Jacob Rees-Mogg speaks slowly and clearly. He has a reputation for expressing clear ideas, some of which are out of kilter with contemporary fashion; notably his strictly orthodox Roman Catholic attitudes to homosexuality and the procreation of children. Yesterday lunchtime he excelled himself in a discussion of the Commons committee report on the Brexit situation on the BBC2 show, the daily politics.
He displayed an astonishing degree of ignorance about the realities of contemporary human aspiration and about the nature of world trade. In his view, the mass of the British people want cheap food and cheap clothes; therefore the UK should open its borders to imports from the countries that can supply the cheapest food and the cheapest clothes.
He did not mention the need to have countervailing exports of British goods and services to other countries, with which to earn the foreign exchange to buy the cheap imports. he did not seem to have any awareness that the countries - like Bangladesh - that are home to the cheapest clothes manufacture have the least capability to pay for the high-tech exports on which the future of the UK depends.
It is a recurrent theme of this blog that the most advanced country, the USA, will never grant to Britain [or to the EU] truly most-favoured access to their domestic market, because they are anxious to nurture their advanced economic sectors: which is best done by enabling their innovating firms to make big enough profits continue with the research and development programmes. Even before Trump, and certainly after Trump, they will be unashamed to prefer US technology, entertainment, financial services and other highly profitable areas of activity. It is part of the American culture to preserve, protect and defend their own firms and their intellectual property.
As the world's second economy, China is notoriously prone to require firms trading into China to share their intellectual assets with Chinese 'partners'. Japan has been closely chauvinistic throughout its modern economic history, and India is developing on similar lines.
Thus, if Brexit Britain went down the route prescribed by Mr Mogg there would be a monumental and rapidly expanding balance-of-payments deficit.
Even more significant, however, is the implicit ignorance shown by Mogg about the pattern of consumer aspirations that has developed all over the world. Yes, the class of hereditary paupers that was created by the Thatcher regime [and subsequently consolidated as part-salaried welfare dependants producing low levels of output per head under Blair, Brown and Cameron-Clegg-May] does want cheap food and clothing. But they also want smart phones, computer games, access to popular music and sports coverage. A major reason why they want cheap food is to have enough money [and access to credit] to buy the high-end products and services that are most fashionable. Such a living standard is accessible to the poorer members of an advanced-economy common market: it is not available on WTO terms to a rapidly-declining economy that is denied access for its exports to the richest countries in the world.
Mogg has revealed to me the extent to which the extreme Brexiteers live in cloud cuckooland.
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 December 2017
Sunday, 3 September 2017
North Korea: Utter Pointlessness
Stalin argued throughout his political career that all the privations that his regime placed on tens of millions of of people, and the punishments and penalties inflicted on millions, were all necessary impositions on the route towards creating a better society than humanity had ever provided in the past. It is impossible to know how much he believed it at the successive phases of his career, but there are many metres-length of the books in which his writings and speeches were recorded, still lying in the deeper stacks of many libraries. He spent a huge amount of his time giving massive speeches, writing for the press, and producing ideological tomes: and there is good reason to believe that most of this output is genuinely his own. He was obsessively concerned that the gulags and the torture chambers served a positive purpose: and many intelligent and able people believed him; or, at least, were prepared to acquiesce in both his regime and his ideology.
No such motivation has been claimed for the North Korean dictator, who was pictured yesterday 'inspecting' what was said to be a hydrogen bomb that was capable of being fitted into an existing model of ballistic missile. Then, within hours, seismologists were announcing that there had been an earth tremor under North Korea that was consistent with a deeply buried nuclear weapon test.
The immense achievement in such a deprived country making such weaponry is quite extraordinary. It is built on three generations of enslaving the people both physically and mentally, while the regime has steadily built up its destructive capabilities. Russia and China are two of the countries that have land borders with North Korea, so there can be no doubt that the threat of nuclear attack can apply to them as well as to South Korea. Yet it is the USA, and to a much lesser extent Japan, that are most obviously threatened, along with South Korea.
Hereditary dictator Kim III has never pretended to any idealistic objective. No attempt is made to mitigate the appalling living conditions in which his half-starved subjects are made to conduct their lives. The Chinese have continued in broad terms to support his continuance in power, as have the Russians: President Xi and President Putin would probably very much rather not have this troublesome neighbour plaguing them, but they do nothing materially to weaken him.
Diplomats and experts on world affairs, in large numbers, assert that North Korea's weapons buildup is intended to force the US [and, by implication, its dependencies and allies] to enter into talks with the regime. The object of such talks would be blackmail: Kim would [so the peaceniks say] agree somehow to 'neutralise' his weapons in return for assurances that he, and presumably Kim IV and Kim V in due course, would continue to hold his power and access the west's luxury goods for himself and his courtiers. Perpetual immunity to enjoy power, and to oppress the millions of his subjects, is an utterly squalid objective. There is no idealistic pretence about it, as there was about the Chinese cultural revolution and even Hitler's gas chambers.
This is a new step towards a deeper hell than terror states have ever achieved before. It is highly dangerous. China presumably wishes that the rogue regime had been killed off a few decades ago, but the clock cannot be turned back. The Chinese are glad that the maniac's target is the USA and not the Han mainland, but given the instability of the situation in Pyongyang, Beijing must be more acutely worried by the nuisance neighbour as his destructive capability is developed. This is a world problem; but the world's institutions do not have any answer to it: and Mr Trump is on the front line.
No such motivation has been claimed for the North Korean dictator, who was pictured yesterday 'inspecting' what was said to be a hydrogen bomb that was capable of being fitted into an existing model of ballistic missile. Then, within hours, seismologists were announcing that there had been an earth tremor under North Korea that was consistent with a deeply buried nuclear weapon test.
The immense achievement in such a deprived country making such weaponry is quite extraordinary. It is built on three generations of enslaving the people both physically and mentally, while the regime has steadily built up its destructive capabilities. Russia and China are two of the countries that have land borders with North Korea, so there can be no doubt that the threat of nuclear attack can apply to them as well as to South Korea. Yet it is the USA, and to a much lesser extent Japan, that are most obviously threatened, along with South Korea.
Hereditary dictator Kim III has never pretended to any idealistic objective. No attempt is made to mitigate the appalling living conditions in which his half-starved subjects are made to conduct their lives. The Chinese have continued in broad terms to support his continuance in power, as have the Russians: President Xi and President Putin would probably very much rather not have this troublesome neighbour plaguing them, but they do nothing materially to weaken him.
Diplomats and experts on world affairs, in large numbers, assert that North Korea's weapons buildup is intended to force the US [and, by implication, its dependencies and allies] to enter into talks with the regime. The object of such talks would be blackmail: Kim would [so the peaceniks say] agree somehow to 'neutralise' his weapons in return for assurances that he, and presumably Kim IV and Kim V in due course, would continue to hold his power and access the west's luxury goods for himself and his courtiers. Perpetual immunity to enjoy power, and to oppress the millions of his subjects, is an utterly squalid objective. There is no idealistic pretence about it, as there was about the Chinese cultural revolution and even Hitler's gas chambers.
This is a new step towards a deeper hell than terror states have ever achieved before. It is highly dangerous. China presumably wishes that the rogue regime had been killed off a few decades ago, but the clock cannot be turned back. The Chinese are glad that the maniac's target is the USA and not the Han mainland, but given the instability of the situation in Pyongyang, Beijing must be more acutely worried by the nuisance neighbour as his destructive capability is developed. This is a world problem; but the world's institutions do not have any answer to it: and Mr Trump is on the front line.
Friday, 1 September 2017
Shabby Britannia!
As I reported a couple of days ago, Mrs May's expedition to Japan turned out to be a salutary learning experience. Far from being welcomed as the harbinger of a new trade pact between isolated post-Brexit Britain and Japan, she was told in no uncertain terms that Japanese investment in the United Kingdom depends unconditionally on Britain remaining in the European Economic Area.
While she was in Japan, David Davis her 'Brexit secretary' was making a fool of himself in Brussels by refusing to play the negotiations as the EEC [all 27 remaining countries] said they must be played.
There should now be no room for doubt in Mrs May's limited mind, that at least tens of thousands of jobs will vanish from the UK within a decade, as Japanese investment is shifted to continental Europe, unless a form of Brexit that is acceptable to external investors is secured. In a blatant item of propaganda which Dr Goebbels would cherish as a model of incompetence, Dr Liam Fox [who has been with Mrs May in Japan] said that the EU 'must' begin negotiations on the future trade relations of the UK with the the Union because 'business' is demanding that progress is made. It had been made clear in Kyoto and Tokyo that Japanese business, in particular, needs speedy reassurance as to Britain's future trading status. Japanese motor firms operating in the UK produce a greater proportion of their complete vehicles in the UK; but, like all the other firms, they need to buy some components from the continent. It is a fact that some parts of cars pass over the channel two of three times between different plant, and thus the future of the entire motor sector [as several others] depends on the free movement of goods and of the experts who manage their creation.
Britain is indeed under pressure, to take up a stance on Brexit that is uncongenial to Dr Fox, who is seen as a representative of the 'hard Brexiteers' who choose to imagine than Britain alone would be able to negotiate deals all over the world on terms at least as favourable as those now standing to the EU. This is nonsense: isolated Britain, with a market of 60 million people who have declining real incomes, would have a negligible fraction of the leverage that the EU has when negotiating for a market of 300 consumers who include millions of the richest in the world.
The EU representatives can just sit this one out, as the British government begins to learn in depth just how deep would be hole into which the United Kingdom would fall if the calamity of a 'hard Brexit' comes about; because of the stupidity and incompetence of Mrs May and her chosen team.
Meanwhile, that team is going forward with the unnecessary and excessively costly new railway from London to Birmingham, HS2. As the existing end-to-end journey now takes around seventy minutes, all that is needed is greater capacity on the existing line: especially to bring commuters into and out of London from stations much nearer to the capital then Birmingham [who would not be served by HS2 anyway; as a large number of stops to take on or drop off many passengers would slow the high-speed train down to a journey time longer than that for the existing line].
While Mrs May was in Japan, China announced that it was considering building an innovatory 600 mile-an-hour link between major cities, which are already linked by high-speed trains. It has been suggested to HM government - who have ignored the proposition - that the major centres of the thus far nugatory 'northern powerhouse' could probably be linked by such a system, more cheaply than the cost of building the unwanted HS2. This is just another example of the shoddy, limited thinking of the May gang. There will be no end to their stupidity: they should go soon. The idea of Mrs May standing in the next election verges on insanity.
While she was in Japan, David Davis her 'Brexit secretary' was making a fool of himself in Brussels by refusing to play the negotiations as the EEC [all 27 remaining countries] said they must be played.
There should now be no room for doubt in Mrs May's limited mind, that at least tens of thousands of jobs will vanish from the UK within a decade, as Japanese investment is shifted to continental Europe, unless a form of Brexit that is acceptable to external investors is secured. In a blatant item of propaganda which Dr Goebbels would cherish as a model of incompetence, Dr Liam Fox [who has been with Mrs May in Japan] said that the EU 'must' begin negotiations on the future trade relations of the UK with the the Union because 'business' is demanding that progress is made. It had been made clear in Kyoto and Tokyo that Japanese business, in particular, needs speedy reassurance as to Britain's future trading status. Japanese motor firms operating in the UK produce a greater proportion of their complete vehicles in the UK; but, like all the other firms, they need to buy some components from the continent. It is a fact that some parts of cars pass over the channel two of three times between different plant, and thus the future of the entire motor sector [as several others] depends on the free movement of goods and of the experts who manage their creation.
Britain is indeed under pressure, to take up a stance on Brexit that is uncongenial to Dr Fox, who is seen as a representative of the 'hard Brexiteers' who choose to imagine than Britain alone would be able to negotiate deals all over the world on terms at least as favourable as those now standing to the EU. This is nonsense: isolated Britain, with a market of 60 million people who have declining real incomes, would have a negligible fraction of the leverage that the EU has when negotiating for a market of 300 consumers who include millions of the richest in the world.
The EU representatives can just sit this one out, as the British government begins to learn in depth just how deep would be hole into which the United Kingdom would fall if the calamity of a 'hard Brexit' comes about; because of the stupidity and incompetence of Mrs May and her chosen team.
Meanwhile, that team is going forward with the unnecessary and excessively costly new railway from London to Birmingham, HS2. As the existing end-to-end journey now takes around seventy minutes, all that is needed is greater capacity on the existing line: especially to bring commuters into and out of London from stations much nearer to the capital then Birmingham [who would not be served by HS2 anyway; as a large number of stops to take on or drop off many passengers would slow the high-speed train down to a journey time longer than that for the existing line].
While Mrs May was in Japan, China announced that it was considering building an innovatory 600 mile-an-hour link between major cities, which are already linked by high-speed trains. It has been suggested to HM government - who have ignored the proposition - that the major centres of the thus far nugatory 'northern powerhouse' could probably be linked by such a system, more cheaply than the cost of building the unwanted HS2. This is just another example of the shoddy, limited thinking of the May gang. There will be no end to their stupidity: they should go soon. The idea of Mrs May standing in the next election verges on insanity.
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Mrs May in Japan
I find it increasingly difficult to believe that Mrs May has any significant common sense at all. She demonstrates daily that she has no dress sense; and in the selection of her kitchen cabinet when she went into Number Ten she created a machine that came close to destroying her credibility with her party and her relations with her most necessary ministerial colleagues.
The Chairman of the EU Commission was quite right yesterday to assert that the position papers that have been cobbled together for the UK government lack both conceptual clarity and essential data. It appears that the Prime Minister - who was an indecisive 'Remainer' in the 2016 EU Referendum - has been bullied into quiescence by the noisy minority in her party who choose to believe that the narrow result of the Referendum must be interpreted to mean that the UK must leave the political Union and also the European Economic Area.
And now she has gone to Japan, where she will encounter almost-infinite courtesy but where it is most unlikely that anyone will speak directly to her of their country's attitude to the risks that are inherent for them in the present utterly unclear Brexit situation. Thousands of Japanese firms in both manufacturing and the financial services have established facilities and bases in Britain. One major factor in this is that London is [obviously] an English-speaking city so this suits the Japanese, most of whom are not great linguists but have been schooled in English for at least a decade of their lives. But a bigger factor than the use of English is that the UK is fully in the European Common Market and the customs union.
The "hard Brexiteer" position on the future relations of the UK with the EU will seem to the Japanese - who located their assets in Britain-in-Europe in good faith - to be a complete betrayal of the understanding on which they have invested so heavily in the United Kingdom. The Japanese are still keen on concepts of honour, and if Mrs May and her team dishonourably shuffle their papers and equivocate on the key question of whether Britain will remain in the European Economic Area after any 'transition period', Japanese finance will be withheld: and if Britain is sufficiently idiotic as to opt openly for a 'hard Brexit' Japanese firms will be among the first to move assets out of Britain. There is no equivocation about this, and however much Mrs May might try to con herself by accepting Japanese courtesy as acceptance of any stance that she might take up, the fact remains that Japan will be strictly self-interested. Grandiloquent talk about "island peoples furthering their common interests in a wide trading world" will just be talk.
Britain outside the European Economic Area is only of minimal interest to Japan, as a minor market for some exports. The main Japanese concern about Britain, in the event of a 'hard Brexit', will be to get their assets out of the UK with the least possible loss of money and of 'face'.
Prime Minister Abe is an unusual Japanese: he is more capable of directly expressing his individual thoughts than are many of his compatriots: and he seems to be more willing than most to do it. There is just a small hope that he will be able to educate Mrs May [who is, indubitably, difficult to educate], but I am not optimistic.
Now that the Labour Party has approached a sensible position on Brexit, the Tory majority of 'moderates' are realising that they have very limited time to talk their leader into common sense. I doubt that she is capable of undergoing that learning process: if so, the sooner she is removed from office, the better.
The Chairman of the EU Commission was quite right yesterday to assert that the position papers that have been cobbled together for the UK government lack both conceptual clarity and essential data. It appears that the Prime Minister - who was an indecisive 'Remainer' in the 2016 EU Referendum - has been bullied into quiescence by the noisy minority in her party who choose to believe that the narrow result of the Referendum must be interpreted to mean that the UK must leave the political Union and also the European Economic Area.
And now she has gone to Japan, where she will encounter almost-infinite courtesy but where it is most unlikely that anyone will speak directly to her of their country's attitude to the risks that are inherent for them in the present utterly unclear Brexit situation. Thousands of Japanese firms in both manufacturing and the financial services have established facilities and bases in Britain. One major factor in this is that London is [obviously] an English-speaking city so this suits the Japanese, most of whom are not great linguists but have been schooled in English for at least a decade of their lives. But a bigger factor than the use of English is that the UK is fully in the European Common Market and the customs union.
The "hard Brexiteer" position on the future relations of the UK with the EU will seem to the Japanese - who located their assets in Britain-in-Europe in good faith - to be a complete betrayal of the understanding on which they have invested so heavily in the United Kingdom. The Japanese are still keen on concepts of honour, and if Mrs May and her team dishonourably shuffle their papers and equivocate on the key question of whether Britain will remain in the European Economic Area after any 'transition period', Japanese finance will be withheld: and if Britain is sufficiently idiotic as to opt openly for a 'hard Brexit' Japanese firms will be among the first to move assets out of Britain. There is no equivocation about this, and however much Mrs May might try to con herself by accepting Japanese courtesy as acceptance of any stance that she might take up, the fact remains that Japan will be strictly self-interested. Grandiloquent talk about "island peoples furthering their common interests in a wide trading world" will just be talk.
Britain outside the European Economic Area is only of minimal interest to Japan, as a minor market for some exports. The main Japanese concern about Britain, in the event of a 'hard Brexit', will be to get their assets out of the UK with the least possible loss of money and of 'face'.
Prime Minister Abe is an unusual Japanese: he is more capable of directly expressing his individual thoughts than are many of his compatriots: and he seems to be more willing than most to do it. There is just a small hope that he will be able to educate Mrs May [who is, indubitably, difficult to educate], but I am not optimistic.
Now that the Labour Party has approached a sensible position on Brexit, the Tory majority of 'moderates' are realising that they have very limited time to talk their leader into common sense. I doubt that she is capable of undergoing that learning process: if so, the sooner she is removed from office, the better.
Tuesday, 29 August 2017
All Quiet on the Eastern Front?
A North Korean ballistic missile was fired yesterday, whose trajectory went over the centre of Japan before it was ditched in the Pacific Ocean to the east of Japan. This was a hugely provocative act: yet the Japanese stock market was unaffected by the news: the main index fell by less than 100 points,and that can be attributed to a number of minor technical adjustments within the market. There is no reason to think that the news story had an impact on the market.
Japanese ministers again mentioned the possibility of reviewing defence policy, which has been constrained since 1945 by the terms of the treaties that followed the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War; but no immediate action was taken.
Commentators on the world's stock markets have felt the need to comment on this lack of any response in the level of stock and share prices to a significant demonstration of the rogue state's rapidly developing power to attack its neighbours, which is regarded as, a side-issue to its plan to develop the capability to attack the continental USA. The general view is that the main markets [in the the Americas, in Europe including the UK, and in Asia] are all in a euphoric condition, carried ever-forward by the massive creation of 'money' by the central banks over the past decade. The cautious withdrawal of the policies by which the capitalist system was 'saved' in 2008-9, by the US Federal Reserve over recent months has not affected that highly positive set of conditions for dealers and players in the global market.
Two other factors are in play. The first is, that if there were to be any direct action by the USA or by any other threatened power against North Korea the consequences would be calamitous and totally unpredictable. The possibilities of a thermonuclear response by North Korea to an attack by the US Air Force, using high explosives in an attempt to destroy buried facilities are so enormous that nobody can assess the effects that would ensue: so the possibility cannot be factored in to stock market price adjustments. The second factor is that governments in the region appear to assume that the Chinese have the power forcibly to 'discipline' North Korea, and would use it, if they judged that the situation really needed it.
Inevitably, it has already been announced that the United Nations Security Council will meet this afternoon, for another session of tut-tutting and to allow the main players to make their positions even clearer and for the North Koreans to say - as ever - that they do not care what the UN says or does.
North Korea has land borders with South Korea, China and Russia. North Korea was created by Stalin's USSR, before the Peoples' Republic of China was established. The position of Russia in relation to North Korea is no less important now than it was in 1950 at the time of the Korean War. Though Chinese troops rather than Soviet forces actually entered the land war, the supplies for the Communist side came from the USSR. It is inconceivable that Mr Putin is not hugely influential in Pyongyang, though the connection is downplayed in the public discussion of the matter; and lazy commentators have taken the view that the North Korean dictator pays little attention to Russia. It will be very important to take note of exactly what the Russian delegate says in the Security Council today: the nuance will matter. The state of US-Russian relations is important in what happens in North Korea, and pretty well the whole of the US political system is in a dangerously anti-Russian frame of mind at present. This does not play out in the calculations of the world's stock markets, but it is a factor not to be forgotten
Japanese ministers again mentioned the possibility of reviewing defence policy, which has been constrained since 1945 by the terms of the treaties that followed the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War; but no immediate action was taken.
Commentators on the world's stock markets have felt the need to comment on this lack of any response in the level of stock and share prices to a significant demonstration of the rogue state's rapidly developing power to attack its neighbours, which is regarded as, a side-issue to its plan to develop the capability to attack the continental USA. The general view is that the main markets [in the the Americas, in Europe including the UK, and in Asia] are all in a euphoric condition, carried ever-forward by the massive creation of 'money' by the central banks over the past decade. The cautious withdrawal of the policies by which the capitalist system was 'saved' in 2008-9, by the US Federal Reserve over recent months has not affected that highly positive set of conditions for dealers and players in the global market.
Two other factors are in play. The first is, that if there were to be any direct action by the USA or by any other threatened power against North Korea the consequences would be calamitous and totally unpredictable. The possibilities of a thermonuclear response by North Korea to an attack by the US Air Force, using high explosives in an attempt to destroy buried facilities are so enormous that nobody can assess the effects that would ensue: so the possibility cannot be factored in to stock market price adjustments. The second factor is that governments in the region appear to assume that the Chinese have the power forcibly to 'discipline' North Korea, and would use it, if they judged that the situation really needed it.
Inevitably, it has already been announced that the United Nations Security Council will meet this afternoon, for another session of tut-tutting and to allow the main players to make their positions even clearer and for the North Koreans to say - as ever - that they do not care what the UN says or does.
North Korea has land borders with South Korea, China and Russia. North Korea was created by Stalin's USSR, before the Peoples' Republic of China was established. The position of Russia in relation to North Korea is no less important now than it was in 1950 at the time of the Korean War. Though Chinese troops rather than Soviet forces actually entered the land war, the supplies for the Communist side came from the USSR. It is inconceivable that Mr Putin is not hugely influential in Pyongyang, though the connection is downplayed in the public discussion of the matter; and lazy commentators have taken the view that the North Korean dictator pays little attention to Russia. It will be very important to take note of exactly what the Russian delegate says in the Security Council today: the nuance will matter. The state of US-Russian relations is important in what happens in North Korea, and pretty well the whole of the US political system is in a dangerously anti-Russian frame of mind at present. This does not play out in the calculations of the world's stock markets, but it is a factor not to be forgotten
Saturday, 1 July 2017
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.
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.
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