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Editorial
Mick Hume
Why mad cows are bigger than EMU
For months the media has been full of excited talk about political ferment,
Tory Party splits and defections, and impending general elections. So why,
some have asked, have most of Living Marxism's front covers and lead
features focused on apparently non-political issues: like the panics about
the contraceptive pill and the coming of new plagues, the circuses surrounding
the National Lottery and Princess Diana, or the scares over ecstasy and
now mad cow disease.
Our unconventional choice of issues is motivated by something more than
a journalistic bid to cover topics a bit hotter than boring old Major and
Blair. It reflects a real shift in the character of political debate and
in the way that different issues now influence people's lives - a shift which
anybody who hopes to make an impact on public opinion today has got to come
to terms with.
More than ever, there is now a yawning gulf between the world of parliamentary
politics and the world where the rest of us live. This is not, as some experts
would have it, because most people are deeply apathetic about political
debate. It is because there is no real political debate for anybody to feel
apathetic or otherwise about in Britain today.
A glance at the Conservative government's legislative programme confirms
that the Tories have nothing left to offer, save the fag-ends of their privatisation
drive and more and more law-and-order measures. New Labour's dramatic alternative
was summed up in January, when Tony Blair promised Japanese businessmen
that a Labour government's priorities would be keeping the lid on public
spending and holding down inflation - in other words, carry on Treasury austerity.
Against this background of political exhaustion and inertia, the two sides
of the House of Commons conduct a phoney war, swapping little insults and
soundbites in a 'debate' devoid of contrasting visions of society.
The fiercest battles today are fought within the parliamentary parties rather
than between them. Without coherent programmes and stable constituencies
to hold them together, the old parties look more like loose collections
of squabbling factions. Most of the tensions inside Blair's New Labour have
been temporarily suppressed, as everybody tries to button their lips until
after the election. Inside the despairing Tory Party, however, it is every
man and woman for him or herself. The defection of Emma Nicholson MP to
the Liberal Democrats, following the departure of Alan Howarth MP to Labour,
shows the Conservatives tearing themselves apart. Yet here, too, the most
striking thing is the lack of impact which these dramas now make on people
outside the parliamentary world.
In the past, defections and splits from the major parties - such as the break-up
and realignment of the Tory Party over Irish Home Rule around the First
World War, or the radical Independent Labour Party's breakaway from Ramsay
MacDonald's Labour in 1932--tended to be around big national issues and
shook the political system to its foundations. Today's disputes look tame
by comparison. Those splitting are either marginalised figures living in
the past (like Arthur Scargill and his putative Socialist Labour Party),
or embittered individuals seeking to settle scores or advance their careers
(like Howarth and Nicholson). Meanwhile, everybody else goes about their
business unmoved by Labour's rows over women-only shortlists or Tory controversies
over the Euro-currency.
As the run-up to the next general election begins, public loyalty to any
of the major parties is at a low ebb. That is why, despite the unprecedented
collapse of Tory support in the polls, New Labour's leaked internal reports
show that Blair's team are still not sure of winning themselves. Most people - and
especially younger people - are entirely detached from the political process.
There is a general sense that everything which goes wrong is somehow the
government's fault, but no real enthusiasm for any other party or policy
either.
It might be thought that a critical magazine like Living Marxism, which
owes no allegiance to any parliamentary party, would be keen to encourage
the mood of disaffection from traditional politics, say with some tub-thumping
frontpage features about Tory corruption. But things are not so straightforward
today.
The widespread anti-politics feeling now goes much deeper than simple hos-tility
to the incompetence of Major or the opportunism of Blair. It is underpinned
by a broader loss of belief in the idea that any political movement, or
any collective of people, could act to alter things for the better. And
that is a major problem for those of us who want to change the way the world
is run.
The coincidence of an economic depression with the exhaustion of the old
politics of both left and right has created a unique kind of consensus:
one which senses that capitalist society is going nowhere, but which accepts
all the same that there is no alternative to the status quo. The result
is a mood of political paralysis. There is a widespread feeling of uncertainty
and powerlessness among people whose lack of faith in politics reflects
the fact that ultimately they no longer feel very confident of anything
or anybody, including themselves. This is where the important influence
of the 'non-political' issues like mad cow disease, highlighted in Living
Marxism, makes itself felt.
As Dr Michael Fitzpatrick examines elsewhere in this issue, the irrational
scare over the potential spread of BSE marks another advance for Britain's
collective anxiety. These days we are exposed to an endless stream of panics
and scares about supposedly increased risks to our personal health, personal
safety and personal security. Beefburgers, alcohol, ecstasy, sex, hitchhiking,
road rage, computer porn, knives, peanuts and scratchcards are just a few
of the more recent dangers which people have been told pose a growing risk
to them and their children.
While a few of these scares may seem too silly to have much impact, overall
the plague of panics acts and interacts to reinforce a general sense of
insecurity in society. Such social insecurity can only encourage conservatism
and regression at every turn.
The constant emphasis upon the need to live more 'sensibly' and act more
'responsibly' these days is pressing everybody to batten down the hatches
and take fewer chances. And if people are becoming more reticent about experimenting
in their personal lives, they will be many times more reluctant to stick
their necks out in public or political life. That is one reason why countering
the paralysing impact of the 'non-political' scares and panics is such a
priority for those of us who want to gain a hearing for political alternatives
today.
The first thing to grasp is that we are dealing with an entirely unprecedented
situation. Of course, the media have always spread scare stories about crime
and disease. The difference today is that, for the first time, circumstances
have combined in such a way that these issues are often the decisive
ones shaping people's outlook on life.
In particular, the demise of the old collective identities associated with
left and right, and of class politics, has removed an important counter-pressure.
People left with a more intense sense of themselves as atomised, powerless
individuals, disconnected from any wider social or political arena, are
naturally more preoccupied with concerns about personal health and safety.
They are also more likely to fall prey to demands for more authoritarian
measures of regulation, protection and control - demands which the law-and-order
lobby of both New Labour and the old Tories are eager to accommodate. That
is why, if we want to shake up the public climate of today, a panic about
mad cow disease really is a more pressing matter to deal with than an issue
like EMU which preoccupies the political elites but leaves others cold.
Coming to terms with the sea-change that is occurring in political life
has important consequences for our own actions and arguments. It means that,
if we want to have something relevant to say today, we have to evolve our
politics in a new direction. Many of the issues and slogans traditionally
thought of as 'left-wing' are at best irrelevant now. The job in hand is
to look at things afresh, in order to identify what are the most powerful
contemporary ideological barriers to the spread of revolutionary ideas at
the end of the century.
That is the project which Living Marxism has been engaged in over
the past couple of years. As a result of our efforts to pioneer a new generation
of anti-capitalist politics, and to test the efficacy of different arguments
today, we have come closer to understanding the demands of the new climate
in which we all live and work.
If it is to be an appropriate tool for countering conservatism in our times,
the politics of Living Marxism will often have to be developed around
the apparently 'non-political' issues which exercise such influence in the
here and now. As the countdown to the general election raises the political
temperature, we will be seeking to intervene in the campaign around these
themes. Anybody who might have thought that our recent emphasis on such
issues was a temporary diversion before we get back to talking about 'real'
politics is going to be as disappointed as they are outdated. Far more than
anything coming from the ailing beasts of Westminster, this is the real
politics of today.
Reproduced from Living Marxism issue 87, February 1996
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