Book review: ‘From Anger to Apathy’ by Mark Garnett
Posted on Monday 31 December, 2007
Filed Under Book review
How did Britain get from the decade of punk rock, the Angry Brigade, the three-day week, Bennism, Grunwick, and the Winter of Discontent to these cursed times of Celebrity Big Brother, the lowest level of industrial militancy since records begun, the smallest electoral turnouts since universal suffrage, LINO government (Labour in Name Only), and the bleeding Pussycat Dolls?
That’s the question Mark Garnett addresses in ‘From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience Since 1975′. This book will be of special interest to fortysomethings, as the period under consideration is broadly coterminous with their adult lives.
As a bonus, the author seems to have been on the right side of the picket lines throughout the Thatcher years, and makes repeated reference to the music of the Clash and the Specials.
Prepare to be reminded of much you had probably forgotten, such as the Mormon missionary ‘sex in chains’ case of 1977, and the days when Gordon Brown wrote corruscating critiques of Thatcherism.
Garnett’s central thesis can be summed up in two words: blame Kinnock. Rather than work from the basis that Thatcherism at no point enjoyed anything like majority support, Labour simply capitulated to the notion that greed was now the dominant social value.
Such was the impact of the 1987 defeat and the subsequent policy review that Neil Kinnock, Labour leader of the day, spent most of the 1992 general election on the back foot, being forced to explain why he was now advocating policies he had once openly loathed. Such opportunism was a propaganda gift to the Tory tabloids.
Now we are living with the results, also known as the youth of today. I’m regularly chided for underestimating young people; they are far more radical then I give them credit for, especially when it comes to anti-capitalism, campaigns against third world poverty and the anti-war movement … or so I’m told.
But individual exceptions aside, I don’t see much evidence for it among younger workmates or fellow students. Love for you if you were born in the eighties, the eighties? Sorry. Not really. I blame the parents, myself. The parents and the Tories, anyway.
Writing the history of recent decades must be a far harder task for a historian than analysing the Glorious Revolution or the causes of world war one, if only because most of the participants are still alive and will have experienced the period in different ways.
If journalism is the first draft of history, volumes such as Garnett’s are essentially the second. The definitive analysis will probably not be produced for many years. But don’t let that put you off; this was one of the most enjoyable current affairs books I read in 2007.
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16 Responses to “Book review: ‘From Anger to Apathy’ by Mark Garnett”
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“Mormon missionary ‘sex in chains’ case of 1977″
What was that ?
Sounds vaguely familiar but can’t remember what it was about.
“I’m regularly chided for underestimating young people; they are far more radical then I give them credit for, especially when it comes to anti-capitalism, campaigns against third world poverty and the anti-war movement, or so I’m told.”
I may be being unfair , but it seems this is often more liberal, lets make capitalism a bit nicer, ‘lifestyle’ politics and not always linked into a wider analysis.
And if someone is more leftwing im not sure we are that inviting. The LP is beyond hope and the alternatives none too promising. All the infighting must surely put off someone new and young to left politics.
Younger workmates? Dave – Could that be something to do with where you work?
I can’t remember her name but an American woman had an enormous crush upon a Mormon and converted to Mormonism. He was sent on missionary duty to London, as is the way in their Church, and she followed him. I think he may have been warned off of her by the Elders in the Church. She followed him to London and with the aid of an accomplice kidnapped him and kept him chained to a bed for a few days. He was eventually freed. She was put on trial for it and came up with the famous quote that she loved him so much she would have skied naked down Everest with a carnation in her gob. The Press loved it all. There were also some very soft porn pictures of her, I think she financed her trip to London by posing naked for mens’ magazines, which is not something that the Church of the Latter Day Saints’ encourages. I read a Mirror special paperback all about the case, of course, that was in the days when the Mirror was a proper paper.
I think major contributing factors are the successes of both the Thatcher and Blair regimes in fulfilling their aims.
Thatcher managed to strengthen the state by reducing expectations on it to provide social and economic functions. This was achieved both by privatising/outsourcing public organisations, and by taking on and defeating interest groups which had influence on state decision-making.
Blair succeeded in taking politics out of politics. Rather than see the job of politics as the resolution of conflicts of interest, Blair set government up as a political elite who would claim to govern in the interests of all, reducing the process of politics to that of administration. This meant that political discourse took the form of petty arguments over ‘competence’ and who is most ‘fit to govern’.
I feel these aims have been largely fulfilled, and one of the major reasons for the increased apathy is that people see their ability to influence what the state does massively reduced. They have taken refuge in the expansion of ‘consumerism’ or the more vague and less confrontational fields of environmentalism and ‘alternative culture’.
The kids are alright. Well, politically speaking, they’re not. Going off the last seven years of working with hundreds of young people, radicals are very thin on the ground and I don’t see much evidence suggesting they’re more progressive than yoof when I was an undergrad (mid-late 90s). There are a number of reasons for this – one major contributor to the damping of radicalism has to be the increased need for students to work to support themselves through their degrees. If you’re knackered after a nine hour shift at Tesco’s, you’re unlikely to be wanting to spend your free time on stalls, selling papers, going on demos, etc. Bloody hell, I’ve become a right miserable sod.
I’ve met Garnett, thought he was a numpty then and your review just confirms me in that prejudice.
Just to remind us all, the Tories won the 1987 election with a majority of over 100 and there were polls during the campaign that had Labour in third place.
Not to change in the face of that would have been the most cynical betrayal: “no compromise with the electorate” as Ken Livingstone put it.
If the argument is that maybe Kinnock wasn’t best placed to make that change, because of his previous political positions that is very different from saying that the changes shouldn’t have been made.
In fact, though, I think Kinnock deserves praise for having grasped the fundamental cultural changes in the lives of working people: not since 1979, but since the very beginning of the long post war boom in the mid-1950s.
Given that he came from the valleys of South Wales, the strongest redoubt of working class self knowledge and solidarity in these islands, that personal epiphany is even more astounding.
But in the end it’s the usual question: do you think Britain is better off with a Labour government or not? If not, then fair enough, you can stick to your “let it bleed” contempt for us social democrats and get back to arms training or whatever it is you do.
If you do think things are better then that isn’t an argument for you all becoming social democrats but it is to say that maybe all the bile and vitriol that is directed at the Labour Party is somewhat misplaced.
Of course, hating the Labour Party is actually easier than changing somebody’s mind about anything – its fundamentally passive, and that is why I think it appeals to many in the far left who have been left washed up by the definitive revelation, post-1989, that whatever way you cut Leninism it leads straight to the GuLag.
The kids have done one thing, bring green issues to the fore. It may be the saving of the planet, so whilst it’s not impressive on the class warfare front it shouldn’t be ignored as a campaigning success.
Those wishing to understand the Democratic Party — and why party politics in the U.S. is very, very unlike European party politics — should read this:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/townsend240807p.html
Also recommended is this piece by Mike Hirsch, a “Third Camp” Marxist and member of the NEW POLITICS editorial board:
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue42/Hirsch42.htm
Key quote: “The Democratic Party is barely a party; it’s a series of shifting coalitions in 50 state organizations and some 3,000 U.S. counties. In many states, the center-right controls it. In city and county politics, real estate and banking interests dominate the local councils. But that doesn’t make it a corporate party.
What I want to argue is that the Democratic Party is controlled by a center-right bloc that effectively freezes out the left. Just as the GOP can command more resources and media than can the Democrats, the party’s center-right has access to corporate giving that can be trumped only by the kind of popular upsurge that will likely be seen in miniature next week in the voting that takes control of Congress away from the far-right. The goal is to reshuffle the cards, creating a center-left coalition that can pose on an electoral level what the movements pose in the streets and in the workplaces. That’s what needs to be done.”
Ooops. Sorry, wrong thread!
“I’m regularly chided for underestimating young people; they are far more radical then I give them credit for, especially when it comes to anti-capitalism, campaigns against third world poverty and the anti-war movement, or so I’m told.”
There’s a few clues in that sentence. Anti / against…
This is why it is so disastrously damaging for the left to have constantly hitched it’s wagons to negativist campaigns – and, bizarely – the further left you go on the British political spectrum, the more negativism you see.
Being against everything may make you good fun at parties. It’s very hip, and it has been since Marlon Brando was asked ‘what are you against, Johnny’ (ans: “what have you got?”) in The Wild One. Meeja types love it. Because so many people get a kick out of it, the left think that it’s a recruiting ground as well.
It isn’t. Anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation stinks. The sooner the left gets out of those movements and starts attacking them, the better.
If we start saying what we are *for* people may start being impressed by our principles again.
So, Last of the Blairites, Leninism leads straight to the Gulag? As opposed to Blairism, which leads straight to imperialist adventure, illegal wars and mass slaughter.
Doug, as rejoinders go that is pretty piss poor. I take you accept that Leninism does lead to the GuLag but your response is “my mass murder is no worse than yours”?
For the record: It really is infantile leftism to decide, as the far left did, that removing a fascist mass murderer in Iraq or the women killers of the Taliban in Afghanistan was to be opposed, a priori because it was “imperialism”.
Of course, in the far left discourse about Iraq the Kurds are ignored as a non-people and instead the Ba’ath and Islam’s answers to Pol Pot are lauded as “the resistance” and all the people they kill are, in fact, victims of Bushitler and Bliar.
Ask yourself why you are ‘Last of the Blairites’? Is it because it was a rubbish politics and things have moved on? Don’t you think that it’s you who are the dinosaur now?
“It really is infantile leftism to decide, as the far left did, that removing a fascist mass murderer in Iraq or the women killers of the Taliban in Afghanistan was to be opposed, a priori because it was “imperialism”.” – Last of the Blairites
Maybe, but they were right about Iraq.
“Is it because it was a rubbish politics and things have moved on?” – Sue R
But things haven’t moved on, have they? Alas.