Fear in the global marketplace
John Redwood
THE AGE OF INSECURITY by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson Verso, £17, pp. 312 Two Guardian journalists have cut loose from the short articles, soundbites and rehashed press releases that their pro- fession often expects of them. They have enjoyed themselves. They have demolished some myths, challenged the government, expressed their hatred of free enterprise and in a talismanic conclusion set the world to rights.
At its best this book is perceptive and well written. Its better passages are a huge improvement on Will Hutton's The State We're In, which doubtless means this book will sell less prodigiously. At its worst it is callow and opinionated, riven by a hatred of all that the market does and stands for. Whilst I disagree with the main plot that markets are bad for you, I agree with many of the sub-plots.
The authors are at their best in attacking the conventional sloppy thinking of the new 'Third Way consensus'. They hammer the idea that Britain needs massive consitu- tional change to right the wrongs. They savage the false notion that modernising is essential and means wrecking many of the institutions that have served us well over many decades or centuries. They are par- ticularly amusing in their robust' defence of Britain as a democracy under Margaret Thatcher, pointing out that the Charter 88 attack was unfair and sly. Their defence of the 1980s from a constitutional point of view is far better than Conservatives man- aged at the time.
They are none too enamoured of the European Union. They dislike the amount of power that has been transferred to Brussels already and strongly oppose the idea of the single currency. At times their racy interpretation of recent events, in order to fit a theory, is factually inaccurate. They claim that in my challenge to John Major in 1995 I offered no alternative strategy on Europe. This came as a sur- prise, as one of the main points of the chal- lenge was to offer the prospect of renegotiation of our relationship with our partners to limit it to the common market we joined, and to distance us from the common government it was fast becoming.
Their central thesis is that too many peo- ple feel insecure in the global marketplace. This, they believe, is brought about by the inherent contradictions of capitalism itself. They yearn for a little more Marxist analy- sis to shed light in dark places. They do acknowledge that Marx made mistakes and was roundly beaten in the battle of ideas in the last two decades.
They are right to say that many people are nervous about their job prospects and worried about whether they will be able to sustain their standard of living. They are wrong to suggest it is new or worse today thanks to globalisation. A docker of the 1950s, a steel worker of the 1930s, a sailor of any previous age could tell you a thing or two about job insecurity. Many of the problems described by the authors are not so much problems of the market system as problems springing from the present style of corporate management in big compa- nies. In many cases, the authors are not in practice attacking the market so much as the large companies that want to protect Mr Figgis! Take your hand off my lap-top!' themselves and their senior directors and executives from the pressures of the mar- ket.
One of the paradoxes of the book is its occasional enthusiasm for small companies — businesses competing in a free market- place — coupled with its rhetoric against the market which sustains them. The book does not offer a proper alternative to the market. There is no suggestion that com- munism was really right, no proposal that the UK should try where the USSR failed. The authors accept the legacy of privatised industries bequeathed by the outgoing Conservative government. They under- stand that too much government can be a threat to liberty and prosperity and firmly oppose any agenda of extending state power in the name of making a country or neighbourhood more secure.
The authors fail to understand the importance of popular capitalism to the politics of the 1980s, or its scope for the future. They admit that selling council houses to people was wildly popular. Why then do they not see that selling or giving shares to people through privatisation, employee share schemes, and building soci- ety conversions is also popular? Why do they not see that such a wide distribution of shares represents some bulwark against the power of the large companies and insti- tutions just as surely as selling homes and freeholds broke up the power of the large landowners? Nineteen Eighties popular capitalism was not about extending the grasp of the big corporation, which can at times operate beyond the power of a national government or marketplace. It was about enfranchising the many, giving and offering to the many a share in the wealth and savings of the nation that had before been reserved to the few.
Their prescriptions for exchange con- trols, more environmental controls and more management of the economy do not live up to the billing of the analysis. They would not of themselves free people from the insecurity many feel in their present lives. They would certainly not transform the inequalities we see around the world. So I disagree with the main point.
Despite this I cannot as I say help liking the book. It is the best put-down yet of the bogus middle way, the best attack from the Left on the preposterous triumph of rhetoric and spin-doctoring over reality. It is the best removal of the mask from the face of a very ordinary Labour government buffeted already by its own lack of princi- ples. This book will be the first of many powerful critiques of this government from the Left. Many of us on the Right will agree with many of the criticisms. It will be up to us to offer a different, and we think better, way to empower the many in the life of an independent democratic Britain. We will have to remind people all over again that markets offer the best way to prosperi- ty. Wise governments know when to inter- vene and when to leave well alone.
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