POLITICS

Green thoughts in a blue shade

NOEL MALCOLM

Will 1989 be the year of the Greens, or rather, of the greening of the major political parties in Britain? I doubt it.

`Green' issues will never rank with the central concerns of British politics (the economy, defence, the Welfare State) unless God opens an ozone hole directly above the Palace of Westminster, or melts the polar ice-cap just enough to bring the Thames lapping round the chair-legs in the Members' Bar. But green issues, like lichen on tree-trunks, can act as important indicators of other, more general changes in the political environment. For years, the public has assumed that concern about such problems was an indicator of a leftist or centre-ish orientation in politics. 'Con- servative', the mental equation went, `equals capitalism, equals pollution.' The Tories have most to gain from any wide- ning of the debate about the environment, because these knee-jerk mental equations are quickly dispelled by any serious thought on the subject.

At the moment, while serious thought about such matters is a rare commodity, most people will vote for capitalism with their feet or their wallets, while harbouring feelings of suppressed guilt about its sup- posed ill effects on the environment (or the poor, or the Third World). It takes a real sea-change of political education to con- vince people that the ill effects of socialism are actually a good deal iller, even in the realms of so-called 'conscience' issues, than those of a system of advanced capital- ism regulated by law. That sea-change is the revolution which, we keep being told, has taken place in the mind of the electo- rate during the last decade. But in the case of the environmental issues, the revolution has obviously not yet happened. If the Government can persuade the ordinary voter that there is no incompatibility be- tween being green and being true blue, that really will be an indicator of a signifi- cant change in the way people think about the choice between socialism and its oppo- site.

The traditional socialist view of the connection between capitalism and pollu- tion can be found on page seven (no, I'm not making this up) of the Labour Party Song Sheet: I'm the man, the very fat man

That waters the workers' beer.. . I've a car, a yacht and an aeroplane, And I waters the workers' beer.

In stanza two, scansion is sacrificed to the demands of scientific accuracy:

When I makes the workers' beer, I puts in strychnine, Some methylated spirits And a drop of paraffin.

But since a brew so terribly strong Might make them terribly queer, I reaches my hand for the water tap And I waters the workers' beer.

The final stanza, however, ends on a note of complaint which is both poignant and theoretically intriguing:

The water rates are shockingly high And chemicals are so dear, So there isn't the profit there used to be When I waters the workers' beer.

There are signs of a breakthrough in economic theory here. Unlike most of the other songs in the book (If it Wisnae for the Union', 'Song of the Trico Women Workers', etc), these lyrics suggest that the evils of capitalism can be overcome not by the unionisation of labour but by supply- side economic forces. A little further thought might have suggested that market forces on the demand side would also play a part: if the workers were given a choice, they might buy strychnine-free beer, even if it cost slightly more. A moment's consid- eration of the difference between the advanced market economics of Western Europe and the sluggish centralised econo- mics of Eastern Europe will show that consumer demand can be an important source of pressure for higher standards of environmental hygiene and safety.

But more than a moment's consideration is needed, not only of the facts (the appalling levels of environmental damage in countries such as Poland and the Soviet Union are all too seldom mentioned) but also of the reasons for them. Poverty and corruption are two major causes of pollu- tion; both of these are fostered by the inefficiencies of a centralised economic system. The comment is sometimes made that high environmental standards are a luxury which only rich countries such as West Germany and Switzerland can afford. There is some truth in this; and it is also true that these countries did not become rich by running their economies on socialist principles.

The point about centralised economies, however, is not just that they are breeding- grounds for spivs, shady dealers and bribe- takers. It is that the central ownership of the economy puts two quite different func- tions into the hands of the government: production and regulation. In cases (which exist in all economies) where the short- term interests of the producer can be served by polluting the environment, pollution is much more likely to be permit- ted by governments where the producer is the government.

Labour's Energy spokesman, Mr John Prescott, made a similar point after the Piper Alpha disaster, when he complained that the Energy Secretary should not be in charge of the North Sea health and safety inspectorate when he also had an interest in maximising production from the oil-rigs. The Environment Secretary, on the other hand, has been roundly attacked from the Labour benches for making precisely the sort of separation of powers (in the case of water supply) that Mr Prescott was deman- ding. The Water Bill ensures that the pollution-regulating powers of the Govern- ment and of the National Rivers Authority will be fully separated, for the first time, from the interests of the water-supplying companies.

Of the two versions of Labour policy on offer here, I think Mr Ridley's attackers come closer to expressing the traditional Labour view. Two recurrent phrases which I jotted down at the last Labour conference were, 'You can't regulate when you don't control,' and, 'You can't have control when you don't have ownership.' Mr Rid- ley's purposes in life (yes, he does have one) is to convince us that the opposite is true. You shouldn't regulate if you also own.