Making sense of the big dipper
It is, it seems, extraordinarily difficult for a government to lose an election. Over the past forty years, for example, this country has seen, in all, nine general elec- tions. Only three of them have resulted in a change of government, and only once —in the very special circumstances of 1945—has the margin in favour of change been a decisive one.
It is in this context that the recent recovery in the fortunes of the Labour party needs to be seen. Even so. the size and speed of that recovery are so surpris- ing that, had the local election results not confirmed the opinion polls. in which Gallup now shows a 71 per cent Labour lead, it would have been hard to believe that it had really happened. Why has it?
The theory, popular in some places. that the Tory party in general and Mr Heath in particular have emerged. since Selsdon Park. as the champions of abra- sive new policies that sound uncomfort- able enough to make an apprehensive public prefer the devil it knows. may have something in it—but not much. Most people are not so much alarmed at Tory policies, radical or otherwise, as unaware of their very existence—while Mr Heath's problem, the difficulty ordinary people have in relating to him, is nothing new.
Nor is there much to the argument that the clue is to be found in the Budget, when (it is said) Mr Jenkins electioneered with machiavellian cunning by ostenta- tiously eschewing an 'electioneering' Bud- get. In fact, as the Gt.c election results showed, the recovery was well under way at least a week before Budget day. Never- theless, the most plausible explanation is indeed an economic one: unrestrained wage inflation undoubtedly swept Labour to victory in 1966; the same recipe seems to be bringing it to the brink of repeating it in 1970.
Yet taken in the round, the Govern- ment's economic record since 1966 is hardly an impressive one. The purpose of this [devaluation] is to ensure a sudden and large-scale shift in resources from home use to export. The means by which this can be done is by increasing taxes or reducing government spending pro- grammes, or both. That is what one has to do to make devaluation work. Let there be no dodging about this . . . we would need another incomes freeze in cir- cumstances when prices would be going up fast ... The logical purpose of devalua- tion is a reduction in the-standard of life
at home. If it does not mean that, it does not mean anything.'
Thus Mr Callaghan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, explaining the elements of economics to the House of Commons just four months before he did devalue the pound. Perhaps he overstated the case. There has hardly been an incomes freeze (although he may still argue that it is needed if devaluation is to continue to work), but prices (like taxes) have cer- tainly gone up fast: by more than 23 per cent in the five yedrs since 1964. com- pared with 20 per cent in France. 18 per cent in America. 131, per cent in Germany —and under 15 per cent in this country in the five years before 1964. Again, while there has indeed been a reduction in the standard of life for some—includ- ing some of those least able to afford it— for the majority there has not.
Nevertheless, the overall rise in pros- perity has been signally small. In 1964. Mr Wilson used to have great sport with the economic league tables, which showed that in the preceding five years there had been a growth in industrial production in Britain of only 23 per cent, compared with 25 per cent in America and 43 per cent in the Common Market. In the five years since 1964 the comparable figures have been 34 per cent for the Common Mar- ket. 31 per cent for America—and a piti- ful 14 per cent in Britain. The Prdlle Minister's sudden loss of interest in the international league tables is not hard to explain. Add to all this an unprecedented increase in taxation and in strikes and the magnitude of the Government's recovery—wage inflation notwithstanding —seems as remarkable as ever.
No doubt the Conservatives will be helped by Labour's latest advertising campaign, labelling them 'yesterday's men': a comparison between yesterday and today can hardly fail to benefit the Tory party. But the Tories will delude themselves if they believe that, in the eyes of the electors, they can pass the crucial competence test quite as easily as that. The floating voter looks for the group of men he feels will most com- petently manage the economy, and most competently speak for Britain in the wider world. By foolishly making the bal- ance of payments seem the touchstone of economic competence and by denying the efficacy of devaluation the Tories have allowed the Government to display itself in the only possible favourable economic light. (Even on this issue they have failed to point out that devaluation was made inevitable by the sharp deterioration in the balance of payments deficit between 1966 and 1967, a deterioration manifestly unrelated to the notorious Tory deficit of 1964.) And they have lost their traditional reputation for greater competence in 'patriotic' terms by plumping for joining Europe without any compensating de- claration of independence from the us.
But if an attack on Labour's record is the Conservatives' most fruitful elec- toral ground, their hardest problem is one that would baffle any opposi- tion—and. indeed, any government, were it not for the fact that possession is nine points of the law. For the predicament of Britain today (and doubtless of many other countries. too, but that is beside the point). the situation that causes the profoundest unease throughout the popu- lation, is what social anthropologists know as anomie—literally. 'rulelessness': the condition in which the individual ceases to feel constrained by the tradi- tional regulators of behaviour in society (whether social conventions, religious dis- cipline or parental pressures) and yet nothing new is put in their place. The results of anomie are real and practical enough—the crime wave, industrial anarchy. inflation and its attendant social evils. Yet though the people look to poli- ticians—and in particular to those aspir- ing to political office—to provide the answer, the social guidelines that are needed lie more outside politics than within it. Certainly, they cannot be legis- lated into existence.
If the Conservatives' response has not had the impact that might have been expected (and certainly this seems to be one lesson of Labour's recovery) it may be because the Tories have been quicker to recognise the symptoms—ris- ing crime. industrial unrest, inflation— than the cause, and therefore to emphas- ise the legal rather than the social reme- dies. A reform of trade union law and greater spending on the police force are admirable so far as they go. But the Tories desperately require to buttress them with a readiness to assert, explicitly and with elegance. the limits of political and legis- lative power. and the overriding need to cherish those of the old social conventions and disciplines that remain and to do noth- ing to undermine them. They may have very little time left.
Previous page
