Nineteen Eighty-Four taught us about dictatorship

On June 8th, 1949, a full 70 years ago, George Orwell’s 1984 was published by Secker and Warburg. Orwell had parted with his original publisher, Victor Gollancz, when they’d refused to publish his 1945 “Animal Farm” because it was too anti-Communist. Nineteen Eighty-Four is even more anti-Communist. Although ostensibly set in a dystopian future, the novel is in fact a recreation of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s. Big Brother, with his moustache, is uncannily like Stalin, who was also the subject of an over-the-top personality cult.

In Orwell’s world the people are subject to incessant surveillance and propaganda. Euphemisms abound, in that the Ministry of Love specializes in torture, the Ministry of Plenty oversees shortages and rationing, the Ministry of Peace runs the war, and the Ministry of Truth specializes in what we would today call “fake news.”

Members of the Outer Party, including Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, have to make do with synthetic foodstuffs and poor-quality “Victory” gin, oily and unpleasant, and loosely-packed “Victory” cigarettes. The ruling Inner Party live in clean and comfortable flats, with pantries full of luxury goods such as wine, coffee and sugar, all unavailable elsewhere. The unmistakable reference is to the special shops stocked with Western goods that only the Nomenklatura of the Soviet Communist hierarchy had access to.

Orwell gave us the language with which to speak of totalitarianism, with terms such as Big Brother, newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime, and memory hole. The book was so powerful that the term “Orwellian” is now used to describe the total control of a dictatorship.

The “book within a book” is the illicit copy Winston obtains of “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein,” (Leon Trotsky), a masterly insight into the theory of totalitarian domination. Goldstein is the main subject of the daily “Two-minutes hate” in which party members have to participate. It resembles the interminable party rallies of Communist regimes.

The shortages and general low quality of life, like the canteen with its peeling and grease-stained tables lead Winston to wonder if it had always been like this. At the back of his mind is the notion that it was not, but the incessant propaganda about constant improvement prevents an accurate recollection. It has been claimed that Orwell’s description derives from his wartime experience in the BBC canteen. If so, it would be fitting, in that the Corporation is practically a temple to doublethink, the art of holding conflicting views simultaneously. And of incessant fake news.

The book is still a gripping read, even 70 years later. Its power is such that some members of the current Opposition regard it with hostility for daring to tell the truth about what Soviet Russia was actually like.

If only the Resolution Foundation could make up their minds

As is obvious we care rather less about inequality of outcome around here than do many others in our current society. But it would still be useful if those doing such worrying could actually make up their minds. For example, here we’ve the Resolution Foundation insisting that regional inequality isn’t much of a thing:

More young people are getting stuck where they grew up or went to university because they cannot afford rents in places where they can earn more money, according to the Resolution Foundation thinktank. It found the number of people aged 25 to 34 starting a new job and moving home in the last year has fallen 40% over the last two decades.

Whereas previous generations were able to move to big cities such as London and Manchester or regional hubs like Leeds and Bristol to develop their careers, the current millennial generation is enduring a slump in mobility caused by rising rents, which can wipe out all of the financial gains of a move.

Even moves over short distances are barely worth making, the data shows. A person on average earnings in Scarborough paying average rent would have been 29% better off if they had moved to Leeds in 1997 and paid average rent and earned average money. In 2018, rising rents and stagnant wages means the benefit after taking into account rent was just 4%.

Some places do indeed have higher wages. They also have higher costs of living, the two rather neatly near exactly cancelling each other out. We’ve thus not got regional inequality of the only type that can even conceivably matter, inequality of consumption.

Thus most of the statistics about inequality in Britain are wrong, based as they are upon income, not consumption. This is, of course, something we have been saying for a long time. Britain has regional differences in pay, yes, but also regional differences in the cost of living. Britain has more of both of those than most other countries, it’s this which makes British inequality figures look so different. It’s also this that makes British inequality figures largely an irrelevance.

We do wish though that the Resolution Foundation could actually make up its mind. For only a year ago they were whining bitterly about regional inequality in Britain. That very thing they’ve just shown doesn’t exist in any manner that is important, in consumption.

Yes, obviously, we’re being picky and all that but is consistency - in saying something other than the modern world’s bad, M’Kay? - really all that much to ask for?

And anyway, isn’t the young moving back home after their education a welcome symptom of local community anyway? Instead of all the brains and human capital draining out of the provinces into the Great Wen?

Two dates for liberty

June 7th was a significant date for liberty on two occasions. The first was the royal assent to the Petition of Right by Charles I in 1628, and the second was the royal assent to the Great Reform Act of 1832 by William IV.

Charles I, anxious to support his foreign wars, had taken to collecting “forced loans” in the absence of Parliamentary subsidies, and imprisoning those refusing to pay. In addition he had soldiers billeted in private homes, and imposed martial law in several places. The Petition, signed on June 7th, imposed prohibitions on the monarch. It limited non-Parliamentary taxation, forced billeting, martial law and unjustified imprisonment.

It ranks alongside Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights as one of the landmark documents that embed liberties into the Constitution. Its influence can be seen in the Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh amendments to the US Constitution, and it remains in force today, not only in the UK, but in many Commonwealth countries.

It was also on June 7th, in 1832, that the Great Reform Act was signed into law. Many historians mark that as the beginning of the UK’s modern democracy. The Act was designed to do away with many of the abuses that had crept into the old system, and to recognize that Britain had become different following the Industrial Revolution. It abolished the rotten boroughs, which in some cases had ceased to exist, and got rid of most of the pocket boroughs that were under the control of the local landowner.

In place of the 143 borough seats it abolished, it created 130 new ones, including many of the new towns and cities in the North. In county seats it effectively enfranchised the new merchant class of property owners, though it did not extend the franchise to the working class or to women. It increased the electorate by over 60 percent, and turned a ramshackle system into a fairly smooth and logical one. It paved the way for future reforms that would lead eventually o universal adult suffrage.

The Bill had a fraught passage, and for a time civil disorder was threatened. Eventually Prime Minister Wellington persuaded the Lords to let it through, rather than have hundreds of new peers created to ensure its passage.

Both Acts played a role in asserting the liberties of the people. The first represented a block on monarchical power, and the second severely diluted that of the aristocracy. Both of them were mileposts on the road to modern Britain.

Here we have proof that solar power is not economic yet

There is much shouting to and fro about the economics of renewables and solar power. Those who insist that it really is economic and all we need to do is roll it out, those who are equally vehement in their insistence that it’s simply not ready for prime time - if it ever will be. Each side presenting their own calculations to make their point.

What we’d like of course is some neutral totting up of the costs and benefits. Fortunately we have just such a system - the market.

Home solar panel installations fall by 94% as subsidies cut

Home solar power is not yet economic.

The Labour party has accused the government of “actively dismantling” the UK’s solar power industry after new installations by households collapsed by 94% last month.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, used prime minister’s questions to challenge the government’s record on climate action after scrapping subsidies for domestic solar panels from April.

Without subsidy people won’t install. The level of subsidy required to get them to install is exactly the measure by which they are uneconomic. QED.

We don’t want people to do uneconomic things so their not installing solar panels is just fine - why would we want people to make themselves and us poorer?

That’s not the end of the argument though. For there is that climate change argument. Perhaps solar panels will become part of the solution? And at some - lower than today - price they could well become so. The answer being that we should wait until those prices are lower and then install. How do we reach that lower price?

Well, no one does actually make solar cells in this country. Our installation or not has near zero effect upon their price, that’s something driven by global technological change, not anything we do here. The answer therefore is obvious enough. As and when global technological change drives down prices so that domestic solar PV is economic then we should be installing it. And there’s no need for us to be doing anything at all to be encouraging anything either. When solar PV is economic people will naturally install it. The price change - the technological advance - that leads to it being economic is entirely unaffected by anything we do so there’s no argument for even encouragement, let alone subsidy, there. And as we don’t, and won’t, take part in the manufacturing anyway there’s no argument for “creating a national industry to compete” and all that malarkey.

King Log is the correct ruling ethos here. When installing solar power is logically sensible then people will o it unprompted and unaided. There’s absolutely no point in subsidising them into doing so when it’s not logically sensible.

The day that brave men changed the world

Seventy-five years ago, on June 6th, 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history took place on the beaches of Normandy. The logistics are staggering. There were 6,939 assorted ships, including the 1,213 warships that began the invasion with a dawn bombardment. During the night parachute troops had made glider assaults to capture and hold key bridges.

The allies had engaged in major deception plans, including a fictitious US Army Group, led by General Patton and stationed in Kent, to persuade the Germans that the landing would be made at the Pas de Calais. The Germans had assumed that if the Allies did choose Normandy or Brittany, they would have to attack a port such as Cherbourg to disembark safely and land supplies, including fuel. Instead the Allies took their own floating harbour called Mulberry with them, and kept the invasion force refuelled as it moved inland with PLUTO, a pipeline under the ocean, pumping oil across the Channel from England.

Brave men stormed ashore in landing craft that had to run the gauntlet of underwater obstacles and mines, and under enemy fire. On D-Day itself nearly 160,000 troops landed in Normandy, a figure that had swelled to 875,000 by the end of June. The supply operation was on a barely imaginable scale. Vehicles, guns, tanks and ammunition had to be transported in vast quantities, as did food and fuel.

Estimates put the Allied cost at 4,414 confirmed dead, nearly half of those at the heavily defended Omaha beach, but the Allies took all 5 beaches on the first day, and later linked them into a perimeter that eventually paved the way to the Allied victory on the Western front. With the Russians advancing from the East, it secured the liberation of Europe from the scourge of Nazism.

Had there been no Churchill, derided as “a criminal” by some on the Left today, there would have been no Britain still in the war to serve as a base for the build-up of men and materials, and D-Day could not have happened. There was no ambiguity about that war. The men who put their lives on the line that day were prepared to accept sacrifice, if necessary, to protect their countries and their peoples from a monstrous and evil tyranny. We owe our peace and freedom today to that readiness on their part, and on the 75th anniversary of their bravery, we salute them. They changed the world.

African child hunger is indeed a problem that we can solve - and should

A new report telling us that child hunger - up to and including both stunting and death - is still a large problem in Africa. This is, - as with child hunger, child death, anywhere - a problem that can and should be solved. The question, of course, is how do we solve it all?

Nearly half of all child deaths in Africa stem from hunger, study shows

Almost 60 million children deprived of food despite continent’s economic growth, in what is ‘fundamentally a political problem’

When The Guardian tells us something’s a political problem we have to be careful. Often enough this turns out to be something that we here in the rich countries are responsible for - capitalism, markets, colonialism, racism, something. It is thus we who must change our ways in order to cease these impositions upon the poor.

The actual report does not put it quite like that:

Child hunger is fundamentally a political problem. It is the offspring of the unholy alliance of political indifference, unaccountable and bad governance, and economic mismanagement.

Politics, governance and economic management in Africa are now, given the end of that colonialism, the responsibility of the local governments. It is they that need to buck up.

We can aid, of course we can, and we can aid in three ways. The first is the obvious theoretical and empirical point. Child hunger decreases as a result of economic growth. Societies that are richer have, by definition, greater resources with which to take care of the children in them. This is how child hunger was solved here - yes, it has been, we have nothing at all left of the sort of poverty we’re talking about in this case - and how it has been solved everywhere else that it has been. Economic growth cures the problem.

How does economic growth happen? A bit more of that capitalism, those free markets, seems to do the job. Everywhere that has had them for more than a few decades is either already rich or is getting so. Those places that don’t aren’t and aren’t.

We can also aid in the process. As we’ve said many a time the best economic development programme that we can individually be a part of is to buy things made by poor people in poor countries. If child hunger in Ethiopia - just as an example - is something you’d like to see fall then preferentially seek out those shoes, those clothes, made in Ethiopia.

Finally, we can aid directly. As an example again, and only an example, we’ve long been taken with Mary’s Meals. They do one thing and one thing only - produce a school lunch for a poor and hungry child. No railings against The Man, no conferences on overturning the global economic order. Just child plus calories to make the world a better place. Their efforts cost about one tenth of an equivalent US government program attempting to achieve the same aim. Yes, cheap is to be praised as we get 10 times as much of the feeding done for the resources we care to send in that direction.

We do know how to end child hunger as we’ve done it ourselves and so has the rest of the rich world - and so is much of the developing world doing it. A bit more of that growth from the only socioeconomic system that has ever produced it, that capitalism and free markets mix. We throwing our weight behind the development through our consumption choices. And why not buy a poor child lunch for a year for £15?

We are indeed liberals around here in that we desire the world become a better place for the poor in it. It’s just that we’re pragmatic liberals in that we support those policies which actually achieve the goal.

The legacy of John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes was born on June 5th, 1883. He died aged 62 in 1946, having left an enduring legacy on the world, not all of it good. He effectively founded modern macroeconomics, and left his name to a school of economic thinking called Keynesian economics. He thought that economic activity was ultimately determined by aggregate demand, or total spending in the economy. High interest rates, which can attract savers, can result in inadequate aggregate demand, leading to periods of high unemployment.

During recessions, therefore, governments should intervene with spending, pushing forward with such things as infrastructure projects and public works, borrowing the money to back them. He thought the deficit spending could be used to stimulate economic activity and employment. The debts could be paid off in times of economic growth. The basis of Keynesian economics is thus economic management, in which governments are supposed to smooth the economy, putting out money when it is sluggish, and taking it in when it is booming. Intervention via fiscal and monetary policies was to be used to micromanage the economy.

During the Depression of the 1930s, this was music to the ears of politicians. Instead of waiting for the economy to recover, here appeared to be a formula by which they could prod it into recovery. Keynes’ ideas came along at an opportune time, providing a theoretical justification for politicians to spend money and to be seen to be doing something. In democratic societies politicians tend to favour policies that go down well at the ballot box, and here were opportunities for them to buy the support of various interest groups through spending programmes for which they could claim Keynesian justification.

Keynesian economics gave politicians the excuse to go far beyond anything Keynes himself would have supported, borrowing from the future, for example, to fund the social programmes of today. This is attractive to politicians because today’s people have the vote, but tomorrow’s do not (not today, that is).

Post World War II, the Keynesian approach came in for sustained theoretical criticism, notably from Milton Friedman’s monetarism and F A Hayek’s Austrian School. It was pointed out that Keynesian policies could bring about “stagflation,” the combination of stagnation and inflation, something that should not happen under Keynesianism. Inflation and unemployment were thought to be trade-off, as in the Phillips Curve - high inflation went with low unemployment. Unfortunately in the 1970s the Phillips “Curve” became a vertical line, as soaring inflation brought no reduction in unemployment, and the stagflation predicted by the monetarists appeared in reality. Keynesian economics became a minority view.

Keynesianism came briefly back into fashion following the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, as indeed did Marxism, but both depend on the notion that governments, or the few individuals who direct them, can second guess economic events with more precision and accuracy than the millions of people who participate daily the real economy. More recent criticism suggests that when politicians use Keynesian methods to “smooth” the business cycle, the are depriving the economy of its beneficial effects, which include shedding failing businesses during downturns, and redeploying capital to newer, more successful ones that can stimulate the upturns.

Phil Hammond's quite right that Britain has no dire poverty

This is correct:

Mr Hammond said: "I reject the idea that there are vast numbers of people facing dire poverty in this country.

"I don't accept the UN rapporteur's report at all. I think that's a nonsense. Look around you, that's not what we see in this country."

As Barbara Castle pointed out back in 1959, dire poverty is something we eliminated in Britain.

Except, of course, we’ve Adam Smith’s linen shirt to think of (explained by two of us at 7.50 here). Relative poverty is a real thing, even if the implications of it are rather overblown these days. Today’s definition of that dire poverty being:

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1.5m people experienced destitution in 2017 - meaning they had less than £10 a day after housing costs, or had to go without at least two essentials such as shelter, food, heat, light, clothing or toiletries during a one-month period.

Going without new clothing - they don’t mean not having clothing, just buying anew - for a month? Well, yes:

The coupon allowance was at its lowest from 1945 and 1946. For the eight month period from 1 September 1945 to 30 April 1946 only 24 coupons were issued, effectively allowing the shopper only 3 coupons a month.

That’s not coupons for three pieces of clothing.

Eleven coupons were needed for a dress, two needed for a pair of stockings, and eight coupons required for a man's shirt or a pair of trousers.

A man could have a new shirt every three months, a woman a new dress every four. By the standards being used today concerning clothing everyone in 1946 Britain was in that destitution.

And the thing is, we’d agree. By today’s standards everyone in 1940s Britain was dirt poor. If you want to leave WWII out of it then everyone in 1930s Britain was also poor by today’s standards. Very few indeed of us would be happy to live at the standards of 1950s Britain, even 1960s. Certainly today’s fuel poverty is defined as something that would have been regarded as luxurious in 1970s Britain. We know, we were there.

All of which means one of three things. There really are people living in destitution in Britain today, an idea we reject. Society’s wealth has advanced so much that what was once regarded as normal is today poverty, something we’re entirely happy to agree with. Or, perhaps, if we’re to stick with clothing, there’s a certain benefit to all that fast fashion and those sweatshops out there.

What can’t be true is that society hasn’t got richer if our current definition of poverty - using Smith’s linen shirt example - is what was the norm back then.

That is, we really are very much richer than the past. Our current definition of poverty - or the one people are attempting to use - is all the proof we need of that contention.

When America reformed its labour laws

On June 4th, 1947, the US House of Representatives passed the Labour Management Relations Act, outlawing what were described as "unfair labour practices" by trade unions. It was to be a full generation before a UK government began to do the same. The US Act is known as the Taft-Hartley Act after the two Republican legislators, one in each house, who proposed the bill. Its passing was not the end of it because the bill was vetoed by Democratic President Harry Truman later that month, only to have his veto overridden in both houses within days, with many Democrats  joining their Republican colleagues to override the veto.

It was prompted by a wave of strikes that had seen 2m US workers active in strikes or disputes in 1946. As in Britain, workers had largely refrained from striking during the war years, but with the postwar uptick in industry, the unions wanted to increase the share going to their members. The mid-terms had, however, returned Republican majorities in both houses in 1946, and Republicans wanted to overturn some of the New Deal measures that had made it easier for industrial action to take place with impunity. The 1935 National Labour Relations Act had only prohibited unfair labour practices committed by employers; now the new Act added a list of ones to be banned for employees.

It outlawed jurisdictional (who does what) strikes, wildcat strikes, strikes done in solidarity, political strikes, secondary strikes, secondary picketing, mass picketing and it greatly restricted closed (union only) shops. It prohibited financial support by unions for Federal political campaigns, but not union participation as voluntary workers in campaigns. It allowed states to pass right-to-work laws that allowed employers to resist unionisation. It also empowered the government to seek injunctions banning strikes if they threatened national health or safety. A controversial clause that required Union officers to sign affidavits that declared them to be non-communist, was later (in 1965) ruled by the US Supreme Court to be an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

The Unions tried many times to have Taft-Hartley overturned, especially under Democratic Presidents such as Carter and Clinton, but never succeeded. Even Truman himself used its provisions 12 times during his terms. The Taft-Hartley Act paved the way for the surge in US prosperity in the 1950s, with union members benefitting from the general rise in living standards.

A similar effect followed the Thatcher labour reforms of her 1979-83 administration. It was not done in a large consolidated bill that would have motivated the unions to confront and defeat the government, as they had faced down those of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Rather it was a series of individual measures done one at a time, measures that cumulatively amounted to total reform. Most important was that unions were made actionable in court for transgressions, with their funds at risk of confiscation. Secret ballots were introduced to elect Union leaders, replacing factory gate show-of-hands votes that were subject to intimidation. Secret ballots also came in for the votes now required of members before unions could declare strike action. This killed wildcat strikes. Secondary picketing was banned, as was the closed shop that forced all workers into the union if they wanted a job. Union membership steadily declined, except in the public sector.

The effect was as beneficial as its US counterpart. The UK, which had topped Europe's league of days lost through strike action, now achieved the lowest number. Its economy boomed, and general living standards improved. No less important was the psychological effect. People no longer felt helpless as they were bulled by overbearing unions; they felt they had regained control of their country from the militant minorities who had used their power to gain advantage for their members and supporters at the expense of the general good. In the the US and the UK, unions were brought under the law, and both countries gained in consequence. The hope must be that neither country will elect a government that will reverse those gains and head back to the days when Union muscle was allowed to override the common good.

Be careful what you wish for - salary and tax transparency

Varied groups are arguing that we should have total salary and tax transparency in Britain. We don’t think so because what others are paid by those who employ them is none of our or your business. It’s a private contract and that’s that. However, those who are advocating it might want to think through this a little:

A majority of British workers would back pay transparency measures to tackle income inequality, as calls mount for Scandinavian-style income disclosures in Britain.

A survey undertaken by YouGov on behalf of the jobs website Indeed showed 56% of workers support making personal information such as monthly income and tax returns publicly available.

The poll joins growing calls from Labour, trade unions, thinktanks and campaign groups to introduce pay disclosures to tackle heightened levels of inequality in Britain. Countries including Finland, Sweden and Norway already force the publication of pay and tax details for every worker in some form.

As has been noted by many people Britain is not in fact a Nordic country, we do things a little differently here. One of those being that we can be rather more rambunctious at times. Another is our own - as opposed to their - feeling of what is fair.

Our reading of which is that what irks and irritates on the Clapham Omnibus isn’t the millions going to CEOs, the footballers’ salaries. Rather, the very solid incomes of the tax fed salariat. And we think that that’s where the exposures, the articles about how awful it all was, would be concentrated. That money taken off us to pay for that diversity coordinator for examples, that would be a target don’t you think?

After all, the Taxpayers’ Alliance does indeed do such surveys of how much public servants are making and they do gain the column inches. Our view is that such transparency would rebound to where the proposers of it rather hope it won’t - to their own incomes. Actually, at which point, bring it on.