ENGLAND: DEAD END OF LIBERALISM?
Goodwin, Barbara
Modern Britain is, I shall argue here, the victim of orthodox liberalism carried to extremes. I use "liberalism" to connote economic doctrines idealizing laissez-faire and the free market...
...The Labour party needs to review its relation to socialist 62 doctrine after two periods of government when it was frequently forgotten, partly because of external economic factors, partly because of concessions to the right-wing members of the party...
...12 Thus Almond and Verba in 1965...
...The Bullock Report of 1977 recommended worker directors for the boards of sizable firms, a modest proposal that buttressed the position of union officials (usually moderate men...
...The dismantling of the welfare state and the public sector in pursuit of the free market is being gradually effected...
...p its assertively right-wing policies...
...Nevertheless, confrontation soon will be inevitable because of the increase in unemployment and the sabotage of the welfare state...
...the convergence of the parties was most marked from 1950-70, parallel with the "end of ideology" thesis in the U.S.A...
...Although I state this in terms of elite and mass, the situation lends itself equally to class analysis...
...Viewed ideologically, the present internal debate is a healthy phenomenon...
...2 This deficiency, underlined by the success of such competitors as Japan and Germany, provoked self-criticism among economists and politicians...
...Admittedly, the Labour party, like other British parties, is not a mass party—its individual membership is about 200,000...
...Instead, we distribute unenforceable rights to oppressed groups such as blacks and women, trading in what Marx called "bourgeois rights" because the liberal constitution and libertarian culture forbid more radical treatment...
...I During this period the retail price index rose from 135 to 201 points (1963 - 100...
...J. Morgan (London: Hamilton/ Cape, 1975-77...
...Clearly, however, such statistics depend on what time period is taken...
...The individual citizens are guaranteed a security that leaves each of them free to cultivate their private interests: this is the ultimate individualism cultivated by our welfare state...
...In Easton's terminology, 13 the British political system has 12 G. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1965), p. 31...
...Traditionally, the British strongly oppose extraparliamentary politics, especially violent protest...
...Crises like the present one are not new to the Labour party and are inevitable for a party with strong principles operating in a climate of moderate and pragmatic politics...
...Such inter0 Daily Telegraph, May 3, 1979, p. 18...
...What is urgent is the formation of a participatory political culture (which our liberal institutions prevent) where the people themselves could initiate nontrivial, nonadversary forms of politics entailing activity as well as the receipt of benefits...
...The press regularly asserts that local party branches are being infiltrated by Trotskyists, on scant evidence, and so claims that the reform would aid the "militants...
...Disappointed expectations are inevitable when the national product is static, or diminishing in real terms, as it has been since 1973: the government can only adjust the proportions allocated to various sections of the population, redistributing hardship, since no new wealth is created...
...In general, the "doctrinaire" socialists are restrained by the intraparty hierarchy or by the exigencies of power, so the likelihood of socialist policies being implemented under this parliamentary system is remote...
...Electorally, it would necessarily mean the exclusion of social democrats from power for the foreseeable future: our lack of proportional representation and antipathy to coalitions guarantee this...
...Apparently, such politicians adhere to the view that abandonment of principle is in direct ratio to electoral success...
...In any case, the left wing's socialism is relatively mild and social democratic, as Benn's book Arguments for Socialism (1979) demonstrates, and far from common ownership of the means of production...
...Admittedly, the conditions for the socialist work ethos are absent from our predominantly capitalist economy even in the public sector, since little creative pleasure can be derived from industrial work and labor does not have the necessary "social" nature that Marx described...
...Ideology — the Invisible Hand IN THE PAST, THE COMPETITION between the major parties for the support of the centrist majority of voters has led to mutual ideological moderation...
...Interventionist government brings a correlative loss of freedom, however desirable the goal...
...This rule-of-thumb held good in the decades of affluence, but may not apply to the future decades of depression, when electors will crave for explanation of our social problems, and for a solution based on theory—something that the Conservatives promised in 1979...
...Direct action and political violence are also engendered by the racist National Front party, whose demonstrations in black areas are countered by "Anti-Nazi League" demonstrations and usually end in clashes with the police...
...The Conservative government of 1959-64 presided over increasingly precarious prosperity and was succeeded by a Labour government (1964-70) that took severe measures to improve the trade balance, save sterling from speculators, and curtail inflation...
...Meanwhile, as the internal wrangle continues, Labour is diverted from the duty of criticizing Mrs...
...Thanks to this system, and the development of rigid party structures, we are the prisoners of a tradition of adversary, government-and-loyalopposition politics that presents every issue in terms of two supposedly dichotomous alternatives,' and for many people the idea of more choices is daunting, not liberating...
...freedom, law and order, stick and I All controversy between right and left ultimately centers on the implementation of clause 4 of the I abour party's constitution, and especially the paragraph that recommends common ownership of the means of production and distribution...
...My purpose is to assess the respective influences of political institutions, the prevalent liberal ideology and state of political culture in producing our present stalemate, and to ask what likelihood there is of a real alternative politics...
...To them, outworn ideology is an embarrassment—a point already made in the 1950s by the party "ideologue" C. A. R. Crossland: "in my view, Marx has little or nothing to offer the contemporary socialist...
...Apart from these dubious legislative achievements, there is a conviction that politics is in decline, even among admirers of the system, partly because of the apparent deterioration of the two-party system, with small majorities or minority governments detracting from our supposed tradition of "strong government...
...patriotism, thrift and hard work...
...Clearly, no new political alternative will be produced while the two major parties continue to monopolize the political scene ideologically and institutionally, relying on the traditional support (and inertia) of the voters...
...The role of protest and direct action in Britain today is merely symptomatic or, at most, catalytic: it has ideologically diverse sources and so cannot constitute a real political alternative, although its methods eventually may be adopted by more coherent groups...
...When the elite asks the people to "tighten your belts" yet again, the response is naturally cynicism and hostility...
...However, this blind, partial, and uncoordinated protest does not rest on a political diagnosis and does not address the relevant roots of the problem, adversary politics and bureaucracy...
...An increasingly divided party is the present result...
...The windfall of oil revenue only prevents living standards falling more rapidly...
...Equality made some progress under recent Labour governments, with a leveling of incomes and increase of welfare payments, but income differentials still remain high...
...However, this democratization would go some way toward undermining the entrenched position of the PLP, which tends to regard itself as the privileged group exclusively concerned with formulating policy decisions...
...Benn and his supporters as crypto-communist, something not borne out at all by their own speeches...
...Prime Minister Thatcher seems determined to repeat the pattern by embarking on a third round of unrestricted wage rises and inflation...
...But this cannot herald political innovation, for the alternative formulas remain the same, although their presentation is more dogmatic...
...Out of the 22 members of Thatcher's cabinet 17 went to Oxford or Cambridge University...
...Shares in profitable state-owned enterprises are to be sold...
...There are identifiable reasons for such failures (costly labor and uncompetitive pricing, an overvalued pound, uncertain delivery dates) but these do not dispel our general suspicion of an anti-British conspiracy...
...BRITISH NEWSPAPERS SPECUALTE DAILY, with some relish, on the prospect of a split in the Labour party...
...The choice in the Labour party is not between social democracy and crypto-communism but between less and slightly more socialism...
...During Callaghan's Labour government there was pressure from left-wingers, but their demands were again subordinated to the exigencies of the economic crisis...
...vention is in part the automatic corollary of an economic crisis: when governments restrain incomes, every wage demand necessarily becomes a political, as well as an economic, act...
...It is interesting to analyze the values that have governed political debate since the war and that reinforce this passive political culture...
...Before the 1980 election, the right-wing Daily Telegraph praised the neoliberal ideology: Mrs...
...The prevalent, bipartisan values (which no government dares to repudiate) have been consumption and security, even if these are now partly forfeited to prevent national bankruptcy...
...an old-established, unchallenged democratic system, whose representative and elite nature prevents participation, has likewise produced political passivity...
...a majority of the members want to protect their incomes from erosion, and a minority of them also have strategic political aims...
...61 The greatest threat to a passive political culture is authoritarianism, political or bureaucratic...
...When Labour was elected in 1964, the perilous financial situation caused it to pursue nonsocialist policies, despite the presence in the government of such left-wingers as Crossman...
...Establishment Politics AT FIRST it appears that politics is less stagnant than the economy, for several major policies were enacted in the 1970s, including reform of the health service, of local government, the devolution bill, and British entry into the EEC...
...The isolation of political from social life has fostered the growth of a homogeneous and privileged elite with shared class, education, and interests...
...Most significant at present is the re-ideologizing of the Conservative party, a notoriously anti-intellectual and pragmatic party...
...The dominance of the two-party system, entrenched by our simple-majority electoral system, makes it difficult for political alternatives to take root...
...result from a balance weighted too heavily in the direction of subject and deferential roles...
...But what Lenin condemned as "economism," a concentration on short-term aims, still prevails in our unions...
...5 The "tradition" of strong government and alternance is mythical, since this century has witnessed endless ad hoc formations of coalitions, national governments and minority governments, and unbroken Conservative rule from 1951-64...
...Promoted by the ideologue Keith Joseph, a coherent monetarist economic policy has been evolved and is being enacted...
...Liberalism privatizes everything, even political life, which becomes a special profession, destroying old notions of citizenship and obligation...
...An outstanding instance of encroachment on civil rights was the introduction of internment in Ulster of IRA suspects in July 1971, which contravened one of our few written constitutional principles, Habeas Corpus...
...From 1973-79 it was, on average, zero (and in the short run negative...
...Thatcher offers a return...
...Some 200 years of liberal democracy have created a system of elitist "private politics" bolstered by a bureaucratic system of representation that makes grass-roots participation nearly impossible...
...Economic and political attitudes are closely meshed...
...Can we look to extraparliamentary groups for hope of a new political initiative...
...Similarly in the Heath's Conservative government (1970-74) engineered a brief period of reflation during which inflation galloped,' but global recession, rising commodity prices, and unemployment supervened...
...I This argument is advanced by Nevil Johnson in In Search of the Constitution (Oxford: Pergamon, 1975...
...Ironically, even while academics puzzled over our endemic failures in the 1960s, the popular press campaigned to show that our standard of living was superior to that of the EEC countries, thus fostering patriotic complacency...
...But the efficacy of constitutional reforms from above is limited, and the creation of new political configurations, such as a center party, is fundamentally irrelevant to our real problems...
...10 So far, the government's measures include drastic cuts in public spending and industrial subsidies, a redistribution of income toward the rich, cuts in the civil service, the promotion of competition, and the abolition of price and income controls...
...The nondoctrinaire approach of Labour ministers has made them "statesmanlike" for the electorate, but despised by their left-wing colleagues who are now taking revenge by enacting a democratization of the party that would favor the left, and a putative socialist program that horrifies the rightwingers...
...The dominant ideal in this can perhaps be described as radical, nondogmatic, socialist, and libertarian...
...Ultimately, Britain needs economic and political modernization: whether this takes a socialist or capitalist form, it cannot be achieved under the present system...
...So the proposed changes would not make it more representative of the majority of voters...
...Since the 1960s Britain has had virtually a "no-growth" economy...
...Another nonconflictual force that is transforming some Western democracies today is grass-roots participation in political and social life...
...The psephologist's advice—unite, avoid ideological commitment, and maximize votes— may not, therefore, always lead to electoral popularity, and will certainly not produce decisive government...
...3 An employment tax was levied on service industries until 1973, but this had little effect except to increase unemployment...
...but, more plausibly, Nevil Johnson argues that it is instinctive self-defense against the encroachment of public authorities...
...In the area of welfare, socialist policies for housing, health, and education are being systematically reversed...
...British governments are notoriously unwilling to adopt positions of moral principle that might be electorally damaging: consequently, liberalizing laws on abortion, capital punishment, and homosexuality all passed through parliament as private members' bills, without government support...
...Non-Establishment Politics WHETHER THE TWO PARTIES COMPETE to be paragons of moderation or adopt ideologically oppposed stances, their joint stranglehold on the system means that Establishment politics will not change in the foreseeable future...
...1 ' See D. Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), chap...
...however, this bill failed after a referendum...
...This dominance is assured by both the electoral and parliamentary systems...
...I use "liberalism" to connote economic doctrines idealizing laissez-faire and the free market together with political doctrines of maximum freedom under law and minimal government...
...Economic Roots BRITAIN'S ECONOMIC CRISIS began before the world recession with an acute balance-of-payments deficit in 1964...
...Nor, in a liberal democracy and an individualistic society, can the sense of community be created that Marx thought necessary to give meaning to "social labor...
...For this, we must profoundly change our system of education, our media, and especially our pragmatic suspiPostscript In these remarks I use the term "socialist" where, I think, Americans would use "socialdemocratic," to describe the policies that a social-democratic government might enact...
...their reform would be an enormous undertaking, and would meet staunch opposition from those comfortably placed within them...
...As this brief survey suggests, British politics continues to avoid important ideological issues and usually seeks consensual policies based on secondary, "nonideological" values such as consumerism or efficiency: where ideological values have to be approached, they are treated formalistically, half-heartedly...
...It met a chorus of opposition from business, despite the Report's claim that it would "tame the unions," and from unions...
...But, significantly, middle-class direct action also spread in the 1970s...
...to the principles and maxims which once made our nation great...
...The main body of this article argued that a major cause of Britain's malaise is the existence of socialist fragments in a political culture of individualism and selfinterest, which enable people to satisfy their material needs while feeling no obligation to contribute to or participate in the community...
...Industrial democracy, another important route toward alternative nonelitist politics, was shelved by the last Labour government...
...Any new Labour leader must apply himself to the question of how to win back defecting voters...
...Our industrial mythology describes nightshift workers playing cards and Ford workers being given a bonus for regular attendance...
...If this were achieved, it would favor the left in the election of leaders, and so, indirectly, lead to socialist policies under a future Labour government...
...A written constitution would help us combat this danger...
...Economy (London: Cambridge University Press, 1966...
...The Labour party, or parties, out of power for a decade or more, would soon loose the image of being the "party of government" that Mr...
...This in turn reinforces their passivity and the need for paternalistic, elite government...
...Some commentators therefore favor a further deideologizing of the party, pointing, for example, to the success of the German SPD in capturing center voters...
...In the present general climate of elite government, any move toward greater openness and democracy must be an improvement, even if this is achieved by admitting other elites to the inner sanctum, such as the unions and party workers...
...At the political-economic level, social democratic reforms and the growth of the welfare state have created a one-dimensional `consumer socialism" that provides according to need but makes no correlative demands on people, thereby forcing them into a passive, recipient role...
...Much of the new ideology reflects the tenets of orthodox liberalism to which British conservatives have always been sympathetic—they have never manifested the reactionary authoritarianism of some continental conservatives...
...6 In October 1974, for example, the Liberals won 13 seats with 18.3 percent of the vote: cf., Nationalists II 56 Despite this evident injustice, the demand for proportional representation is destined to fail since both major parties have a vested interest in the electoral system...
...Local government reform also expanded bureaucracy, and the devolution bill, which gave semi-autonomous parliaments to Wales and Scotland, would merely have created supernumerary administrations without real power...
...8 The intraparty ideological struggles are documented in The Crossman Diaries, ed...
...There is certainly a significant group of Labour politicians who would prefer to see the party abandon its diminishing connections with socialist doctrine and become a centrist party bearing only the title "social-democratic...
...To call a strike "political" is invariably an oversimplification, but one that the media favor since unions are proven to be unpopular with the public, which suffers from their activities...
...so strong is the doctrine (deriving from Locke's liberalism) that parliament, the representative of the people, is the supreme and legitimate locus of power...
...The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty (once invoked for the people against the monarch, now against the people by the elite) made this violation legally possible, despite considerable protest...
...Healey, Mr...
...But such groups apparently do not aspire to enter and change politics: they offer new models for personal life but no political alternative, and so remain marginal...
...The radical changes that could rejuvenate our institutions and revivify the electorate—such as proportional representation, a Bill of Rights, and reform of parliament—are unthinkable because of the consensus and amount of parliamentary time they would require...
...Finally, there is still a flourishing but very limited "alternative culture" of communes and alternative schools...
...The Labour party is unlikely to split...
...More thorough-going egalitarian policies might create a less alienated, more cohesive society, even within the framework of the mixed economy...
...The social services have become an adjunct to liberalism, enabling "egoistic man" (in Marx's words) to pursue his private goals in isolation from any sense of duty to the community, other than paying his taxes...
...It is unfortunate that the government discreetly abandoned the plan, since worker participation would create an appreciation of people's capacity for self-government and ultimately, maybe, a reconsideration of the representative system...
...Besides, the climate of opinion has moved to the right in Britain, as elsewhere, and this fact is bound to restrain even a doctrinaire socialist...
...Our myopia is culpable, but British governments are skilled at preserving the form of freedom while undermining its substance...
...Direct action has grown since 1970 in the Irish context, 58 but the IRA does not fit the British political matrix and its actions are directed against the government for instrumental reasons, not in order to change the system...
...59 We have in effect stumbled on the "to each according to his needs" element of socialism without propagating the corresponding doctrine, "from each according to his ability...
...It follows that the unions are unlikely to promote a political alternative, although they may have veto power...
...The left wing is now very strong in the party's National Executive Committee (which is extraparliamentary) and has support among many, but not all, unions...
...Adversary majoritarian politics is unkind to disunited parties and factions...
...Although such an institution would not be ideally democratic because of the bloc votes held by unions, it would give more weight to the opinions of constituency party workers, who are at present excluded from any policy-making, despite their vital support and hard work for MPs...
...But all these measures misfired, producing disillusionment...
...8. accumulated such reserves of support, or deference, that even considerable, widespread discontent will not precipitate political change...
...seats with 2.9 percent, Conservatives 277 seats with 35.8 percent, and Labour 319 seats with 39.2 percent...
...In Britain the persisting deferential and subject orientations foster the development of strong and effective governments...
...The balance sheet is, however, ambiguous: advanced, welfarist liberal democracy has provided a pleasant or tolerable standard of living for the majority...
...It would certainly enfranchise some left-wing constituency workers, at present frustrated at every turn by the party bureaucracy...
...2 The growth rate in the 1960s hovered around, and often fell below, 3 percent...
...Wilson and Mr...
...There is also strong hostility to union politicking among voters and politicians, for this threatens the comfortable and predictable process of elite politics...
...This is accompanied by strong support of free enterprise and a reassertion of personal economic freedom, though not .of "moral" freedoms (the right to abortions, to read pornography, etc...
...This controversial hypothesis illustrates our recurrent resort to self-pity in the face of adversity...
...Clearly, the "lazy national character" hypothesis is absurd, but I suggest that our problems of static growth and political inactivity may be rooted in 33 years' enjoyment of an embracing welfare state that provides relative individual security for all...
...But radical social workers tend to get dismissed, and self-help groups, without paternalism, tend to collapse...
...In 1975, Johnson concurred with this analysis, demonstrating the overextension of public authority and the power of the elite...
...Although the demands then were economic, left-wingers in the public-sector unions also made explicitly political demands for the restoration of public expenditures...
...The initial result has been a large rise in inflation (to 21.9 percent after one year) for which the strength of sterling abroad is no consolation...
...As to the celebrated values of freedom and equality, while receiving lip service in manifestoes, they are often given low priority in policymaking, partly because they are suspiciously "ideological...
...Again, a Labour government (1974-79) had to introduce stringent measures against its social democratic conscience, notably a savage incomes policy that caused a fall in real standards of living...
...4 The new organization is already to be partly dismantled...
...Self-advancement and pursuit of private interests from a basis of equality of opportunity is the ideal of this liberalism, which has long been the dominant ideology in England— though it denies having the status of ideology and aspires to that of truth...
...The "Deferential Consumer" Culture A CLICHE USED to explain both our economic crisis and political apathy is that "laziness is the British disease...
...8 Heath's conservative government, by contrast, was even accused of being socialist because of its aid to distressed industries and was moderate until its confrontation with the miners' union...
...Its substance is a restatement and entrenchment of liberal economic and political orthodoxy: laissez-faire plus individual freedom...
...Bureaucratic hypertrophy naturally alienates people and enhances their reluctance to participate in politics...
...One popular explanation of the "bad luck" variety is that our heavy industry suffers from structural obsolescence because we industrialized early: rivals benefited later from our advanced technology and thus progressed further and faster...
...As to the indirect consequences of the change, that is, the creation of more socialist policies, my personal view is that this would be desirable...
...This destructive "stop-go" pattern results from our system of adversary, two-party politics with its pendulumlike alternation and consequent moderation within certain limits...
...So every social democrat must hope for a solution within the existing party structure...
...Such developments worry supporters of the major parties who fear for the parliamentary system, which promotes their interests and, they say, guarantees stability and fairness...
...The extension of welfare rights increases the likelihood that the freedom or privacy of claimants will be infringed, a notorious example being the state's right to spy on female benefit claimants suspected of cohabiting...
...But although the NF's activities are deliberately provocative at this level, it seeks to work through the parliamentary system primarily...
...In a culture so stable and antiextremist, this kind of alarmist misrepresentation is easily understood, but if accepted and acted on it would herald death for all but pragmatic, centrist parties...
...We should create a politicized, activist, even dogmatic political culture, acknowledge that politics already pervades the whole of social life, and act to control it...
...The Labour party respects this tradition as much as the Conservatives...
...The present crisis can be analyzed differently, according to whether one's interest is in psephology or ideology...
...Can socialism find the way out...
...Postwar affluence and a motherly welfare state have caused economic passivity...
...It is possible that deference to political elites can go too far, and that the strongly hierarchical patterns in British politics...
...True, world price rises and our membership in the EEC have combined to further depress our economy, but the popular view holds that the causes of inflation and unemployment are exclusively external, which removes the need for self-criticism and a drastic restructuring of the economy: instead, we hope for a world boom to improve our domestic well-being...
...if it can reunite on the basis of some recognizably socialist policies, so much the better...
...Thatcherism" is innovatory in tone rather than content...
...One cannot estimate fully the disaster for British socialism of three postwar Labour governments doomed to conduct the policies of economic stringency...
...chap...
...the health service, the largest employer in the country, benefited administrators financially, multiplied the number of administrative posts, and created a complex bureaucracy that delayed decisions...
...The press has portrayed Mr...
...Both parties prefer to tread the middle ground of pragmatic consensus to risking ideological self-definition...
...Social workers have tried to institute self-activating groups, rangJohnson, O. cit., esp...
...November 1980 63...
...5 The decisive majority achieved by Thatcher may reverse this trend, but there are other manifest threats to the parliamentary system— interference by the unions, intervention by the EEC and IMF, and the growth of minority parties (briefly) with bargaining power...
...It was clear in the last election that Labour had lost support in the middle ground of the electorate, although some of this may be automatically regained as Mrs...
...Also operative in recent legislation are the instrumental values of the bureaucracy, which frequently jettisons primary political or moral values for its own convenience and to perpetuate itself...
...More important, this approach is bound to reinforce the system of alternating adversary politics, which makes long-term, large-scale reform impossible and produces pragmatism, compromise, and electoral apathy...
...Such values indicate the passive, recipient role allocated to the people...
...And any revival of participatory politics would have to be inflicted on the population against its passive inclinations and deferential tradition...
...There are other forms of conflict politics that challenge the Establishment...
...Would a left-right (or left-center) split be the tragedy that it is widely supposed to be...
...The fate of heavy industry in the 1970s was further decline: the collapse of Rolls Royce, the closure of shipyards, and the contraction of the steel industry...
...In general, progress toward substantive equality is still opposed by rightists and centrists in the name of "equality of opportunity...
...Legislation attempting to prevent racial and sexual discrimination was passed in 1968 and 1970 —half-measures typical of our formalistic, juridical way of implementing political ideals, which ignores the root cause of a problem in case treating this would involve unacceptable coercion (for instance, imprisoning employers who reject black applicants...
...Freedom has always been prominently displayed in our political shopwindow but, by any standards, was certainly eroded in the 1970s...
...55 One constructive result of this introspection was that Wilson's government followed the economic analysis of Kaldor, who argued that the "tertiary" or service sector had overexpanded and that heavy, "primary" industry must be renewed by a transfer of workers...
...We lack the preconditions for creative work, and are left with a lopsided ethic of pure consumption that is inevitably passive...
...Only at the beginning of 1979 did strikes occur that constituted an overt confrontation with the government...
...The idea of "autogestion" has scarcely taken root in Britain because of our emphasis on representation, but there are embryonic attempts at participatory democracy that might point the way...
...The representative system has atrophied the political role of the people—a development against which Rousseau warned England two centuries ago...
...Yet the unions do not automatically oppose the government: during the no-growth years of Callaghan's government the unions' voluntary adherence to income limits was invaluable in combating inflation...
...8. Johnson argues the need for a Rechtstaat to combat growth of the state...
...So the situation has a built-in democratic stabilizer if the left wing is victorious...
...A united Labour party could win the next election...
...In espousing neoliberal policies, Thatcher has chosen an ideological battleground, and left-wing socialists will gladly fight...
...Unions are pluralist organizations...
...Conservatives find this middleclass activism outside the ballot box indicative of a general decline of moral standards...
...Policies such as health, welfare, and support for the mixed economy became almost bipartisan and the Labour party suppressed the socialist aspirations of its left-wing members...
...But union political activity may be more innocent, or less so...
...But the testing economic crisis shows us the cul-de-sac of bureaucracy, elite activity, and mass passivity into which successful liberalism leads...
...If the electoral college is established and chooses a leftwing leader, we may see a more left-wing manifesto before the next election, but the leader's need to conciliate powerful rightwing colleagues and the backbenchers will still limit the extent of the shift...
...Thatcher, though fortunately the continuing harshness and ineffectiveness of her policies is already condemning her in the eyes of the electorate...
...But we are not likely to become significantly more socialist...
...The rift between the people and the political system, alias the rulers, is thus disadvantageous to both: the people have little sense of belonging to a political community or participating in a common enterprise, and they reject the correlative responsibilities, thanks to the liberal segregation of politics...
...rather, their political interventions are symptomatic of a widening of the political arena, which gives some hope for the transformation of our politics...
...Membership in the EEC has caused widespread irritation because of the burden of administrative requirements to which we must conform...
...The rejection of this policy shows both the strength of laissez-faire liberalism in private industry and the unions' old-fashioned preference for oppositional relationships with management...
...Something must be said, then, about the proposal for an electoral college, which will be discussed by a special conference in January 1981...
...In short, the major changes of the 1970s all elaborated administrative hierarchies, without improving efficiency or benefiting the public, which has to swallow the unpalatable end products of these reforms...
...The present battle for the leadership makes the divergence of views within the parliamentary party transparent, although it was also manifested at the Blackpool conference in October when the left wing gained various concessions concerning the democratization of the party...
...The Balance Sheet CURRENT OBSERVERS of British politics may not consider that we have reached an impasse since the level of party political activity is high...
...Hence the success of the Conservatives' election promise to curb the unions ("a jumble of medieval guilds"), but their proposed reforms are prudently moderate, and they have restored the "right" to free collective bargaining by eschewing incomes policy...
...Callaghan created...
...Benn, and the "Gang of Three" are politicians first and socialists second, and they know that this would constitute electoral suicide...
...57 carrot, scope for legitimate ambition, selfreliance and independence...
...People have been unduly slow to draw general lessons from government behavior in Ulster: the army operations there are said to be viewed by the authorities as practice for urban guerrilla warfare in the 1980s...
...9 But the party has always turned to internecine warfare when in opposition, and there is as yet no strong reason to believe that socialism will be reborn in this struggle...
...For example, the 1974 reform of 3 N. Kaldor, The Causes of the Slow Rate of Growth of the U.K...
...The parties' and voters' lack of ideological commitment also means that electors vote in judgment of the previous government, and this promotes the typical alternation between governments, which often negate each others' achievements, and produces an ultimate sterility...
...Public inquiries into proposals for motorways, airports, and nuclear power stations were interrupted and obstructed by angry residents...
...They identify the leftwingers' commitment to socialist principles such as nationalization as being at the root of the last electoral failure...
...The economic situation is crucially important because the attitudes of resignation and self-pity induced by our stagnant economy and falling living standards also pervade the political arena...
...Thatcher's government implements cion of ideology...
...This, then, is today's official political menu— a restatement of familiar ideas on both sides...
...ing from neighborhood or tenants' groups active in local affairs to refuges for battered wives and self-help groups among the claimants of welfare benefits...
...But with the modern necessity for interventionist government, elite politics is disastrous, since everyone must be persuaded to cooperate in incomes policy, energy saving, or similar enterprises, to everyone's advantage...
...Half the adult population depends directly or indirectly on the government as employer, subsidizer of jobs, dispenser of student grants, and so on, a situation that is invidious because the general population does not con60 trol the government, which can, as at present, sacrifice jobs or cut benefits more ruthlessly than any private employer...
...so they have chosen to fight the battle for socialist principles by trying to democratize their own parliamentary arm, the Parliamentary Labour party...
...An important phenomenon of the 1970s was the sporadic intervention of the unions in politics, especially in 1974 when a miners' strike caused Heath to call an election...
...Meanwhile, those who support minority parties criticize the electoral system as intolerably unfair, for it limits or annuls their parliamentary influence.' See M. Kogan et al., The Working of the National Health Service (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1978...
...Our problem is that of liberal democracy carried to its logical conclusion...
Vol. 28 • January 1981 • No. 1
