At the Labour
Party Conference in his speech Jeremy Corbyn claimed that Labour were on the
brink of power and if they achieved it there would be nationalisation on a wide
scale and major interventions in many sectors. Was the ghost of Clement Attlee
hovering over him?
The Wikipedia
article, "Attlee ministry" if you scroll down to the end has a list
of the major legislation passed during his first period of office. It is long
and widely encompassing. It is the basis of this that his government is claimed
to have created the Welfare State, the NHS, and had grown a forest where there
had been a wasteland.
If that is the
case, one might ask how did we finish up on the winning side in World War 2? Or
get through the 1930's? We are told that the needs of the war, the problems it
created and the challenges had been met by major community efforts and radical
changes in organisation and methods. Also people were made to feel all part of
the effort and ceaseless propaganda urged us to be as one.
But there is a
crucial difference between a national service more or less locally administered
and common services of the nation locally provided. Before the Attlee
government and the imposition of the Trade Union/Sons of the Raj/Centralist
doctrines of organisation and planning the UK had not been a wasteland of
nothingness.
There had been
extensive, varied, local, commercial and charitable etc. forms of provision
which in many districts was better than those of the Attlee visions. The
trouble was where for one reason or another there were major deficiencies or
the war had had a more severe effect. Some of the worst were Labour local
government districts in the hands of local Labour "kings".
In industry the problems arose from WW2, the
lack of capital and the uncertainty created by the way in which the government
was making laws and key economic decisions more or less off the cuff and
meddling and attempting what we now call micro management. When the ability to
make and implement these decisions was removed to Whitehall it added seriously
to the problems.
The list of
legislation for the Attlee period may look impressive until you consider the
effects within each sector of transferring all that management to central units
under Cabinet control on that scale in that time frame. I was working on the
railways at times in the 1950's and the management seemed to be up there with
the Sputnik.
One result was
the detachment of ordinary people at first from government and then
increasingly from each other as the media and entertainment and other consumer
sectors began to divide us into marketing sectors and on a generation basis.
They were quickly followed by the political operators and the pundits.
Locally,
councils increasingly could not exercise discretion, make particular
arrangements and had to do what they were told. The ability to do a job for the
people was replaced by the ability to work out what on earth the latest
government statutory instrument was about and implement it regardless of cost
or sense.
British
Railways became almost a Department of Bright Ideas as the top management tried
to cajole the lower ranks and the regions into modernisations and functions
that suited the politicians but often bore little relation to a transport
system converting to motors.
Around all
these industries the question "why" loomed large and to which there
was too rarely a sensible answer only something convenient in the short term to
Whitehall and Westminster. "Planning" became monster documents made
from recipe's of old data, new prejudices, old rivalries and new squabbles.
As for the now
in the 21st Century it will be interesting to see how this vision of the late
1940's works out in a client state of the EU in which a great deal is owned by
foreign interests, what people want is impossible for them to have or get and
the basics of control and management are now in big boxes.
Many of those
big boxes used to be in the Virgin Islands.
If we vote Corbyn into power, then as usual we'll get what we deserve.
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