open Democracy News Analysis - Thatcher's Shadow falls over Alex Salmond, Gerry Hassan - Comments

Smiler on "Thatcher's shadow falls over Alex Salmond"

Smiler — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:02:04 +0000

"I was commenting on why Scots, in particular, were so deeply resentful of Thatcher and I think here her social message epitomised in the unfair poll tax and her comments of ‘no such thing as society’ cut against a very Scottish grain of social conscience. That doesn’t mean that the nation liked her economic policies, just that we liked her lack of concern for social consequences even less."

Not that hard to understand really unless you are Neu Liebour. Or your name is Campbell.

JG17 on "Thatcher's shadow falls over Alex Salmond"

JG17 — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 09:52:50 +0000

Now if you'd just comment on the huge amount of hypocrisy and mythology that surrounds what Thatcher actually achieved versus what is claimed then you'd balance up this article. You mention the massive de-industrialisation of Scotland almost in passing but then seem to suggest that the Scots should just grow up and actually thank Thatcher for putting them out of work. How clever is that?

Bringing it to the present, Japan, China and the rest of Asia don't believe that they should aim to be post-industrial and make money just from moving money around. This is why they have all the money and the US and UK are wallowing in debt. Real wealth comes from turning raw materials into useful items and selling them. Real employment means having jobs, not from manipulating the unemployment figures 20 times. To try to create a service industry economy is to assume that just washing cars is as valuable to the economy as making them. One day Thatcherites might learn these lessons but they have to deconstruct the myths of Thatcherism first.

Stephen Maxwell on "Thatcher's shadow falls over Alex Salmond"

Stephen Maxwell — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:44:24 +0000

Gerry Hassan overinterprets Alex Salmond's interview remarks. While those remarks tend to confirm Salmond's personal shift from the socialism of the early 1980s through the left of centre social democracy of the 1990s to the economic liberalism of the 2000s , they are not conclusive of either Salmond's own position or, even less, the position of the SNP. For one thing his comments insist on a distinction between the economic and the social. This may be ideologically naive, as left nationalist critics such as Jim Sillars and Isobel Lindsay have pointed out, but it may just as plausibly reflect a real tension between competing values or strategic perceptions. For another, can Gerry Hassan point to a single statement by Alex Salmond in his three decades' long political career in which he has criticised the principles of a redistributive welfare state?. While the same might be said of Gordon Brown, Salmond's record in Government illustrates the Scottish difference - opposition to the PFI/PP, support for a redistributive local income tax, opposition to the privatisation of the NHS, the abolition of prescription charges et al. What Salmond's comments do highlight is SNP's need to clarify where it stands as between the neo-liberalism of Celtic Tiger Ireland and the social democracy of the Scandinavian model as a model for Scotland's future. A crucial test will come this winter when the Scottish Govermnment publishes its response to the consultation on its Tackling Poverty and Inequality paper where the Irish - Scandinavian polarity was fully on display. It would be sensible to wait for this more substantial evidence before lining Salmond up as another legatee of Thatcherism along with Brown and Blair.

douglasclark on "Thatcher's shadow falls over Alex Salmond"

douglasclark — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:00:25 +0000

I'd just like to say that Thatcher's shadow cast large over Scotland and we didn't, particularily like it. I do not want to make too much of this, but I do think the Scottish consensus is about breaking free from:

the world of the BBC consensus: Blair, Brown and Cameron

If I could add Radio Four and most of the Murdoch Press, as examples, perhaps.

There is something going on at an almost samizdat level in Scotland. It is certainly not supported at even a local media level, but it seems to be progressing none the less.

My suspicion is that, should the Tories look unbeatable in England at the next (General) election, you could assume that that will be met by a huge rise in SNP voters in Scotland. Enough to bust up the UK?

Possibly.

Not logged in on "Thatcher's shadow falls over Alex Salmond"

Not logged in — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:36:58 +0000

Excellent article, Gerry. I agree 100%. I detest Alex Salmond but his faux pas here in letting the cat out of the bag about the total humbug played by all parties in the UK of accepting the Thatcherite neo-liberal economic agenda whilst sniping against Thatcher, has done us all a big favour.

But the mainstream media and the culture gurus who dominate it have actually created this situation as much as the politicians who are obliged play their kid-on games. We have been ill-served by a lack of hard-headed analytical impartiality on the part of the journos who dominate the British media. They have offered rhetoric, not analysis. It is all part of dumbing down.

Thatcher won the economic argument (though I for one, continue to challenge it) but the cultural establishment, who are after all, not pragmatists faced with actually having to run an economy, remain stubbornly, left-wing. However this stance lacks anything of credible practical policy. So politicians have had to kid on, because of the power of the media to assassinate political careers. If you want to blame somebody for this humbug, blame the press. I do.

To give one example of craven acquiescence to Thatcher: Since 1990 (in one small area I am concerned with - housing) I have been shocked by the way that politicians of all stripes in my local authority (Edinburgh) have accepted greedily Thatcherite economics in endorsing the Private Rented Sector (PRS). In 1989 Thatcher abolished 'fair rents' and replaced them with 'market rents'. She abolished security of tenure and replaced it with the six month Short Assured Tenancy. Thanks to her de-regulation, the PRS has expanded astronomically during the 1990s and 2000s in this city. It is now 20% of all dwellings.

I do not consider myself old but I am old-fashioned enough to consider 'landlordism' a social evil, and 'unearned income', immoral earnings. But I might as well piss in the wind in terms of getting through to politicians in this city as to how Thatcherite landlordism is affecting this city adversely.

House prices for first time buyers are now unaffordable due to the inflationary pressures on prices created by the PRS as everybody over 40 wants to get a buy-to-let mortgage and become a fat-cat landlord. Globalisation increased the money supply in the 1990s but what did banks like the RBS do to invest? New innovative business ventures? Nope! 'Safe as houses'! Become a rentier! Get a buy-to-let mortgage funded by money from China to enrich Chinese investors whilst screwing our own local kids!This unimaginative lending policy has led to an explosion in the PRS fully aided and abetted by Thatcherite free market economic incentives to landlords, who get a series of perks, like tax concessions on 'expenses' (unlike owner-occupiers). Council housing is non-existant because it's all been sold off. Students leaving university have huge debts of £15,000+ caused by lining the pockets of fat-cat landlords over four years. In order to get on the property ladder they are clubbing together to buy property in Eastern Europe with their student loans. We are losing our best and brightest to abroad. Meanwhile Eastern Europeans come to Edinburgh where they continue to line the pockets of free market landlords in overcrowded shabby flats. Community has all but disappeared.

Yet can I get through to politicians that Thatcherite de-regulation of the PRS in 1989 was a social evil which they ought to oppose on political, economic and moral grounds, a BIG MISTAKE, and that it upset the established consensus on the PRS that was in place since the Glasgow Rent Strike of 1915 first forced rent controls?

Nope! As far as they are concerned landlords are 'providers' of housing. They cannot, you see, distinguish between 'housing' (what everybody over 25 wants) and 'accommodation' (what people under 40 are increasingly forced to accept, ie, rip-off, short-term overcrowded bedsits, with no security of tenure). No I say, they are HOARDERS of property. Their acquisition is inflationary and monopolistic and is preventing young people from becoming owner-occupiers, just as their fleecing them with high rents prevents them from saving for the future.

It disgusts me, it really does. They all have their greedy little snouts in the trough. All aiding and abetting Thatcherism whilst sniping against it.

This Thatcherite policy needs radical revision. I say that if the PRS is allowed to remain, it needs to become more socially orientated. We should re-introduce more security of tenure and 'fairer' rents, abolish 'market rents'. This will dampen the market. A three year 'social tenancy' at a 'fair rent' might be a start. That would be my policy. Tone down Thatcherism. At least make it more social-democratic, less profiteering, more community-orientated.

Another area of Thatcherite deregulation and profiteering destroying our society is booze. I could go on an on - Thatcherite economics are rotten to the core.

You are dead right we need a Big Idea to replace Thatcherism. Maybe the coming recession will prompt a change in thinking.

Tom Griffin on "Thatcher's shadow falls over Alex Salmond"

Tom Griffin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:46:00 +0000

Nationalist movements everywhere do tend to be 'catch-all ' parties, and I suppose that points to a basic divide between nationalist and socialist movements that is well-described by Immanuel Wallerstein in this New Left Review article.
I'm not sure how far I'd go along with the details of Wallerstein's theory, but I think his basic point is sound, namely that states as much as social classes occupy distinctive positions in the world economy.
An independent Scottish state would be in a distinctly different position from the UK, and one might hope that, simply in its own interests, that would translate into different policies on defence, foreign affairs, the EU, industrial policy etc.
Maybe your point about RBS suggests that such hopes are overblown.

Thatcher's Shadow falls over Alex Salmond, Gerry Hassan

Gerry Hassan — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:41:02 +0000

Alex Salmond's remark to Iain Dale that Scots 'didn't mind the economic side' of Thatcherism, created a storm of hypocrisy and exposed a fundamental truth about Scottish politics, argues Gerry Hassan, in a swiftly written essay. Mainstream politicians are as united in tacitly accepting Thatcher's legacy as in publicly abominating her policies.

British politics have for the last thirty years been shaped by Margaret Thatcher, Thatcherism and the legacy of Thatcher’s period in office.

All of the mainstream politicians who have followed her – John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron at a UK level, and Alex Salmond and his Labour predecessors as First Minister in Scotland – have been influenced by her, and their politics shaped, defined and framed by her and her achievements. This has been thrown into sharp focus by recent remarks - and the reaction to them - made by Alex Salmond in an interview for Total Politics with Iain Dale, who thought them so obvious as to be quite uncontroversial.

The fact that the political world we live in has been created by Mrs. Thatcher is well made by Simon Jenkins in his persuasive thesis, ‘Thatcher and Sons’ where he examines the Thatcher legacy and its acceptance by Major, Blair and Brown. This entailed the reconfiguration of politics, the state and polity around a new credo of free market capitalism, deregulation, privatisation, celebration of the super-rich, alongside increased centralisation and an authoritarian, powerful central state.

Blair and Brown both famously courted Margaret Thatcher once they arrived in office; both invited her to No 10 Downing Street, while at the same time overtly accepting, embracing and extending the nature of the Thatcher revolution. While they were doing this, large parts of Labour continued to see Thatcher as a hate figure and Thatcherism as something they totally detested.

This produced a strange kind of almost Alice in Wonderland politics whereby Blair and Brown attempted to send out overt signals to former Tory voters that they understood their concerns, while continuing with her policies and operating within her legacy, and at the same time, offering the pretence that they disagreed with large parts of her legacy by creating a caricature of it: going about three million unemployment or the ‘Black Wednesday’ moment of Major’s government. At its core New Labour was, in the words of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Thatcherism consolidated’.

‘Bathgate No More, Linwood No More’ and Thatcherism North of the Border

The way Thatcherism has been perceived in Scotland has been even more pronounced on the surface, but even more complex and complicated underneath. The combination of Thatcher’s English persona and style, English nationalism and the fact that the Tories were increasingly a small, declining minority of votes, always meant that Thatcherism was never going to win the popularity stakes north of the border. Part of this was no doubt due to Mrs. Thatcher’s personality rubbing Scots up the wrong way, as much as her policies.

The Thatcherite agenda produced north of the border economic and social dislocation with massive de-industrialisation, hardship and poverty, which were interpreted in Scotland increasingly in the 1980s as ‘anti-Scottish’ – something that the North of England, Yorkshire and Wales shared in policy-wise, but could not experience through the same paradigm. The poll tax was important in precipitating this disparity as it was imposed on Scotland first: the country was singled out as a test case a year before the rest of the UK. There was a genuinely proconsular aspect to this, as one of the most Tory of policies was rolled out in the least Tory province, which precipitated anti-English sentiment.

However, as with all things life was a little more complex that the ‘Bathgate no more, Linwood no more’ lament of The Proclaimers – who compared Scotland’s experience of Thatcherism to the Highland Clearances. Scottish people enjoyed many of the benefits of Thatcherism – buying their council houses and privatised shares, while higher public spending continued north of the border – but they just didn’t vote Tory as a result of it. Instead, the majority of Scottish opinion, aided by the grotesque imposition of the poll tax, moved into a position of feeling both the ‘victim’ of and ‘morally superior’ to, the rest of the UK.

Scottish politics for the eighteen years of Tory rule was characterised by opposition politicians – Labour, Lib Dem, SNP – trying to outdo each other in their opposition and rhetoric towards Thatcher. This was an era of symbols and shibboleths which defined the nation’s resistance to Thatcherism: Linwood, Invergordon, Ravenscraig and Rosyth. All but the last were closed under the Conservatives and each cause, campaign and crisis was meant to signify that the Union might be under threat. Two politicians who excelled in this climate were Gordon Brown and Alex Salmond.

Understanding Thatcherism in the post-Thatcher Age

The election of New Labour and acceptance and consolidation of much of the Thatcher legacy, led to Scottish politics moving on as well, but with the continuation of an even more complex Alice in Wonderland set of attitudes. With the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, both Scottish Labour and the SNP had to emphasise their ‘Scottish’ credentials and their difference. They did this by stressing that they were more left-wing and social democratic than parties south of the border, and continuing with the language of detestation towards Thatcher and Thatcherism. While they presented themselves in this way, both parties moved in the same direction as New Labour and came under the same influence: accepting the logic and values of the post-Thatcherite environment, while pretending otherwise.

Thus, we come to the importance of Alex Salmond’s recent remarks on Margaret Thatcher. Salmond stated:

The SNP has a strong, beating social conscience, which is very Scottish in itself. One of the reasons Scotland didn’t take to Lady Thatcher was because of that. It didn’t mind the economic side so much. But we didn’t like the social side at all.

He then had to qualify his remarks almost immediately, taking the unprecedented (and slightly embarrassing) step as First Minister of Scotland of phoning in to BBC Radio Scotland’s Saturday ‘Morning Extra’ programme to state:

I’m well on the record as never having approved of either Margaret Thatcher’s social or economic policies – that’s clear if you look at the interview.

He also commented that he would not be following Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair before him) of inviting Margaret Thatcher for tea. Subsequently Salmond said about his remarks:

I was commenting on why Scots, in particular, were so deeply resentful of Thatcher and I think here her social message epitomised in the unfair poll tax and her comments of ‘no such thing as society’ cut against a very Scottish grain of social conscience. That doesn’t mean that the nation liked her economic policies, just that we liked her lack of concern for social consequences even less.

Now it does not take a Kremlinologist to work out the difference between Salmond’s first and last statements. The quote that Scots ‘didn’t mind the economic side so much’ is a tacit acceptance and endorsement of Thatcherism’s economic agenda; in his follow up comments Salmond attempted to quote his ‘economic and social side’ remarks and deny that they were in any way support for Thatcherite economics.

What was as revealing was the reaction to the remarks. The ‘cybernat’ community tried to defend Salmond saying this was not an endorsement of Thatcherite economics; that New Labour has more embraced it, and so on. Labour politicians attacked Salmond’s ‘own goal’ and ‘praise of Thatcherism’. Most interesting of all was the comments from some of Salmond’s critics in the Nationalist community. Jim Fairlie, a senior figure in the party in the 1980s called the remarks ‘a qualified acceptance of Mrs. Thatcher’s economic policies’ and talked of Salmond’s ‘drift to the right’. Jim Sillars, SNP victor of the 1988 Govan by-election commented:

It is revisionist nonsense for Alex Salmond to suggest that our society only objected to her social policies, while we accepted her economic ones.

What is going on here is that Salmond has violated the first cardinal rule of Scottish politics after Thatcher: that is namely to vilify, degrade and denounce Thatcher and Thatcherism with every word in your vocabulary, while being influenced, shaped and following in her footsteps. To be flattering, he made the ‘political error’ of being too relaxed and speaking with a degree of honesty.

All of Scotland’s mainstream political parties have had their policies and philosophies altered by Thatcherism, while at the same time, they continue to articulate a social democratic centre-left politics which has been diluted and diminished by Thatcherism; you can even include the Scottish Tories in this equation as they have been consistently devoid of a right-wing agenda and gone with the grain of Scottish politics. When you combine this mix with the national question, Scottish centre-left politicians have to emphasise even more than south of the border, their distinctiveness and moral disgust at the world Mrs. Thatcher brought about.

The ‘Catch-All’ Nature of the Scottish Nationalists

Alex Salmond’s remarks and the controversy they have caused have to be seen in this context. He has inadvertently blown open the Alice in Wonderland mentality and Janus-like attitude which exists across the whole of the UK and the political spectrum about Thatcher and Thatcherism, which is just more acute and sensitive north of the border.

The SNP like Labour north and south of the border are a broad coalition of social democratic sentiment which has acquiesced with Thatcherism and the neo-liberal project. It is not for nothing that the SNP, like Scottish Labour and New Labour, is ominously silent on the central issue of political economy. Salmond’s acceptance of the dominant economic order was evident in remarks in the same interview:

I suppose I have tried to bring the SNP into the mainstream of Scotland. We have a very competitive economic agenda. Many business people have warmed towards the SNP. We need a competitive edge, a competitive advantage. That side of SNP politics – get on with it, get things done, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy.

These remarks reveal the ‘catch-all’ nature of the SNP’s political agenda, and the reality that for all its popularity, statecraft and progressive elements which have been on show since it came to office, social democracy and challenging the vested interests of the global order, are just as unsafe in the SNP’s hands as they are in Scottish Labour’s.

The political project of the SNP is a ‘Scotland plc’ – not that different from the kind of economy and society envisioned by Labour modernisers, only independent. That is one of the defining features of Scottish politics: the lack of a real, distinct set of political differences between Labour and the SNP beyond independence. And that leads us to the second cardinal rule of Scottish politics after Thatcher: because of that lack of substantive difference, Labour and SNP go at it upping the ante and vitriol between each other.

The current Nationalist vision of the world is one where a ‘national project’ will see an independent Scotland and its government align with business and corporate interests to promote the nation and compete in the global economy. Jim Mather, Enterprise Minister, an ardent marketer, once commented: ‘Any notion that an independent Scotland would be left-wing is delusional nonsense’; Mike Russell, Environment Minister, penned a book ‘Grasping The Thistle’ one year before becoming a minister, filled with the most fundamental free-market proposals.

Alex Salmond, once a radical left-winger in the days when he was an economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland in the 1980s, has now undergone a full conversion to celebrating and advocating corporate interests. This can be seen in Salmond’s fully fledged support for Donald Trump’s luxury golf development in North East Scotland, or his consistent advocacy for the corporate interests of the Royal Bank of Scotland: the fifth largest banking group in the world. Sometimes it seems as if Salmond sees the interests of RBS and the Scottish economy as being one and the same; this is a bank which employs 8,500 people in Edinburgh.

1979 And All That: The Power of the BBC Consensus

There is a larger set of questions for Scottish and UK politics posed by this episode. How long are politicians in Scotland and the UK going to continue being defined and shaped by Thatcher and Thatcherism? For how long are we going to continue to allow them to act in the two-faced, hypocritical, talking one way and acting another manner towards the Thatcher legacy?

Alex Salmond inadvertently has hit a raw nerve with his recent comments. He has shown the lack of straightforwardness and honesty that lies within the SNP acceptance and continuation of Thatcherism, that is much like Labour’s. By doing so has exposed the narrowness of the SNP’s rationale as a party to the ‘left’ of Scottish Labour. 1979 was a long, long, long time: over a generation ago. Yet, its myths, folklores, triumphs and limitations still shape our politics, our political debate and political horizons and imaginations.

The current political, economic and social impasse has a direct linkage and causal relationship to the events and forces which emerged in 1979 and this cannot go on forever. However, no political settlement just collapses because of the weight of its own internal contradictions, but requires a counter-movement and set of stories. It took over thirty years before the previous watershed - 1945 - was challenged and overthrown. But that was part of an international, neo-liberal mobilisation for a new global arrangements. Despite the limitations of Thatcherism and flaws in the neo-liberal worldview, of which the ‘credit crunch’ is the latest example, we don’t yet have any countervailing economic and social strategy.

Instead, we still live in the world created by Thatcherism: the world of the BBC consensus: Blair, Brown and Cameron (with Alex Salmond providing a supporting role). It is aptly titled for it is comprehensively signed up to by the influential and powerful in the UK whether they are in politics, the corporate world or the media. The bandwidth of what is politically possible and imaginable is defined by these elites, and what passes for their commentary unquestioningly supports the present political, economic and social order.

We should be grateful to Alex Salmond for being relatively honest about this and scornful of the hypocrisy of those in the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats who want to deny their subordination to the Thatcherite hegemony. It is up to progressives and democrats of every and no party to challenge this state of affairs. We have to push and pull, dream and work, to devise new counter-movements and widen our political horizons and imaginations from their current straightjacket.

Gerry Hassan is a writer, commentator and policy analyst and author and editor of twelve books on Scottish and UK politics including The Scottish Labour Party: History, Institutions and Ideas, After Blair: Politics after the New Labour Decade and The Political Guide to Modern Scotland. He can be contacted on: gerry.hassan@virgin.net

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