Back to the 1970s with William Hague
Posted on Wednesday 10 March, 2010
Filed Under Conservative Party
HAS somebody gone and invented time travel, and the story broke on a day when I was just too hungover to listen to the Today Programme? Or could it be that Peter Mandelson is secretly a Time Lord? They are supposed to look like human beings, after all.
I only ask because William Hague is set to give a speech today, arguing that a Labour victory at the general election will take Britain back to the 1970s.
This riff seems to play the same role in contemporary Tory discourse as the opening chords to Honky Tonk Women do at a Rolling Stones gig. Keef only has to launch into that famous look-no-hands duuuh … dum dum duuuh … dum dum bit on his open-tuned telecaster, and the joint goes wild. That’s because the audience knows what’s coming next.
So it is when Daily Telegraph editorial writers and the Federation of Small Businesses trot out their lame cover versions of one of Conservatism’s greatest hits. The dead unburied on Merseyside! Uncollected garbage in Leicester Square! Picket lines everywhere!
Apparently the pointy heads are split on the possibilities of Hague’s prediction coming good. Some think one-way travel into the future might just be possible, based on the gravitational time dilation effect spelled out in the theory of general relativity. But it is currently unclear whether the laws of physics rule out a return to the years of my teens.
However, the truth is that there is more chance of The Clash getting back together again than there is of New Labour revisiting the era of punk rock. If Baseball Cap Dude’s speech really contends that the left is once more in the ascendant and that unions will somehow dominate any Labour administration that may emerge after the impending contest, he can only be delivering it after at least six pints of the 14 a day he is partial to knocking back.
What Hague really means to say is that there are important differences of substance between the economic policies that Labour would adopt if returned to office, and those of a Tory administration in which he would presumably play a leading part.
I can’t say that, as a socialist, I am particularly enthused about what is on offer from either quarter. Labour’s plans to start work on deficit reduction only once the recovery has been firmly established, while protecting frontline investment in schools and hospitals, will be painful for many. I for one will be on the inevitable protest marches.
But the contrast with the pre-Keynesian Treasury View orthodoxy of Osbornomics is sharp enough. That wouldn’t take us back to the 1970s; it would mark a return to the 1930s. That’s what the Tories truly want, and it is the last thing Britain needs.
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Those of us ancients who actually remember the picket lines, the militant shop stewards and works convenors eternally yelling out one demand after another from our telly screens and – of course – the unburied dead on Merseyside – and not only on Merseyside – are forced to remember that some – not all – trade unionists did everything in their power to discredit the labour movement and make Labour unelectable.
The current choice is a grim one. Does anyone really really love the party of Lord Mandelson, Lord Paul and the Harperson [and the Harperson's spouse] and Postman Pat and the rest of the ghastly gang?
But look at the Tory smoothies! What an appalling prospect!
“Surely, comrades, you don’t want Jones back, do you?” howled Comrade Squealer at the assembled animals.
Oi Bill, BOO!
As someone who wasn’t alive at the time, I often wonder whenever this stuff about the unburied dead etc gets aired again, what steps people would like government to take to stop gravediggers and rubbish collectors going on strike?
Option A – don’t give them real term cuts in wages (the left-wing solution)
Option B – remove their right to withdraw labour, essentially making them slaves rather than free workers (the right-wing solution).
So Bill, which would you agree with?
I dream of a return to the seventies.
The absolute apex of full-spectrum prole-led, egalitarian pop fun.
Never in the history of mankind have miserable, greedy, sour-faced bastards had less pull.
Well, what did the Labour Government of 1945-51 do when faced with wildcat strikes?
If I remember my reading about the period, it was fully prepared to charge and imprison trade unionists who overstepped the mark.
Sorry Bill, I’m not clear what you’re saying.
Is your solution to somehow come up with a legal definition of ‘overstepping the mark’ (including, presumably, fighting for your wages to keep up with inflation) and imprison those who do it?
I’m with ya, Scratch
The absolute apex of full-spectrum prole-led, egalitarian pop fun
I’m gonna nick that at some point.
Never in the history of mankind have miserable, greedy, sour-faced bastards had less pull.
Like so?
Unburied dead people is not the worst thing that could happen. As long as the living are cared for, I’ll be happy. Most of the dead couldn’t give a toss either way.
Keef couldn’t do the opening riff on Honky Tonk Woman in a million years.
It was Ry Cooder and he famously fell out with them over their failure to credit him.
Keef had same problem with Mick Taylor, a personality one. He wouldn’t credit him or cover his songs ‘cos the glimmer twins wanted the thing sewn up. Taylor left.
He was always a better muso than Keef by a million years but not a patch on Cooder who is on a planet of his own.
“Labour’s plans to start work on deficit reduction only once the recovery has been firmly established”
I think new Labour are saying that just to ride the storm, the logic says if the economy gets back on track then the huge surgery to the public sector will no longer be required, not that it is required anyway. All New Labour will do is tighten the budget process to include more efficiency targets, and introduce things like shared services for ‘backoffice’ functions. But I don’t think we will see the level of cuts proposed by the Tories from New Labour.
Again though we are talking about the crises of capitalism here and NOT socialism!
I’m gonna nick that at some point.
I’d be honoured Mr O.
)
Whoa!
We can do emoticons!
Dean – “Again though we are talking about the crises of capitalism here and NOT socialism”
Except you wouldn’t know it from the coverage in the media and reading the blogosphere, this has firmly been painted as a problem with the Left. Funnily enough I don’t remember the protests from these people when Brown was sowing the seeds by following Thatcherite policy, ie keeping taxes low for the higher earners, Lasiz Faire regulation of our Financial services.
Oh and ther was certanly no uproar when Brown inflicted a tax hike on low earners.
No that Boy George’s “Scorched Earth” policy towards the deficit is any better.
Allan. The crises in socialism is long past. The experiment is over.
The Tories’ memory of the 1970s is very selective. They don’t like to remember the first half of the decade – which was a high point of working class militancy. That was when a government posed the question “Who rules the country?”, and got the unequivocal answer “Not you!”
The government that completely screwed things up, to the point of declaring that a week only has three days, was, of course, a Tory government. But the memory of Ted Heath’s humiliating defeats at the hands of dockers and miners has been completely expurged from Tory memories.
Unfortunately, much of the left seems to have forgotten about them too.
But I remember the early 70s as an exhilarating time. A Tory government was brought low in Britain, the United States suffered a crushing defeat in Vietnam, Portuguese colonial-fascism was overthrown, and, with the help of Cuban forces, the newly born Angolan republic defeated a South African invasion.
That’s what victory looks like, and we haven’t seen much of it recently.
My wages in 1970 £ 23 a week, I worked on average 80 hours a week, and when i went sick the money was appalling.
we went on strike for six solid weeks until the company put the wages up so we could live, I then earned after the strike and all the shouting on TV, £75 a week basic.
The 1970s were damn interesting time and naturally the Tories are using a Daily Mail Kaleidoscope to look back in time.
The rubbish collection issue and non-burial of the dead, were, as I remember, fairly minor instances and then only temporary.
The British Left was a lot better in the 1970s, there was still an active antifascist, antiracist movement. The NF were kept in their place, and often intimidated off the streets.
There was still plenty of feminists around, and that had quite an effect on male socialists, bringing home the reality of the women’s existence
Big Flame was a good read as well
Oh, not forgetting the equal pay disputes!
And in the 1970s, William Hague was even more annoying as a spotty young youth.
Who can forget Grunwicks? and Mrs. Desai?
Boilermaker. The unburied dead was a cracker of publicity for the Tories. Not that the Tories give a fuck for the dead but it does appeal to the public most of whom did not know the dead. The Tories managed to get away with not caring about the living.
Humans are fickle. I wanted to get buried in my rhubarb patch which is legal but apparantly it is difficult for the house to be sold because of superstition.
paul fauvet. Not much change paul. The Tories are still with us. The Africans are still slaughtering each other and the US have been doing military exchanges with Vietnam for over a decade. And it goes on and on.
Those of us ancients who actually remember the picket lines…
Some of us do remember, obviously better than Bill Corr, when the government was trying to hold wages below inflation as they kowtowed to the international bankers. The militancy was led from the shop floor, not from the top down, and this went against the grain of the then Labour leadership. The fault lay with Callaghan, Healey and Foot.
Les Abbey. You are right about the bankers and the old Labour cronies. The militancy as you suggest did not exist. A few strikes here and there do not ammount to revolution. As from the from the shop floor up you are wishfull thinking.
Is Jimmy Glesga a ghost writer? He says that he wanted to be buried in his rhubarb patch, which means he must be dead. Explains a lot. I wish we could go back to the 1970’s to a time when my bones didn’t creak and my eyesight and hearing were still razor sharp, but as it hasn’t happened, I must assume that we have not fallen through a timewarp.
Jimmy the Hack: From what you have said in the past, I don’t think you were alive in the 1970s, certainly not in a position to be politically conscious, so you are talking shite. it was teh shopfloor militancy of the 1970s that led Labour to hobble the labour movement.
There’s ONE enormous big difference between the seventies and now, of course.
Communism as a living political force is one with the teachings of Madame Blavatsky and the cause of bimetallism, except for the
unswerving loyalists over on SOCIALIST UNITY.
As an issue, Communism might be dead but something far nastier from the archaic past has slid under the crypt door into the sunlight and refuses to go away:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/11/muslims-know-value-democratic-engagement
One never expected to say it but one genuinely misses the Brezhnev Doctrine …
“Trade Union power”,”Left-Wing Labour” – what f***ing planet is Hague living on? He’s having a laugh – isn’t he?
Dunno about the bald Yorkie being on another planet when starts going on about Trade Union Power, O KevB.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_sylvester/article7054580.ece
He might be right, after all.
The union trying to destroy dear old BA is Labour’s paymaster.
Don’t get me started on the subject of Lord Ashcroft of Belize or the Libyan money that found its way to the HealyTrots and the IRA.
SueR. Obviously I am not dead yet in my patch. You should go back to the seventies Sue and dream of the fifties while the rest of us move on you old slapper.