The end of the Thatcher era in Britain coincided both with the dissolution of the Cold War and with the collapse of the system of white-minority rule in South Africa. The practice of apartheid (legally-enforced “separate development”) in that country went completely counter to the liberalising trends which had dominated the West since 1945, and the system of dividing races and cultures had been under hostile international scrutiny for over 40 years. Massive pressure was exerted in the post-World War II period, primarily by the African and Asian countries in the United Nations. But the U.S., Britain and Western Europe were themselves committed (as one aspect of the Western Cold War strategy) to the goal of the equality of peoples and cultures, and this would lead, albeit more gradually, to more telling forms of economic pressure on the white South African government. Step by step the South Africans became increasingly isolated on the international stage. These efforts, combined with spreading unrest within South Africa itself, finally bore fruit with the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the beginning of negotiations to install a system of one person, one vote. Given the relative size of the different races and cultures, the electoral outcome of this process was certain.
The irony in these developments was that South Africa had projected itself throughout the period since the Nationalist Party had won control in 1948 as the chief defender of the West in Africa, as the power which, in alliance with Western democracies, would lead the struggle against the spread of Communism in the African continent. But from the American and British perspective, by contrast with their stance on the Franco dictatorship in Spain, South Africa fairly swiftly had come to be seen as more of a liability than an asset in the Cold War struggle. The importance on the world stage of being seen to be in active support of the liberation and advancement of indigenous peoples was central to Western Cold War strategy. With the hardening of this view over the years, it became clear that white South Africa’s long-term fate was sealed. The reckoning was to come in the late 1980s when the change in mood in Central and Eastern Europe brought not only the rapid conclusion of the Cold War but the collapse of the Soviet idea itself.
Simultaneously, in South Africa, the view took hold amongst significant sections of the white population that Communism was not the only alternative to white rule. A majority amongst the people of European descent in South Africa gradually came to see a way out of the country’s plight as “lepers” on the world stage. Thus it was that the movement in Eastern Europe and that in South Africa went hand in hand. When the representatives of the Soviet Union informed both their own comrades in the liberation movement and the white Nationalist government of South Africa that the revolution was “indefinitely postponed”, it became easier for white South Africans to see the possibility of a liberal path forward which would be open to all cultures in the country. At that time the example of Zimbabwe seemed to augur well for a working partnership between the races which would create stability and bring prosperity. The Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain symbolically changed its name in 1994 in the belief that the struggle (at least concerning their leading campaigning issue) had been won. The establishing of a Truth and Reconciliation Committee for South Africa as a consequence of the racial settlement was to become emblematic of the new order. The idea was being established in peoples’ minds, not only in South Africa but in the West as a whole, that the climactic events of 1989-91 had indeed ushered in a new age, a less divided, co-operative and, above all, post-ideological era. What was, in fact, assumed in these hopeful sentiments was that the world would be made safe for the modern liberal capitalism that had made such an impact worldwide since the late 1940s. However, only a few years were to pass before the utopian gloss on the post Cold War vision began to fade. As it turned out, the years of the 1990s would be left hanging in history, a tribute to the readiness of human beings to neglect past lessons, and to keep believing in “new beginnings” which evaporate when one tries to take hold of them.
It is true that for many of those living at the time, the immediate post-Cold War period was dominated by a feeling that the big conflicts were now a thing of the past. Though most people decried the hubris of the philosopher who spoke of the “end of history”, there was a general feeling that liberalism had won and that an era of international co-operation beckoned. This collective self-deception was heightened by the fact that while Mr. Yeltsin, the new Russian leader, adopted a policy of opening up friendly contacts with former enemies in the West, there was also the (mistaken) hope that the passing of old-style revolutionary doctrine in China would lead over time to a liberalising of the whole Chinese system. Contemporaneously, there existed a celebratory atmosphere surrounding the establishment in 1994 of a black government for the new “rainbow” South African nation led now, on behalf of the majority, by Nelson Mandela. In the following year the rugby World Cup became the focus for a poignant piece of symbolism when President Mandela performed the ultimate gesture of reconciliation, wearing the shirt of the victorious national team in what had traditionally been seen as the white man’s game. The overall ideology of the time, a mixture of liberalism, a conscious kind-hearted universalism, and wishful thinking, was now clearly established and, was rapidly (and dangerously) becoming almost compulsory for enlightened Western young people. Symbolic of the period also was the fact that while the occupant of the White House was the disarming, agreeable and youthful Mr. Clinton, 1997 was to bring a partner in the task of Western leadership in the form of Britain’s Mr. Blair, famous also for his equally optimistic and winning ways.
The end of the formal communist/capitalist division was welcome news to those who had so thoroughly brought about the cultural revolution in Britain. The liberating ideas of the 60s and 70s, of tearing down borders, of “one race the human race”, and of the hope for universal equality, all of these received a fillip with the end of the Cold War. The downfall both of the Soviets and of the apartheid concept appeared to prove that closed systems of society, where it was difficult for change to occur or light to enter from outside, and where there were severe restrictions on the freedom of the individual, had been shown not to work and had been rightly rejected. This was intended to be a time not only for the “peace dividend” but also an era for embracing the modern, and for shedding the legacies which remained from the past. This would include all that stood in the way of the equal society, and would bring to the fore the campaigns for feminism, anti-racism, sexual freedoms, and for universal human rights.
But the naive optimism of this period was not to last. By the end of the century it was becoming evident not only that international terrorism was on the increase but that across the continents fundamental differences of world-view continued unabated and were, in many cases, hardening. Divergences were particularly noticeable in the Middle and Far East and in Africa. The civilisations which prevailed in these parts of the world had their own histories and inheritance, in which Western notions of liberalism had been mostly absent. Outside the small proportion who had taken on Western ideas, their populations felt little need to discard age-old cultural forms, and often found renewed pride in these same forms in a world increasingly dominated by Western capital. At the same time as Europeans were withdrawing from the role of acting as suzerains, overseeing the development of many of the nations of Africa and Asia, an ever increasing number of individuals from these countries were moving to settle and work in Europe itself. Underpinning the new conflicts was a clash of cultures, both within the “third world” itself, and between the civilisation of Europe and the very different civilisations of all those places which Britons and other Europeans had sought out for purposes of trade, economic opportunity, development and colonisation over the previous 4-500 years. Further, as this clash of cultures developed and increasingly affected the everyday lives of people in the West, a new clash, internal to society in Britain and other Western countries, began to develop, in which the buoyant and all-conquering liberalism which had carried all before it since the 1950s began to be challenged by ideas originating within the traditions of the West itself, ideas which had been to an extent lost or overlooked under the steamroller of this 40-50 year headlong cultural change. Before examining this phenomenon, which began to grow in the early 2000s, and which was cast as counter revolutionary, regressive or, more insultingly, as simply backward, further description of the changes of the 1990s is needed to establish the context.
In its early years the Conservative Major government of the 1990s was able to benefit from a moderation of the shrill tone of Mrs Thatcher’s last years as Prime Minister, and also from the adoption of a more emollient approach towards the electorate. The war in the Gulf, spearheaded by the Americans, should have been a warning of deeper problems to come, but British support was given, with little effect on a general public which was more concerned with British domestic affairs. A general election could not be delayed beyond 1992, and, contrary to the expectations of many in the media and on the liberal-left, was won fairly easily by Mr. Major, giving the Conservatives their fourth successive election victory. There was, evidently, still insufficient trust on the part of the electorate for a Labour Party which had been linked strongly with class war ideas and postures in the 1970s and early 80s. The Conservative Party’s main concern lay with finding the best possible path for the economy in the context of a European Community which was clearly set on moving towards an integrated union and a common currency. This would prove to be the Conservative Party’s Achilles heel. Raised afresh, now with renewed vigour, were the long-held doubts over European integration and the belief, held by many, that for Britain to properly follow her own path forward she needed to recover the status of a fully sovereign state which she had held and defended against many powerful enemies for centuries. The divide which began to grow in the Conservative Party quickly reached a severity unknown since the free trade/Imperial preference arguments which had dogged the Conservatives in the early 20th Century.
This internal blood-letting on the right served only to underline the appeal of a Labour Party undertaking thoroughgoing transformation. By the early 1990s dedication to continuous modernising had led to an almost complete shedding of its straightforwardly socialist ideas. By this time the Labour Party was busy re-fashioning itself to become the political and governmental expression of the post-Cold War “spirit of the age”. Its aim now was to incorporate the successfully embedded new cultural world-view into a New Labour political programme for government. The political arena could thereby finally be colonised, wrested not only from the divided Conservatives, but from all those guilty of the parochialism and prejudices of the old Britain. The new order to be constructed would amount to what would later be described as a “new dawn”, a politics beyond ideology, one that would fit with the enlightened, open system of life that no sensible person could doubt was what the vast majority of the population wanted. This new order would overcome divisions in society and supersede the era in which class had been a decisive factor in British society. At the same time as the country would become increasingly equal, it would also become more prosperous and progressive in outlook.
This vision was intoxicating. Its success would mean the sweeping away of the Tories and their interminable quarrels over Britain’s place in Europe, their elitism, their lack of care about or comprehension of the lives of “ordinary people”. But there was little self-awareness amongst the new visionaries, little readiness to see themselves as others saw them, or to even consider that their evaluation of human nature might be wrong. Perhaps it was for this reason that, in their elation at the prospect of power, no one in the modernising movement saw that their dream of the future was hopelessly utopian, that it was but the latest expression of the dangerous seductive trick which had, from time to time in the story of Europe, brought to the fore the promise of the millennium, the hope that, with passion, a new generation could “change the world”.
Events definitely seemed to conspire against the Conservatives and in favour of Labour’s vision of a transformed Britain. From 1992 onwards a series of humiliations shook the solidity of British institutions. In October 1992 a tousle-haired Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared before cameras to announce that intense Treasury activity had failed to prevent what amounted to Britain’ s ejection from the European Monetary System (through which the British pound was to be tightly aligned with other European currencies). Though few amongst the population fully understood the financial comings and goings, it was clear that large amounts of public money had been expended to no effect, and that incompetence had been revealed at the highest level. Conservative governments had always based their reputation on reliability in money matters. That this had occurred under a Conservative government which sought to build a reputation on these skills only reinforced the sense of shock.
In the 1980s the Labour Party had not fared well in their bruising confrontation with a Tory party that had reverted to classical economic ideas and broken free from the constraints of all-encompassing state “management” of the economy which had been hailed as the answer in the post-war years. The success over a decade of Mrs. Thatcher’s new course had not been expected. While a large proportion of Conservatives MPs had opposed her tough stance, many on the Left denied that there had been any success at all (though by the late 1980s there were clearly considerably increased employment opportunities, while Britain itself had regained much of her reputation on the world stage). But now, in late 1992, all was changed, and the supposed gains of Thatcher’s economic revolution appeared at first to have been lost. It would take time for the general realisation to sink in that, in fact, the reverse was true, that Britain’s freedom of action and rising prosperity founded on entrepreneurialism had actually been enhanced by the debacle of 1992.
The Conservatives were both confused and divided following their failure with the European Monetary System. This frustrating period coincided with the trend under which old institutions as well as old certainties seemed to be crumbling before the eyes of the public across a wide field. In the new post-Cold War climate the public was clearly hungry for something new. The Labour Party had been led by John Smith, a reasonable and cautious Scottish lawyer. When he died at a young age early in 1994, the way seemed open for a bright new shining star. Just 40, engaging, attractive, frank and friendly in manner, Tony Blair was the very embodiment of Cool Britannia. In his person he seemed to represent the new youthful order which would sweep away all the stuffiness and incompetence of poorly-performing Britain, chiefly by launching a new social compact in which all sections of society would be respected and honoured, A vision was laid out which embraced vast social change. Prominent amongst the target topics were education, healthcare, equal opportunities, and an end to discrimination against long-oppressed categories of the population, But the overriding, self-consciously moral, message was the promotion of an open and welcoming internationalism. This would have replace the inward-looking, narrow Britain-centred world outlook which, according to the Labour Party, had dominated national for too long.
The early 1990s also saw what must be described as a proliferation of scandals centring on the Conservatives and on that famous layer of society still labelled as “the Establishment”. Chief amongst these were the personal problems affecting several members of the Royal family, the worst being the details of the breakdown of the marriage of the heir to the throne and Princess Diana. Their wedding in 1981 had been both widely publicised and celebrated. Now, in the mid-1990s, painful and unpleasant information was leaking out gradually, to be eagerly consumed by a public ever-keen on royal news. The inclusion of agonising television interviews with the respective parties only increased the mood of scepticism which had spread about much of what had been seen as traditional British life. The death of the Princess later in a car crash in Paris together with the events surrounding the period of mourning and the public funeral only confirmed the existence of this new more sardonic mood
Another branch of the Establishment was the social world of the Conservative Party in power, and in this period the public was entertained at regular intervals by various new scandals involving Conservative MPs, the accumulation of which was described, in a phrase which tended to stick in the mind, as “Tory sleaze”. Little wonder that the Conservatives rapidly came, for many, to seem weary and outdated. By 1994 and for the rest of the period of the Conservative Major government, Mr. Blair’s “New Labour” enjoyed levels of public support unknown to any party since the National government coalitions of the 1930s, with consistently massive opinion poll leads.
A longstanding element of British life had been the association of Christianity, the Church of England and the monarchy, all linked as supposedly stable, constant and reliable features of the social and constitutional landscape. The Conservatives derived some of their reputation with the public from their belief in and support of all these institutions. The scandals of the 1990s seemed only to confirm that the long battle to dislodge all of these components of national life from their previous position of general respect and acceptance had been well and truly won. For the new generation entering adulthood, their experience of life, which included their immersion in the now accepted child-centred world of primary and secondary education in which the individual child was king/queen and in which creativity, innovation, experimentation and personal autonomy were key features, the arguments for a free and inclusive secular society seemed very convincing. The fruits of this upbringing would be carried over to the ever-expanding and proliferating university sector. And with the historic decline in the size of the former fairly homogenous class of factory workers, it was precisely this generation and its sense of modernity that would be the target and focus of New Labour ambitions.
For an increasing proportion of the young, the ideas and tenets of Christianity, as well as of the ways of church and chapel, were no longer even a memory. The notion of a God-fearing way of life had gone, along with the belief in authority and structure in society. A process had developed since the end of the 1950s through which new generations were increasingly divorced both from the moral principles (especially of self-reliance) built up over centuries and from a proper understanding of their own cultural and national past. With the growing influence of new educational theory, under which pupils and students came more and more to see themselves as the focus of attention and rights, while at the same time losing touch with much of what would formerly have been seen as common sense, the ground was laid for the potential takeover of young minds by utopian dreams. According to these dreams, human beings were universally and innately good. Where the educators’ aim of nurturing the potential and creativity of the individual student failed and where, therefore, a good result was not obtained, the answer lay not within the individual but in home conditions, “society” and poverty. The social sciences would provide the way forward by identifying the inadequacies that were responsible for individual failure and by defining what was needed to solve the problem. In the end it would be the government that was always responsible, and the government, through continuing large injections of resources, that would be expected to solve the problem.
Here lay a fundamental flaw with the utopian vision. If things went wrong for any individual or family or group in society, it was at base the government’s (or, as the phrasing went “successive governments’”) fault. This world-outlook was born not of open minded enquiry or of trial and error; it was the result of the dogma of the new cultural world-view. No facts “on the ground” could sway the certainty that it was, at bottom, oppressive forces and governments that caused individual failure or misfortune. It was evident here that the new culture had, consciously or not, echoed the Marxist view that the proletariat were the oppressed and that the system of capitalism was, at base, always responsible for their plight.
The consequence for society was clear. Each individual and each family would now be encouraged to see “the government” as responsible for the problems of life, and urged therefore to complain, campaign and claim their “rights”. The failure of the government to sort out problems led to the conclusion that we lived in an “unjust”, or “unfair, society”. Previously, governments had been concerned with equality of opportunity, with creating conditions where all could, as far as they were able, flourish. Now it was inequality of itself, (a condition deeply rooted in human nature and in social intercourse) which became an injustice which the government needed to “rectify”.
Few seemed to notice that, rather than ushering in a new era of co-operation and concern for the underprivileged, the effect of this overall process would be the erosion and demoralisation of the individual and the autonomous family in a trajectory which seemed destined to bring forward a new form of hellish totalitarianism, in which “approved” ideas and intentions would replace free thinking and open-mindedness.
For what was certainly true, and borne out daily by the character of events, was that while the new liberal order promised “inclusion”, the end of discrimination, the end of hate and social conflict, the reality was inevitably very different. None of the sins that the individual was prey to, of pride, envy, self-centredness, of desiring what others had, of seeing oneself always as a victim, of not noticing the plank in one’s own eye, had gone away. The old evils, so well known in human conduct, of wanting one’s own way against the other, of seeking to control and impose, of self-deceit as to the nature of one’s intentions, of using professed concern for others as a cover to gain power, continued to flourish as always. What was different was the way in which negative consequences were handed over to be sorted out by planners, counsellors, social psychologists and other experts. In reality the failure to face up to human nature would give the whole modern cultural movement an air of hopeless infantilism. This was an age in which while the ideas and wisdom of children were invariably held up for all to praise, adults looked, behaved, and were increasingly treated, like children, bereft, so often, of status, character or authority.
There was a sub-text of the period 1994-7, largely overlooked in the media, which was thoroughly absorbed with Royal goings-on and new stories of Tory wickedness. This was the half-accidental recovery of the economy following Britain’s exit from the European monetary straitjacket mentioned above. From 1993 onwards the country was given fairly clear evidence of new life and energy in British commerce and trade of a kind presaged in the 1980s but not seen in such relative strength for many decades. Britain had lagged behind all her major Western competitors during Europe’s “golden” period of capitalist expansion between the late 1940s and the Oil Price Crisis. Mrs. Thatcher’s drastic measures of the early 1980s effected an economic revolution, but with further malaise from 1989-92, the fruits of her strict policies had been only partially evident. Now it was different. The Western post-war boom had largely played out by the 1990s. Economic expansion had slowed, particularly in European countries and in Japan. Against this background British business appeared to have acquired a new imagination and vitality. The gloom and “decline” surrounding British fortunes seemed for the time being to have lifted.
None of this suited the propagandists of the liberal-left. Nor did the good news of Britain’s economic turnaround make any impact on the huge popularity of the new future promised by Mr. Blair. News of expansion and better times seemed only to reinforce the desire for a more modern, younger and exciting hand on the tiller. These trends fitted in completely with a Blair-led Labour Party which, having discarded the pretentious (and failed) “revolutionary” ideas of the 1960s and 70s, were able to persuade a willing public that they were best able to lead the way on the many hopes and aspirations that had built up in the post Cold War atmosphere. Slogans abounded, proclaiming a new Britain, free of all the old prejudice and stuffiness, a Britain where “things” would always be “getting better”, where the privileged and affluent would “reach out” to the not-so-privileged, where rising numbers of immigrants would be integrated happily with the existing populations of the four home nations, and where prosperity would be assured by co-operation and collaboration. Would it work out like this? And, if so, would it last?
Junius 2 