RSS Feed MenuYou start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in… grotesque chaos…
– British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock on the party’s far-left “Militant Tendency” movement
Thirty years ago in Britain, the election of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party signaled not only the defeat of the Labour Party, but also a crisis for the dominant economic and social paradigm of the day, Keynesianism . Keynesian economics had been essential in powering Britain and the world’s post-war economic recovery and in providing answers to the major problems of the time: unemployment, lack of basic education and inequality. Unfortunately, Keynesian social democracy did not have answers to the demands of a new generation: lack of consumer choice, technical competition, economic globalism, inner city crime and stagflation. In the wake of Labour’s 1979 election defeat, the party entered into a period of prolonged crisis, a debilitating conflict between left, right and center that nearly put the party out of business. Don’t look now, but history may be repeating itself across the pond thirty years later…
The Leadership
Labour's Michael Foot and current GOP leaders
Following the Tories’ overwhelming victory in 1979, Labour elected Michael Foot leader. A well-respected and highly regarded MP and former journalist, Foot was an unabashed socialist. Well liked, Foot was thought of as out-of-touch, holding positions that were increasingly irrelevant to the problems of the 1980s and increasingly unable to manage a Labour Party spinning out of control.
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The Fifth Columnists
Labour's Gang of Four and our Republican RINOs
Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers despaired of the party’s left-wing direction and were hounded by far-left activists inside the party. Criticized for being too far to the right and insufficiently committed to socialism and class conflict, the so-called “Gang of Four” left (or were chased out) of the party in 1981.
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The One
Labour's Tony Benn and the GOP's Mike Huckabee
Tony Benn was known for his oratorical skill, his fatherly and gentlemanly approach to political debate, and his deep commitment to socialism. He was respected and well-liked. If anyone could have turned Labour into a socialist party that could win, it was Tony Benn.
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The Rank and File
Grassroots leaders like Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers, MPs like future London Mayor Ken Livingston and Eric Heffer and rank-and-file activists from groups like the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, fought tooth and nail against Labour moderates, attacking them at every turn.
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The Fire-Breathers
Terry Fields, leader of Labour's Militant Tendency and Glenn Beck
The men and women of the Militant Tendency, co-founded by Terry Fields, did not believe in the Labour Party at all, except insofar as it served as a vehicle to advance their revolutionary Marxist ideology. They used Labour to push revolution, argued for a class war and told followers not to believe the “capitalist media.”
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The Results…
British 1983 electoral map with Labour party wins in red
The 1983 election saw Labour adopt its most left-wing program in decades. The party manifesto, mocked by one Labour MP as “the longest suicide note in history,” called on the Labour Party to implement a socialist program featuring unprecedented government expansion into the economy, reintroduction of planning, nationalization of industry and withdrawal from NATO and the EEC. The far-left got what it wanted and Labour was dealt the worst election defeat in its history. When all was said and done, the left-wing was discredited and the way was paved for the rise of “New Labour,” which was more centrist than anything Fields, Foot or Benn could have ever imagined in 1983.
A Cautionary Tale from Accross the Pond | Republicans United. // Oct 30, 2009 at 11:46 pm
[...] Charles Brackett has a pretty good rundown of what happened 30 years ago in Britian. The election of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives, placed the Labour Party in a crisis. In something that is strangely similar to today, the party decided that it was not left-wing enough and pushed ahead with an even more leftist platform. The result? The election of 1983 was a landslide for the Conservatives. [...]
wrs10 // Oct 31, 2009 at 8:14 am
ottovbvs #23 “The conservatives had held the seat forever……”
So????
http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/XXXV/3/252
or if you prefer
http://poluk.wikia.com/wiki/1979_General_Election_Results
Conservative Holds at the 1979 Election D–H
Constituency: Party (Majority), MP (Where Applicable)
Glasgow Hillhead: Conservative (2,002)
A majority of 2,002 is marginal – even if one stands on one’s head. End of story. Glasgow was the only area of the country which swung against he Conservatives in 1979. (Glasgow is also my home town – give up trying to make out that you are on the inside track on this one). I was also standing as a candidate for a local authority ward in May 1982 – so I did notice that my Party had re-taken the lead in polls in March. I noticed that the Hillhead (along with everyone else, including the media) result was more damaging to Labour than to the Conservatives. If you really were ” very up to speed with what was happening in British society” you would have noticed that the swing against Labour, by Roy Jenkins, in the Warrington by-election was noticeably more than his swing against the Conservatives in Hillhead.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ap8iQufidpV4
……Labour hasn’t been placed third in Mori’s poll since February 1982……….
“………there’s a contradiction between your first and subsequent three sentences!”
No there is not. I would not pay you good money to tell me the time of day.
ps – “there was a real chance she could be overthrown in a palace coup……as she ultimately was……in the short term the Falklands war removed that risk”
Er, June 1982 (Argentinian surrender in Post Stanley) – November 1990 (Thatcher being dumped) exceeds the length of time one can be elected President of the US . Your idea of “short term” is not the same as mine.
I did not need to look up Google to inform myself – I knew from previous experience of dealing with “the Falklands saved Margaret Thatcher” myth that I would be meeting some resistance. Most of them were British so they were familiar with the fact that governments in Britain often lose about one third of their support mid-term but come back to win the following election – and that 1981 was typical of that historical pattern. You, on the other hand, have been particularly clueless.
ottovbvs // Oct 31, 2009 at 8:57 am
Churl // Oct 30, 2009 at 9:51 pm
” If Armey has pulled any “activism” stunts of a magnitude comparable to the 1984-1985 British coal strike I’ve certainly missed them.”
………Purely a matter of the relative resources at their respective disposal…..if Armey had them he would……I was in the oil business at the time of the miners strike(although not living in Britain)….. about a third of British generating stations were oil fired so the maintenance of supplies was of paramount importance and we had police guards at the terminals and along pipelines……the miners tried to get the seamen union and oil installation workers who were in the transport and general workers union I think to come out in sympathy with them but they wouldn’t fortunately. Thatcher personally wasn’t enormously popular, never was, but the feeling in the country was that trade union anarchy had to be stopped. She did conduct it brilliantly from the get go…..it was obvious she was gearing up for a fight from at least a year before with the build up of coal and oil stocks and then Scargill walked right into the trap……once battle was joined she never lost her nerve despite a lot whining in her own party leadership who on the whole detested her.
ottovbvs // Oct 31, 2009 at 9:25 am
wrs10 // Oct 31, 2009 at 8:14 am
……You miss the point entirely……Let us go back to your original comment where you were contesting my statement that it was the Falklands War that turned things around for Thatcher viz.
“ottovbvs #7 “What saved her was the Falklands War”
????? Not according to the March 1982 opinion polls or the Glasgow Hillhead by-election held in that same month. They showed clearly that the Conservatives were in the lead again and what with another 2 years before the need to hold an election….. ( I think that the recovery in the economy had something to do with that state of affairs)”
1)If your contention was correct she should have held Hillhead, but it wasn’t correct because her approval was in the twenties and didn’t turn around until after the Falklands War
2) The question that then arises was why didn’t labor win it since they were the main opposition. They didn’t win it because Labor was collapsing and there was great fear amongst the traditional parties that Social Democrats which Jenkins founded in 1981 would benefit from both a collapse in the labor party vote and the conservative vote because of Thatcher’s unpopularity.
3) The possible outcome at the next general election would have been a hung parliament with no party with an absolute majority but the conservatives probably with the largest number of seats and thereforce forced to go into coalition with the SDP who wouldn’t serve under Thatcher and therefore, would have to choose another leader.
4)Many among the leadership of the party, who largely disliked her, wanted to pre-empt this by dumping her and thereby improve the conservative party’s chances of winning an absolute majority at the next general election. There was nothing unlikely about this as they’d done the same to Heath only a few years before. Therefore the notion that she was “pleased” by the outcome of the Hillhead election and that it strengthened her position is total nonsense.
5)The Falklands War rendered this all moot, revived her popularity and blunted the growth of the SDP. When the next general came around, the Labor party was in complete disarray, I think Foot was leader by then, and she had a walkover.
ottovbvs // Oct 31, 2009 at 9:38 am
wrs10 // Oct 31, 2009 at 8:14 am
“………there’s a contradiction between your first and subsequent three sentences!”
No there is not. I would not pay you good money to tell me the time of day.’
………..mamma mia
“Arthur Scargill and Dick Armey could not be mistaken for each other if they were each wearing brown paper bags over their heads.”
…………Politically Scargill and Armey bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever!
” They both were/are out to sink the chances of candidates in their own parties who had/have a chance of winning moderate voters. The more “success” they had/have the more likely that their party stayed/stays in the wilderness.”
…………Politically Scargill and Armey are both behaving in exactly the same way
“Strategically they are sufficiently similar to be compared.”
…………Politically Scargill and Armey are similar enough to each other to be compared.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Churl // Oct 31, 2009 at 1:21 pm
ottovbs saith, “Purely a matter of the relative resources at their respective disposal…..if Armey had them he would……”. It would be interesting to see how you know that, or could prove it.
and this zinger on Margaret Thatcher,
“…once battle was joined she never lost her nerve despite a lot whining in her own party leadership who on the whole detested her.”
Reminds me of the Republican Party’s current national leadership (and wannabee prophets like Frum) who quiver and whimper whenever a conservative stands up for conservative principles.
ottovbvs // Oct 31, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Churl // Oct 31, 2009 at 1:21 pm
“ottovbs saith, “Purely a matter of the relative resources at their respective disposal…..if Armey had them he would……”. It would be interesting to see how you know that, or could prove it.”
……..Quite easily actually since he’s already demonstrated this proclivity…..he and Gingrich were quite happy to shut down the entire Federal govt over a fairly minor budget dispute just so they could embarrass Clinton…….and then there was the whole Whitewater farrago……ultimately both of them blew up in their faces.
“Reminds me of the Republican Party’s current national leadership (and wannabee prophets like Frum) who quiver and whimper whenever a conservative stands up for conservative principles.”
…………I’m one of Thatcher’s greatest admirers but this is a typically simplistic reading………One of the far right’s besetting sins is they will try to transfer patterns of behavior they admire (eg. Churchill in 1940 etc) to totally different circumstances……Thatcher won big in the Falklands and against the miners because she was right, had general public support and showed a lot of tactical flexibility in pressing her campaign……later in her premiership she showed increasing signs of blind adherence to doctrine and tactical rigidity in matters like the poll tax and Westland which are the hallmarks of today’s GOP and which ultimately led to her overthrow……..an event unprecedented in modern British political history.
Churl // Oct 31, 2009 at 2:21 pm
ottovbs, and now the question is, which US party is pursuing the analog of the poll tax: Republicans who say stuff that liberals don’t like, or the Democrats who are trying to run the banking industry and 2/3 of the American auto industry, take control of health care with 1,990 pages of legalistic opacity, and whack with higher costs anyone who consumes energy or uses it to produce something with CO2 cap and trade regulations.
Time will tell.
ottovbvs // Oct 31, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Churl // Oct 31, 2009 at 2:21 pm
…….Putting square pegs in round holes again……….they are not running the banking or auto industries…….they are not taking control of healthcare but piggybacking on an immense, disparate and almost entirely private existing system which is why you end up with a 1900 page bill…….the whole notion of less govt is a myth……Federal and state budgets total approaching five trillion (4.5 trillion in Bush’s last budget) this is several times the expenditure of any other sovereign state in the world……it’s never going to change……the challenge is to manage it as efficiently and cost effectively as possible……. the occasional whimsicality of your comments suggests you are not entirely without some appreciation of complexity and nuance, so what do you keep repeating this simplistic stuff
sinz54 // Nov 1, 2009 at 10:24 am
ottovbs: they are not running the banking or auto industries
Of course they’re running them.
They forced the resignation of several CEOs.
They told GM to start producing small “green” cars, even though any industry analyst would have told them that only the big SUVs produced enough revenue to keep GM afloat even this long. (The high cost of union labor is fixed no matter what type of car GM produces. And the chance that GM can produce a car to compete with the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla is virtually nil; GM engineers are simply incapable of that.)
sinz54 // Nov 1, 2009 at 10:28 am
ottovbs: the challenge is to manage it as efficiently and cost effectively as possible
But they’re NOT managing it efficiently and cost effectively.
In fact, they’re deliberately doing the REVERSE: Spending almost wildly on everything (except, notably, national defense) in an attempt to boost the U.S. out of recession. This is Bernanke’s “helicopter model” on steroids.
The stimulus package contained a huge number of ridiculous projects that won’t produce any lasting capital goods. I don’t think Obama cared. He just wants to reflate the currency.
ottovbvs // Nov 1, 2009 at 11:01 am
sinz54 // Nov 1, 2009 at 10:28 am
“In fact, they’re deliberately doing the REVERSE: Spending almost wildly on everything (except, notably, national defense) in an attempt to boost the U.S. out of recession.”
…….Read conservative economist Bob Bartlett’s book, he’ll explain it to you.
“The stimulus package contained a huge number of ridiculous projects that won’t produce any lasting capital goods. I don’t think Obama cared. He just wants to reflate the currency.”
……Sinz gives us the benefit of his economic expertise…..now what you think Paris Hilton?
balconesfault // Nov 1, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Spending almost wildly on everything (except, notably, national defense) in an attempt to boost the U.S. out of recession.
The funny thing is, one day the charge is that the stimulus bill isn’t pumping money into the economy fast enough … for example, the tax cut and unemployment assistance programs kicked in immediately, but the CBO found that only 52 percent of the money in the stimulus bill devoted to new government spending will actually be spent by 2010, as bureaucrats were charged with developing procedures and criteria, issuing necessary regulations, and reviewing plans and proposals prior to doling out the cash.
Wildly?
wrs10 // Nov 4, 2009 at 12:37 pm
http://openleft.com/diary/15831/ny23-resultsdemocrat-owens-leads-in-early-returns
New York 23rd Congressional
(528 of 606 precincts reporting)
Owens (D) Scozzafava (R) Hoffman (C)
49.1% 5.5% 45.4%
Owens margin: 4,580
How does that old saying go again – oh yes “One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh!”