Downs for the equally speculative Heights, his spirit lives on in British public life, especially in the City and 11 Downing Street.
Which brings me back to these memoirs. I hope Labour’s Shadow Chancellor reads them. I fear David Cameron and George Osborne have already done so. If I’m right, and if you want to know what might happen in the near future, look at Lawson’s semi-distant past. Ignore what the coalition leaders presently say about the cuts hurting them more than they’ll hurt you. Read the form book. Lawson, by his lights, was on a winner.
Long before Lawson entered Parliament, Harold Wilson told me he was the one Tory writer on economic affairs that he respected. Part of Wilson’s inheritance when he became Labour leader was a regular meeting with Norman St John Stevas. He quickly decided that Stevas wasn’t bright enough to be talking to. But he was happy to talk to Lawson.
Lawson became an MP in 1974 and a finance minister, eventually Chancellor, under Margaret Thatcher. But he was never the prisoner of the Treasury. Uniquely, he knew more than its officials about politics and economics (one subject, not two). They couldn’t blind him with jargon. He knew it, invented some of it and was able to simplify it for even the dumbest of Tory backbenchers to understand and gullible voters to misunderstand. If MPs found him arrogant, it is because he was. But it was arrogance born of his confidence that he was right. That hubris led to his early successes and later failure. It is still there – why else would he re-issue his memoirs 18 years after their first publication?
He knew what he wanted to do when he became an MP. If, when he became a minister, and the driving force behind Geoffrey Howe’s first Budgets, he didn’t always foresee the consequences of his actions – “if the severity of the squeeze in output was fully foreseen…the size of the accompanying unemployment came as a shock” – he wasn’t distracted by them, as were Mrs Thatcher’s wets (for “wets” then read LibDems today). He welcomed it when she cleared them out.
Breaking a promise not to double VAT (it went up from eight to 15 per cent, so marginally keeping the promise in fact though not in spirit) was done to cut income tax. Now VAT has been raised again. The income tax cuts will come, too, probably just in time for the next general election. Labour should prepare for it.
A riot at Millbank? Small beer compared with the riots in Toxteth, Southall, Manchester and Brixton in the 1980s. The then Tory Cabinet were “unnerved” by them and Mrs Thatcher acted. She sacked the unnerved. They were replaced not by new policies but by fresh faces. Nick Clegg, be warned.
But even all the measures that were taken were inadequate in Lawson’s estimation. Britain was still borrowing too much. Apart from the lengthy Civil Service strike, Arthur Scargill was looming in the background. Lawson felt bitterly that the coal miners had defeated the government in 1981 and was determined not to let it happen again.
Mrs Thatcher appointed him as Energy Secretary and, he says, he “subordinated almost everything to the over-riding need to prepare for and win a strike. Scargill was seeking a strike and “I was determined he should lose it.” Moral to today’s unions: never embark on a strike which the government wants.
Lawson wanted to attack the NUM and attack it he did. In the end we had 18 years of Tory governments. These memoirs abound with parallels and lessons for today’s Labour leadership. It would be unforgivable if they were ignored.
