| The Greasy Pole
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Hard
work,
decency
and
politicians |
Are
you decent? Are you hard-working? Do you always play by the rules? If
you can tick the "Yes" box in answer
to these questions you should be aware that our politicians have it in
mind to look after you. Both Blair and Howard
are agreed that you are a specially deserving case. In a recent speech
Michael Howard told us that the Britain he believes in
"will give hard-working families the support they deserve.Those people
who play by the rules, pay their taxes, respect
others…"and he complained in the Tory election manifesto that "instead
of rewarding families who do the right thing, work hard
and pay their taxes, Mr. Blair's government takes them for granted."
This in spite of the fact that Blair has already told the 2004 Labour
conference that his government planned to change Britain
for better, into a country "where hard working families who play by the
rules are not going to see their opportunities blighted by those who
don't."
And he followed this up in Labour's manifesto, which he said was "a
plan to improve the lives of hard-working families…(and)
building communities strong and safe for those who play by the rules."
But plans to celebrate would be premature. From past experience
any promise by a politician to improve your prospects needs to be
received warily.
Abbey Bank
When Blair and Howard talk about their ambitions to improve the
lot of hard working families they are overlooking the people -
there are thousands of them - whose dearest wish is to work hard for an
employer but who are denied this on the grounds of profitability. That
was the case with MG Rover and with a more recent, less publicised,
example of the Abbey Bank. This bank was once the Abbey National
Building Society, whose business was locking workers into a lifetime of
debt in order to have somewhere to live. They advertised themselves
with a catchy jingle about getting the habit for being an Abbey debtor,
a slogan about Abbey making life simpler and a comforting logo of a
cheery family striding confidently into the future protected by an
umbrella in the form of the roof of a house. That was when working for
a building society gave someone a job for life, which encouraged them
to work that bit harder for their employer.
Then the Abbey National became a bank, which plunged them into a
savagely competitive industry where they found it hard to survive, let
alone prosper. The hoped-for remedy was to be taken over by the Spanish
bank Santander, who took a more robust view of the processes of
employment and the reasons for people working for them - and presumably
of the complacent delusions fostered by that advertising jingle and the
company logo.
A principal concern for Santander was their new acquisition's
cost/income ratio, which persuaded them that there had to be some
economies. These involved getting rid of a few thousand employees,
which must have dissolved a lot of ideas about the bank being a kind of
charity.
Originally Santander intended to cut about 3,000 jobs but recently
their boss, Francisco Gomez-Roldan, announced that another 1,000 would
have to go, which may not be the end of the redundancies.
The finance services union Amicus angrily described the sacking as "an
example of worst practice" but of course right - the right of an
employer in the class relationships of capitalism - was on Santander's
side. Gomez-Roldan was unmoved. "We want to be a strong competitor" he
argued, "We have to manage the cost/income ratio". So a few thousand
hard working people, who would like to be allowed to continue in that
way, are joining the dole queues.
Meanwhile, Santanders' profits rose by 38 percent, to £820
million, in
the first quarter of this year. And that logo? It too has been made
redundant and is being replaced with another - of red flames -which
will soon be on all the country's High Streets.
Deception
Decency is another human characteristic which Blair and
Howard promise to see appropriately rewarded. How do they match
up in this? Howard was one of the more prominent figures in the Tory
governments of the 1980s and 1990s and during that time he did not
amass a reputation for fastidious devotion to the truth. After the
defeat of the Major government in 1997 he languished in comparative
obscurity until the final months of Iain Duncan Smith's disastrous
leadership. As desperate Tory MPs began to manoeuvre to get rid of
Duncan Smith, Howard was asked whether he would be willing to stand for
the leadership. His reply was an emphatic "no," saying that he could
not imagine any circumstances, even if Duncan Smith resigned, in which
he would be a candidate. Soon after that Howard was engaged in a
conspiracy with other Tory leaders to nominate him and, circumventing
the rule which laid down that the leader must be elected by the party
membership, ensure that he got the job because he was the only
candidate. This gave the Tories in Parliament the leader they wanted
and avoided another Duncan Smith experience but it was an example of
dishonest political manipulation.
Lies and inconsistency were an important issue in the last election,
largely centred on Tony Blair and his deceptions over Iraq,
tuition fees and the like. At a post-election meeting of Labour MPs
Glenda Jackson recounted a common experience: "I was told on the
doorstep time and again that they cannot vote for me while Tony Blair
remains leader". But this kind of attack on the leadership concealed
the fact that among the doubters in the Labour Party there was
considerable inconsistency, not to say deceit. Let us take the example
of Tony Benn, who for a long time has claimed to be the passionate,
undying defender of true Labour Party values. Last December he was, as
expected of him, complaining that the Iraq war was based on "a blatant
lie about Saddam's possession of WMD" and he described the war as
"deeply immoral and unwinnable". Again as expected of him, he has
consistently attacked Labour's "shift, by stealth, towards
privatisation in health, housing and education". These doubts should be
enough to persuade anyone to leave the party and go into opposition
against it.
But when the election came Benn proved how adaptable his principles
are, by telephoning wavering Labour voters to forgive
and forget and get down to the polling station and vote for another
period of Blair government, with its wars, its privatisation, its lies.
"I am supporting Labour candidates up and down the country" was how he
airily put it.
Coercion
In February 2002 Transport Secretary Stephen Byers had to
apologise for telling a lie on TV about his responsibility for sacking
his press chief Martin Sixsmith. Byers' indefensible deception was
justified by the then Education Secretary Estelle Morris by a peculiar,
but convenient to Blair's Labour Party, definition of a lie:
"It (Byers' lie) wasn't an attempt to deceive - he couldn't possibly
have thought that people wouldn't have known…What I call a lie is when
you say something to somebody and hope to get away with it because they
won't find you out."
(
When is a lie not a lie? Er.image ->)
That feeble and transparent attempt at propping up the unsupportable
was all the more remarkable because of Morris' reputation as an
unusually honest politician, the woman who later resigned from her
Cabinet job admitting that "I just don't think I am as good at it as I
was at my last job" and who did not stand at the last election because
she could not endure the high profile media scrutiny. In that sense she
was an exceptional presence in the political jungle but in another -
her readiness to excuse and encourage blatant deception - she was
completely typical.
The "hard work" and "decency" we are supposed to conform to and the
"rules" we are driven to keep are fashioned by the needs
of this class society in which privilege exists by virtue of minority
ownership of the means of life. That system of property rights is
supported by its "rules" - a huge complex of coercive laws and
punishment - which defines concepts such as "hard work" and
"decency". Political leaders like Blair and Howard work to justify that
coercion and to encourage the working class - the voters - to acquiesce
in its continuation. But they could not do that through any clear and
consistent statement of reality; to justify the capitalist system
relies on a repetition of false arguments. So the politicians who
manage capitalism impose on the workers their own flexible
interpretation of the rules. They need to lie, to evade, to conceal, to
manipulate, because they could not do their job, at which they are
notably hard-working, in any other way.
IVAN
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