Britain After 18 Years of Tory Rule
GELB, NORMAN
GRUMBLING THROUGH PROSPERITY Britain After 18 Years of Tory Rule By Norman Gelb London Avery strange thing has been happening in Britain. After having long been jealous of Germany's...
...Neither was local democracy, and its erosion has generated still more discontent...
...For a country whose economic strength was long based on heavy industry—steel, auto production, shipbuilding, toolmaking, coal mining—the switch to service industries has been unsettling, however inevitable it was given the nature of global markets...
...Kenneth Morgan, whose biography of James Callaghan, the last Labor Prime Minister, is to be published here this summer, blames Thatcher and her Tory successor John Major for having blazed "a trail of devastation and social damage from which Britain will take a very long time to recover...
...They do not like change...
...that took over key duties from them...
...Indeed, they are relentlessly dissatisfied and much given to complaining...
...Except for the affluent and the eccentrically footloose among them, they are also conditioned to staying put by circumstance—by comparatively cheap public housing that is available primarily to longtime residents, by government rent subsidies, and by their familiarity with local social services...
...Though that is true, a good deal of the present dissatisfaction derives from the here and now, from the inability of ordinary Britons to accept that it has been a long time since they have had it as good as they currently do...
...the operation repeatedly postponed because of staff or bed shortages...
...They have not been able to grasp that their crusade to dismantle the welfare state, which they believe to be their greatest contribution to the nation, has become the biggest cause of popular worry...
...Their attachment to the kind of work they do and to the place they do it—and, incidentally, to the class to which they belong—sometimes seems almost feudal...
...It's reported that Samsung, the giant Korean company, recently shifted its European headquarters from Frankfurt to London partly because its senior executives preferred the pleasures of "swinging London...
...Some of their grumbling is congenital, a deeply ingrained characteristic of a proud people who once ruled vast expanses of the globe but who now must be content with managing a tight little island roughly the acreage of Arizona, watching as even tiny Hong Kong prepares to lower the Union Jack...
...Moreover, Labor Party leader (and likely new Prime Minister after the May 1 elections) Tony Blair appears to recognize that the Conservatives were not unmitigated villains: Rather than completely ruining Britain, they put it on the road to economic revival...
...But the form they have taken has distressed people who have grown used to free, prompt, adequate medical care whenever needed...
...the witholding of a new breakthrough medication because it was expensive...
...And not only the economy...
...The result has been a shambles...
...National Health Service reforms have unquestionably been essential...
...Unlike Americans, who would not find it extraordinary to move from Chicago to Seattle, for example, if job opportunities beckoned, the British are profoundly uncomfortable about having to pull up their roots and move elsewhere...
...While the people of most nations gaze hopefully into the future, observes Jeremy Paxman, the highly respected anchor of the BBC's flagship Newsnight program, "the English have an obsession with looking back...
...Rubenstein further argues that the lowtaxation, low-inflation economy the Tories created has generated a highly productive investment culture of a kind hitherto found only in the United States...
...The reason the populace is so gloomy, he says, is that they have lived with a sense of failure for such a long time that they have become "intellectually addicted" to it, automatically discounting the possibility of success...
...It is the basic conservatism of the British people that is in great measure responsible for this uneasiness...
...Whatever the current mood in the country, he maintains, the 18 years of Tory rule have been the most constructive period for Britain this century: It was an era when a dangerously stagnating economy was transformed into one that is dynamically prepared for the challenges of the new millennium...
...Measures by the Conservative government to get rid of this inertia by trimming locally dispensed social and financial benefits have only contributed to insecurity...
...Turning their chronic pessimism into hopeful confidence will nonetheless be a formidable task for a new Labor government—if there is one...
...As demonstrated at the recent Oscar ceremony in Hollywood and by the phenomenal success of British plays on Broadway, this country has suddenly become a style and fashion statement...
...the triage approach to the allocation of resources...
...Margaret Thatcher, Britain's Tory Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, proclaimed "the NHS is safe in our hands.' It wasn't...
...the badly needed local emergency room that has been closed...
...Nevertheless, every person I know here—and judging from media reports, just about everyone in the country—has a story to tell about how an NHS shortcoming or blunder affected him or her, or a family member: the ambulance that took two hours to arrive...
...After having long been jealous of Germany's economic strength, France's leadership in style, Italy's irrepressible optimism, and the wealth and vigor of the United States, the British bewilderingly find themselves praised, admired and envied...
...Even in the realm of food, London, once a much ridiculed culinary wasteland, now boasts some of the most renowned chefs in the world...
...Despite drastic cutbacks, the health care that the NHS continues to provide free of charge to countless Britons is remarkable...
...Optimistic reports on the financial pages of their newspapers do not reassure them...
...the misdiagnosis by overworked personnel...
...While much of the rest of Europe struggles with soaring unemployment and inflationary worries, Britain's economy appears to be ticking over quite smoothly...
...The realization that the calculations of accountants half a world away can determine who works, what they will be required to do, and under what conditions, does little to buoy confidence in booming Britain...
...Norman Gelb reports regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...
...Retraining programs that were meant to create a flexible work force for the new age have managed also to create an insecure work force...
...the lost records...
...the last-minute opting for expensive private care out of desperation...
...Tourists are pouring into Britain, converging on London and fanning out to the rest of England's green and pleasant land...
...They emasculated local government councils because most were Labor Party dominated...
...That has been especially true with regard to the Tory mutilation of the National Health Service...
...Its pop music is enjoying its greatest money-spinning international revival since the days of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones...
...The Englishman Isaac Newton knew 300 years ago that a body at rest tends to stay at rest...
...Town halls were far more responsive to local needs and wishes than the Ministries of Environment, Transport, etc...
...Although they are pleased to be admired, the British themselves are for the most part neither jubilant nor impressed...
...the shuttling of a seriously sick patient from hospital to hospital across the country in search of available facilities for proper treatment...
...For all the statistics about rising living standards, falling joblessness, and huge foreign investments in the country, they cannot shake the conviction that their economy is fragile, and that today's boom is just a prelude to tomorrow's bust...
...Dazzling displays by British clothing designers have brought them the kind of esteem usually reserved for their French counterparts...
...Even London's so-called Tory press finds that situation intolerable...
...But a diametrically opposite view is taken by the Americanborn Bill Rubenstein, professor of history at the University of Wales and a Tory sage...
...The failure of the Conservatives to conserve was largely responsible for the voters' loss of trust in the party...
...London, for instance, no longer has a citywide authority to cope with the problems of its decaying subway network, undermanned police force, struggling school system, traffic congestion, or the growing number of homeless that have been appearing on the streets over the last few years...
...Ever greater numbers scoot over from the Continent by car or train through the Channel Tunnel for a weekend, or just a day, to savor the delights of "Cool Britannia...
...Greater longevity, wage inflation, and expensive medical equipment have vastly increased the cost of health care...
...The refashioned Labor Party has appropriated many of the cardinal Tory policies, including restrictions on union power and promotion of business enterprise...
...Despite the Tories' professed aversion to "big government," the centralization of power in Britain increased enormously under them...
...For the moment, Blair seems to have the grudging trust of the British people...
Vol. 80 • April 1997 • No. 6
