You may wish to read my comments about the Bishop Williamson case on the nascent Christianity in the West website.
Paul Gottfried's article also details why Angela Merkel is not a real conservative.
Monday, 16 February 2009
Politeness, political correctness and David Cameron
Cameron says that he did not intervene in the Carol Thatcher row because part of political correctness is about politeness. Well, this is true in that political correctness is about establishing good behaviour towards ethnic minorities, which is a laudable aim; in using the term, "gollywog", Carol Thatcher was being impolite, and rather boorish.
But given the amount of impoliteness and obscenity being broadcast on the BBC, it is clear that political correctness only enforces politeness sometimes. The truth is that PC rules are about enforcing an ideological vision of the world which assumes that white people oppress other races, christians oppress people of other religions and none, men oppress women, and so on. It is understandable to say in relation to BNP members whose names became public on a website, we know where to send the (I paraphrase) excrement; it is edgy to ask David Cameron if he fantasised about Margaret Thatcher and to make lewd comments to Gweneth Paltrow (both Jonathan Ross).
If political correctness is partly about politeness, it is accidental.
But given the amount of impoliteness and obscenity being broadcast on the BBC, it is clear that political correctness only enforces politeness sometimes. The truth is that PC rules are about enforcing an ideological vision of the world which assumes that white people oppress other races, christians oppress people of other religions and none, men oppress women, and so on. It is understandable to say in relation to BNP members whose names became public on a website, we know where to send the (I paraphrase) excrement; it is edgy to ask David Cameron if he fantasised about Margaret Thatcher and to make lewd comments to Gweneth Paltrow (both Jonathan Ross).
If political correctness is partly about politeness, it is accidental.
Emergency contraception: abortion culture in GP clinics
Labour plans to put abortion services into every GP's clinic. A 1/3 of GP's are against this, according to the Catholic Universe. But the abortion culture has been insidiously present for a while: the last time I was at a GP surgery, I noticed that the morning after pill was being advertised as "emergency contraception". It is of course an abortifactent.
So much for informed choice.
So much for informed choice.
Friday, 13 February 2009
Demographics, culture and allegiance, not values
Those of us who think that we have got it disastrously wrong on multi-culturalism and immigration will be tempted to say that Geert Wilders is trying to save western society whereas Muslim extremists aim to destroy it. But being “even-handed” over extremist elements makes sense if you accept that British identity is composed of values rather than allegiance: to the creedal nation, protests against multi-cultural orthodoxy are on a par with extremist imams, Louis Farakhan and other movements dedicated to destroying the decadent and devilish West.
Ironically, for someone seen as far-right, Wilders is similar to mainstream liberals in that he thinks values are crucial: the difference is that they think Islam is compatible with enlightenment values, Wilders disagrees. Wilders' criticism of Islam is in fact ridiculously crude and depends too much on the supposed evil of Islamist ideology, which he compares with Facism. This doesn't matter: Islam does not have to be evil to be a threat to the West. Europeans were a threat to native Americans in the 19th century primarily due to their numbers. The merits or otherwise of Western civilisation were irrelevant. The moral status of Islam do not affect the level of alarm that people feel at the scale of immigration and speed of transformation in European cities. Moreover, immigration from Islamic countries is only part of the phenomenon.
The main threat is partly cultural but mainly demographic – both from mass immigration and from the higher birth rates of some immigrant populations, such as Muslims, vis a vis Europeans. Due to a shared cultural background, the same numbers would matter less if all immigrants were eastern europeans, although there would still be tensions. Maybe we should say the problem is less with high immigrant birth rates and more with extremely low European birth rates, because low birth rates make European culture less demographically robust. The nature of Islam is a special issue, but there are social problems and ethnic tensions with other immigrant groups as well.
These problems are not just about economics but about who we are as a people and to what do we owe allegiance. Secularists, liberals, conservative catholics will for the most part feel allegiance to European civilisation and the heritage of the Roman Empire and Middle Ages; a large proportion (how large?) of Muslims look to an Islamic past, not a European one, and they will also aspire to an Islamic future. Even those who reject violence, being human, will inevitably wish to promulgate their culture and religion, just as native Europeans do. This is something we should accept as part of the human condition; it only becomes a problem due to demographic trends. Of course, to those who believe that cultural ties don't matter, I am speaking dangerous nonsense.
For Wilders, there can be no moderate Islam as opposed to the extremist version because Islam is an evil ideology. To my mind, it is hateful to condemn in absolutist terms a whole civilisation; but he is right in a way that he does not know, because, while Islamic terrorism is not an existential threat to the West, as his film (I understand) suggests, large-scale immigration can overwhelm its people, culture, traditions and institutions. No evil ideology is needed to bring this about. Demographics will be the Death of West, unless we do something about now. As Wilders says, we are at the 11th hour, but tirades against Islam miss the point. The solution is to stop mass immigration, ensure the repatriation of those here illegally and take measures to increase European birth rates, so that our civilisation can survive the 21st century. Then the demographic impact of Muslims inside Europe will be lessened and, in a world where resources are more scarce than today, European nations will be in a stronger position in relation to their neighbours, Islamic or otherwise.
Ironically, for someone seen as far-right, Wilders is similar to mainstream liberals in that he thinks values are crucial: the difference is that they think Islam is compatible with enlightenment values, Wilders disagrees. Wilders' criticism of Islam is in fact ridiculously crude and depends too much on the supposed evil of Islamist ideology, which he compares with Facism. This doesn't matter: Islam does not have to be evil to be a threat to the West. Europeans were a threat to native Americans in the 19th century primarily due to their numbers. The merits or otherwise of Western civilisation were irrelevant. The moral status of Islam do not affect the level of alarm that people feel at the scale of immigration and speed of transformation in European cities. Moreover, immigration from Islamic countries is only part of the phenomenon.
The main threat is partly cultural but mainly demographic – both from mass immigration and from the higher birth rates of some immigrant populations, such as Muslims, vis a vis Europeans. Due to a shared cultural background, the same numbers would matter less if all immigrants were eastern europeans, although there would still be tensions. Maybe we should say the problem is less with high immigrant birth rates and more with extremely low European birth rates, because low birth rates make European culture less demographically robust. The nature of Islam is a special issue, but there are social problems and ethnic tensions with other immigrant groups as well.
These problems are not just about economics but about who we are as a people and to what do we owe allegiance. Secularists, liberals, conservative catholics will for the most part feel allegiance to European civilisation and the heritage of the Roman Empire and Middle Ages; a large proportion (how large?) of Muslims look to an Islamic past, not a European one, and they will also aspire to an Islamic future. Even those who reject violence, being human, will inevitably wish to promulgate their culture and religion, just as native Europeans do. This is something we should accept as part of the human condition; it only becomes a problem due to demographic trends. Of course, to those who believe that cultural ties don't matter, I am speaking dangerous nonsense.
For Wilders, there can be no moderate Islam as opposed to the extremist version because Islam is an evil ideology. To my mind, it is hateful to condemn in absolutist terms a whole civilisation; but he is right in a way that he does not know, because, while Islamic terrorism is not an existential threat to the West, as his film (I understand) suggests, large-scale immigration can overwhelm its people, culture, traditions and institutions. No evil ideology is needed to bring this about. Demographics will be the Death of West, unless we do something about now. As Wilders says, we are at the 11th hour, but tirades against Islam miss the point. The solution is to stop mass immigration, ensure the repatriation of those here illegally and take measures to increase European birth rates, so that our civilisation can survive the 21st century. Then the demographic impact of Muslims inside Europe will be lessened and, in a world where resources are more scarce than today, European nations will be in a stronger position in relation to their neighbours, Islamic or otherwise.
Monday, 9 February 2009
The gollywog row
The contrast between Carol Thatcher's treatment and that of Jonathan Ross shows the contrast between conventional morality and BBC morality. Conventional morality says that that one should generally be polite and show consideration to others; that, alright, we shouldn't be racist, but let's not force the issue every time; BBC morality says that racism and sexism is unforgivable, even as a joke made off-air, and must be punished unless accompanied by public recantation; in contrast, as far at our national broadcaster is concerned, seedy, bullying or boorish behaviour is generally acceptable; and it is an occupational hazard that occasionally presenters go too far – all in the name of edgy, youth-oriented broadcasting.
This goes against Trevor Philips' contention (made on a BBC Radio 4 programme on the subject of political correctness, masquerading as a balanced portrayal) that political correctness is simply about politeness. But we see that most forms of disgraceful behaviour are outside the remit of politically correct policing. The Jade Goody case in Big Brother illustrates the point. The low-level aggression and rudeness that the Shelpa Shetty received was an accepted part of the reality TV experience; but the minute it becomes “racial bullying” - some comments about curry and what Indians do, then Jade Goody became subject to the full weight of moral opprobrium; Channel 4 itself was criticised for going too far and there was talking of stopping the Big Brother show. Jade Goody felt so under pressure that she was forced into a tearful apology and denial that she was a “racist”: what more terrible crime could there be? Celebrities can get indulge in any kind of boorishness and rudeness, but any suggestion of Racism puts you beyond the pale. This goes against Trevor Phillips' contention that being PC was just another form of being polite and treating others well; the very best construction is that it promotes politeness sometimes.
More to the point, politically correct morality is inadequate: the the BBC has given a lot of airtime to various government-sponsored anti-bullying campaigns, yet many of its best-paid employees take part in activities which would be called bullying if they took place in the playground. Making abusive phonecalls to an elderly gentleman about his granddaughter is excused because Ross apologies – but this is beyond apology. The justification made was that Ross is edgy and has a youth appeal: but is this the kind of behaviour we want to be modelling in our schools? A cursory glance at Cbeebies in the afternoon shows that there is a set of assumptions operating there: the presenters act like overgrown children rather than adults, presumably in order to identify with youth; there are no positive authority figures: there is an evil headmaster in one programme, old people are uniformly ridiculous; these negative portrayals seem always to be of white people – no-one from an ethnic minority is shown in this negative light. This manufactures a world-view, based on the assumptions of the left, which our children, in drip-drip fashion imbibe: that authority is bad, the views of the old don't matter, that white people are objects of ridicule, but other racial groups are not, that children need adults to be older children, rather than to model responsible and mature behaviour. The output of the BBC, generally speaking, could not be better calculated to warp the moral sensibilities of the young, and this has been going on for decades.
That there is inconsistency was noted by Evan Davis on the Today programme this morning and it is worth saying why it exists. It seems to be a historical legacy of the 60's cultural revolution, which was characterised by an “anything goes” conception of freedom: standards of politeness and decency were scorned as antiquated, conventional morality; other facets of this revolution in values was a scornful rejection of the family and childrearing, of the traditional roles of fatherhood and motherhood; a caricaturing of western history as irredemiably racist and imperialist. This world view justifies the politically correct laws of sexism and racism, and the restrictions on free speech they impose; but their prescriptiveness is very far from the promise of “anything goes”. One dared not say that immigration was problematic, that women are harmed by abortion, that black people can also be racist, that a disproportionate amount of crime is committed by black youths; nor could one point out the civilising achievements of western civilisation or of Christianity. Underlying this censorship is the a world-view where white people oppress other races, men oppress women, the rich oppress the poor; correspondingly the role of enlightened opinion to combat this.
The irony of this is that the new morality is discriminatory, putting some classes of people under suspicion: at the moment Racism is the main crime, so white people are permanently under suspicion, and need to be re-educated or controlled. I remember a famous black anti-racism campaigner of the old school on-air during Question Time a few years ago; he referred to "every jihadist in the corner shops", meaning Muslim shopkeepers; this can clearly be labelled as “racist” in the sense that it characterises all Muslims and is rather crude thinking, given that all Muslims do not support terrorism. There was a perceptible silence, but no-one challenged him, and I have never any controversy arising from it; whether he was quietly removed from the BBC afterwards, I can't say because the BBC has so many channels and outlets. I suspect if he was white, there would have been uproar; but to challenge a black person would undermine the fiction that the crime of Racism is a historically-determined aberration existing only among white people. Carol Thatcher is the ideal sort of person who can be accused of Racism, being white, and, I would add, from a well-to-do, famously conservative background.
Unlike Darby's, Carol Thatcher's misdemeanour was off-air, but the attitudes of the BBC authorities are uncompromising and punitive; an apology is not enough, it must be an unreserved apology. Calling a mixed-race tennis player a gollywog is not particularly funny, but in the context not harmful, being private; but Carol Thatcher apologised for the offence, qualifying the apology by saying it was a joke. This should have been enough, but it was elevated to the level of unacceptable behaviour and an unreserved apology was required. Yes, as some black people have said, gollywog was a term of abuse for black people in the racially charged 1970's; but Carol Thatcher didn't shout Gollywog across the street with the intention of abusing another person. This is equating deliberate bullying containing a threat if violence in the street from a stranger with a casual remark made in a private or semi-private sphere. Carol Thatcher seems to be the perpetrator of a thought crime.
Without knowing the facts of the case, I suspect that Thatcher is the victim of another kind of bullying, the coercive groupthink that can take place in organisations towards anyone who represents a different view of the world, whether political or moral. In this case, it is the groupthink of political correctness where the slightest slip leaves you open to demonisation and ostracisation. Her colleagues, Jo Brand and Adrian Chiles are clearly BBC people and Thatcher seems to have fallen victim to an intolerance to any other standards than that of the group, perhaps to more petty motives such as personal dislike or willingness to ingratiate oneself to the powers that be. It shows how modern-day progressive liberalism exhibits many of the aspects of totalitarian regimes like Communist Russia, except that in our more free and democratic society, they have less power to enforce their views on the population. Nor should one forget the power of the BBC, which dominates broadcasting in this country (87% of the market, according to Robin Aitken); if a journalist or presenter falls foul of BBC moral dictates, their choices in finding another job will be severely limited. The monopoly of the BBC is one of the greatest threats to free speech and democratic politics in Britain.
The importance of maintaining a charitable approach to free speech is vital here. People make mistakes, they cause offence and perhaps need to be challenged. But this heavy treatment is disproportionate; moreover, it is not clear if it really defeats racism or whether it encourages a hypocritical lip-service to the newly enforced morality. Ironically, the fact that it is treated so seriously is tacit admission that the politics of race and ethnicity are very toxic in spite of many years of education about diversity: rather than a happy melting pot, we can use the “gollywog” controversy as evidence that race relations in this country are a tinderbox, where strong prohibitions on free speech are required in order to keep the peace. This is not a good indicator for the prospects for multi-racial Britain in the future. Rather than pretending that we can end racial tension by correcting the errors of the white population and demonising people who make these errors, we should accept that the tensions exist and be more forgiving when people make mistakes. Otherwise we risk creating more resentment than we avoid, and losing our traditions of free speech into the bargain.
This goes against Trevor Philips' contention (made on a BBC Radio 4 programme on the subject of political correctness, masquerading as a balanced portrayal) that political correctness is simply about politeness. But we see that most forms of disgraceful behaviour are outside the remit of politically correct policing. The Jade Goody case in Big Brother illustrates the point. The low-level aggression and rudeness that the Shelpa Shetty received was an accepted part of the reality TV experience; but the minute it becomes “racial bullying” - some comments about curry and what Indians do, then Jade Goody became subject to the full weight of moral opprobrium; Channel 4 itself was criticised for going too far and there was talking of stopping the Big Brother show. Jade Goody felt so under pressure that she was forced into a tearful apology and denial that she was a “racist”: what more terrible crime could there be? Celebrities can get indulge in any kind of boorishness and rudeness, but any suggestion of Racism puts you beyond the pale. This goes against Trevor Phillips' contention that being PC was just another form of being polite and treating others well; the very best construction is that it promotes politeness sometimes.
More to the point, politically correct morality is inadequate: the the BBC has given a lot of airtime to various government-sponsored anti-bullying campaigns, yet many of its best-paid employees take part in activities which would be called bullying if they took place in the playground. Making abusive phonecalls to an elderly gentleman about his granddaughter is excused because Ross apologies – but this is beyond apology. The justification made was that Ross is edgy and has a youth appeal: but is this the kind of behaviour we want to be modelling in our schools? A cursory glance at Cbeebies in the afternoon shows that there is a set of assumptions operating there: the presenters act like overgrown children rather than adults, presumably in order to identify with youth; there are no positive authority figures: there is an evil headmaster in one programme, old people are uniformly ridiculous; these negative portrayals seem always to be of white people – no-one from an ethnic minority is shown in this negative light. This manufactures a world-view, based on the assumptions of the left, which our children, in drip-drip fashion imbibe: that authority is bad, the views of the old don't matter, that white people are objects of ridicule, but other racial groups are not, that children need adults to be older children, rather than to model responsible and mature behaviour. The output of the BBC, generally speaking, could not be better calculated to warp the moral sensibilities of the young, and this has been going on for decades.
That there is inconsistency was noted by Evan Davis on the Today programme this morning and it is worth saying why it exists. It seems to be a historical legacy of the 60's cultural revolution, which was characterised by an “anything goes” conception of freedom: standards of politeness and decency were scorned as antiquated, conventional morality; other facets of this revolution in values was a scornful rejection of the family and childrearing, of the traditional roles of fatherhood and motherhood; a caricaturing of western history as irredemiably racist and imperialist. This world view justifies the politically correct laws of sexism and racism, and the restrictions on free speech they impose; but their prescriptiveness is very far from the promise of “anything goes”. One dared not say that immigration was problematic, that women are harmed by abortion, that black people can also be racist, that a disproportionate amount of crime is committed by black youths; nor could one point out the civilising achievements of western civilisation or of Christianity. Underlying this censorship is the a world-view where white people oppress other races, men oppress women, the rich oppress the poor; correspondingly the role of enlightened opinion to combat this.
The irony of this is that the new morality is discriminatory, putting some classes of people under suspicion: at the moment Racism is the main crime, so white people are permanently under suspicion, and need to be re-educated or controlled. I remember a famous black anti-racism campaigner of the old school on-air during Question Time a few years ago; he referred to "every jihadist in the corner shops", meaning Muslim shopkeepers; this can clearly be labelled as “racist” in the sense that it characterises all Muslims and is rather crude thinking, given that all Muslims do not support terrorism. There was a perceptible silence, but no-one challenged him, and I have never any controversy arising from it; whether he was quietly removed from the BBC afterwards, I can't say because the BBC has so many channels and outlets. I suspect if he was white, there would have been uproar; but to challenge a black person would undermine the fiction that the crime of Racism is a historically-determined aberration existing only among white people. Carol Thatcher is the ideal sort of person who can be accused of Racism, being white, and, I would add, from a well-to-do, famously conservative background.
Unlike Darby's, Carol Thatcher's misdemeanour was off-air, but the attitudes of the BBC authorities are uncompromising and punitive; an apology is not enough, it must be an unreserved apology. Calling a mixed-race tennis player a gollywog is not particularly funny, but in the context not harmful, being private; but Carol Thatcher apologised for the offence, qualifying the apology by saying it was a joke. This should have been enough, but it was elevated to the level of unacceptable behaviour and an unreserved apology was required. Yes, as some black people have said, gollywog was a term of abuse for black people in the racially charged 1970's; but Carol Thatcher didn't shout Gollywog across the street with the intention of abusing another person. This is equating deliberate bullying containing a threat if violence in the street from a stranger with a casual remark made in a private or semi-private sphere. Carol Thatcher seems to be the perpetrator of a thought crime.
Without knowing the facts of the case, I suspect that Thatcher is the victim of another kind of bullying, the coercive groupthink that can take place in organisations towards anyone who represents a different view of the world, whether political or moral. In this case, it is the groupthink of political correctness where the slightest slip leaves you open to demonisation and ostracisation. Her colleagues, Jo Brand and Adrian Chiles are clearly BBC people and Thatcher seems to have fallen victim to an intolerance to any other standards than that of the group, perhaps to more petty motives such as personal dislike or willingness to ingratiate oneself to the powers that be. It shows how modern-day progressive liberalism exhibits many of the aspects of totalitarian regimes like Communist Russia, except that in our more free and democratic society, they have less power to enforce their views on the population. Nor should one forget the power of the BBC, which dominates broadcasting in this country (87% of the market, according to Robin Aitken); if a journalist or presenter falls foul of BBC moral dictates, their choices in finding another job will be severely limited. The monopoly of the BBC is one of the greatest threats to free speech and democratic politics in Britain.
The importance of maintaining a charitable approach to free speech is vital here. People make mistakes, they cause offence and perhaps need to be challenged. But this heavy treatment is disproportionate; moreover, it is not clear if it really defeats racism or whether it encourages a hypocritical lip-service to the newly enforced morality. Ironically, the fact that it is treated so seriously is tacit admission that the politics of race and ethnicity are very toxic in spite of many years of education about diversity: rather than a happy melting pot, we can use the “gollywog” controversy as evidence that race relations in this country are a tinderbox, where strong prohibitions on free speech are required in order to keep the peace. This is not a good indicator for the prospects for multi-racial Britain in the future. Rather than pretending that we can end racial tension by correcting the errors of the white population and demonising people who make these errors, we should accept that the tensions exist and be more forgiving when people make mistakes. Otherwise we risk creating more resentment than we avoid, and losing our traditions of free speech into the bargain.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
An exploitative version of Capitalism and unaccountable elites
Alan Johnson conceded that ther loopholes in EU law are unfair. These allowed a Finnish shipping company to change flag and hire cheap estonian labour, and a latvian construction company working in Sweden to hire Latvians instead of Swedes. Both cases went to EU judges, who favoured the employers. This is the race to the bottom, where workers in reasonably well-off countries are also subject to wage undercutting because there will always be someone in another country who will be happy to work for less.
Some right-of-centre commentators are arguing against the official line of the Conservative party. Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail criticised Mandelson for promoting an exploitative form of capitalism. He criticised Brown for being populist also, which is true, but it depends on what you meant by populism. Janet Daley writes that people are realising what they have signed up for with the EU: "it is now illegal – illegal – for the government of an EU country to put the needs and concerns of its own population first." She then goes on to say that people who legitimately resent the importation of cheap labour en masse are being smeared with accusations of racism; that the free market of labour envisaged by the EU is part of the democratic deficit.
We should note how the accusation of populism is levelled at Gordon Brown for his "British Jobs for British workers" speech. One one level this is right: it is outrageous for a managerialist politician like Brown to promise what he can't deliver under EU law, for the sake of electioneering; but we have a situation where the concerns of probably a majority of the electorate are not being addressed by the political elites: it becomes "populist" to dispute the consensus of the political elites.
You can argue that by not protecting your workers and other countries not protecting their workers, you create this ideal world of optimal prosperity. But this is pretty abstract, at best, even if it were true. It depends on people ignoring the moral ties they have to their own communities in favour of a counter-intuitive internationalism. There are problems with this model, however. What happens instead when the compact between governments and their people are broken is that governments see their responsibility in terms of protecting world (or EU) trade laws and facilitating employment conditions that favour (increasingly) trans-national companies rather than looking to the interests of the people who elected them. This leads to a more cut-throat version of capitalism where employers can drive wages down according to the laws of supply and demand. It leads to a lowering of living standards for home workers. It creates exploitative conditions for immigrants who need to live in very poor conditions in order to live by the wages they are offered. A common practice is for employers of immigrant labour to pay the minimum wage and then to deduct (at a high rate) rents from the workers they ship in. Even when immigrants are not shipped in, the increase in the supply of labour drives down wages while simultaneously raising the prices of fixed resources such as housing.
It also assumes that no-one is cheating, that every government in the world will play by the rules. We see that Asian countries have higher tarriffs for goods whan we do; the chinese are engaging in competitive currency devaluations; china and middle-eastern governments are investing their surplus cash into Sovereign Wealth Funds owned by the state rather than independent, globally-focused enrepeneurs or companies. State-owned businesses are buying up the world's commodity resources under the noses of an increasingly impoverished West, which for the most part has lived by the mantra of Freedom of capital, goods, services and labour.
Throughout the neo-liberal period, which seemed to start in the late 70's/early 80's and reaches its apex in the 90's, there has been a popular undercurrent of disquiet about immigration, the EU, outsourcing, the decline in manufacturing, all based on the idea that we are part of one world and it is ultimately counter-productive for individual countries to distort the free market and protect its own interests. These popular feelings have been marginialised by political elites, who use cross-party consensus, obsequience to big business and politically correct national media organisations like the BBC to swamp political discourse with the internationalist perspective.
The irony is that both left and right have betrayed their intellectual roots, which is another way of saying they have betrayed their own people. After the fall of Communism and the discrediting of Socialist economics, the left saw Free Trade and Mass immigration as the means of downgrading traditional cultural values, promoting international solidarity and world-wide governmental institutions. The Free Market became one of the main instruments in promoting the cultural revolution in the West. The right, since Thatcher and Reagan, saw the doctrine of Free Trade and the unrestricted market as a way of combating socialism and the left, and guaranteeing liberty. The irony is that Thatcher herself was against laissez-faire even if many members of the later Thatcher and Major governments were not; and Reagan forced imports quotas on the Japanese in the 80's, forcing them to locate factory production in the US. These heros of the right were pragmatists, not idealogues.
This alliance between left and right is not accidental. Free Trade and big government go well together. If workers lose their jobs because of outsourcing, the state will pick up the bill in terms of welfare; if state spending goes up, corporations can avoid taxes and the striving classes (i.e., working classes and middle classes) will pay. Corporations will support all manner of green, ethnic diversity and gender equality initiatives, paid for by the Corporate Social Responsibility budgets; cheap at the price if they can avoid taxes and use the flexible labour markets to hire cheap labour. The New Labour government are afraid of driving these companies away in a globalised market, but they still want to spend taxpayers money on big government schemes. So they have accepted the devil's bargain that the productive part of the population pay higher taxes. Socialists don't mind how the wealth is produced; they care only that the money is there so they can dispense state largesse.
Even the Chinese Premier yesterday said that his government would look after China first. If a dictatorship can say this, what has happened to democratic politicians in the West. Moreover, China's production-based model is enriching his country; our capitalism is impoverishing ours.
Some right-of-centre commentators are arguing against the official line of the Conservative party. Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail criticised Mandelson for promoting an exploitative form of capitalism. He criticised Brown for being populist also, which is true, but it depends on what you meant by populism. Janet Daley writes that people are realising what they have signed up for with the EU: "it is now illegal – illegal – for the government of an EU country to put the needs and concerns of its own population first." She then goes on to say that people who legitimately resent the importation of cheap labour en masse are being smeared with accusations of racism; that the free market of labour envisaged by the EU is part of the democratic deficit.
We should note how the accusation of populism is levelled at Gordon Brown for his "British Jobs for British workers" speech. One one level this is right: it is outrageous for a managerialist politician like Brown to promise what he can't deliver under EU law, for the sake of electioneering; but we have a situation where the concerns of probably a majority of the electorate are not being addressed by the political elites: it becomes "populist" to dispute the consensus of the political elites.
You can argue that by not protecting your workers and other countries not protecting their workers, you create this ideal world of optimal prosperity. But this is pretty abstract, at best, even if it were true. It depends on people ignoring the moral ties they have to their own communities in favour of a counter-intuitive internationalism. There are problems with this model, however. What happens instead when the compact between governments and their people are broken is that governments see their responsibility in terms of protecting world (or EU) trade laws and facilitating employment conditions that favour (increasingly) trans-national companies rather than looking to the interests of the people who elected them. This leads to a more cut-throat version of capitalism where employers can drive wages down according to the laws of supply and demand. It leads to a lowering of living standards for home workers. It creates exploitative conditions for immigrants who need to live in very poor conditions in order to live by the wages they are offered. A common practice is for employers of immigrant labour to pay the minimum wage and then to deduct (at a high rate) rents from the workers they ship in. Even when immigrants are not shipped in, the increase in the supply of labour drives down wages while simultaneously raising the prices of fixed resources such as housing.
It also assumes that no-one is cheating, that every government in the world will play by the rules. We see that Asian countries have higher tarriffs for goods whan we do; the chinese are engaging in competitive currency devaluations; china and middle-eastern governments are investing their surplus cash into Sovereign Wealth Funds owned by the state rather than independent, globally-focused enrepeneurs or companies. State-owned businesses are buying up the world's commodity resources under the noses of an increasingly impoverished West, which for the most part has lived by the mantra of Freedom of capital, goods, services and labour.
Throughout the neo-liberal period, which seemed to start in the late 70's/early 80's and reaches its apex in the 90's, there has been a popular undercurrent of disquiet about immigration, the EU, outsourcing, the decline in manufacturing, all based on the idea that we are part of one world and it is ultimately counter-productive for individual countries to distort the free market and protect its own interests. These popular feelings have been marginialised by political elites, who use cross-party consensus, obsequience to big business and politically correct national media organisations like the BBC to swamp political discourse with the internationalist perspective.
The irony is that both left and right have betrayed their intellectual roots, which is another way of saying they have betrayed their own people. After the fall of Communism and the discrediting of Socialist economics, the left saw Free Trade and Mass immigration as the means of downgrading traditional cultural values, promoting international solidarity and world-wide governmental institutions. The Free Market became one of the main instruments in promoting the cultural revolution in the West. The right, since Thatcher and Reagan, saw the doctrine of Free Trade and the unrestricted market as a way of combating socialism and the left, and guaranteeing liberty. The irony is that Thatcher herself was against laissez-faire even if many members of the later Thatcher and Major governments were not; and Reagan forced imports quotas on the Japanese in the 80's, forcing them to locate factory production in the US. These heros of the right were pragmatists, not idealogues.
This alliance between left and right is not accidental. Free Trade and big government go well together. If workers lose their jobs because of outsourcing, the state will pick up the bill in terms of welfare; if state spending goes up, corporations can avoid taxes and the striving classes (i.e., working classes and middle classes) will pay. Corporations will support all manner of green, ethnic diversity and gender equality initiatives, paid for by the Corporate Social Responsibility budgets; cheap at the price if they can avoid taxes and use the flexible labour markets to hire cheap labour. The New Labour government are afraid of driving these companies away in a globalised market, but they still want to spend taxpayers money on big government schemes. So they have accepted the devil's bargain that the productive part of the population pay higher taxes. Socialists don't mind how the wealth is produced; they care only that the money is there so they can dispense state largesse.
Even the Chinese Premier yesterday said that his government would look after China first. If a dictatorship can say this, what has happened to democratic politicians in the West. Moreover, China's production-based model is enriching his country; our capitalism is impoverishing ours.
Monday, 2 February 2009
workers revolt: some in the Left are listening but not the Conservative party
In my previous entry, I predicted that the left would try to smother the strike story, due to their love affair with internationalism. Although the usual pious diatribes against xenophobia can be found in the pages of the Guardian, my prediction has proved happily incorrect, at least in part, with much disquiet and vocal comments from people such as Frank Field and John Cruddas, talking of a race to the bottom. Both are critical of Brown's economic philosophy. Now that their membership have led the way, the unions are also saying that they have been telling the Government about this problem for years. If only they had told us.
It is the Right however, or at least its most important representative, Davos Cameron's Conservative party, which stands up for the “free movement of labour” principle. Cameron himself set the tone with his criticism of the prime minister for pandering to the BNP with his British Jobs for British Workers speech. While this is true as far as it goes, anyone with experience of political discourse in this country will know that raising the spectre of the BNP is really a signal that the speaker does not want to discuss the issues. At Davos, Cameron waxed lyrical on the need for a new moral capitalism. Cynics might doubt this and wonder if the standard bearer for a new “progressive conservatism” has missed a vocation as PR frontman for a Corporate Social Responsibility department in a major corporation – perhaps Total. Moral capitalism and his criticism of the last 15 years sounds promising, but it needs application to specific issues like this one to see what it means.
A more honest comment on the Andrew Marr show, the de-facto deputy leader, William Hague said that free movement of Labour was one of the aspects of the EU that we strongly favour. Marr, author of the much plugged (by the BBC), centre-left history of post-war Britain, allowed Hague to move quickly away from this topic. Ken Clarke on the Today programme today said that the free movement of labour was ultimately good for us all, that it was only because of the recession that people were protesting, the solution was to work for economic recovery. He also castigated the prime ministers infamous soundbite as “populism”. How long can they maintain a distinction between democratic politics and populism remains to be seen. Interesting that the Independent reported Peter Mandelson saying that British workers could go to Europe to find jobs, which shows how the debate cuts across party lines, with the establishment in both Labour and Conservatives favouring the globalisation/free market agenda. It also vindicates Peter Hitchens' comments that there is no point Clarke and Mandelson arguing across the dispatch box, because they agree on everything.
In the Telegraph, the Saturday Leader and the Sunday Leader contained homilies against the evils of protectionism, reflecting the establishment position and its Torygraph nickname. Also anti-protectionist articles by George Walden. The Daily Mail had two seemingly contradictory leaders, one criticising mass immigration, the other defending free markets against protectionism, which shows the ambivalence on the right between neo-liberal market ideology and the instinct to defend one's country. The last word is left to Christopher Booker, who comments (under "Unions learn the cost of Union membership") that since Delor's speech in 1988, the TUC have been highly supportive of the EU project, something they might regret now. All Booker can do is point out the inconsistencies, which brings us to the nub of the matter, that domestic politicians can do nothing in the face of EU Law. Asking whether EU Law is just or not leads to the question of whether EU membership is worth the disadvantages. Cameron's “moral captitalism” speech immediately is put to the test.
Links to follow later
It is the Right however, or at least its most important representative, Davos Cameron's Conservative party, which stands up for the “free movement of labour” principle. Cameron himself set the tone with his criticism of the prime minister for pandering to the BNP with his British Jobs for British Workers speech. While this is true as far as it goes, anyone with experience of political discourse in this country will know that raising the spectre of the BNP is really a signal that the speaker does not want to discuss the issues. At Davos, Cameron waxed lyrical on the need for a new moral capitalism. Cynics might doubt this and wonder if the standard bearer for a new “progressive conservatism” has missed a vocation as PR frontman for a Corporate Social Responsibility department in a major corporation – perhaps Total. Moral capitalism and his criticism of the last 15 years sounds promising, but it needs application to specific issues like this one to see what it means.
A more honest comment on the Andrew Marr show, the de-facto deputy leader, William Hague said that free movement of Labour was one of the aspects of the EU that we strongly favour. Marr, author of the much plugged (by the BBC), centre-left history of post-war Britain, allowed Hague to move quickly away from this topic. Ken Clarke on the Today programme today said that the free movement of labour was ultimately good for us all, that it was only because of the recession that people were protesting, the solution was to work for economic recovery. He also castigated the prime ministers infamous soundbite as “populism”. How long can they maintain a distinction between democratic politics and populism remains to be seen. Interesting that the Independent reported Peter Mandelson saying that British workers could go to Europe to find jobs, which shows how the debate cuts across party lines, with the establishment in both Labour and Conservatives favouring the globalisation/free market agenda. It also vindicates Peter Hitchens' comments that there is no point Clarke and Mandelson arguing across the dispatch box, because they agree on everything.
In the Telegraph, the Saturday Leader and the Sunday Leader contained homilies against the evils of protectionism, reflecting the establishment position and its Torygraph nickname. Also anti-protectionist articles by George Walden. The Daily Mail had two seemingly contradictory leaders, one criticising mass immigration, the other defending free markets against protectionism, which shows the ambivalence on the right between neo-liberal market ideology and the instinct to defend one's country. The last word is left to Christopher Booker, who comments (under "Unions learn the cost of Union membership") that since Delor's speech in 1988, the TUC have been highly supportive of the EU project, something they might regret now. All Booker can do is point out the inconsistencies, which brings us to the nub of the matter, that domestic politicians can do nothing in the face of EU Law. Asking whether EU Law is just or not leads to the question of whether EU membership is worth the disadvantages. Cameron's “moral captitalism” speech immediately is put to the test.
Links to follow later
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