Once it was usual to refer
to decisions made or key discussions taking place on the quiet as being by men
in smoke filled rooms. Tobacco is now
out but it could be said that coke filled rooms have replaced it; I do not mean
a smokeless fuel form of heating.
What is amazing about the
Co-Operative Group/Bank business is the sight of leading members of The Labour
Party standing there waving their arms about crying, "Nuffin to do wiv me
guv!" "I wus in the seminar
wiv me mates!" "Honest to
Marx, swear on Das Kapital, I knew nuffin, heard nuffin, saw nuffin."
For my entire life and
that of my parents, now only a couple of years short of a century, the Co-op
was Labour and Labour was the Co-op. My
father had good cause to dislike it. By
then it had already come a long way since it's origin.
The rapid expansion of the
Co-op in many urban areas between the wars opening big shops with several
counters, along with other chains, wiped out a lot of small traders, including
the one that employed my father. He lost
his trade. Also he did not like the
system. It was his view that a lot of
cheap low quality stuff was being peddled with the dividend being a
fiddle.
During the war years and
after when rationing and supply were problematical it was believed that to be a
customer with preferential treatment you needed to be a paid up and active
member of the Labour Party and in Labour controlled areas pressure was put on
suppliers to favour the Co-op.
Certainly during my key
time during the 60's and later where I was the Labour Party and the Co-op's
were not just connected they were the same people with different hats. This was literally true when one lady was
both a leader of her local Labour Party and Chairman of the local Co-op using
the millinery department in their department store as her personal hat stand.
It went beyond that
because there were many senior Labour party figures at national level who
maintained their local Co-op connections as part of their personal base and a
key network within the Labour Party's political system at the time. It has not changed much in recent times.
Consequently, the denial
that the Co-op Group/Bank issues at present have little or nothing to do with
the Labour Party strains credulity a long way past breaking point. What is even more ridiculous are the claims
that much of this is "private".
If someone is in charge of
a major outfit responsible for very important matters then absolute privacy is
not an option should it in any way bear on answerability. If top jobs are being given out and by who
neither is that; nor is the matter of where their money is coming from a
private matter if it is accountable.
"Crony
capitalism" is not capitalism as it should be, it is a debased and
destructive form of corporatism.
Socialism is not as it should be if it amounts to a small and introvert elite
number both engaged in cronyism and control.
What has happened is that
government's have bet the house on finance and a range of agencies and
controlling bodies. But in charge have
been very many persons while claiming to be "management" in fact know
little about their fief and more important do not recognise key elements.
In banking this means financial
risk and the relevant complexities. In
Health it means medicine, demographics and other elements of risk. In the defence of the realm it is something
else and again other forms of risk.
At the political level
there are ministers etc. who are not expert and also involved others not
necessarily expert. What has been
happening is that increasingly, almost it seems across the board, the people
appointed to actually run the organisations are not expert or informed and all
too often are sub-politicians with all the short termism and narrowness of
vision entailed.
Never mind that so many
seem to be more concerned with getting out of their skulls and the sometimes
squalid details of their non-working activities rather than the jobs in hand.
We left the Co-op Bank a few years ago. They took up too many right-on causes for my liking. Nothing wrong with that, but it became too enthusiastic and political.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is, where do you go? Whom do you trust?