The Demise of Social Democratic Britain (Since 1979)
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Cycnos The Last Utopia: the Demise of Social Democratic Britain (since 1979) Hassan Gerry Pour citer cet article Hassan Gerry, « The Last Utopia: the Demise of Social Democratic Britain (since 1979) », Cycnos, vol. 28.n° spécial (Le Refus), 2012, mis en ligne en juillet 2012. http://epi-revel.univ-cotedazur.fr/publication/item/235 Lien vers la notice http://epi-revel.univ-cotedazur.fr/publication/item/235 Lien du document http://epi-revel.univ-cotedazur.fr/cycnos/235.pdf Cycnos, études anglophones revue électronique éditée sur épi-Revel à Nice ISSN 1765-3118 ISSN papier 0992-1893 AVERTISSEMENT Les publications déposées sur la plate-forme épi-revel sont protégées par les dispositions générales du Code de la propriété intellectuelle. Conditions d'utilisation : respect du droit d'auteur et de la propriété intellectuelle. 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EPI-REVEL Revues électroniques de l’Université Côte d’Azur Gerry Hassan Gerry Hassan is a writer, commentator and policy analyst. He is author or editor of fourteen books, including Radical Scotland: Arguments for Self-Determination, The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power and After Blair: Politics after the New Labour Decade. Gerry is a Demos Asssociate and was Head of the Scotland 2020 and Glasgow 2020 futures projects which produced Scotland 2020: Hopeful Stories for a Northern Nation and The Dreaming City: Glasgow 2020 and the Power of Mass Imagination. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland, where he is researching his Ph D on political communications. Gerry’s writing and research can be found at: www.gerryhassan.com. He also runs a very popular blog: www.gerryhassan.com/category/blog/ “The question that hovers above the Iraq inquiry is – since the evidence on Saddam Hussein’s weaponry was so flaky and the post- war planning so atrocious – why on earth Tony Blair did it. One theory, albeit not the one likely to be offered by Mr Blair himself, is that his militarism and messianism, the mix of responsibility and entitlement that he evinced, are part of the inheritance of all post- imperial British leaders …. If Empire is the backdrop of Britain’s foreign entanglements, it is also implicated in the country’s exposure to another great debacle, the financial crash. The City and the Empire grew up symbiotically. Imperial trade and investment made London a world financial centre; the City became vital to the British economy, while at the same time, preoccupied as it was with foreign deals, largely separated from the rest of it. The Empire thus bequeathed commercial habits, and an overmighty financial sector, which British taxpayers now have cause to regret.” Bagehot, The Economist, December 3rd 2009 “On the domestic front Mr Blair still holds extraordinary sway. His public service reforms, which sometimes had a chaotic quality in their more limited manifestations, are now being fully realised by David Cameron. Senior Tory ministers idolise Mr Blair. But in terms of the calculations that led to the nightmare of Iraq, he is a ghostly figure from another age.” Steve Richards, The Independent, January 20th 2011. Introduction The British state is currently in flux: one of crisis, challenge and doubt. Concerns abound about British economic decline, social malaise and ‘Broken Britain’. The end of declinism trumpeted by Thatcherism and Blairism has proven illusory. In many respects this is part of a general Western and European sentiment: of declinology books such as ‘Germany Does Away with Itself’ (Sarrazin, 2010) and ‘French Melancholy’ (Zemmour, 2010). Forthcoming is Jean-Pierre Chevènement's ‘Is France Finished?’. Even before the crash book shelves were crammed with titles such as ‘Can Germany Be Saved?’ (Sinn, 2007) and ‘The Last Days of Europe’ (Laqueur, 2007). At the same time British writers were producing books with a sense of self-belief titled ‘The End of Decline’ (Brivati, 2007). Where does the British story fit into this picture: this seemingly remorseless journey of anxiety, fear and uncertainty about economic power and globalisation, the future of Europe, and of power shifting eastwards and southwards? There is a very British experience which this paper will attempt to address. It will locate recent British history in a longer timeframe and address three core concepts: Addressing the character of the UK – and its state, economy and culture - in a longer-time frame; Analysing the neo-liberal nature of the British state; And addressing the intertwining of this with the territorial dimensions of the British state. The Long Now: Empire State Britain The current state of Britain needs to be explained in a long view – which goes beyond Thatcher, the 1960s, the post-war settlement or the cost of the Second World War: the usual culprits trotted out to explain away decline. Instead, I am going to look briefly at the legacy of Empire and the influence of the City, the anti-industrial ethos of establishment Britain, and the nature of the UK state, at home and in its global influence. First, Empire has left a significant influence and shadow across Britain domestically to this day which is seldom understood. What people often ignore or fail to grasp is that Empire remade large swathes of British life – economically, socially and culturally. Empire and the financial nexus of the City of London grew up hand in hand, one supporting and defining the other. This can be seen in the patterns of imperial trade, investment, preferment and protection which made London into the first world city: the centre of ‘the world system’ of Empire (Darwin, 2009). This process resulted in the City becoming the cornerstone of the British economy; yet at the same time as it looked abroad it became separated from the rest of the economy. The City ‘crowded out’ the prospect for the UK to become an economy shaped by industry or having a developmental state. Instead, the City became a pillar of the Empire State – and in its evolution and success it sprang from and gave sustenance to the anti-industry ethos of the British ruling class. Industry was just not the sort of appropriate livelihood for a gentleman who instead had the elite playground of the Empire or City to choose from. These values persist to this day – aided by Thatcher’s ‘Big Bang’ and New Labour’s collusion with the City, the burgeoning size of Britain’s financial industries pre-crash, and the culture it has spawned (Bagehot, 2009). Britain as a ‘World Island’ Britain has to be understood geo-politically and an appropriate place to start is Churchill’s 1946 speech which put Britain at the centre of three circles: Empire, Anglo-America and Europe. Today as Andrew Gamble has set out there are four circles: British Union, Commonwealth, Anglo-America and Europe (Gamble, 2003). This is the idea of Britain – or more accurately at points England as ‘a world island’ – a place at the centre of a series of complex inter-relationships. It also locates Britain in the context of ‘the Anglo-sphere’ – by which I mean the six countries of the English speaking democracies of advanced capitalism. These are as well as the UK: the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. Each of the six has had very distinct neo-liberal experiments unleashed in them not found anywhere else in the Western world. The specific values and policies of ‘the Anglo-sphere’ can be summarised as having: A pronounced culture of individualism; Liberty seen as first and foremost as an economic idea, before it is viewed in a social or political context; A concept of political economy based upon a distinctive idea of the free market; A narrow model of corporate governance, responsibility and finance; A specific way in which the role and place of the state is understood. Many of the pronounced neo-liberal actions were undertaken by supposedly centre-left parties. In this New Labour is part of an international phenomenon found at its most pronounced in ‘the Anglo-sphere’. As well as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s embrace of market fundamentalism, there has been Bill Clinton’s New Democrats, Bob Hawke’s and Paul Keating’s Australian Labor, ‘the Rogernomics’ of New Zealand Labour, and the Canadian Liberal administration of Jean Chretien. It would seem that ‘the Anglo-sphere’ model of capitalism is one whose origins and roots can be traced back to the UK; the distinctive economic, social and political sphere that formed around the Enlightenment. This is sometimes called ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ of Adam Smith, David Hume and William Robertson. In recent years, some writers have tried to claim that ‘the Scots invented the modern world’, and even that the Declaration of Arbroath led to the US Declaration of Independence (Herman, 2002).