Beware of Africa

It is terribly easy for a resident in Europe or the Americas to ignore Africa. Nevertheless the European Union is subject to a massive invasion of African economic migrants, many of whom claim to be refugees; but fewer and fewer are even allowed landfall on the continent. An unknown number of hundreds of thousands have gone to ground in Europe, many of whom have no prospect of becoming fully registered members of the workforce and of the social security systems. The main political focus on this issue is on keeping any more of them out, as 'populist' politicians gain votes from people who are scared [rationally or otherwise] by the prospect of culturally alien people of different skin colour 'swamping' medical services, schools and the jobs market.

Some voices are raised to point out threat the flow of would-be migrants would be massively less if more attention were given to economic and political development of African countries; but weary EU politicians who take any interest in such matters count the billions of dollars of 'aid' that have been abused by dictators on their personal lives and on military equipment to mount or to defend against political adventurism. The continent is seen as inherently corrupt; with many western corporations hesitant to trade there because of draconian anti-corruption laws that operate in their home states.

China has been very active in construction, especially of railways and port installations that enable the sources of materials and crops in which they have invested to get back to China easily. China has become a major manipulator of the African morass for its economic advantage; which has relatively disadvantaged the west where firms are hamstrung as mentioned above.

Almost every African country is an artificial construct, with boundaries set by the European imperialists in the nineteenth century which have simply been handed on the post-colonial regime that now prevails. These boundaries ignore ethnic diversity, and give cause to conflict on those grounds. It is estimated that half of the world's population growth in the next two decades will be in Africa, centred in just five countries; which are as diverse as Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.

There are renewed signs that the ethnic tensions which have to some degree been restrained over the post-colonial half century will break out with renewed force. The key example here is in Kenya, where a few months ago a court whose participants - all native Africans - wore English eighteenth century white wigs and black gowns as handed down by the former colonial government to announce the decision to quash the result of a presidential election. Now the losing candidate in that election, who knows that he will also lose any re-run of the election, has stood down from the contest. So long as there is an acknowledged candidate from the Kikuyu population, as there is in Mr Kenyatta, no minority ethnic group has a chance of being elected, however free and fair the election process is. Mr Odinga uses many arguments, but the weight of numbers will always be against him.

So does Odinga try secession: do a Catalonia? It has been tries many times, all over Africa, dating back to the secessionist campaigns in Katanga and 'Biafra' several decades ago. There will be much more of this kind of thing, which will increase the lawlessness and political chaos that have paralysed most of central Africa for several decades. No outsiders have any right to tell Africans how to conduct their lives. The problems will multiply; and their effects will rebound on the rest of humanity: not only as an endless procession of boatloads of miserable, desperate humans who are even more unwanted in Europe than they were where they come from.

The Glory of a Mixed Economy

Between 1950 and 1972, Britain boasted of its Mixed Economy. Then, in the 'seventies, the misapplication of Keynes's principles by the self-styled NeoKeynesians combined with the OPEC cartel to create an inflationary spiral that threatened to destroy the economy. That situation, in turn, made the opportunity for Thatcherite Monetarism and the 'free markets' dogma to be installed: with apparent temporary success and long-term ruinous outcomes. I have issued sufficient jeremiads about the latter state to give it a rest for the moment, and to pick out instead the features of the economic policy [broadly pursued by both Labour and Conservative governments] that prevailed beneficially under the generic description of the Mixed Economy.

During World War II the coalition government published the Beveridge Report, which promised a universal, compulsory social insurance scheme that would provide healthcare, unemployment insurance and old-age pensions for all contributors and their dependents. Both the major parties in the coalition were committed to implementing the scheme, and though the costs - especially of the national health system - always exceeded the income of the national insurance fund it was hoped that a time would come when those books would balance and a subsidy from general taxation would not be necessary. The National Health Service, in particular, was immensely popular and it delivered massive benefits to the entire nation.

Labour won the 1945 election, with a clear mandate to nationalise core infrastructure services and the 'commanding heights' of the industrial system. Under the infrastructure policy, the clapped-out railways, the partially-derelict canals, the major bus companies and the biggest road haulage companies [with their depots and other support facilities] were nationalised. The railways already owned some ports, and major hotels near stations, and these were taken into state ownership as well. For the first decade of nationalisation there was an attempt to support all of these facilities; but with the rapidly rising popularity of private cars and the consequential demand for the state to provide an appropriate road network the aggregate costs became too great. The slow death of the canals continued, and the subsidy of railways became excessively burdensome until a Tory government appointed a 'technocrat', Dr Beeching, to manage the railways. He just adopted a slash-and-burn approach, reducing the system too much in an orgy of destruction that is pretty universally regarded with hindsight to have been absurdly excessive. But the core railways system was preserved, to become a success eventually: and the motorways were built.

Coal and steel were among the 'commanding heights' of the economy which were nationalised, reorganised, and subject to massive investment and modernisation: which worked beneficially for a couple of decades. Electricity and gas services were nationalised, with massive investment in new power stations and the creation of the national grid for electricity and the beginning of a similar system for gas distribution. Telephones had been developed as a state monopoly, under the Post Office, and their availability increased immensely. Television had been suspended for the war, and it was reintroduced [BBC only, at first] to become massively popular.

The state managed all these things, while making good the massive destruction that had been effected by German bombing during the war and the massive wear-and-tear on all types of plant and equipment that had happened while concentration on war production had meant that maintenance and repairs had been minimal. Perhaps the greatest achievement was in housing. Private builders were enabled to develop private estates while the state sector built hundreds of thousands of houses. So great was the success of that programme, that under a Conservative housing minister in the later 'fifties 400,000 houses were completed in a single year. By contrast, the pathetic shower who govern us now cannot orchestrate the 'market economy' to provide so many as 100,000 homes in the face of desperate need.

Not all was perfect in those years; but things felt better than they do now because there was a feeling of common national purpose with significant objectives being achieved by the public and proivate sectors of the economy working in concert.