Rjan:
Carryfast:
Dennis Healey was anything but for the workers.He was an establishment puppet totally onside with Callaghan and who engineered the below inflation wage increase limits,which hit the lowest paid hardest and which rightly brought Callaghan down in 1979 albeit resulting in the collateral damage of replacing Callaghan with Thatcher.While at the same time helping Callaghan with the mass transfer of UK jobs to Europe.As for Benn he was good but not as good as Shore would have been as PM at least.On Healey, I agree that whilst he had some memorable rhetoric, he was considered to be on the right of Labour at the time (although almost everyone of that era appears hard-left by more recent standards).
The ultimate cause of the high inflation of the 70s was the oil crisis, which sent inflation soaring across the world, and workers were strong enough at the time to defend their wages against inflation (effectively insisting that the increased cost of oil be paid for out of reduced profits and the pockets of the rich). But like the crash in 2008, the way the Tories have written history is to suggest that it was all the Labour government’s fault.
And once Labour started to push the line that the main problem was worker strength or the union barons, along with the fact that they went with the begging bowl to the IMF and presided over several more years of union-battling which provoked widespread industrial action (although the economy as a whole recovered dramatically under Labour in the late 70s), then naturally a proportion of the populace decided to throw their cards in with the Tory party under Thatcher.
And even though the economy plummeted again under Thatcher, Labour split in 1981, and by 1983 things were looking up again in the economy generally (owing somewhat probably to the fact that international oil prices started to plummet again after 1980), and Thatcher won an even greater majority (on a reduced vote share, due to the split), and from that point Labour shifted decisively to the right (as had many of the better-off working class who were being given the public family silver through discounted council houses and cheap or free shares and so on, and whose jobs were not immediately imperilled by Thatcherism). Labour is only now really recovering from that loss in 1979.
And beyond the crude bribery of the Thatcher government, what we now call neoliberalism and faith in markets was back in the ascendancy as a public ideology in the 1970s and 80s, whereas a lot of people were sick of the cronyism and apparent spanish practices of the unions and indeed the collapsing solidarity amongst the working class (and the pre-war generation who had been through the 1930s as youths or adults were almost completely retired by 1979). It only takes a couple of percent of people to be influenced overall to shift an election.
There is a significant parallel to what New Labour did in 2008, which was to begin implementing austerity, indulging the narrative that they had overspent or “failed to fix the roof whilst the sun was shining” (even though, like 1973, it was a worldwide crisis, albeit one caused by the excesses of free markets and neoliberalism itself, rather than by external factors like oil supply), and that ultimately paved the way for the Cameron government in 2010 (albeit in coalition with the LibDems). Miliband diluted his left-wing agenda so much that Labour barely recovered any votes in 2015 whereas Cameron had detoxified the Tories, and because of the LibDem betrayal, lots of voters swung either further to the right with Ukip or into alternative left-wing parties like the Greens, or just didn’t vote.
The lesson is that whenever the Labour party attacks the working class, the country swings further to the right. That’s why Corbyn is a breath of fresh air, has reinvigorated Labour (swelling the membership ranks and gaining the second-highest number of votes since WIlson in the 1960s), and has pulled the public narrative decisively to the left again (even before he has gained power), because we have a Labour party once again threatening to tackle the rich and do something for workers, instead of the craven Blairite b@stards who were in the pockets of the rich.
And the biggest irony of all is that even the IMF, once upon a time the enforcer of neoliberal policies around the world, criticised the policy of austerity and lends some modest support for Corbyn’s policies! Many of the rich themselves can see that capitalism is in a crisis of its own making, and are starting to come around to left-wing policies as a way of both relieving pressure and kickstarting capitalism again.
Ironically more like it was actually Callaghan’s Socialist ideology and his treacherous cabinet of such notable muppets as Healey,Varley,Dell,Jenkins and Prentice which created the situation in which our economy was hit harder than Germany’s to the point of IMF loan desperation and Healey’s idiotic attacks on wages and then scapegoating the unions as a result.
When by that time North Sea oil was coming online in ever increasing amounts while Callaghan’s and his rabble as listed were exporting it,along with Brit jobs, to help their EU cronies like the Germans etc as fast if not faster than it was coming out of the ground.To the point where Germany and German workers were laughing at us all the way to the bank.
Whereas a Nationalist as opposed to a Socialist line would have been expected to use it to reduce the inflationary pressures at home and let the Germans be the ones who were hit by the resulting inflation spiral caused by it,not Brits.Again Nationalism and protectionism was/is the solution not naively thinking that it’s our responsibility to help everyone else at our expense.Or in that case subsidising the German economy at the expense of Brit workers to meet the US geopolitical aims of the day.Which is ironic bearing in mind that the reason we are now ■■■■■■■ off the Russians and Brexit is being sabotaged is ultimately all about similar reasons.IE US geopolitics including the globalists plans combined with a Labour Party that’s still so crippled by Socialist dogma that it can’t/won’t realise that the reality of Socialism means doing what’s good for our foreign competitors at our expense.