Labor's love lost:
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
suggest that Labor in fact reconciled the incompatibles by Election in...
...When I'm finished here I found them...
...Friends of the patients, most filled with almonds, filberts and walnuts...
...The swing to the Tories are in economic trouble and whose demise might throw in the opinion polls taken in this period was prodigious, since thousands out of work...
...Callaghan realized how much the British Labor Party...
...Some of the subsidies were dealing with unions after all...
...dominated by Trotskyists--had actually cut back on social spending in some areas and had reduced taxes...
...Thatcher's better off" at the expense of "the rest" (a Party favorite...
...I've been Stuyvesant Park...
...But the see former Prime Minister Edward Heath or someone ofhis industry subsidies raise more complicated questions: how moderate views leading the party in Mrs...
...It stood for a continuation ofthe welfare state...
...As one moved ment and a serious commitment toreducingthe power of trade north, Labor's strength increased...
...At the end was paid by a park association founded dog-walkers whatever the weather...
...Using his pole he filled " I used to leave the nuts on the faces pressed against the wire mesh the can in the tree with nuts...
...I approached to ask ing out the sun...
...what extent can such subsidies be given...
...Youngstown, Ohio: what should be done about industries that That ended with this year's strikes...
...Labor appeared to gain America and elsewhere...
...become the centerpiece of conservative propaganda in Yet Mr...
...Thatcher--that a moderate left consensus prevails in to research by Michael Hill, an analyst at the University of Britain...
...On the other ment, and the fact that the damaging winter strikes were most hand, the unions--which represent a much larger share of the severely felt in the south of England...
...And it stood foran and Mr...
...Callaghan, known to some as "Tammany Jim," the United States and elsewhere...
...Depending on Mrs...
...According for Mrs...
...Before long of them black, would stand along the Up in the tree, nailed to a branch, was his job would come to an end...
...A couple of years ago, conservatives some ground as the campaign progressed by arguing that produced an attack on British social democracy entitled The Conservative tax policies might produce the "high life for the Future That Doesn't Work...
...But unquestionably, British workforce than do their American comrades--have a Labor's commitment to "the regions"--i.e., Britain's poorer variety of democratically guaranteedrightswhich they will use areas--had a substantial electoral impact...
...One criticism of Labor's policy is that it Mrs...
...Labor--that left-wing party allegedly BUT DID IT WIN THE CAMPAIGN...
...At of his pole was a coffee can, swingingon back around the First World War, before night, in all but the rawestmonths, it was a nail...
...As the Guardian's Peter Jenkins pointed out, Labor may supported simply because notto do so would put a lot ofpeople have lostthe election, but it won the campaign...
...This is the lesson in the 51 percent ofthe vote won by Bristol sympathetic to Labor, many of the specific job subthe Liberals and Labor, as against the Conservatives' 44 per- sidies did more toassistemployers who would have created the cent...
...And this from a party that had committed itself to "a fundamental and irreversible shift LABOR'S LOVE LOST in the balance of wealth and power in favor of working people and their families...
...the last of the old ladies in the Beth Israel...
...began to move in and would eat them all friends would hang about all evening, "There's nothing for the squirrels to up...
...But luck, the left may soon be able to produce a work of its own, the Tories still did well pushing for tax cuts, suggesting the entitled, perhaps, The Past That Doesn't Work, Either...
...suggest that Labor in fact reconciled the incompatibles by Election in Britain losing both...
...He explained that it was a job and he ice cream vendors in good weather, and He wore a round leather cap...
...And for how long...
...date ofthe changes my Tory friend may find so unpalatable-If any single thing defeated the Labor Party, it was the though I'm sure my friend voted for the Conservatives...
...Sometimes a bum manages to climb up into a tree for the nuts, but it's more than most of them can handle...
...Many quite uncynical people in Britain would by Labor was that Scotland and the north of England would Commonweal: 296 become "economic deserts" if the job and industry subsidies rooted in Friedmanite ideas about how to encourage investwere ended as proposed by the Conservatives...
...This system works pretty well...
...Thatcher was the candiof more than local interesL...
...much can and should be poured into businesses that are in Perhaps the greatest milestone for feminism to be found in trouble to save jobs...
...Thatcher's place...
...If we didn't feed them the bums rummaged around until they brown paper bags...
...For not entirely good reasons of life to which people were accustomed...
...On top of these expenditures were a series of largely that James Cailaghan won the campaign...
...On the one hand, the public opinion polls show substancommitment to decentralization of power to a Scotish parlia- tial support for a reduction of trade union power...
...In Scotland, Labor actually unions...
...More thanany other liberal getting the working classes ofGreat Britain to accept cuts in or social democratic party, Labor tried to deal with the probtheir living standards that it began to draw praise from the lem confronted by church groups and left organizers in right...
...So exactly what happened on May 3 is people did not want to change...
...difficulty American leftists might have in proposing tax reform E. J. DIONNE...
...Labor's answerwas massive subsidies the strikes suggested that maybe Labor wasn't so good at for "uneconomic" industries...
...Stuyvesant Park was a brought their clients to the park...
...If the shoving gets hard, the Another lesson of which Americans left and right will take threat to free institutions might be enormous--particularly if heed is the Conservatives' success in makingtax cuts the issue...
...Other factors were at and a major threat to the orderly functioningof British democwork inthis, no doubt, includingthe Callaghan government's racy...
...Overwhat he was doing...
...Of several minds: Thomas Powers them but the bums would scratch them up again...
...justified on the theory that the industries might eventually But from the end ofthe strikes on, Labor kept gaining in the prosper if enough money was invested in them...
...Thatcher decides to go as far as a simple reading of the Indeed, the Conservatives were not only committed to cutting polls would suggest she could...
...They proposed this by way of ideas that will make it a convenient target for the left in encouraging savingover consumption...
...And Mar- subsidies to employers and local governments to encourage garet Thatcherlost...
...The socialist magazine New Statesman was reduced to pointing out to the THE MEANING of this year's election in Britain will be party that its greatest losses to the Tories in the polls were debated for some time, largely because Britain has among working-class people...
...Until then, Labor-- But Labor stood for more than just things as they are...
...He quickly ground," he said, "but then the bums covering the windows...
...One ofthe themes hammered home and power...
...For awhile I even buried morning, I met a dog-walking regular 25 May 1979:297...
...Sometimes the circled the park, filling cans as he went...
...park like any other, filled with kids and wooden pole in Stuyvesant Park...
...Once, early in the they'd starve...
...pre-World War II German Social Democrats, "is necessarily And despite Labor's defeat,the significance ofthe subsidies faced with a choice between two incompatibles--principles was not loston the voters...
...He realized that Britain was interested in some thing:no one on the left, thank God, harbors illusions about the kind ofsocial harmony that would allow people to get on with Soviet Union anymore, and so the right has been forced to find life free of strikes-- andalso free ofradical changes in the way a democratic whipping boy...
...to resist stringent Tory policies...
...And many were the Tories who would have preferred to new jobs anyway than to deliver new jobs to the poor...
...sidies are more compassionate overthe short term than allowStill, Labor lost, and it is important to assess why--and ing mass unemployment to hit particular communities...
...J. Dionne, Jr., who visited Britain during the election Mrs...
...Mrs...
...The latter could prove both a major challenge to her registered a net gain over the Tories...
...Her notions of reform are American politics...
...association were dying off...
...Others were polls...
...income taxes in ways that would especially benefit the well- As to the Friedmanite economic policies, Mrs...
...Only a few re- ing a drug detoxification program run by tree...
...But to where--it lost...
...A democratic socialist movement that attempts to trans- For all its weaknesses, British social democracy began dealing form a capitalist into a socialist order," wrote Peter Gay ofthe with such questions under James Callaghan...
...In the daytime it was a L met a brisk little man with a long doing this for thirty years...
...in place of across-the-board tax reductions...
...Thatcher to-do...
...He finished LIFE IN THE PARKS filling the last can, unscrewed his long JEWELS IN THE CROWN O F THE CITY pole in the middle, and strode briskly off in the direction of Madison Square...
...Clearly job subliability in the campaign...
...Over his shoulder he carded a sack mained...
...Prostitutes from then poked it up among the branches of a began to rise up around the park, block- 14th Street andThird Avenue sometimes tree, rattling it about...
...He put somethinginto the can and the huge Beth Israel Hospital complex a gay cruising ground...
...There was always a lot to see in EARLY ONE MORNING, years ago, I go on to Madison Square...
...During its tenure, the party's main achievement often did appeartobe its capacity to fight inflation by imposing sacrifices on working-class people...
...So able was Labor in can left will have to study in detail...
...Callaghan in particular--had impressed the countrywith their government's ability to deal with unionsand to bringindustrial policy whose strengths and weaknesses the Ameridown the inflation rate to single figures...
...The fact remains--and it is a sobering fact them to hire the unemployed, especially the young...
...Thatcher takes office looking toward fundamental campaign, is working on a study ofthe raceissue in British and reform of the British economy...
...Which means out of jobs...
...I tried hiding them in the bushes but drinking beer or wine from bottles in eat," he said...
...In a way, this is a very good relished it all...
...strikes that engulfed Britain this winter...
...Feeding the squir- posh residential district then, surrounded looking one end was a tall buildinghousrels," he said, hurrying on to the next by elegant townhouses...
...Thatcher's election was the fact that her right-wing encouraged inefficiency and discouraged the kind of geogviews, not her gender, were widely regarded as her greatest raphic mobility that a vital economy needs...
...Of course we have (George Will, .for example, has perceptively argued that the to become competitive," a Tory friend once said to me, "but problem is with British capitalism, not British socialism), the todo that, we'll have to changeso much thatthe country won't left everywhere ends up defending Britain, and in particular, be the one I care about...
...park's iron railing and shout up to the another tin can...
...they were also committed to increasing spending taxes may well turn Britain into the laboratory for the right's latest that most affect the less well-off...
Vol. 106 • May 1979 • No. 10
