Do Not Treat My Politics as Any Less than Yours

As anyone who has read this blog down the years will not be surprised, I am pleased that Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the Labour Party.  After the May 2015 election I did not have any expectation that the Labour Party will be re-elected.  The demographics are against them and as has been quoted before, the British public is Conservative and only occasionally votes Labour.  Indeed the New Labour it voted for was simply a pale blue version of the Conservative Party with a better publicity machine.  Corbyn is refreshing because he puts forward an attitude that many, if only a large minority, have felt have been missing from British politics (though clearly not the politics of Greece or other European countries) for so long.

It is not surprising that the right-wing media have attacked Corbyn on every basis from what songs he might sing to who he slept with forty years ago to his fashion sense to made-up policies they think sound poor.  In some ways I welcome that fact as it does suggest that they see him as a genuine threat to their distortions and scares peddled to the population.  If Andy Burnham had won, I doubt he would have attracted a fraction of the attention that Corbyn has done.

'The Guardian' feels that Corbyn and his camp could have rebuffed false accusations if they had had their 'media machine' set up quicker.  In some ways, however, I am heartened by the fact that it was not.  To feel an obligation to rebuff every last accusation as soon as possible is simply to play the game of the right-wing; it shows that you feel that you can be harmed by them, rather than ignoring the rubbish thrown at you because it is in fact nothing more than rubbish, often fabricated and always plastered with indignation.

Corbyn is facing a man who left a child unattended in a pub and has no grasp of how 95% of the UK population live.  Even when he is pictured on public transport, it is clearly faked.  Corbyn looks like he belongs on the underground train, travelling home from work, looking tired, like literally millions of other Londoners.  Part of the problem are the Blair years.  The Blairite government made themselves masters of media manipulation.  However, they also made themselves vulnerable by seeming to care whether one MP stepped off a very narrow line about a policy.  They created a context in which it is felt that unless an entire political party is full of drones mouthing exactly the same words on everything it has somehow failed.  This makes it very difficult for genuine debate to occur not just over the big issues but also the nuances within them.  That does not aid British democracy.  Why is it acceptable for the Conservatives to have a spectrum of opinion from people wanting immediate exit from the EU to those who want to stay in forever and yet even moderate differences on the issue are seen as a 'failure' by Corbyn.  I suppose because we lack a left-wing media.

The anti-Corbyn campaign has been so relentless that it is unsurprising that it is picked up unquestioned and every crumb used as gospel truth by a lot of the population.  I work where people generally have to have a decent level of education to be employed.  However, I have been harangued by the fact that Corbyn wants to wreck the UK economy by scrapping the Queen and he will abolish the Army the moment he comes into office.  Even then, to me such policies seem pretty rational alongside ones such as compelling schools to become academies and allowing the private sector to take over handling prisoners and hospitals.  Given how shoddy and expensive the British railway system is, why is it not shouted down whenever anyone suggests it is not re-nationalised?

I do not expect people to agree with me.  This is a democracy, there are different parties and there is a range of views within every political party no matter how the Conservatives and the media portray it.  Yet, Corbyn politics in a matter of a week have been made to appear illegitimate even to discuss and at best something very naive.  No other political leader has reinvigorated a movement in this way for decades.  Perhaps Sir Keith Joseph and following in his footsteps, Margaret Thatcher did for the Conservatives and that was forty years ago now.  Yet if I ever say anything positive about a Corbyn policy people titter as if I am foolish.  I would be happier to accept them being angry about my approach.  However, the right seems to be winning as it did in the 1980s by simply making Labour policies not seem a threat but simply not worthy of even considering and viewing anyone who proposes them as 'loony'.  It worked before, so I should not be surprised that it is working now.  It is exasperating for a number of reasons.

I could stand in a French or a Greek workplace and outline political views at odds with the people around me and they might disagree perhaps vocally, but they would not look on me as a child; they would not strip me of my right to hold that opinion.  To do so in Britain is a form of censorship which is in fact akin to the approach of dictatorships, not that of other mature democracies.  A further point is that I could state that the world was created in 7 days in 4004 BC; that dinosaur bones were laid in the strata by God to show man the passing of all things and that one day the righteous will be lifted into the skies during the Rapture and no-one would be allowed to laugh or ridicule my views without risking a disciplinary action for discrimination.  I subscribe to a political stance which is rational and in my view would be better for the bulk of people living in my country than the current policies.  Yet, because those very few who control our society and economy feel threatened by such views, they have schooled their minions in the population to ridicule and simply dismiss even the expression of that view.  Is it any surprise that people say Britain has only a partial democracy?

More UK Government Harassment Of Diabetics

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I have Type 1 diabetes which comes about because of a disease or a failure in the body, typically before middle age rather than Type 2 which tends to arise from obesity or old age.  For some reason the current government is particularly hostile to diabetics.  As I noted in 2013 we are treated as if we are drug abusers and if involved in a car accident that was not out fault we can be arrested and the perpetrator let off: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/diabetic-driver-discrimination.html   The difficulty the police have with diabetics was re-emphasised recently as new laws are coming against drugged driving.  Diabetics are being told to carry medical 'evidence' or face being arrested as if we were abusing heroin or cocaine.  This is ironic because, unlike drug abusers, diabetics are highly aware that with care they can maintain good health and prolong their lives, so they tend to safety-minded rather than reckless.  In one step, however, people with a disability (diabetes has been considered a disability legally since 2005 in the UK) are now assumed to be on the same level as criminal and drug abusers.  I might as well have a letter from my doctor tattooed on to my body to ensure that even if I am beaten unconscious by the police who decide to stop me, the medical evidence cannot be lost.

Anyway, today's posting is about something slightly different.  Britain has long been proud of its state-run health service and its welfare system.  However, there has long been a concern that provision should only go to 'deserving people' and that both run the risk of abuse from 'scroungers' and 'fiddlers'.  Diabetes is one of ten conditions which means you get free prescriptions.  The reason for this is that I take four injections per day of two types of insulin and I take four other sets of tablets.  Each prescription lasts me twenty-eight days (when the doctor gets it right, sometime they only prescribe a fortnight's worth).  At the current rate of £8.05 per item I would be spending £629 (US$968; €849) per year just on the medicines, this does not include the needles for the two insulin injectors or the blood test strips which tell me my blood sugar levels and which I have to use 30 minutes before every time I drive and then every 2 hours of a journey, so getting through a pack of 50 a week very easily.  An acquaintance of mine in the USA has to keep down a good job to fund his Type 1 diabetes and it eats into the money he has for rent and food, the costs there are so high.  The UK prescription charge is a fixed rate not what I would have to pay to buy this medication and appliances on the open market.

With the drive of the coalition government to reduce public expenditure to the level of the 1930s they are incessantly trying to hunt down and charge people who are defrauding the system, that is unless they are high salary tax avoiders or bankers.  Today Diabetes UK reported that many legitimate diabetics were being fined for apparently trying to defraud the NHS (National Health Service) by claiming exemptions from prescription charges.  It was stated in the news that most of those affected were people diagnosed before 2000 when the need to renew your exemption certificate every five years was introduced.  Before them you had a certificate for life because at present Type 1 diabetes is incurable.  The NHS Business Services Authority said it was down to the individuals to make sure that they complied with the rules as they now stood.  What was neglected on the news was that even people who do still face fines.

I have had Type 1 diabetes since the 1980s.  In 2000 I was told by my pharmacy in East London that they could no longer serve me without an exemption card so I got one and have renewed it every five years since.  I have a current one at the moment.  However, even this has not spared me for receiving a fine of £96.60 (US$148; €130).  The letter was very threatening and starts from the assumption that you are guilty.  There is only a tiny section which tells you how to contest the charge laid against you.  If you do not pay within a month they add another £48-50 on to the fine.  Obviously I rushed to contest the fine, though of course they were not there on the weekends.  They finally admitted that they were wrong. 

Apparently the problem arose because they had an old address for me and that did not match the one I was now using.  I asked them how it came about that they did not have my latest address.  Every time I move house I have to register with a local doctor and from there my new address goes on to my NHS file and is not only used by the local surgery but also hospitals in the surrounding area so that they can call me for associated checks on my eyes, my feet and my diet.  I could not understand why they did not receive the same information as I had been at this address for seven months already.

It turns out that the NHS Business Services Authority is not connected to the NHS records system so every time you move you have to inform them separately.  All they do is compare fee-exempt prescriptions coming in against a list they hold and if something does not match then they send out a fine.  What this seems to be is a private company doing something for the government as so often is the case these days.  It does not bother with the processes in place and simply applies its own rules, funding itself from the fines it gathers.

There is a further unpleasant aspect to the Business Services Authority's approach and that it utterly disparages the staff working in pharmacies.  As I collect a prescription from mine every two to four weeks, I am well known in there.  However, every time I go in, I have to produce my exemption card and it is checked by the staff even before they accept my prescription.  Clearly however the Business Services Authority has absolutely no trust in the assiduousness or the capabilities of the pharmacy staff even when dealing with patients they are very familiar with.  Their whole approach is an insult to these professionals.

One can imagine that similar cases will come forward from those with one of the other nine conditions that have been treated in the same way.  I do fear that given this government has overseen two steps to harass diabetics what will happen in the next five years if the Conservatives are even part of the government let alone if they have a majority.  This is despite Prime Minister David Cameron having had a disabled son.  What will he next steps be?  To ban diabetics from driving even though no-one has shown any evidence that they are any great risk and certainly not more than the speeding Clarkson-wannabes who apparently are in full health?  Will the next Prime Minister choose to follow the path of Winston Churchill in the 1900s and seek the sterilisation of those deemed to be at risk of 'sullying' the Great British blood?  By 2020 will I find myself at a risk of not simply an unwarranted fine but a summons to an institution to house me where I will never return from and will be lost to 'complications'.  Remember the Nazi regime killed 70,000 disabled people even before they started the Second World War.  Diabetes is an 'unseen' disability so if people with it are suffering harassment what can be expected for those with more visible conditions?

P.P. 24/03/2015 - The Penalties
Just to sum up how horrendous the prejudice is against diabetics these are the penalties now in force that I will suffer as a Type 1 diabetic if someone decides to crash into me.  In contrast, they may walk away with absolutely no penalty.  This comes from the UK government official website:

"Prescription medicines

It’s illegal in England and Wales to drive with legal drugs in your body if it impairs your driving."

However, if you are involved in an accident that was not your fault they still can arrest you as if it was, because as a Type 1 diabetic you are no longer considered to be like normal people.

"If you’re convicted of drug driving you’ll get:

• a minimum 1 year driving ban
• an unlimited fine
• up to 6 months in prison
• a criminal record

Your driving licence will also show you’ve been convicted for drug driving. This will last for 11 years."

So all I need to spend time in prison and get a criminal record is to have one of those Clarkson-deluded speeders shunt me.  If this is not discrimination against a minority, I do not know what is.

Guaranteeing Eternal Conservative Governments - One Victory is Not Enough to Satisfy Cameron

I did wonder during the lead up to the Scottish independence referendum why Prime Minister David Cameron was campaigning so hard for Scotland to remain in the Union.  With Scotland independent, the Labour Party would be denied 41 of its current 256 MPs.  In contrast the Conservatives have only 1 MP from Scotland among their 304 currently in the House of Commons.  It would have probably made it impossible for Labour ever to get back into office on its own ever again.  While this would not have ensured a Conservative government for ever more, it would certainly have increased the chances of that happening.  I realise now that I was naive to wonder why Cameron was behaving in the way he did.  

Today the explanation has become clear.  In fact it did not matter which way the referendum went, he had plans on how to permanently reduce Labour's majority at Westminster.  This can be seen as the next step in his shaping of democracy to constantly favour his party.  We know that boundary changes will favour the Conservatives anyway.  However, now he is going to exclude Scottish MPs from voting on legislation that is about England (and presumably Wales too).  The argument is that with certain powers being given to the Scottish Parliament it is argued Scots MPs in Westminster should not then vote on things that English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs cannot affect in the Scottish Parliament.  Of course, 83% of the UK population lives in England and with the royal prerogative legislation passed can be extended in time or scope without reference to Parliament.  Thus, now Cameron can simply introduce purely English laws, be guaranteed of opposition not being able to muster sufficient seats and then extend it to the other nations through royal prerogative.

Cameron has steadily adopted steps to reduce democracy.  The introduction of the fixed 5-year term was the first move in this direction, making it almost impossible to break the coalition or bring down his minority government.  The vote on proportional representation similarly dismissed another chance to make the UK more democratic.  Only one, poor model was offered and yet its rejection is seen as ruling out any electoral reform.  At the last election the Conservatives received 36.1% of the vote but 47.2% of the seats; Labour won 29.0% of the votes but 39% of the seats; the Liberal Democrats got 23% of the votes but only 8.7% of the seats, they should have received 149 rather than 57.  However, these things such as fair representation are seen as 'not British'.  The Conservatives benefit from the fact that most British people feel politics is somehow inappropriate for them even though they complain about its impact.

Of course, the chipping away of democracy was begun under the Blair regime.  With hindsight it appears that the governments of Tony Blair had very little to do with Labour Party values, they were simply a repackaged form of Thatcherism something Cameron is taking to new extremes.  The erosion of civil liberties under Blair, notably the extension of detention without charge; the declaration of war based on faked evidence, the elimination of some critics and steps like identity cards and the RIPA anti-terrorism legislation which has constantly been abused by local authorities, let alone the constant use of the royal prerogative established a culture in which Cameron's steps to erode democracy can prosper.

In future I will be sure to try to see behind every step Cameron takes and recognise that no matter what he says it is about, all the rubbish about being passionate for the Union, in fact his core agenda is about creating a Britain where the Conservatives will never leave office and many of our remaining freedoms will be gone.  Today I really pity the Scots for not having chosen to escape from this developing dictatorship.  I know it would have left people in England in a tougher position, but even if you cannot escape from the prison yourself it is always good to see that someone else has made it out.  Now we are simply going to share our bitter fate together and I am sure many who voted for Scotland to stay under the yoke of Westminster yesterday will soon be regretting it.

Life After Europe

This is certainly a topic I know more about than many others as I used to teach on European Integration and even got to grips with the complexities of farming subsidies.  I do not need to tell you that the key political development in the UK of recent months has been the success of UKIP, a right-wing party primarily aiming to have Britain leave the EU.  Receiving around a quarter of the vote and going from 8 to 147 councillors in the local election has unsurprisingly attracted attention.  Though it is important to note that there are 165 Independent councillors and that the Conservatives have 1116, i.e. more than Labour, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP put together.

Of course UKIP’s impact has been greater than simply the number of councillors it has.  It has again exposed the long-running fracture in the Conservative Party over the question of the extent to which even if the UK stays in the EU it actually participates in the political process.  This is because the Conservative Party has two main wings, one which is primarily business focused and welcomes being part of a vast free trade system and the other which is more nationalistic and simply baulks at the perception of giving any degree of sovereignty to any non-military organisation.  This fracture has not really troubled the Conservatives since the closing days of John Major’s administration in the mid-1990s, but is now back in force.

In recent days David Cameron has been compelled to accelerate the movement to a referendum and without anyone really noting this it has quickly mutated from being about redefining the relationship with the EU to the now trumpeted ‘in/out’ referendum.  Cameron has had to play some politics because he is coalition with the most pro-EU of the British political parties, the Liberal Democrats.  Labour has had an ambivalent attitude towards the EU through its history.  This is because back in the 1950s and 1960s it was seen as a project brought forward by conservative, largely Catholic, businessmen.  It was only in the 1980s when with the pressure that working people were facing in Britain and the EU’s introduction of labour and social policies that most, though not all, Labour members began to see a benefit in the EU, as it is now known.

One reason why Cameron is under so much pressure from UKIP is because, whilst it is primarily a single-issue party, it has also managed to adopt a populist stance that taps into a strong sentiment in British society personified by the presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who in fact has been the most successful ‘political’ author of the past decade.  Cameron has been weak on the populist side of Conservative support right from the start as I noted as far back as October 2010: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/camerons-blunder-with-electorate.html  The nostalgia for a kind of edited golden days of the 1970s when people were apparently free to damage themselves through speeding, not wearing seatbelts and smoking, is very strong in Britain.  Cameron, unlike both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, has never even attempted to speak to those Conservatives in Britain who are not wealthy, but in fact, make up the majority of the people who vote for them.  This is why Nigel Farage is succeeding where Jimmy Goldsmith and his rather elitist Referendum Party which was also anti-EU did not thrive.  Farage may flirt with racism but he manages to do it on the ‘down the pub chat’ basis of ‘I’m not racist but …’ which less alarms the bulk of voters than the more explicit rhetoric of Nick Griffin and the BNP.  Cameron, though elitist has a modern outlook which is all about high-tech global business.  However, that is not the world that the bulk of Conservative supporters feel comfortable with even contemplating.  Britain is a country which lives in the past and any attempt to move away from that, especially when people feel insecure in terms of jobs and the economy, is to make yourself unpopular: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/britain-land-that-time-forgot.html  This is why it may benefit Ed Miliband to adopt the trappings of ‘Old’ Labour at least to appeal to a sector of working people who liked the certainties of the past but with a more labour-focused approach.

Anyway, there are loads of commentators with more time to explore these issues so I will move now from the current political turmoil to look longer-term.  It is clear that there will be an in/out referendum.  Even if Labour comes to power in 2015 they will find it difficult to resist the head of pressure for this.  It is something that the bulk of the population have wanted for decades and had to accept assurances that it was not possible.  Now Cameron has opened the door, it cannot be closed again.  All politicians have to face the fact that the vast majority of the British public loathe the EU.  Many of the reasons for this loathing are based on misinformation which has been provided by the media decade after decade.  However, the support for UK membership of the EU is limited to business people who like the free trade aspect and the ability to bring in cheap labour legally from Eastern Europe and middle class people living in South-East England who own property in France or lower middle class people from Essex and Liverpool whose parents retired to Spain.

One key myth about the EU is that it compels Britain to accept regulations that hamper the freedom of Britons to be exploited and to have their environment wrecked.  The EU only got into social and labour legislation in the 1980s but it has meant better conditions for maternity leave and eventually for limiting working hours.  These things are seen as hampering the potential success of British business which feels compelled to work on a cheap labour, long hours approach with workers accepting lower wages as they compete for jobs against cheaper workers from Eastern Europe.  The ironic thing is that in terms of health and safety legislation countries outside the EU have gone down the same route.  In issues such as farming and fishing quotas Britain has always enforced these far more rigorously than the more pro-EU states like France, Germany and Spain.  It is the British government that has made these rules apply.  Yet, the propaganda portrays that the assertion of regulation comes from Brussels.

As Tony Benn has long noted, the EU does not have a democratic structure.  The European Parliament which all UK electors can vote for, is seen as the ‘government’ of the EU, in fact does not create legislation and is little more than a talking shop.  EU business is carried out by the Council of Ministers, the prime ministers and in some cases foreign ministers, of each of the member states.  It is no more than a club of democratic leaders.  Thus democracy is not direct, it is filtered through whoever is in power in each state.  Yet, this is not the perception that has been peddled to the British over all these years.  Of course, to a large extent, this is irrelevant, because the British even now we have a coalition government which is sort of working, we dislike other countries negotiating with us, we just want them to do what we say and leave us alone.

All EU members have nationalism and bigotry, it is an element of the modern nation-state.  However, the lack of travel by young British people and the general inability to speak foreign languages: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/british-and-foreign-languages.html  exacerbates the situation in which the only view of the EU is the one that comes from the BBC and is heightened by ‘The Sun’ and ‘Daily Mail’ even when people bother to read them.  It is far easier to make a scare about immigrants taking jobs and school places than explain the opportunities of the EU.  The sustained rise in the cost of living in Britain is making British people more and more insular.  It is expensive even to travel within the UK let alone abroad.  As a result, increasingly it is only the children of those who own houses in France that are experiencing neighbouring cultures and they are generally pro-EU already.

In the next decade, perhaps as early as 2017, maybe even before that, there will be a referendum regarding the UK leaving the EU.  There will be an overwhelming vote in support of immediately leaving.  There is no question of this given the extensive hostility to the organisation.  What will life be like once Britain is out of ‘Europe’?

The first thing is that trade would be affected.  I know this from working part-time in an import/export business which brings in goods from the USA and China as well as EU countries.  With EU countries the company pays not import duties and customers in those countries similarly can get their goods at the price they see on the website.  The moment the UK is outside the EU, this will stop.  However, we are fortunate that there is a drive for international free trade so leading to a reduction of tariffs and so the impact on British trade would be less than if we had left the EU in the Thatcher years.  Overall 48% of the UK’s exports in goods and services is with the EU; of all the EU states the UK is least dependent on trade within the union, but currently there is a trade gap with Britain importing £6.1 billion more items from the EU than it exported to these countries.

According to the Confederation of British Industry, the USA with over 300 million people takes 17% of the UK’s exports, but Germany with 80 million takes 9%, France (65 million) takes 6.6%, the Netherlands (16 million) takes 6.9%, Eire (4.4 million) takes 6.1%.  Thus both per capita and as an overall figure, the EU is the largest consumer of UK exports which would now not have free trade with.  You could argue that we could replace this with exports elsewhere.  This is certainly the case, but we need to move quickly.  Between them India and China have 2.3 billion people but only 2.0% of UK exports go to China and 1.2% to India; 1.1% go to Russia and only 0.1% to Brazil, the other two burgeoning ‘BRIC’ countries.  The USA only provides 2.8% of Britain’s imports whereas Eire sends 9.4%.  We have a large trade imbalance with the BRIC states with China providing 9.4% of Britain’s imports, India 8.0%, Russia 4.0% and Brazil 4.1% despite how little we sell to them.

Yes, it is likely the EU would remain Britain’s prime trading partner, even after we had left but access to the EU marketplace would be harder.  In addition, US and Japanese investors are already concerned that their manufacturing in Britain would now be the wrong side of the free market ‘wall’ and it would be better to move to a country remaining within the EU.  This might be of benefit to an independent Scotland.

Leaving the EU would provide a set-back for British trade that is clear.  However, this would fit in well with the populist UKIP attitude and to attract business and produce competitive exports, the UK would rely on cheap labour costs and deregulation.  Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Lawson, has argued that EU regulation is hampering the financial companies of the City of London, always a strong element in Britain’s export of services, from making as much profit as they can.  The City of London while it may see itself as an autonomous element of the British economy is in fact currently integrated into it.  The separation is moving far too slowly.  This integration was why reckless activities by its bankers impacted so heavily on high street banks and the general public: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/myth-of-alternative-to-bank-bail-out.html  The cuts in welfare and other spending are a result of insufficient regulation of the UK banking sector and we need, not simply want, more regulation if ordinary people are going to be spared suffering once again from bankers pushing to make even more stupendous profits.  Regulation does not have to come from the EU.  However, this disengagement from the EU does seem to be increasingly linked by other extreme right-wing policies.

The one factor that probably wins greatest support from those seeking to leave the EU is the barring of the immigration of EU citizens, in particularly those from Eastern Europe.  This is where the populist view goes against that of the business community who love cheap labour that can be used to push down wages for British workers too and reduce overall costs.  The impact on the construction, catering and care industries as a result of the loss of these people would be great.  In 2011, there were 2.7 million people in England and Wales (not including Scotland and Northern Ireland) who came from other EU states, this included 579,000 from Poland and only 79,000 from Romania.  The peak for migration from Eastern Europe was in 2007 and the monthly figure is now a quarter of what it was that year.  The economic crash of 2008 naturally made the UK far less appealing.

The balance across the country is uneven; 27% of Polish immigrants live in London as do 56% of Romanians.  In the mid-2000s, 10% of the population of Southampton was Polish but this fell sharply after 2007.  The majority of citizens of other EU countries, 59% are from states which were in the EU before 2004, for example at any one time 300-400,000 French live in London making it the city with the sixth largest French population in the world.  There are around 270,000 Germans, 54,000 Spaniards and over 100,000 Italians.  This can be compared with the 761,000 Britons living in Spain permanently with a further 229,000 living there for part of the year; 150,000 live in France; 120,000 live in Germany and 29,000 live in Poland.  In total around 1 million British people live in other EU states though there are seasonal fluctuations; 660,000 Britons live in the USA.

With Britain leaving the EU, the rights of all these people to live in the UK would suddenly go.  This does not mean that there would be mass deportations because Britain does allow some immigrants even from outside the EU to settle here still.  What would make an impact is what laws restricting provision for immigrants would be introduced either before or after the exit from the EU.  Currently there are plans to limit the access of Bulgarians and Romanians to free health care and policies like this, it seems likely, would be quickly extended to other EU citizens with Poles being the top of the anti-immigration supporters’ list.  In such a climate many EU citizens would choose to leave anyway.  There was a fall in the Polish population in 2008 at the time of the economic crash, particularly noticeable in some towns.  The impact would be very varied across the country with London experiencing the greatest changes.  There are likely to be tensions especially for cases of the children of EU immigrants who have only lived in the UK or for people who have been living here for many years.  The large increase in immigrants from other EU states came in 1992 meaning that some will have been in the country for over two decades.  How would families in which one parent is British and the other an EU citizen be treated?  Expelling one, might mean the other going too.

Immigrants are always people with ‘get up and go’.  If you have worked in the civil service you will be familiar with working alongside multi-lingual French, Spanish and German workers.  The stereotype of the Polish and Lithuanian builder is based on a degree of fact as are Eastern European waiting and pub staff.  Thus, these sectors which employ a sizeable percentage of especially skilled or cheap foreign labour will suffer most.  There do not seem to be loads of UK people waiting to fill these posts and it seems that ahead of the exit a training campaign would have to be introduced to get young British people ready to fill the lower paid posts or see numerous shops and cafes close; certainly all the Polish grocery shops would disappear and again it is not as if there are Britons waiting to fill those slots.

A further challenge would come if there was a ‘tit-for-tat’ approach from EU states and Britons found they were no longer welcome living in Spain or France and either would be ordered to leave or face increasing restrictions of the kind these states’ populations would be encountering in Britain or that we already see for expatriates in Australia.  Spain would be foolish economically to expel Britons, but they may leave anyway in this new climate.  New locations, notably Turkey, still outside the EU, might become increasingly attractive in the post-EU era.  The difficulty for the UK is that whilst the bulk of immigrants coming into the UK are young and economically active, the bulk of emigrants are retired.  Thus, their return would not only not contribute much to the economy but add a new burden to health and social services.  It is actually of benefit to have so many old Britons looked after by Spain and Cyprus.  It would be interesting to see how the UK’s relationship with the Republic of Ireland would change.  There is a special relationship between the two countries which mean that Irish have more rights than other EU citizens.  This might shift once Britain left the EU and Eire remained in.  There are over 600,000 Irish living in Britain, again focused in specific areas including London; they are the only nationality group which has continued to see a fall in their numbers in the UK in the past decade before and after the economic crash.

Overall on leaving the EU in the following years around 2 million people might be compelled to leave the UK, primarily from London.  In general these would be economically active tax payers who up until the break had been living in the UK legally.  There is likely to be some influx of retired people coming back from EU states but also workers from Germany in particular.  Some would argue that this would solve unemployment in the UK in one go.  However, it ignores the number of businesses run by migrants that would close and the fact that many Britons are not skilled or willing to take the jobs that migrants fill.  Ahead of the exit British teenagers would have to be schooled in accepting posts as cleaners and waiters and be trained in construction and administration in order to fill the gaps left by the missing EU citizens.  Once the EU citizens had been removed, which group would the government turn on next: Commonwealth immigrants?

This represents the changes on a very clinical basis, and that is what people like UKIP want.  However, it would be far messier than that.  Anti-foreign attitudes would be crystalised and people suspected of being from another EU country even if this was not the case, would come under pressure.  Thousands of people in the UK are descendants of immigrants from Poland in the 1940s and from Italy, France and Germany going back decades; who would draw the line between them and more recent arrivals from these countries?  Some people would seek to buy false identities and hide from the authorities.  The policy would also dent the economies of certain districts especially in London, exacerbating the impact of the decline in EU trade on the UK economy as a whole.  Along with the people expelled, would go all the funds that these EU citizens have in the UK.  Of course, as in all these things, wealthy French or Germans or even Poles, could buy exemption, the government is always nationality blind when dealing with the rich.  It would represent the largest organised removal of people in Europe since the end of the Second World War which is unlikely to make Britain look good on the world stage.

Following the UK’s exit from the EU there would certainly be economic and social upheaval.  Britain’s exports and imports would fall and there would be gaps in towns from where EU citizens had been removed.  Attitudes would become insular and xenophobic, something that the UK does not need more of.

What would be the greatest impact for ordinary people?  Well, aside from the economy going downhill further, it would be the difficulty of going on holiday or even a ‘booze cruise’ day trip to France.  If you want to know the difficulties that would occur just ask an Australian or South African who has the right to permanent residency in the UK.  Just to go for a two-week holiday in France requires them to spend eight hours at the French Embassy in South Kensington.  They are interviewed; their children are interviewed separately and you have to battle with the officials to be allowed to have a parent present even with a five year old (this is based on my experiences in assisting a South African planning a trip to France).  They have to produce proof that they have a job in Britain and if they are self-employed, need a letter from their Chamber of Commerce.  Of course there are loads of forms to fill in.  The visa is only valid for six months so if you want to holiday in France again next summer you have to go through the whole process again.  From the Kent coast you can see France, but who is going to bother trying to go to visit it if you have to spend all of this time and expense even for a short visit.  As it is, the French and German embassies are going to be full of business people trying to get visas to visit to carry on at least a little trade with EU states.  No school trips to France or Germany any longer, it would just be too hard to organise.  I guess this severing of the UK (or perhaps by then England, Wales and Northern Ireland – ‘Ewani’ – we need a term for this grouping) from the EU, is the ultimate goal of UKIP.  We can then all speed around not seeing anything much beyond a Britain whose economy would be in further recession and prone to insularity and xenophobia.

Is It Time To Revive The Concept Of Class?

Working in London I come into contact with a far wider range of people than was the case when in an office in a medium-size town in southern England.  There are many more opportunities, especially on public transport, for eavesdropping.  One thing that has become very apparent to me returning to London properly (i.e. being here on a sustained basis rather than for one-off visits) for the first time in over a decade is just how many universities there are.  The number of actual institutions may not be much higher than it was in the late 1990s but certainly the number of students is, and, whilst staff:student ratios may have altered, the number of lecturers and administrators must be higher.  Consequently, travelling between home and work or going out for an evening you stand a good chance of having students and even academics around you.  A lot seem to head to central London, I guess they have evening seminars, lectures, meetings and things.  As readers know, having attended university in a very different time for education and the UK as a whole, I am interested to see what is happening to them these days.  Is eavesdropping an invasion of privacy?  Some people talk so loud it would be difficult not to hear what they are saying and academics seem to get into lively debates wherever they might end up.  I suppose I should be grateful that that remains true, not least as an antidote to the 'I don't want to hear that', silo approach in which everyone seals themselves off from each other, from life itself with their ipods.

Anyway, this posting is less about the potential for interaction in academic discussion on public transport and more a debate sparked by some of this eavesdropping as well as talking with acquaintances of my own.  It seems the concept of social class is so out of fashion that anyone who writes an academic article featuring the term is very likely to have it rejected.  The term 'culture' is acceptable apparently, though I guess something like 'working class culture' would not be.  I suppose we should not be surprised.  Margaret Thatcher claimed she was 'working class' because she worked 'jolly hard' (there is interesting analysis online about how much of a Victorian she was in attitude, maybe this is what distinguishes her brand of societal destruction from that of Cameron).  She further denied that there was such a thing as society, saying there were just individuals and families.  John Major trumpeted that the UK had developed the 'classless society', though that seemed to be on the basis that under his administration middle class people started having their houses repossessed like poorer people once had.  John Prescott as deputy prime minister in 1997 claimed 'we are all middle class now', though I think that was more a comment on the styling of the Blairite New Labour than on society.  Parallel to these political developments, it is clear that universities threw out class along with the the leather patched jackets and the 'History Man' beards.  Yet, they cannot really turn their backs on it entirely as there is still the OFFA - Office of Fair Access, which seeks to have those from 'under-represented' sectors of society gain equal access to higher education; part of the deal over the increased fees is tied to supposedly widening this access.

I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that people think Karl Marx invented class.  Consequently with Thatcher, Major, Blair and their adherents keen to make Socialism, which in some elements is based on Marxism (though it surprises some people to find there are other things like mutualism and even Christian viewpoints in the mix), a thing of the past, felt that they had to purge the UK of the very concept of class.  This shows a lack of historical knowledge or more likely a deliberate misinterpretation of it.  The Greek cities had citizens and some had helots.  The Roman Empire had slaves, freedmen (and -women) and citizens.  Even among the citizens you had to have a certain wealth to be able to be appointed to particular political office.  India had its caste system, China had a very hierarchical structure from the emperor down, (though there were some opportunitie for meritocratic progression), and until the destruction of the Shogunate in the mid-19th century Japanese society rigidly enforced class immobility which interestingly, from a Western perspective set peasants above merchants who languished just above the 'untouchables' despite them being wealthier than the average member of the samurai class.  Medieval society was clearly full of class divisions like the serf, the cottar, the yeoman, the knight, the nobleman and so on.  In addition, many of these society had parallel classes, for example, the structure of the church from the Pope all the way down to a lay brother.

The 19th century portrayals of society as a vast pyramid with each in his or her 'station' probably crystalised the perception of class that we have still lingering in many of our minds despite the efforts of politicians over the past 30 years.  In addition, the social upheaval, especially rural-urban migration and the success of factory owners in raising themselves into the higher levels of society previously held exclusively by large landowners.  In the context of burgeoning capitalism, its exploitation of workers through longer hours, low pay and unhealthy conditions, combined with an apparent new fluidity of people rising and falling through the social classes, ideas around working class, middle class, etc. came common political currency.  Of course, it was never as simple as that.  Even Marx spoke of the lumpen proletariat of unskilled workers as opposed to the proletarian aristocracy of the skilled workforce.  In the UK for over a hundred years there have been numerous sub-strata within classes, the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled working class; the lower, middle and upper middle class, with the really only the latter being the bourgeoisie of property owners in the way that Marx had seen the middle class.  Whilst of little interest to the mass of the population, the British upper class also sub-divided itself on many different bases, into 'old' and 'new' money, connections to particular schools and regiments, location in the country and proximity to titled nobility and the royal family.

The concept of class was hardened in the late nineteenth and the twentieth century on the basis of class-based parties.  Left-wing parties had opinions ranging from outright violent revolution to bring about change across to gradual modification of the capitalist system rather than its abolition on the lines Marx and his adherents proposed (or in fact, felt was inevitable no matter what people or parties did).  This meant that politics shifted from two parties of similar social backgrounds arguing over economic policy such as free trade vs. protectionism to the dominance of a party seen as upper class - the Conservatives and one seen as working class - Labour.  It panned out similarly in much of democratic Europe, though typically with a wider spread of parties falling under these two designations.  In Canada and the USA, however, the model has remained very much like that of Victorian Britain with Liberals and Conservatives; Democrats and Republicans with even working class parties let alone revolutionary ones making minimal impact politically.  Thus, it can be argued, as many British counter-factual commentators were doing in the 2000s that even in Britain there was no inevitability about class-based politics.

Does this suggest that it is only really an accident of history combined with alarm at a political philosophy which could have easily faded into obscurity along with so many others (One Nation Toryism, Whiggism, Social Darwinism, Guild Socialism, Syndicalism, anyone?) that meant that the concept of class continued to persist in Britain as long as it did?  I guess that, in fact, the opponents of class-based politics actually sustained the view of Britain as a class-based society through their rhetoric.  The Conservative Party are the main culprits in their insistence about moving away from class-based politics, partly because they always knew that workers would outnumber their natural base of support.  In many ways they need not have been as fearful as they were.  For 64 years of the 20th century the country had a Conservative government or a coalition led by the Conservatives and even the New Labour government of the last years of the century owed much more to Conservative values than it did to anything the Labour Party had stood for since its creation.  In addition, the Conservatives have always attracted strong support from the so-called 'working class Tory' voter, someone who labours but supports their views on control of society balanced against reduction of regulation; the role of the police/justice system, military and the monarchy; the culture of British society and Britain's standing in the world, even though at times to others these can seem damaging to the interests of those in such a position in the economy and society.

Whilst on one side the political rhetoric has perhaps sustained conceptions of class, on the other shifts in the economy, society and culture may have reduced the acutality of distinct social class.  When the language was developed there was a lot of commonality between millions of people.  Manufacturing had replaced agriculture as the key economic activity in the UK and, as a result, the experience for the bulk of the population: living in houses surrounded by people who did very similar types of work to themselves, fitting with a common daily, weekly, annual pattern, wearing basically the same clothes and eating much the same food, formed a basis.  Of course, the British like to emphasise their differences and group themselves in tribes.  Distinction between people from different regions and ethnicities, distinction between skill levels and gender were all used to show shades of difference between people at a time when, in fact, the life path for the bulk of them was very similar.  The similarities can be grouped into what can be termed the class culture.  In many ways it was little different for those in the various ranks of the middle class, where the only distinctions really came down to whether you worked in a protected profession or not.  Of course, that economic pattern has gone and so have the similarities that permitted useful grouping of people in certain categories.  Particularly notable is 1974 when service-sector jobs exceeded those of manufacturing jobs for the first time and those who once had operated heavy industrial machinery began the progress to being call centre staff.  Yes, they wear a suit to work, but the control of their working lives and the 'minding' aspect of their work is no different; purely a cosmetic change, trumpeted by too many as representing a shift to a classless society.

Culture is an important element in defining class in Britain, often far more than income.  Skilled working class people would often exceed the income of lower and middle-middle class people and yet because of their dress, language and pastimes would never be seen to be on the same level.  With the erosion of real salaries for over four decades now (except among the top 10% earners) and insecurity of employment and property ownership even for those in what were once secure professions, culture is often all that remains for someone to use to distinguish themselves from someone they feel remains 'beneath' them.  Interestingly, I feel that consequently we have moved a little in the direction of E.P. Thompson's view of class.  This is summed up, if I remember rightly in 'The Making of the English Working Class' (1963).  Now, despite Thompson being an avowed Marxist, he eschewed Marx's view of class as this almost rigid, society-spanning structure, I think, in part due to his aversion to Stalinism.  Thompson's view of class that it is almost in constant fluidity, shifting almost moment to moment as we define ourselves in relation to the others we interact with.  Thus, it is a perception that we generate of ourselves and our family in relation to the perceptions we hold of others.  This is different from people having a kind of label as being working class based on what work they do.

Thompson's perspective seems to fit well in modern Britain in which the nature of work has changed so much and has become fragmented.  The commonalities have disappeared, hence the great importance in so many jobs on the title of the job and who can be described as an 'operative', an 'assistant', an 'officer', a 'team leader', a 'manager', 'middle management', an 'executive', 'senior management' and so on.  After all, if I can be a senior manager in a company of five people but am probably earning less and have to use fewer skills and have less reponsibility or control than a team leader in a mult-national.  We generally have no idea what other people earn, and anyway, with the vast difference in pay rates, house prices, loans you can get, debts we have to pay back, income is no indication actually of the level or standing of the job you do. 

As a consequence, we fall back on the cosmetic, the 'cultural' aspects and categorise people by the size of their house; but also the clothes they wear; how they have their hair done or what make-up they wear; what television programmes they watch, if they even still watch television; whether they go to the theatre or a gallery; what food they eat, what they call their children and what clubs the children are members of, which schools they go to; where they go on holiday (not simply due to the cost but the perceived 'quality' of the location, it may be more expensive to fly to Florida than stay in a house in the Dordogne region, but the latter has a far higher class cachet).  When driving there is a constant judgement of 'class' by the type and age of the car driven and on this basis much driving behaviour in the UK is based, notably which cars you flash to have them move over on the motorway; which you feel you can intimidate into letting you into the flow of traffic even when you have no right of way.  Class is alive and well in the UK but it is no longer really an economic category, it is more a cultural category which has its roots in how much money you have but beyond that, what things you choose to buy to manifest your wealth and their own perceived 'value'.

Value is certainly itself up for contest.  There was always pride in working class culture, but there is now a more active assertion that a certain brash culture is somehow better or at least more correct.  I think Britain is unique in seeming to value in popular culture an approach that is not based on acquiring education.  The often vocal assertion that the 'school of hard knocks/university of life' is better than attending a real university is very common.  The disparaging of geeks, boffins and nerds is prevalent; people are ridiculed too often for their learning in a way they would not be even in the USA.  The privileged actually are now promoting this attitude as they feel that universities have been filled by too many of people who, in their view, are not the 'right kind' and that this has reached a level at which it is impacting on those who 'should' be at university.  Yet, no-one has managed to make alternatives, despite the periodic statements that vocational courses are as valid, gain any value.  This is because status in UK business still derives not from your skills or aptitudes but from your background and family.  Those with power rarely have technical or strictly vocational skills, they generally have skills about simply asserting authority or bullying, such as sales.  Those with technical skills are rarely a full time part of the body which runs a company, they are simply called in to answer specific questions and then dismissed.  Consequently, from the highest mult-national in the UK down to the man who runs a carpet-cleaning company, the view that education is of no benefit rules supreme and the emphasis on simply asserting yourself, generally through being loud and aggressive is raised even higher in its place.

So, when I say that the concept of class should be revived am I simply saying that we should detail categories based on what people possess and make it clearer that you can move from C1 to B if you buy a 4x4?  Of course, that is not what I am saying.  Instead, I think class should return in a great measure to what it was once about: opportunity.  Opportunity comes from where you stand at the present and then what restrictions prevent you from moving from that position to something 'better' whether you personally define that in terms of what you can learn or do or simply what you can own.  The most privileged have ample opportunities, they can go wherever they want, they can do what they want, they can pick out their lives very easily.  The least privileged have no opportunities, they have minimal choice over where they live, where they can go and what jobs are open to them.  When living in Poplar and Mile End I was struck by how few people living there strayed outside a 3 Km radius of their house, about the same radius that a medieval serf would have had as their horizons.  Occasionally they would go to the mill or into the woods; occasionally my neighbours in the East End would go down to the slightly larger supermarket or to the park, but generally this was all within walking or short bus ride of their house.

Opportunity does often stem from wealth, but there is not always a direct correlation.  Rich celebrities often find this when they try to get into or get their children into a specific school or club.  This comes back to the use of the cosmetic to separate us from others and to know who are the 'right' kind of people.  From the other side simply being offered a place at university even with all the bursaries, does not mean a young person or even a mature person will be able to take it up, because of the lack of opportunities that they have in terms of living expenses, the extras needed for study, factors like care for their parents or children.  Let alone cultural aspects put up in their way because of how they dress or speak or even their attitude to the world.  The lines are hardening as all the fuss about people having to have unpaid internships first to get an unpaid job.  For every breach of the barriers put up to personal progress by the less privileged, the privileged, especially in the current climate, set up new ones. To complain about the way of the world and demand opportunities was once seen as radical and expected of students; these days it is seen as rude and ungrateful, thus, undeserving.  These days you have to do a lot of forelock tugging even if given an opportunity, so suppressing the range of attitudes and cultures that are deemed 'acceptable' in our society.

Social class has always cut across gender and ethnicity.  This is why David Starkey is simply not just bigoted, but entirely wrong in his assessment of the recent rioting.  What we saw was unrest from a class of people who have had the last fragments of opportunity snatched from them by government policies added to which are many people from what may still be called the 'middle class' seeing such restrictions increasingly imposed on them after over a decade of them and their parents feeling that the UK was being engineered to best benefit them.  The coalition government, headed by those clearly from the upper class, both David Cameron and Nick Clegg are closing the door even on people who would naturally be Conservative supporters but are on a social par with Margaret Thatcher, let alone John Major.  As Marx warned, the greatest danger to stability comes not from those at the bottom of the capitalist system, but from those feeling that changing circumstance are thrusting them down into that pool.  In addition, when so much of our status in UK society is simply defined by the model of television or mobile phone we own is it of any surprise that people go and loot these things?  The riots were a protest about closing off opportunity in so many ways whether ending the EMA or simply saying to people that they will never have even the chance to afford the consumer goods our emphasise so much.  This is why Cameron has so strongly emphasised the 'criminality' to detract from the actual political motivations, even if these are distorted by the consumerist viewpoint on life that has been so imbued into our society.

To address the tensions in Britain on the basis of the old economic perceptions of class would fail.  As it is, despite his rhetoric, Cameron has no desire to 'fix broken Britain' he simply wants to secure the position of the elite and ensure that the little ethnic shop they buy their spices from is not boarded up.  Class needs to be defined by what it really was a century or so ago, about opportunity.  This means that we move away from the superficially divisive aspects like whether we watch 'The X Factor' or the Danish version of 'The Killing', there is no need for cultural uniformity in the way George Orwell might have demanded.  We need to get back down to the perception of people on the basis of whether in this capitalist society they have any chance of altering their situation or whether to a greater or lesser degree they will die pretty much the way they were when they became an adult and when their parents became an adult and so on.  This means that even in families you will find different classes.  As I went to university in the 1980s, I have been in a higher opportunity class than the 9-year old who lives in my house who, it appears will have no chance at getting a degree even if we superficially live in a 'middle class' house.  I had the opportunity to travel abroad with my family, he never does this.  I had the opportunity to go on school trips and join any club I wanted.  Now, for this he is worse off than me, but far better off than many of his contemporaries; both of us are worse off than my parents.  Of course, opportunity does not mean the same as receiving.  Both my parents could have gone to university, my brother too, but for various reasons none decided.  In addition, my parents retired with a much higher opportunity standing than when they became adults, the difference between the 1950s and the 1990s; if they had been twenty years younger that progression would have been reversed, i.e. from the 1970s to the 2010s.

The goal of governments should be, if they truly believe in equality and justice, to pursue policies that enable people to progress from say opportunity category 40 to opportunity category 30 or 25 or 20, in the course of their life.  This forms a useful basis on which to judge people's progress broadly.  Of course, individuals will pick something different to what they are offered.  However, if we can see that a child born in opportunity category 40 is now only likely to make it to 38 whereas two years ago he had a shot at 32, then we know something is wrong.  When we know that people who are in opportunity category 40, 50, 60 see only a chance now to end up in category 75, 80 or 90+ (I define someone as 99 who is living on the streets), as is happening Cameron's 'hammered Britain', then we should have no surprise if we witness rioting and looting, perhaps to raise them a couple of points, but mainly to rail against the realisation that in the 40-60 years of their lives ahead of them, it is never going to get any better than this and most likely, far worse.

In the myth of Pandora's Box it is said that when she released all the evils from the box, Pandora closed it to keep 'Hope' trapped inside.  It might seem odd that hope was stored among all the evils.  This is because the popular renditions of the story have made an error, in the original it is 'Foreboding' that she traps.  Foreboding is an evil, because with it you feel that there is absolutely no point in continuing if everything will just end up badly.  Now, throught their policies especially towards young people, the coalition government has unleashed the evil of foreboding, by making it so explicitly clear that for millions of us only circumstances worse than what we are experiencing now lie ahead of us.  It is an evil to snuff out any prospect of improvement and as a consequence it has received a virulent reaction as seen in the rioting.

Rioting 1911/2011: Similarities And Differences

As regular readers know I have done a lot of research into the Great Unrest of 1911: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/11/great-unrest-1910-11-part-1.html  I have been in contact with people involved in commemorating this period of strikes and rioting, notably in Liverpool which experienced effectively a general strike.  It is ironic that precisely 100 years on we are seeing much the same kind of riotous activity.  As I have noted that, in contrast to the early 2000s when people on history discussion boards discussed any reference to the Great Unrest as a fantasy or a counter-factual, elements of it are even appearing in prime time television, such as reference to the shootings during a riot in Llanelli in 1911 on 'The One Show' on BBC1.

What then are the similarities and the differences between what we are seeing now and what was witnessed in 1911?  The basis is very different.  The unrest in 1910/11 had its roots in strikes by coal miners, railway workers and merchant sailors.  In 2011 there are no such strikes going on.  The coal industry has been all but destroyed in the UK and our coal, where needed still, is imported.  A lot of freight that arrives in the UK is carried by foreign vessels, whereas in 1911, the UK was the dominant country for sea freight.  The railways were as fragmented as they were in 1911 since the privatisation of the 1990s.  However, at present railway workers seem not to have any reason to strike.  Consequently, unlike in 1911, there is not an established pattern of unrest on which the riots can be based.  A lot of this stems from the hammering of the trade unions during the 1980s under Thatcher and the loss of any collective identity among workers.  Thatcher's greatest success in weakening the unions was not the legislation restricting their behaviour, much of which Labour tried to introduce in the past anyway, it was her success in getting us simply to think of 'me first'.

Another factor that is different to 1911 is the lack of radical rhetoric.  In 1911 Labour MPs notably Keir Hardie went around not only supporting the riots as an expression of legitimate working class unrest which they generally were not, but publicly calling on soldiers to mutiny if their commanders ordered them to fire on rioting working class people.  In contrast this time we have supposedly left-wing Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney one of the most deprived areas of London calling for a London-wide curfew, something that was not even imposed (outside Liverpool) even in 1911 and would appear as if we were under foreign occupation.  No-one in the Labour Party will even try to squeeze out some reference to this unrest being a representation of the anger of the public over a mixture of issues, notably continued police mistreatment of ordinary people, especially from ethnic minorities and youth unemployment at a level higher even than the worst days of the 1980s.  Without channelling there is a danger that the unrest will turn to racial violence as it did in South Wales in 1911 and could easily do in many parts of London.  This may not be black/white violence but as happened in Cardiff a century ago, targeted at people seen as taking jobs, so aimed at Poles and other EU citizens who have settled in London and who we know the CBI favours as employees over UK young people.  This seems to be an unforeseen danger that needs to be addressed now.

Another difference to 1911 is the fact that the weather is not as hot.  The summer of 1911 was exceptionally hot and this always provides a context for rioting.  However, neither is it raining heavily, so the weather may not provoke rioting but it is not discouraging it either at the moment. 

Rioting in 1911 was generally carried out by people unconnected to the strikes going on at the time and it focused on much the same things as this time: attacking the police (especially those brought in from outside the area) and looting.  Looting is especially popular at times of economic hardship and conspicuous consumption that we are experiencing at the moment.  The largest similarity between 1911 and 2011 is the economic context. It is noted that in 1911 a lot of anger stemmed from the fact that real wages were falling but consumption by the wealthy especially of very visible luxuries was increasing.  We are in a very similar position now.  Real pay has been declining for forty years now and even those people in graduate professions cannot afford a fraction of what their parents in such jobs could have done. 

Everyone is suffering from the inexorable rise in petrol costs, utility prices and housing both in terms of buying houses and, in particular, rent, which seems to have had a new burst of climb since the recession started.  The disruption to household incomes by redundancy and unemployment further impinges on disposable income as well as income used to pay for the essentials.  I have been unlucky, but my circumstances are probably not atypical, with over half my monthly income paying for somewhere to live, to light and heat it, to fuel my car and to eat.  I do not go on holiday, my car is 15 years old, I do not eat in restaurants and do not go to the cinema.  You can put up with a dull life and battling for every penny, but after a while it impacts on you.  I am lucky, there are millions of people in the UK far worse off than me, but if I am disgruntled can imagine how many of them/you feel?  Whilst most ordinary people struggle we still keep seeing the obscene salaries and consumption of the privileged.  Bankers pay continues to be high and yet we are still suffering the consequences of their failed greedy gambles and will be for decades to come especially in terms of lost social care and local facilities such as libraries being closed down.  As in 1911 the obvious greed of the wealthy is painful and pricks us, made easier by the constant flow of information to us through every medium available.  Whilst the trains may be slower and less frequent than they were in 1911, information travels far faster these days to people in all walks of life and all ages.

There are a number of other similarities to 1911 not just the conspicuous consumption in a time of hardship.  The drafting in of police to cities is just like in 1911.  There are promised to be 16,000 police on the streets of London tonight; 10,000 of these brought from outside the capital; nine constabularies are sending officers to London.  In some ways this is a reverse of 1911 when the Metropolitan Police provided officers to other parts of the country, but that was only because London remained quiet and the unrest was located in other cities.  However, it seems likely that cities will draw on constabularies in neighbouring more rural counties.  The UK has far fewer constabularies than in 1911, but we still have a very decentralised system.  I wonder if cities in the North East will bid to buy in police from the Cleveland Constabulary given that their former Chief Constable and Deputy Chief Constable, arrested this week for corruption, seem happy to sell their officers to the highest bidder. 

The call from the local authorities for troops to be on the streets of Croydon is just like the hysteria of 1911.  Fortunately local magistrates are no longer in a position simply to summon a local unit as they were 100 years ago.  Given how many people whine about Winston Churchill as Home Secretary centralising the despatch of troops in 1911 to tackle unrest, that is more the system we have now. The issue, ironically, is unlike in 1911, Britain is currently fighting in two wars.  Whilst we no longer have imperial possessions to defend and the commitment in Ireland is far from what it was in 1911, the British Army would be pretty stretched if it was mobilised to police the streets.  In 1911 the Territorial Army was not trusted to oppose rioters, but in 2011 given class fragmentation and the dependence the UK has on its part-time soldiers, they may, in fact be called up to combat unrest.  However, I would imagine even now they would be sent to areas outside those in which they were recruited to avoid any questions about opening fire on family members for individual soldiers.  Of course, these days the odd tank or armoured car can achieve what a squadron of hussars would have been needed to do in 1911, so they could be spread thinner.  They are also no longer dependent on the railway system to reach the scenes of unrest.  However, experiences with civil unrest in Northern Ireland in the 1970s show the hazards of such action. 

I am more familiar with the King's Regulations of 1908 than I am with the current Queen's Regulations, and I would be interested to hear what the procedure is for the military called on to deal with unrest.  I cannot believe it is to simply fire into the front row of rioters but with the power of modern rifles and sidearms, even firing over their heads would cause a hazard.  Of course, the British police, since the 1980s have possessed anti-riot equipment pretty much undreamt of in 1911.  There would be no need for police to fall back on furled raincoats, instead they have baton rounds, tear gas, shields of different types and in some locales, water cannon.  Cameron ought to be alert to coming down too hard on the rioters if he wants to secure his political legacy.  Misremembered accusations that Churchill had striking miners shot were to haunt him politically even forty years after the event.

Whilst it is clear that 2011 is not a re-run of 1911, there are similarities which furthermore makes me ask why no-one in power was ready for the unrest which broke out this month.  As I have noted before, I believe that they probably did foresee and are happy for it to run its course.  Cameron is clearly enjoying sounding off as the authoritarian leader in the media and no doubt taking steps to further reduce liberty in the UK.  Perhaps, I am simply giving him credit for foresight that is undeserved and he is simply even more incompetent than I believed.

Thirty Years On: Rioting In London - Is Anyone Surprised?

I am sure most readers of this blog will have seen the news of the rioting and looting across London from Tottenham to Peckham from Ealing to Hackney and other places including Birmingham and Croydon.  It has now raged for three days and has involved attacks on the police and the looting and burning of shops.  I have written before how the government is ushering in an era which looks unpleasantly like the 1980s with high unemployment and in particular the reduction in opportunities for young people, who increasingly feel they have nothing to lose in rebelling against the government and capitalist society?

Something else which does not seem to have changed is the relationship between the police and ordinary people.  After the murder of  Ian Tomlinson by police in April 2009 and the continued tension with ethnic minorities because of the hyping up of the terrorist threat and the blame being put on to South Asians, activity among far-right political groups, it all seems horribly like 1981 once more.  If you were around in 1981 or have read about the period then you will know it had a summer which witnessed riots pretty much like what we were seeing now.  The Brixton Riot of 1981 occurred in April of that year and raged for three days.  Very much like the rioting we are seeing now, it stemmed from the handling of ethnic minority males by the Metropolitan Police and the bad relations being heightened by rumour around the arrest of Michael Bailey.  Whilst the initial riot was about protest regarding heavy handed tactics by the police, by the third day it was basically a looting spree.  Riots attract different people and get out of hand quickly.  Whilst starting as a political event, they soon bring in people just looking to steal what they can.  I think the looting of phone shops in Woolwich is symptomatic of that phase.

The spark for these riots was the shooting of Mark Duggan by police in Tottenham on Saturday.  Tensions around stops and searches have also contributed to the unrest.  In many ways both the context of Britain in fear of what is being inflicted on it by the government and what worse is to come, combined by heavy handed behaviour by the police have once again led to rioting.  All of this was covered in the Scarman Report of 1981.  I am sure somewhere in the government's or Metropolitan Police's strategy units there was a scenario playing out for summer 2011 just like this one.  Despite the various shootings by police over the past thirty years they seem to behave pretty much as they did in the 1980s.  No-one seems to learn from one year to the next: the police behaviour towards Duggan's family is as if none of these shootings had ever happened and certainly no lessons learnt from them. 

Whilst the hammering of the country by the government, the crass behaviour of the police and the willingness of people unconnected with the initial incident to take advantage of the rioting has not changed in 30 years, the techology has.  The ability to tweet messages and keep in contact via mobile phones and to relay images quickly to different groups explains why we are not simply talking about the Tottenham riot.  We know that there were various groups, following the student riots of last winter, ready for a new round of action.  Summer is always the best time for rioting, you just have to look back to 1911 as I have done.  Yet, all the ministers and the mayor of London, all set off on holiday with no expectation of rioting.  Clearly the police's intelligence is poor and they are not retrospectively hunting down people who use Twitter to organise violence.  If they had not spotted it coming, even in the immediate aftermath of Duggan's death, I think they will continue to be stumped.

The government is wrong to think that rioting will simply go away.  As in the early 1980s it is likely to continue appearing not just in London but in many cities.  The government cannot expect to keep on imposing cuts on services and cutting jobs and most of all opportunities in such a blatant, arrogant way, treating us like idiots when they do not blame their friends the bankers, and expect the British public (and the Northern Irish public either) to remain passive.  The continued police bungling keeps on providing the spark for the whole pile of tinder the government keeps on adding to.

Anyone who had stopped and thought would have been able to put a decent bet on there being rioting this summer.  I cannot believe that the government and the police had not worked through scenarios that showed this happening.  If I can do it, simply watching the television or writing my blog, then they, with all their advisors and their sophisticated computers should have had no difficulty.  I guess that they welcome as a distraction from the continued revelations about how guilty not only News International but also a growing number of its rivals were in hacking the phones of the bereaved as well as celebrities; the corruption connected with that and the government connections to people involved, plus straight forward corruption at the highest level in the Cleveland Constabulary.  I worry that knowing how much 2011 resembles 1981 and even 1911, they had foreseen all of this and yet took no steps to head it off.  It is clear that despite any efforts senior police officers may be making cannot stop their footsoldiers shooting people dead and that will constantly trigger local incidents.  However, I think the broader rioting was expected and has been allowed to run its course to allow the government to introduce the punitive and authoritarian legislation they are itching to impose.  Democracy and liberty are dying quickly in the UK.  I recognise the frustration the rioters are unleashing on this government which is pounding them and keeps telling them to forget have any opportunities in life, but inadvertently they are playing into the hands of a regime which is keen to impose an authoritarian regime and implement a social counter-revolution.

P.P. It is interesting to note that the rioting has spread to areas such as Toxteth in Liverpool, Handsworth in Birmingham and Bristol which experienced rioting in the 1980s.  It is unsurprising the areas affected are those where people still feel as let down by the government as they did 30 years ago.  There seems surprise in the media that so many young people have turned to rioting, without the recognition that if you cut off any hope for such people, they have nothing to turn to except violence.  The hypocrisy of the government as in 1989 over the Tianamen Square unrest, when they laud the overthrow through violent unrest of governments across the Middle East and yet somehow expect their own population to remain passive, I suppose is unsurprising.  I believe that David Cameron really does believe he is doing the best for the UK, even in his reassertion of social class divisions and denying access to higher education for all but the wealthy.  He is  so out of touch with the people that he simply sees all this as criminality.  Of course, every riot has elements of that in, but by focusing on this, he helps the media and the wider population ignore that a huge motive is despair created precisely by the conditions caused directly by government policies.

Cameron knows that the Poll Tax Riot of 1990 helped end Mrs. Thatcher's career and I guess he wants to marginalise this before people start questioning his position, especially as, in a coalition he is in a far weaker position than she was.  I think Cameron will use the riots to bind the Liberal Democrats closer to him, suggesting they sympathise with the rioters if they leave him now.  I also maintain that he will use this as the basis for more authoritarian policies and despite his sour attitude at present is actually enjoying these events.