Politics
Red Ken's epiphany
p icture this morning, as 'Crossbencher' 1 of the -Sunday Express may well have said last Sunday, Mr Ken Livingstone, the leader of the GLC. What thoughts, it may well have gone on, fill his mind as he shares a hasty bowl of muesli with his newts? Does he fear the first real check to his meteorically successful career? Can he afford to take courageous and unpopular decisions and alienate his traditional sup- porters?
Only one Sunday before, Mr Arthur Scargill was having a similar colloquy, though not, presumably, with newts. What he really wanted, we may never know, but we do know what he decided — not to alienate those supporters. His sincerity was not tested because his view was a minority one. The strike was called off. Mr Living- stone took the alternative course. When finally asked to do what he had daily for the past 18 months said he would do, he didn't do it. He discovered at the last minute, thanks to a 'report' by Mr Reg Race, the head of the GLC's Programme Unit, that the council had enough money, even within the Government limit, to finance its planned programme. So the great rebel voted for a legal rate and, thanks to the vagaries of the many propos- als debated in the frank and free discus- sions which dignified County Hall for 221/2 hours, voted for a rate which was lower than the maximum proposed by the Gov- ernment.
The week bordered by those two Sun- days was the worst for the Left since records began, or at least since it decided that it was a good idea to confront and bring down an elected government. The demonstration in London on 6 March, which seemed oddly large and aggressive for a protest solely concerned with rate- capping, had been fixed for that day to celebrate the first anniversary of the min- ers' strike. Posters advertising it exclaimed 'One Year!'. The plan was to use the momentum from one battle to begin the crucial stage of another. Mr Livingstone said as much in a letter to Mr Scargill on 24 January: . . . As you may know, numerous organisa- tions are pledged to turn this into a joint strike against Local Government legislation and Pit Closures. The two forces most feared by this Government are the NUM and the threatened Authorities, particularly the GLC. We believe that a convergence of our two struggles on the anniversary of the strike could give real hope of turning the tide.
So when the miners' strike collapsed, Ken was left with the force of his earlier argument, but pushing the other way. The tide had not turned; it had swept on over the miners and was making for Ken and his friends. Even so, some of those friends told him, as courtiers told King Canute, that he could rebuke the waves. Like Canute (who is usually misrepresented in these compari- sons), Ken did not believe them; but instead of trying to prove them wrong, he simply decided not to risk getting wet. Without the miners' strike, the spirit of defiance was rather sapped. Councillors began to realise that they did not want to be bankrupted, barred from office, poss- ibly imprisoned. Men who for years had been calling for struggle, revolt, resistance suddenly came quietly when tapped lightly on the shoulder by the long arm of the law. None of those areas bound at this stage of the year to set a rate — the GLC, the ILEA and the metropolitan counties — had refused to do so. The great revolt was supposed to start from the top and work down to the smaller authorities. Now that the top has allowed Mr Patrick Jenkin to cram his cap onto it, the bottom will feel much less inclined to fight. What is the Left supposed to do next?
There comes a moment of epiphany in the life of every left-wing leader when he is accused of betrayal. If it never comes to him, he can be confident that he never was a leader in the first place (I doubt, for instance, if Miss Joan Maynard has ever been accused of betrayal). Despite their most strenuous efforts, the moment even came to Messrs Scargill and McGahey as the strike ended. Now it has come, much more strongly, to Mr Livingstone. As the public gallery shouted 'scab' at him last Sunday, he must have known for the first time what it was like to be Neil Kinnock. It was Mr Livingstone's first, tentative move towards becoming a normal British politi- cian. Soon there will no longer be a GLC. Not much later, if all goes according to his well-laid plan, Mr Livingstone will be MP for Brent, a left-wing Member no doubt, but an ambitious Member, conscious that the only way to succeed is on the front bench and the only way onto the front bench is to accept and work with the conventions of Parliament and a liberal democracy. In the end, all Livingstones have to decide whether they want the power that comes with being 'moderate' or the wilderness that comes with being 'ex- treme'. It is very simple, and it is just a pity that the rest of us have to suffer while men like Mr Livingstone dither about which course they would prefer.
But it is still puzzling that the resistance to rate-capping has crumbled so quickly. On the ground of local government, the Thatcherite junta is much weaker than it was with the miners or trade unions in general. This is partly because local gov- ernment is not so universally distrusted as trade union leaders have become over the past 20 years; but the more important difference is in the Government's approach to the two questions. As was suggested in this column last week, it simply is not true to say that the Government has taken powers to control and subordinate trade unions to itself. It has made laws which give the members of trade unions more power over their leaders and members of the public more redress against those trade unions. The case of local government is different. This is the first government (although Mr Callaghan's threatened something of the same) which has seriously set about reining in the pretensions and powers of local government. It proposes to abolish some councils without replacing them with larger authorities; and it is setting legally unbreachable limits to what they may spend. Whether or not one thinks this is a good thing, it is certainly an attempt to strengthen the power of the centre. The Government can be made to look authoritarian.
It an also be made to look silly. Mr Jenkin is not the most respected and eloquent of Conservative politicians, and his plans are not the best considered of this Government's many laws. The central administration's access to correct and pre- cise information abOut the spending habits of councils is limited (councils often do not have the information themselves), and so it makes terrible mistakes about what and where the real problems are. If it is really true that Mr Livingstone can carry out all these thrilling schemes for the GLC with- out overspending the Government's limit then what is the point of the wretched cap in the first place? Even with as many caps as a crocodile of schoolboys, councils will continue to spend hugely and wastefully. This must be so as long as two conditions prevail — that governments impose large statutory duties on councils and that there is very little relation between local tax and the local vote. The trouble with rates is not the nature of the tax, but that they were never intended to be so high, nor so oddly distributed. The present structure of hous- ing benefit means that, no matter how high the rate, the social services will pay it in full to all those who are eligible. There is no business vote, and there is a council payroll vote. Reform of local government which made it more locally answerable might well be as successful as the Tory union laws. The present policy is merely wrapping malignant growth in bandages. The Gov- ernment now privately admits this and is working on new proposals for the summer. If the Left cannot make something of the Government's confusion over local govern- ment, what can it achieve? Perhaps the answer is nothing. Perhaps Mr Livingstone is beginning to think so too.
Charles Moore
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