Writing about Blue Labour in Liberator at the start of year, I suggested that:
Maurice Glasman’s target voter is a white working-class man in a manual job in the North of England in 1957.
That makes him a modernist when set against Al Carns, judging by the defence minister's resignation statement in the Commons today.
Here's how Carns began:
As honourable members know, I came into politics for one reason. That was to enact change.
But to be able to work out where you’re going, we must realise where we have come from. The Labour party I joined is one that was chiselled out of the mines of the north-east. It was hammered out of the shipyards of Govan, Liverpool and Belfast. And it was forged in the factories of the industrial revolution.
Calloused hands, sore backs, people who did a hard day’s graft and asked for one thing in return – a government that has their back.
That’s the tradition I serve in this house, and it’s a tradition that shaped that decision I took last week.
Commercial shipbuilding had largely disappeared from Britain before Carns was born in 1980 – what remains is almost all in the defence sector. Brian Potter has mapped its demise:
Despite taking virtually any order that it could get, even at loss-making prices, the UK’s shipbuilding industry continued its inexorable decline. Between 1975 and 1985, the UK’s shipbuilding output declined by nearly 90 per cent, and its share of the world market fell from 3.6 per cent to less than 1 per cent.
British Shipbuilders began re-privatization in 1983 with the passage of the British Shipbuilders Act, and over the next several years most of those newly privatised yards would close. In 2024, the UK produced just 0.01 per cent of the commercial ship tonnage built worldwide that year. In 2022 and 2023, the percentage was 0.
Potter's whole article is worth reading. It provides evidence for the view that many of Britain's economic problems stem from the fact that our managers aren't very good.
Returning to Carns's speech, coal mining in the North East of England reached its peak in 1923, with the last deep mine in the region closing in 2005. And the Industrial Revolution is generally reckoned to have begun in the middle of the 18th century.
If these are really Carns's politics, then they have nothing to do with Labour's voters and members or with the British working class today. That class, forced to exist on temporary work and zero-hours contracts, are the very people who would be hurt by his enthusiasm for yet more welfare cuts.
So when Carns went on to talk about modernising defence, you feared he was going to demand that eight Dreadnoughts be built or call for an improved flintlock for the infantry.
In fact he had sensible things about the need to grasp how warfare is changing, which means we can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't believe the first part of his statement either.
But he's not the only Labour politician who, when asked to explain it, makes their attachment to the party sound like a form of ancestor worship.
Sorry to differ, Jonathan, I don't agree with Al Carns' supposed views on welfare but I do understand his historical sentiments.
ReplyDeleteI still revere the memory of my Granddad who left school at 12 to go down a Durham pit - having lost my Gt. Granddad (age 29) to miners' lung. Granddad bought a book on geology with his first wage to understand where he worked. I well remember black scars on Granddad's back caused by the narrow seams and a medical boot he wore after an injury. I still have Granddad's geology book (with his annotations) and Gt Granddad's death certificate.
I also remember him telling me about 1926 when the mine owners (some of whom were Liberals like Lord Rhonda) cut wages by 40% and lengthened the working day. He was locked out by the owners for eight months, and my then ten year old Mum had to pick out waste from the tip to keep the home warm.
I don't believe in 'ancestor worship', but I do respect those who have gone before and built the opportunities I benefitted from. I'm not sure what has become the party of 'Middle England' understands or gets any of this.
eneral Strike. He was out for eight months and my ten year old Mum had to collect slack from the pit heaps to help keep the house warm.
You say, "Returning to Carns's speech, coal mining in the North East of England reached its peak in 1923, with the last deep mine in the region closing in 2005."
ReplyDeleteYes, and has the party of 'Middle England' got any policy to revitalise and remedy any of the industrial wastelands left by Thatcher et al.
During the Covid lockdowns, UK government was heavily scrutinised and reported. I was regularly struck by how little government ministers knew about how things are done -- about how people in offices, factories, laboratories, shops, schools tackle things when something unexpected happens and how helpless most ministers would have been out there. I know who I wouldn't want stranded on my desert island.
ReplyDeleteParliament has always been full of people from the talking professions -- solicitors, journalists, teachers, full time trades unionists -- but modern management theories have reduced professionalism. In the 1970s, a market town solicitor turned local politician had no first hand experience of running a factory or department store (and hopefully no desire) but knew people who did. That's the thing; knowing somebody who knows, or just recognising that such people exist.
In this new century, our politicians seem to believe that the only people who can step up to fix things in a crisis are management consultants (if organisation is required) or the armed services (for basic manual labour, or in recent months to provide more driving test examiners). Owing to the curse of "Yes, Minister", public servants cannot be trusted (eg for Covid test and trace) outside the limits of defined roles, even when outsourced services have clearly failed. Why are half our prisons run by contractors and half by a public service?
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An aside on why the VIP lane for politicians offering "to introduce a mate who can get you a good deal on PPE" was a great idea, shockingly implemented:
Back in June 1992, John Major announced the Cones Hotline, a telephone number to receive queries about roadworks. It was brilliant. Instead of hundreds of staff being bugged by complaints, one member of staff dealt with the lot.
I'm sure that the VIP lane for PPE was intended to work in the same way. There was one point of contact for spivs and chancers so that the people who knew about purchasing could get on with their work. Nobody would be daft enough to buy from these barrow merchants, surely?