Defence Spending in context

The United Kingdom has some pretension - still - to be a major military power, by virtue of the nuclear arsenal that Jeremy Corbin so ardently wishes to destroy. Were he to have his wish, Britain's decline, far below the status of 'the world's fifth-biggest economy', would instantly be apparent. No sane living person who has breathed since the end of the war with Japan in 1945 has ever wanted nuclear weapons to be used. Many people deplore the use of two atomic bombs to 'bring the Japanese to their senses' and thereby save many millions of lives by enforcing the surrender of the Empire of the Sun. But the Corbyn ideal of mutual nuclear disarmament is not going to happen within decades; so to undertake unilateral disarmament would diminish Britain further than it has been diminished under Thatcher and her successors would be an act of harebrained vandalism.

Millions of people in southern England have been told so often that Thatcherism was a great restorative of the country's power and of its pride, that they at least half-believe it. I had the benefit of a Sheffield perspective, where the truth that I beheld was totally different from the myth that enabled Blair and Cameron to continue the craze for deregulation and the dissipation of economic and political cohesion that made inevitable the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

The Thatcher government deliberately stood back from the steel industry, when fellow members of EFTA [notably Austria and Sweden] took simple measures to protect their equivalent production facilities. Thus the greatest concentration of skill and capital intensity in steel and related technology in the world was exposed to cheap, short-term competition; and destroyed. More than 60,000 skilled jobs [out of around 80,000] in the steel sector in South Yorkshire were redundant within three years; while the government rode high in the polls on the post-Falklands euphoria. In Sheffield the loss of HMS Sheffield during the campaign to recover the islands was a salutary symbol of what was to come when a previously-unpopular government was returned with a sufficient majority to press on with its destructive policies.

The primary target of the returned Tories was the coal mining sector. The oil industry was riding high globally. High inflation in the industrial countries had counteracted the negative impact that the OPEC oil price hike of 1973 had had on the oil price relative to that of coal; and awareness of the detrimental effects of carbon-based atmospheric pollution was increasing throughout society. In various corners of the state-owned coal and electrical power industries experiments were being undertaken - successfully - to find ways of using coal to produce energy with minimal polluting effect; and with a realisable end objective of being able to use coal indefinitely [mostly mined from the abundant resources under these islands] as a primary source of electrical energy. The oil lobby was empowered hugely by the development of oil wells in the North Sea, and their arguments against investment in coal resources had weight with a government hell-bent on simplistic privatisation of electricity generation and distribution without the successor companies being lumbered with the obligation to fund research on 'clean coal'.

A more urgent reason for the Tories' ideologues to oppose the coal sector was, of course, the National Union of Mineworkers and their influence over the whole trade union movement. The Labour government of the late 'sixties had encouraged union membership, and the weakness of the Wilson and Callaghan governments in the 'eighties meant that they could not resist the pressure from their trade union supporters [and funders] greatly to empower unions to recruit members in the workplace and demand negotiating rights between firms and their employees. Millions of people were members of unions under 'closed shop' types of arrangement, where people who could not prove a conscientious [usually that meant a religious] objection had to join the union to get the job. The government was keen to sweep away all such obstacles to a 'free market' in labour: and saw the Mineworkers as the inevitable block in their way. So they decided to tackle it directly, and a plan was carefully devised simultaneously to stockpile coal where it was still needed - mostly at the power stations - as the necessary preparation for a strike that would probably cause coal production to cease for a protracted period.

The National Union of Mineworkers was controlled by a clique of hard leftists, led by Arthur Scargill, who were on their side so determined to have a strike that they alienated their colleagues in some regions that those regions' miners stayed at work when a strike was called without a formal ballot and at the time of year -spring - when the demand for coal at the power stations was declining. The dispute then turned into an uprising. I saw this for myself. Hundreds of the police who were drafted in to confront the miners and their violent leftist supporters stayed in the hall of residence where I was the warden, during the vacations. Non-miner supporters of the strike [and of the revolution that they hoped it would ignite] came along for the rough-stuff; and the strike took on another political dimension when the already heavily-exploited miners of the Soviet Union were levied a portion of their wages to support the supposedly-starving families of British miners. No ordinary miner saw any of that money: it vanished into bank accounts for which no explanation nor audit has ever been issued.

People spoke openly of a potentially revolutionary situation. Those around Scargill included a cohort who believed that the mineworkers were the last mass workforce who could spearhead a revolution in the UK. From being a sympathiser with the union, I became a sceptic and then - regretfully - an opponent of the extremism that the confrontation bred. In the end, enough people went through the transition that I experienced myself for the government - despite its destructive motives - to have the strength and support to drive the miners to surrender, and return to work until the pit closure programme could be implemented.

The attitude that closed the steelworks went on to shut the shipyards and aerospace plant, and allowed the demise of the potteries and a series of other regionally-based industries. Much of industry was tied up with national defence - steel for ships and aircraft and guns, as a prime example - the rundown of the nation's defences became inevitable as the real economy slowed down. The bubble of financial services and the poison of consumer credit were encouraged as means of claiming 'economic growth' through the expansion of consumer spending: increasingly on imports.

I have warmed too much to my theme and gone on too long. Apologies to anyone who actually does read this.

How Thick are the Tory Brexiteers?

I admit that I voted for 'Brexit' under the impression that the 'Remainers' were likely to win; but sure that even if the 'Leave' vote gained a majority the government's policy would be to remain in the European Economic Area, probably within the structure of EFTA. My opposition to 'Europe' was entirely to the political Union, especially the drift towards integration of the military and the threat to NATO.

I now read that there are some sixty Tory MPs who want to sever all institutional links with Europe, and shove Britain off into the wide world with no context for trade other that the World Trade Organisation. It is also widely believed that Mrs May, a lukewarm remainer in the referendum, has swallowed the sixty headbangers' line. It seems that the Maastricht ghost that destroyed the Major era is gathering strength to destroy what is left of Mrs May's residual authority in the Conservative party.

That party has a centuries-long tradition of disposing of dangerous and embarrassing leaders. Let them get on with it: even if it means another election, another hung parliament and a consensual coalition.

Meanwhile the Brexit Secretary has begun the pantomime in Brussels. It is all so sad, that I have no more words for today.

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow....

What Is the Point?

I often ask myself, why do I make a daily post on this blog when virtually nobody reads it?

The answer is always the same: I can prove that I expressed my thoughts and views on specific dates. So, just as I can prove that I laid out exactly why there must inevitably be a crash in the global financial market [and especially in New York  and London], over several months before it eventuated in 2007, I will be able to show how the failure of Mrs May's hubristic election campaign was predictable stage-by-stage over the past eight weeks.

Mr Corbyn showed a remarkable capability to stick to a script that was profoundly unlike his utterances over the previous four decades, and his party was rewarded with a mass of under-thirties' votes. It was essential that Corbyn kept to that brief - and wore suits and ties as he did so - and he obeyed advice [most likely, from his chum the Shadow Chancellor] to insist that the programme in the Labour Manifesto was 'fully costed', even though the possibility that their funding plan would meet the spending promises was nonexistent.

I now predict that we will not be entering a period of two-party politics such as is presented as the norm in simple textbooks on the British non-constitution. Instead, it will increasingly become clear that a majority of Brits would vote to separate the country from the political institutions of the EU - the Commission and the Parliament, where the UK has been treated with contempt since the Brexit vote. On the other hand, the more the implications are understood, the more idiotic Mrs May's talk of a 'hard Brexit' becomes. The idea that she could walk away from a 'bad deal' [which she has never defined, due to her lack of vision] and take the whole country into an economic wilderness - where she could be accepted as the New Mrs Moses - is very sick fantasy. Britain must remain within the European Economic space, preferably within EFTA which the UK helped to create while deGaulle was keeping us out the the then-EEC.

The Tories will have to show formal loyalty to Mrs May in the period during which she tries to bring solidity and stability to her shattered party.

Thus it falls to the other parties to seize the opportunity to shape a new consensus for the UK. They should not be embarrassed about proposing some of the same things as Donald Trump has offered Americans, especially massive investment largely funded by state-guaranteed borrowing. It the is underlying mantra of this blog that production of wealth in this country can only increase if we improve the productivity of our jobs, and that rising productivity can only be stimulated and sustained by emphasising the need for greater productiveness in all sectors. The majority of Conservative MPs are not idiots: they will recognise sense if it emerges through consensually agreed policies brought forward by other parties.

The key policies include:
Leave the EU political institutions.
Stay in the European Economic Area, preferably within EFTA [The European Free Trade Area].
Replace the Cameron-Osborne-Clegg austerity programme by a bold national investment and expansion plan.
Move towards a consensus on pensions, welfare and social care that is rationally affordable.
Move towards a national consensus on the funding and management of education: no new grammar schools, no more racketeering chains of academies, no tolerance of 'schools' where dogma is substituted for learning, and rigorous oversight of failing schools - combined with adequate funding in each case. Review the purpose of higher education, what is should provide, for whom, at what cost to the state and to individuals.
Fund the NHS properly, with rigorous accountability.
Restore adequate police and military protection for the nation.