Left and right

When both ends meet

John Fletcher

Instead Of the conventional political map — a straight line with the left wing at one end and the right at the other, with consensus politics snugly and eternally in the centre at the fulcrum of political power — imagine the map as a circle, with left and right wing joining at the extremes, at the exact opposite of the political spectrum to the consensus centralisers. Strange things are in the air at the moment. Enoch Powell and his supporters, over the Common Market the Prices and Incomes and dealings with the trade unions, seem closer to the left of the Labour Party than either do to the centrist policies of Edward Heath, Jeremy Thorpe or Reg Prentice. The alliance between left and right has, in fact, a long and respectable history in English politics.

The centrist forces of today first became a political force in the latter half of the eighteenth century; they represented the businessmen and frequently nonconformist middleclasses that rose with the Industrial Revolution. Their great voice was, and continues to be, the Times. The industrialisation of England was a traumatic experience, which could only be effected by the violent uprooting of traditional rural life-styles, and the destruction of the independence and self-sufficiency of many layers of rural society. A contemporary observer, Thelwall, noted:

to profligacy and hard labour, that an individual may rise to unwieldy opulence?

Thelwall was a convinced Tory. In his book, The Making of the English Working Classes, E. M. W. Thompson traces the continuing alliance in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century England between the traditional Tories like Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, through to Carlyle, and Jacobin radicals like Cobbett. Both were united in the belief that life could only have dignity and value when human beings were independent and self-sufficient, qualities which industrial society had to destroy before it could advance. Herbert Spencer was probably the most famous late-Victorian representative of this alliance. In the view of this arch-Tory, "Government is begotten of aggression and by aggression:" Now that the white savages of Europe are overcoming the dark savages everywhere; now that the European nations are vying with each other in political burglaries; now that we have entered upon an era of social cannibalism in which the strong nations are devouring the weaker; now that national interests, national prestige, pluck and so forth are alone thought of and equity has utterly dropped out of thought, while rectitude is scorned as "unctuous;" it is useless to resist the tide of barbarism. There is a bad time coming, and civilised man will (morally) be uncivilised before civilisation can advance again.

It is always argued by cabinet ministers and such that the law of the land should be obeyed, because, as Robert Carr put it concerning the Industrial Relations Act, "the English have always had a profound respect for the rule of law." Herbert Spencer demolished that argument: The tacitly asserted doctrine, common to Whigs, Tories, and Radicals, that government authority is unlimited, dates back to times when the law-giver was supposed to have a warrant from God; and it survives still, though the belief that the law-giver has God's warrant has died out. "Oh, an Act of Parliament can do anything," is the reply made to a citizen who questions the legitimacy of some arbitrary state interference; and the citizen stands paralysed."

In The Man Versus the State he wrote:

Every extension (of government intervention) involves an addition to the (government's) agents — in further growth of officialism and an increasing power of organisation formed of officials. A comparatively small number of officials, coherent, having common interests, and acting under central authority, has an immense advantage over an incoherent public which has no settled policy, and can be brought to act unitedly only under strong provocation.

Herbert Spencer had a great influence on later radical thinking. The radical Populist movement of the 1890s in the United States treated Spencer as a bible, and it was in the strongest Populist areas of the Midand FarWest and the South that the anarchist elements of the anarcho-syndicalist 'Industrial Workers of the World' took strongest root.

In a political map divided between centralisers and decentralisers, other strange alliances at the end of the nineteenth century were taking place at the opposite, centrist, end of the political spectrum. That archimperialist, Joe Chamberlain, and that archsocialist, Beatrice Potter Webb, were eyeing each other hungrily—politically and sexually. Joe Chamberlain's radical national programme in the 1880s of slum clearance, sanitation, and town lighting relied heavily on the research undertaken by the Fabians. In the 1880s and 1890s they formed a politital alliance, advocating state intervention in almost all aspects of national life. Both groups were reformist rather than revolutionary, seeing the efficient progress of industrialised society as an end in itself, both were attacked equally by Spencer at one end of the conventional political spectrum and anarchist thinkers like Bakunin and William Morris at the other end. When Joe Chamberlain carried

his

imperialist sentiments from the Liberals to \Lae Tories, he was supported by the Fabian socialists, and Beatrice Potter even conteMplated marriage with him.

Pre-first-war politics provide the real hunting round for alliances between left and right uec.entralisers against the centre. Imagine a Political philosophy which provides common ground for G. K. Chesterton and Bertrand Russell, Hilaire Belloc and R. H. Tawney, Osr,vvald Mosley and George Lansbury, James `-onnolly and Benito Mussolini, Walter Lippan n and John Dos Passos — to work all Logether for the overthrow of the centrist Political system. The answer is that now obscure historical international phenomenon, anarcho-syndicalism. The basic belief of anarcho-syndicalism was decentralisation,. °PPosition to centralised systems of governMent in which power was held by small, selfPerPetuating elites—whether they be cornMunist or capitalist. The anarcho-syndicalists and related guild socialists aimed at re-orientating industrial ,society, with practical power being exerted ifom the bottom of the pyramid upwards. ractical power was grounded in that foundation of all power — property — which was to be owned either by the individual who Worked it—agriculturally—or by the group— Industrially. In the government, every post was open to public election every two years, and the post could not be held by the same Person for more than two years. This eql.Phasis on the individual and participation, W, ith trade through barter being controlled ,Ibrough the natural laws of supply and "ernand, and the immediate accountability of government to people, appealed equally to linght and left wingers — hence the strange 6roupings, hence also the vulnerability of anarcho-syndicalism to attack by centralised pyernment. Lenin wiped them out in Russia, w.dson and Lloyd George in the US and Brit2a,,M. In the Palmer Raids in 1920 in the States, were arrested in one night, Lloyd ite orge contemplated using the RAF against Ile anarcho-syndicalist miners strike of 1919, and Lenin fought the anarcho-syndicalists ZIth as much ferocity as he fought the White citIssians. With the defeat of anarcho-syn1alism throughout the world in the early c"40s, its members realised that only strongly _entralised organisations could hope to werthrow other strongly centralised systems. The syndicalists turned largely to com-'11,rlism, the anarchists to fascism. , Ilould anyone doubt the strength this 'eft-right alliance once had, it should be tae„Illembered that the ultimate weapon of all "archo-syndicalists was the general strike, kd that England, France, Belgium, Italy and be e US all entered the first war literally weeks .f.ore such anarcho-syndicalist general ;trl.kes, and that general strikes were being petively arranged in Sweden, South Africa, 1-anada, New Zealand, and Australia in 1914. .'Lliti England, in July 1914, politics had polarised t bp. open confrontation between decen:allsers and centralisers — among those ntralisers huddling up to each other could 17 numbered imperialists, Tories, Liberals, the abour Party and the TUC. Sir Oswald °81eY, in his 1967 autobiography, still t'cribes his political position as being closest so that of the guild socialigts and anarchoPrdlcalists. Who is the younger generation's moPhet of Glastonbury' other than John tiltchell, the founder of the Radical-Tradi onalist Society? x,,Which brings us back to the present. As rrtehael Foot is only allowed on the Labour wehrtt bench when Labour is in opposition, wa,t odds Enoch Powell over William

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i„iuree:11tlaw in the Conservative Party of the

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,1 Fletcher develops this theme further in book, Haven't I Heard All This Before?, to Published shortly by Davis-Poynter.