The collapse of consensus
Christopher Booker
In the summer of 1978, following Solzhenitsyn's Harvard speech,' I wrote a long series of articles in these columns discussing one of the most fascinating questions he raised on that occasion — why is it that, over the past two centuries, the underlying political momentum of mankind has been so inexorably to the left? 1 went on to address myself to the psychological reasons why it is that Socialism invariably seems to end up by producing societies so totally at variance with the original Socialist vision of a better, happier, freer life for all. And in.particular I examined that crucial point along the line of the leftward movement where the original, Conscious, libertarian motivation of Socialism is finally overtaken by the growing, .unconscious drive to totalitarianism — that point where, in order to bring into being his vision of a world freed from evil and oppression, the Socialist finally conjures up a. wholly new engine of oppression in order to force his one-sided 'democratic freedom' on society, without even being aware that he is casting his country into a far worse condition of slavery than it ever was in before.
This week may seem a peculiarly appropriate moment to return to this theme, because it is now more apparent — even than it was a year ago — just what a remarkable watershed British politics has been approaching in the late Seventies. In the past few years, it has become a commonplace to say that we are seeing the break-up of that 'consensus' which in general has governed our politics since the Fifties, perhaps ever since the Conservative Party's dramatic move to the 'left' during the war years (Butler Education Act, Beveridge, Ministry of Town and Country Planning etc).
In view of some of the political battles. of the Forties and early Fifties, it may seem strange to talk of 'consensus' during the post-war era. But the fact remains that both Labour and Conservative governments have :operated, broadly speaking, round certain shared assumptions. We have seen 30 years of Keynesian economics, the acceptance of full employment, the increasing economic role of the state; the acceptance and gradual extensions of the welfare state; liberalising social reforms — and on all these issues, the policies of Conservative and Labour governments have played a complementary part, within the framework of a mixed economy and a liberal society, in pushing the country's political centre of gravity gradually to the left. Name any particular area of reform, from the 'comprehensive redevelopment" of our cities to the 'comprehensivisation' of education, and it is difficult to say where the contribution of one party ended and the other began.
But amid the turmoil of the past few years, the rise of Mrs Thatcher's 'New Conservatism', tpe swing of the Labour Party and the trade union movement even further to the left, there have undoubtedly been many signs of the breaking up of that consensus, And one of the most interesting reasons for this has been the extent to which the chief political goals (.1 the consensus period have been realised — even if they have at the same time been found wanting. We have `comprehensivised' our schools, we have redeveloped our cities with tower blocks and motorways, we have built our monster new hospitals — we have done all those early Sixties, Galbraithian thing's to redress the balance between 'private affluence and public squalor' — and quite apart from the fact that we do not much like what we see, there is little more in that direction we could do. Similarly, we have done just about everything that could be done in the direction of liberalising society by abolishing censorship, legalising abortion, making divorce easier and so forth. We have extended the welfare state into almost every area it could go. We have extended the economic role of the state, with a bit of nationalisation here, a new state planning board there, to the point where it could scarcely go further without making the term 'mixed economy' seem a had joke.
So it is scarcely surprising that the consensus should at this point have begun to collapse — simply because there is little more it could have hoped to achieve (particularly when the results have left the country more obviously dissatisfied and economically debilitated than ever). And the chief political consequences have been threefold.
On the one hand, it is hardly surprising that we should have at last seen a general reaction to the right. Looking at the pitiful and chaotic results which the years of woolly-minded consensus and leftward drift have produced, the Thatcherites say, it is time we tried undoing some of the damage by going back down the path we have travelled, by reducing the role of the state instead of always extending it. It is that which has given the Conservative Party such a new charge of energy in the past few years, not least because its views broadly coincide with those privately expressed (as the opinion polls repeatedly show) by the majority of the British people.
of it is hardly surprising that one ot the most notable events of British politics in the Seventies has been the extraordinary collapse of the Social Democrats, the moderate wing of the Labour Party. As I have observed here before, who could have predicted even in 1974 that we should today be seeing a parliamentary Labour Party without Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland, Brian Walden, John Mackintosh, David Marquand, Reg Prentice, Shirley Williams? Accidents have, of course, played their part — but the real reason for the collapse of Labour's social Democratic 'right' has been that, in the era of consensus, almost all its declared aims have been put into practice, if not realised — and there is now nothing more for a Social Democrat to do other than to try (as Mr Callaghan and Mr Healey did in their last two years in office) more or less to maintain the status quo. The only way any member of the Labour Party can preserve any sense of energy or forward movement is by moving — as the Labour Party has always moved, by fits and starts, ever since. it first came into conflict with the exigencies of power — even further to the left. No sooner is one batch of. nationalisation measures complete than the thoughts of the radicals must inevitably move on to the next, and so forth. But the reallY important thing which has happened to the Labour Party in the Seventies is the crucial psychological watershed along that leftward path it has crossed. For 60 years, its leaders, such as MacDonald, Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, have been able to operate in the Fabian gradualist tradition, claiming that they were operating within the existing framework of a liberal, democratic society and a mixed economy. But now the Labour Party has reached the point where, as its inbuilt momentum carries it still further to the left, it can suddenly preserve these fictions no longer — any more than many of its activists would wish to. The Labour Party has in fact reached that point where the unconscious totalitarian drive finally breaks surface over the old conscious libertarianism (as has been shown in .no way more conspicuously than in the quite spectacular openness with which so many union leaders in recent years have expressed their sympathy with the Soviet bloc).. It is this which presents us with a.polit ical prospect for the Eighties which is nd tqou thati te u sphr oe cuel dd el inktee dt i rn e tt uh ri sn cnoe ux nt t week ye e—k a.
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