These are the chumps who lost Scotland

Some years ago in a time BTC (Before The Crash), a group of us wrote a booklet entitled Feelbad Britain. (Available at http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/docs/feelbad-britain.pdf). It received mild interest and then passed into the oblivion reserved for small political tracts. One sentence from its first paragraph sums up its content: Twenty-first century Britain, our country, is afflicted with a deep-seated and widespread social malaise. Since that distant past, this malaise has deepened. One obvious factor is the revelation that our high-street banks, once pillars of respectability, are nests of crooks who have managed to steal billions of pounds without any retribution. Another is the ongoing disclosing of just how deep rooted has been a culture of sexual depravity and paedophilia amongst once-revered entertainers and politicians. Perhaps the defining revelation is that an allegedly demented paedophile was able a few weeks ago to sign his name to a letter requesting leave-of-absence from the institution of which he remains a member: the House of Lords. Presumably his advisors thought it might be embarrassing for him to continue to sign to collect his £300/day ‘expenses’. Truly, England has become a sad and dispiriting country.

Meanwhile, amidst this malaise, a suitably sad and dispirited election campaign is underway. On the Conservative side, this lack of any spirit is understandable. If one accepts that there are only two kinds of election campaign: steady as she goes and throw the rascals out then clearly they have to be bound by the former and unexciting slogan. Steady as she goes, chaps, careful not rock the boat, we’ve got the wind in our sails, easy does it… (I think that’s enough nautical stuff). Even so, Cameron has seemed so lack-lustre as to require a special boost of amphetamines to inject just a bit of dash into his manner.

The issue really is just why the ‘throw the rascals out’ Labour campaign has been so pitiful. Just why these devotees of the West Wing with their expensive American advisers and their months of preparation have managed not just to be totally devoid of any spirit but also to be so inept. These, after all, are the chumps who lost Scotland, the heartland of the labour movement, Red Clyde and all that. Say it very loud: these are the chumps who LOST SCOTLAND.

It is not as though there were not plenty of warning signs. The electoral system for the Scottish Parliament could have been designed expressly to stop any one party dominating but in 2011, the SNP did win an overall majority. Then they came within touching distance of succeeding in the referendum. Then, instead of realising that by siding so openly with the Tories as pro-Union they had poisoned their reputation, that when, last year, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont, resigned saying that Scottish Labour was treated “like a branch office of London”, she was replaced not by an MSP but a political bruiser from Westminster. At the time, Henry McLeish, another former Labour first minister, said that Scottish Labour supporters no longer know “what the party stands for” and that it had given “enormous ground to the SNP unnecessarily”. But still the chumps carried on oblivious.

It could still all be a dream and we could wake up on 8 May and find that it was the same-old two-party system. But the Scottish polls all suggest otherwise. The result of the inevitable bargaining over a minority government will clearly fill the columns. But another, underlying issue will also arise; can the Labour Party survive the debacle of losing Scotland. In terms of simple arithmetic, the answer is yes, it can survive without Scotland. In 1997, it won with a UK majority of 179 so even losing 41 seats in Scotland would have left it with a massive majority. It would even have won in 2005 though with a majority of barely 20. In a sense, the arithmetic is even better if one takes into account the fact that Scotland is over-represented with several small seats. It could even, looking to the future, survive the loss of Wales if one follows the idea that if Scotland goes then perhaps Wales will also see the advantage of having a progressive regional party look after its interests. In 2010, Labour won 29 of 40 Parliamentary seats there though with a historically low share of the vote, 36.3%. In principle, taking 1997 as a marker, it could still gain a majority of close to 100 even if it were to be wiped out in both Scotland and Wales. Even the result in 2005, a Labour majority of 66 would be almost a dead-heat without Celtic votes.

To appreciate what this would mean requires some graphics.

Electoral Map, 1997

This is the best that Labour has received in modern times. And here is the map from the other famous victory in 1945 when Labour had a majority of 150.

UK in 1945 general election

Finally, let’s look at the 2010 result.

UK in 2010 election

These three show how dramatically concentrated Labour has become regionally within England even in the miraculous victory of 1997 compared with 1945 when it actually won fewer seats.  Since 1945, entire regions, notably East Anglia and the east Midlands drifting down to London have become effective no-go areas for Labour. In 2005, there was almost dead-heat in England as shown below, achieved by Labour holding on to seats in the west Midlands and this could be repeated in a future election. It is almost certainly the best it can hope for from this election.

In other words, Labour can survive and even win a Parliamentary majority without the Celtic votes. However, it would become essentially a regional party ruling over the entire U.K. as well as Northern Ireland from a swathe of northern England and central London.  This would be more difficult once the slow-motion Electoral Commission had regularised seats boundaries but still not impossible. The question is, even if this electoral manoeuvre could be successfully carried through, is such a regional domination politically, let alone democratically, possible. The problem is exacerbated by the likely issue that Labour would win a majority of the seats but not of the total vote. England is not a country prone to civil war but a scenario of Labour ruling from such a confined English base would seem to set a possible scenario for another one.

Electoral Map of England in 2005 general election

Unless there is a sea-change in the next five days, the result of this election seems likely to raise a whole raft of questions, essentially concerning legitimacy. These could arise almost immediately if, as present rhetoric suggests, Labour would try to govern without making any kind of agreement with the regional party which has just wiped it out in one part of the U.K. The same issue, though as a kind of mirror-image, will come about if the Conservatives push ahead with their commitment to limit parliamentary votes on issues on which Scotland has devolved powers to English M.P.s Although Labour has largely tried to avoid the issue, it was in fact first voiced by a Labour M.P., Tam Dalyell, back in 1977 and became known thereafter as The West Lothian Question after Dalyell’s Scottish constituency.

This problem has been avoided by the three main parties largely because they pretend that they are genuinely national bodies choosing to follow U.K. national sentiment in the belief that Northern Ireland is a kind of foreign country with its own mysterious and potentially frightening political governance. The Tories have moved closest to accepting that they are basically an English party having been wiped out themselves in Scotland in 1997. It is hard to remember that up to 1987, the Tories had 21 seats in Scotland and were only overtaken by Labour there in 1955 when it still operated as the Unionist Party before merging with the Conservative Party of England and Wales.

The Liberal Democrats have an odd, historically based regional pattern with a geographical base in the South West followed by patches in the North West, Scotland and Wales which essentially follow the bases of the old Liberal Party. Given that most these last are likely to go in this election, their regional base will become quite clear.

The regional basis of Labour once it has lost Scotland and, potentially Wales, and having no real links with any Northern Ireland party will pose it with a huge problem given that it has become a party essentially run from a London-based machine. Only Manchester outside of London still possesses anything like a regional power-base. One of the most difficult issues for Labour, if it does form a minority government, is what to do about DevoManc given that it was negotiated directly by local Labour bosses without, apparently, any involvement of the London leadership. If similar powers to that accorded to Greater Manchester are passed to other cities, mostly northern, then it will be seen throughout the rest of England as a way of privileging Labour’s northern base. If it lets Manchester proceed on its own then it will enrage leaders in cities such as Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool.

The fact is that Labour has become a regional party but without the local, regional dynamism which propels other regional-based grouping in countries such as Spain and Italy. And, of course, its ‘region’ has no name or political identity other than ‘up there’ or the ‘grim north’. Older Labour members sometimes nostalgically recall the days, usually the 70s and early 80s, when local northern Labour constituencies had some real life and sense of social purpose. Now they are just efficiently organised electoral machines with no role for members other than a little electoral activity.

Must Labour die? Well, in its current form, probably unless the chumps who lost Scotland manage some exceptionally clever reorganising. There will undoubtedly by some vicious infighting inside the leadership especially as beasts such as Douglas Alexander and Jim Murphy will be wandering about wondering how to get back on to the gravy-train which has given life for so long. The chances of a new and brighter party leadership emerging from the wreck are small particularly if, because of the vagaries of the British electoral system, they have the chance of forming a minority government provided, of course, they manage to eat humble pie and deal with the SNP. Good luck on that one.

One final thought. The Green Party has always had a separate organisation in Scotland. In England and Wales, they could emerge being able to claim that they are the only genuinely national party not rooted in one region, north, south, east or west. Not quite sure how that one will pan out either.

What to do with the EU?

Willie Thompson writes:

Despite the fact that British withdrawal constitutes the centrepiece of the UKIP election campaign, the other parties involved have been surprisingly reticent about discussing the question at any length or in great detail. No doubt this is due to a state of uncertainly and embarrassment, plus a suspicion that a referendum would be likely to result in a vote for exit, which none of the others would wish to commit themselves to, since they retain the conviction, with various degrees of enthusiasm, that membership is a ‘good thing’. Odd to think that in the referendum of 1975 the Labour Party was in the main on favour of withdrawal, now, next to the Lib Dems it is the one most committed to opposing not merely exit but even a referendum.

Indeed there are plenty of reasons for wanting to be quit of this institution. It is consummately corrupt and unmitigatedly undemocratic, a gravy train for its bureaucracy and high officials; the meadow to which dubious politicians who have overstepped the mark, such as Peter Mandelson, are put out to grass. It may be remembered that voting publics in particular states such as Ireland, when referenda returned votes against innovations thought by the elites to be very important, the citizens were made to vote again until they produced a majority for the favoured outcome. It has worked in every case except Norway, but even there the national economy is nevertheless closely tied to that of the EU.   

Although the butter mountains and wine lakes are now in the past, the bureaucrats of the Commission continue to make rules which result in serious inconvenience to ordinary citizens or even wreck entire industries such as the British fishing industry. Marketisation is at the heart of its agenda and it was specifically designed in the 1950s to entrench capitalism and present a high obstacle to a socialist programme in any of its member states even if their electorate should have the impertinence to democratically decide upon such a thing, as more than half a century down the line the Greek example has demonstrated with unmistakable clarity. The ultimate aim, clearly stated from the beginning, is political unification; an absurdity in any modern state institution with the degree of language difference inside even inside its previous borders, while its parliament, except as a platform for political publicity, is a farce with no meaningful powers.

Although it is not a sovereign state, its elites have nevertheless has developed aspiration to conduct foreign policies. When these have had any effect, they have proved catastrophic. The EU in the main has acted as the economic arm of the US empire in Europe, an economic and would-be political coalition of vassal states, and if not all its members are not enrolled in NATO, the overwhelming majority are and the two institutions are closely aligned. The nature of this alignment has become especially clear in recent years in the military and political sphere so far as the Ukrainian crisis is concerned, while in the Mediterranean, thousands of refugees are being condemned to death by drowning on account of the decisions of the politicians who run the institution and constitute the final decision-makers.

To some extent tensions and stains within the EU derive from the fact that when it was created its originators assumed that the Soviet bloc would last at least far into the twenty-first century; it was intended for the western Europe of the previous one, and its unforeseen growth deep into Eastern Europe and the Balkans, with notions of admitting even Turkey and regions yet further afield, has turned its structure of governance into a rickety mess.

What attitude to take?

Naturally the EU has attracted hostility in different degrees of intensity, some of it unrelenting, and given it character and practice this should not surprise anybody. Would its breakup, if that were to occur, therefore deserve celebration and applause? If a referendum were to go ahead in 2017 should the British public vote to depart? The answer, surprisingly it might appear, in view of what has been said above, is ‘No’.

Although there are not many of them, even in its present form the institution does have some positive features. Its social regulations at least pose some restraint on the worst features of predatory capitalism, which is the principal reason that there is a lobby, albeit a minority one, among some sectors of British capital, in favour of withdrawal. The traumatic economic effects of uprooting from such a lengthy and deep integration into the structure as Britain has developed, is of course evident.

The principal objections to leaving however relate to none of these aspects, but to consideration of the political forces which would gain from such an outcome. These are the right-wing reactionary populist movements which infest nearly country in the Union and thrive on its deficiencies, often supported by toxic tabloids such as, in the UK, the Daily Express. Breakup would put rockets under their political prospects and energise them to no end. They are all racist in their presuppositions although their leaders may try to deny it and expel members who are too vociferous in these matters. Some, primarily in eastern Europe, nevertheless are even open in their fascist nostalgia.

There are some on the left as well who would, understandably, like to see the end of the European Union (I have a degree of reactive sympathy with them) but the situational reality has to be the decisive consideration and the institution’s collapse, or  British withdrawal, has got to be countered and argued against strongly. Nevertheless, unless the EU is reformed root and branch and designed to be primarily for the benefit of its citizens and not its moneybags, hatred and resistance can only increase, with political reaction harvesting the gains.

UKIP and Labour: Anyone for “Social Fascism”?

Andy Pearmain writes:

The concept of “social fascism” has got a very bad name. It was coined by the Communist International in its “third period” of the late 1920s to attack social democracy. The communists were competing with the reformist and labourist political parties for the allegiances of the working class across the industrialised world. This was the time of the Wall Street crash and the onset of the Great Depression, of mass unemployment and hyper-inflation. In the heightened tension of capitalist crisis, which pitched “class against class” in a global struggle for supremacy, the social democrats were cast by the communists as “the left wing of the bourgeoisie”, delaying the historically inevitable onset of “the dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Further, they could not be relied upon to resist the blandishments of the ruling class, and would always betray the interests of the proletariat for the sake of their own governmental, parliamentary, municipal and trade union careers. Practical examples were not hard to find, from the SPD's role in suppressing the German revolution of 1918/19 to the 1929/31 National Government in Britain led by “turncoat” ex-Labourites Ramsay MacDonald and Phillip Snowden. 

But there were several problems with this line of thinking. In its strategic perspective of “class against class” it was hopelessly “economistic”, in that it reduced all analysis to simple polarities between capitalism and socialism, bourgeoisie and proletariat, reform and revolution. It privileged the economy as the sole determinant of history, and relegated culture and ideology and even politics to the status of irrelevant sideshows. It pitched actual and potential allies on the left into sectarian squabbles and feuds, turning them in on themselves and against each other and away from the broader struggle for socialism. Above all, it downplayed the emergent threat of actual Fascism and Nazism, already in control of the state in Italy and well on the way to it in Germany, and the much greater threat they posed to the “grand old cause” of international socialism and eventually world peace.

In the ensuing local controversies over “social fascism”, trade unions, cooperatives, cultural and propaganda organisations were riven with factional dispute. Real physical violence was widespread, in the form of street fighting and targeted attacks. The Communist Parties themselves, previously ascendant and basking in the “borrowed prestige” of the young Soviet Union, were confused, divided and distracted. Anyone suspected of deviation from the party line was summarily expelled, an early warning of the purges which would destroy an entire generation of “old Bolshevik” intellectuals and activists in the darkest years of 1937/8.

In reality, “social fascism” had far more to do with the vicious infighting inside the Communist Party of the Soviet Union than with the grand project of world communism. It provided the “theoretical basis” for Stalin's “left turn”, the vanquishing of former collaborators on the right (most notably Bukharin) who had worked with him to defeat Trotsky and the mid-1920s “Left Opposition”.  The substantive issues – the pace and scale of industrialisation, policies towards the peasantry and the middle classes – were less important than the imposition of the central authority of the “great leader”, who could tack to the right or the left as it suited him.  From then until his death in 1953, “Uncle Joe” would be the undisputed figurehead of Russian and worldwide communism.   

In the meantime, the ultimately embarrassing concept of “social fascism” was quietly dropped. The Popular Fronts of the mid-1930s saw considerable revival in the political fortunes of the left, including relatively stable and successful governments. Once actual Fascism and Nazism had been subdued by military conquest, forms of “left unity” provided the political basis for post-war reconstruction and the welfare state, adopted with varying degrees of radicalism by all the victorious powers, including the Soviet Union, Western Europe and even the USA. Even the prolonged stand-off of the Cold War tended to favour the domestic politics of left-wing social democracy and right wing communism in an undeclared but highly effective alliance right across Western and Eastern Europe.

Now, with the “post-war social democratic consensus” pretty much vanquished by Thatcher and Reagan and their disciples (including much of what remains of social democracy), and the almost total hegemony of neoliberalism and its project of capitalist globalisation, is it time to rehabilitate the concept of “social fascism” to explain the almost universal rightward shift of the centre of political gravity? In particular, does it aid our understanding of the new right-wing or nationalist “populism” which is taking social democracy's place across Europe and elsewhere as the primary vehicle to resist, protest or ameliorate the ravages of global capitalism?

We are struggling to understand it in any other terms, not least because it poses an all-round electoral threat to traditional parties of both left and right. Let's look at our own national example, the peculiarly British (or more exactly English) United Kingdom Independence Party, which looks set to attract around 15% of the vote in the forthcoming general election, and may gain sufficiently more in some constituencies to win 5 or 6 seats. What exactly are UKIP's politics, beyond its signature themes of opposition to Europe and immigration (not forgetting its denial of climate change)? In traditional political party terms, where can we place it?

Well, like all classically Fascist political movements, it doesn't fit easily into any single point of the political spectrum, and can be identified as much by its temper and style as programme or principle. What can be seen of its central leadership beyond Nigel Farage is almost entirely ex-Tory, based in London and the Home Counties, and disillusioned with their former party's apparent disavowal of full-blooded Thatcherism. They are viscerally disgusted by the more modern, socially liberal, “politically correct” Conservatism espoused by David Cameron and his metropolitan friends in the Notting Hill set (or have they all now decamped to the Cotswolds?).

But to their evident surprise, these traditional, dry as dust Thatcherites are drawing support from disillusioned segments of tribal Labourism, especially in the midlands and the north. The more far-sighted UKIP-ers are working towards a “2020” strategy, whereby second place to Labour in the 2015 general election in around 100 constituencies will pave the way for a concerted effort to win those seats five years later, and displace the Labour Party as the “true” voice of working class England. The loss of even a quarter of those northern English seats, on top of the massive losses expected in Scotland this year, would be utterly disastrous for Labour. Where else, apart from (weirdly) inner London, with its enclaves of white middle class hipsters and their multinational service-class underlings, would Labour then be able to call its own?

We are in murky waters here. The British proletariat, even at its late 19^th century zenith when manual labour occupied fully two-thirds of the whole population, was never clearly politically identified. Rather, it was collectively organised in the workplace through trade unions, with their “economistic” focus on squeezing better wages and conditions out of the capitalist bosses, and practical neglect of broader social and political concerns. In its “spare time” the working class was most passionate about essentially non-political pursuits like gambling, spectator sport, music and other forms of light entertainment, and emotionally focussed on the immediate concerns of family and street community.

Labour could never count on their unconditional support, even at elections. For much of its history since universal suffrage, large chunks of the working class voted Tory and sustained a culture of popular Conservatism with strong strands of unionism and imperialism. Its less respectable cousin British Fascism – real, declared fascism in the form of Mosley's blackshirts and the National Front and most recently the British National Party – has been largely a working class movement led by toffs; an alliance of the “top and bottom drawers” which has always set itself most stridently against the middle class enlightenment and liberal philanthropy of “progressive politics”.  

For all the self-serving triumphalism of the metropolitan liberal left – determined that “in the twenty first century there can be no place” for racism, sexism, homophobia and every other nastiness – these ideological impulses are all still there, successfully tempted out of the regional English undergrowth and coalesced by UKIP into a new historical bloc. UKIP has provided a contemporary and very plausible political vehicle for what I have elsewhere called “the fascist possibility”, always lurking like a bad smell on the margins of British political culture. With its appeal to disillusioned old Labour, it has taken on a “social” dimension which previous, predominantly business-orientated and ex-Conservative fascist movements never quite managed. Hence, the label “social fascism”.

Finally, if we are to fully grasp what all this means, we need a better understanding of what actual Fascism is and was, beyond the foul insanities and perversions of Hitlerism and the comic buffoonery of Mussolini. These were real social and political movements, which managed over decades to mobilise genuine historical grievances and popular aspirations. They won majority support, at least in their own countries (though they were also widely admired elsewhere, including the UK). While setting a firm profile towards the future, they also aimed to recreate an imagined, much better past. Their core support was the lower middle class and upper working class, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and the labour aristocracy. They were impatient with the niceties of the law, and contemptuous of the messy compromises of democracy.

Their political style can be described as “authoritarian populism”; their political project as “regressive modernisation”. These were terms commonly applied in the 1980s to Thatcherism, which was also described by some as a form of fascism (not very helpfully, because Thatcher unusually took over an established political party rather than creating her own; and by then the concept of fascism had been devalued by decades of caricature and name-calling). Above all these movements were angry, to the point of violence when necessary, but otherwise prepared to vent their anger through established legal and political channels if it got them their way. On all these measures, UKIP is fascist, and just possibly the most successful British incarnation yet of “the fascist possibility”.    

Andrew Pearmain's latest book 'Gramsci in Love', a novel set in Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy, is out now.