That’s the heading of an email I received from a friend this morning - the first I knew that Boris Johnson has been elected as Mayor of London.
A somewhat faulty analogy for non-Londoners is if Pauline Hanson stood against Clover Moore for the mayorship of Sydney and won. Make that a Liberal with a Pauline Hanson mouth versus a Laborite with Clover Moore’s democratic green credentials and you’ll get the idea.
My friend (who is in her 60s, so she’s been around the election block) wrote:
This is a sick making night. Really terrible. Labour have no one to blame
but themselves. But it’s a bloody crime that Boris has seemingly taken
London. Ken is a shit but he’s been overall positive for London. What on
earth will happen with Boris? And he’ll be in charge when the stupid
Olympics hit town too. Jesus Christ, I hate mainstream politics and cannot
cannot cannot understand why people are so stupid in elections.
Yours in London blueness, S.
Coming in the same week as a former neo-fascist youth leader was elected mayor of Rome, this is a weekend for blueness all round.
Yes, Pauline Hanson is totally like Boris Johnson. In every way.
While democratic socialists may be down in the dumps this sort of result vindicates us anarchists ( libertarian socialists) Even right down to ‘Red’ Kens fake don’t vote ‘joke’ campaign. Because is has almost become anarchist dogma that you NEVER ever vote under any circumstances.
I’d take a slightly less jaundiced view even from the theoretical and abstract POV of the person in the street. Nanny statist, micro-managerialist meddling has received a setback. In the contrarian scheme of things - ie throwing whoever’s in OUT - this has to be seen as a good result. Europeans want freedom of movement and a convenient stable currency - they obviously don’t want incompetent ideologues either from the loony-tune left or the lunar-right in charge for very long - if at all.
This is a good time to consider open-source people power. To consider anarchism for a change.
A somewhat faulty analogy for non-Londoners is if Pauline Hanson stood against Clover Moore for the mayorship of Sydney and won
It’s quite true, you know. While representing the One Nation party, Pauline Hanson was editor of an international current-affairs and arts magazine, and also wrote a number of erudite and witty opinion columns for the major newspapers. Also, as is well known, Hanson wrote a number of entertaining books about the political process, and even at one point wrote a novel. And Pauline Hanson’s skills as a public speaker and knowledgeable classicist are well-known.
However, the comparison isn’t quite perfect. Boris’s skills in the fish-and-chip business are sorely lacking.
“A somewhat faulty analogy for non-Londoners is if Pauline Hanson stood against Clover Moore for the mayorship of Sydney and won.”
Peas in a pod. Both presidents of the Oxford Union, both married people of Indian descent….the comparisons are endless.
More apt comparison would be Boris = GW Bush.
Idiotic, bafflingly popular clot-headed sons of the aristocracy, propelled into power despite a stuffup-strewn career on the strengths of their family and old school pals so they can present an affable blundering facade while their mates behind the curtain can get down to business.
So it’s like Dolly Downer taking on Clover Moore then?
I dunno if Downer’s ever been described as ‘bafflingly popular’. If we were to fuse him somehow with Corey Worthington we might get something approaching Boris.
I don’t know if there’s anyone to whom one can compare Boris, particularly in Australian politics. The Hanson’s more like the BNP than she is the Conservatives.
“So it’s like Dolly Downer taking on Clover Moore then?”
Dolly is - and would be - outrageously flattered by that comparison Gummo.
But we know what you mean Suz. Livingstone did a number of interesting things for London, not the least of which was the congesting pricing, and closer to my heart, he appeared to be a friend of cyclists. Boris on the other hand has been posted above his station, only time will tell if his past form holds true.
I had to scratch my head to come up with an analogy - I considered Tony Abbott and indeed, Alexander Downer, who is quite comparable in terms of his headline-grabbing faux pas and buffoonish image. I used Hanson as a measure of just how outageous and divisive many of Johnson’s statements have been.
Pauline was indeed one of our more successful products who chose the affairs of the state over the affairs of the mind. As some of the more astutue observers above have noted, Pauline’s record is identical to Boris’.
Namely:
1. Born in New York. Daughter of Oxford graduate World Bank executive and European Union diplomat father and Oxford graduate painter mother.
2. Won a King’s Scholarship to Eton College
3. Scholarship to read BA (Classics) Oxford University
4. President of the Oxford Union
5. Member of the British-Arab University Association
6. Marriage to Sikh-Indian human rights barrister. They have four children.
7. Worked as a journalist for over a decade in London and Brussels before joining The Spectator
8. Editor of The Spectator at age 35
9. Elected to parliament at age 37
10. Elected Mayor of London age 43.
Just like our Pauline.
Ho ho fuckin’ ho…this is gonna be fun.
As Boris is about to discover London has the most labyrinth,
peculiar, archaic, yet always in flux power, pressure group and vested interests systems of any major city in the world. Probably only NYC and Tokyo come close.
It’s the political skill, experience and networks of a Lord Mayor of London that determine whether he or she ends up as a ceremonial figurehead or a driver of actual change.
Ken had around three decades as a real player in local and national Government and even he couldn’t get half the things on his Mayoral agenda up, let alone implemented.
Wait till Boris announces some swingeing new plan only to be confronted by an ad hoc coalition of unlikely partners emerging out of the woodwork – ranging from subcontinental steel multibillionaires, Fellows of the Royal Zoological Society and Essex developer and drugs outfits to the National Trust, the Ministry of Sound and a carefully deadpan letter of “interest and concern” from the Palace.
As I’ve said before, Boris strikes me as a lousy administrator but who knows? Maybe he could rise to the occasion. Remember Winnie was an unpopular half-Yankee mountebank with a track record of political opportunism and many ministerial disasters when he ended up as the compromise choice for PM in May 1940.
And let us not forget too vaudeville was invented in London and the Brits have never lost their taste for surreal buffoonery.
I could well see Boris ending up in the job as the City’s head greater, charming foreign investment with his tongue in cheek Wodehousisms and offering entrée to all the snob value institutions that are already attracting all the parvenu Russian and Indian billionaires to London.
As it ever was. Remember La Belle Époque when there was a thriving trade in marrying off the daughters of US department store, manufacturing, resources and real estate magnates to impoverished but ubercool British aristocrats? There were many Borisi back then too.
Speaking of hypergamy, I really should get ready for my date tonight.
No matter what happens, London, like The Dude, will abide.
“head greater”
Well obviously I meant “greeter”. Or “grater”.
Gordon says Labour ‘needs to listen more’.
Oh dear, things are going bad. When he says he’ll just have to work harder, put your money on the conservatives.
Nabs, the day before the election Ken said he would give Boris a job if he (Ken) were re-elected as he thought Boris would run again next time yet he has no experience in such a position - so Ken would give him that experience, for London’s sake. The idea of Ken employing Boris in order to make Boris fit to be the next mayor gave me a chuckle - unfortunately, Boris won and goes into the job without that experience.
But you’re right - London will survive.
Suz:
Long-distance impression is that Livingstone was definitely unlovely but respected; Labour Party was neither lovely nor respected.
Whathisname, the boofhead with a severe case of F.I.T.H. Syndrome, had only one thing going for him: he was NOT Labour Party - therefore he was elected. In Australia, we are familiar with the Drover’s Dog phenomenon.
Anyway, both Dick Whittington AND his cat have been sighted fleeing London in sheer horror.
Immigration should now grant special refugee status to all Londoners as an act of mercy and compassion.
Leinad [1]:
Even on her worst day, Pauline Hanson could never have done what is about to be inflicted on London. [b.t.w., Pauline Hanson would better be compared with Russian nationalist, Vladimir Zhir9novsky].
Leinid [4]:
Aaah. That’s better. George W. Bush …. or Dan Quayle.
@Nabs: “And let us not forget too vaudeville was invented in London”
How so? Vaudeville’s a North American form, maybe via France. You’re thinking of Music Hall or Burlesque aren’t you?
d
Well, at least there’s two swines who won’t be out there planning to blackmail Boris into taking part in shady activities…&/or capturing him drinking on the job:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/03/monarchy.ukcrime
(Pair guilty of royal blackmail attempt get five-year jail term, Stephen Bates The Guardian, Saturday May 3 2008)
That only leaves…
Good riddance to Red Ken. Or perhaps Rainbow Ken would be more apt, given his pandering to various special interest groups.
Interesting how he exemplified the morphing of Old Left communism into New Left “culturalism”. One thing both movements had in common was harbouring fifth columnists.
That chicken came home to roost on 7/7, an underlying factor in his defeat.
You should be placing “Berlin” and “Paris” before “Rome, London”. I make that a clean sweep for the Centre-Right in all of the USE’s Big Four. These parties have swept to power in pretty much all the main USE states over the past few years, generally running on conservative populism.
Personally I dont care which party-wing is in power, so long as it follows progressive cultural, fiscal and technical policies. Not so for the Trumpet which blasts a triumphalist right wing fanfare to mark the occasion:
Apparently only Right-wing religious cranks, like the Trumpet, and Left-wing sore losers, like suz8’s correspondent, appear to notice the trend. At least they are paying attention.
Probably this psephological pattern is just an eccentric synchrony of the various European electoral cycles. But possibly these political developments are a lagging indicator of the dreaded “Decline of the Wets”, finally expressed in Old Europe.
The populace are seem to be fed up with the failure of the liberal-Left’s cultural policies, kicking certain bums out. If so this proves there are more things in the Strocchi-verse than are bad-dreamed of in the Larva-Prodder philosophy.
Don’t count on it jack.
Ha-Ha!
More like Winston Churchill, witty aristocrat, versus Daniel Ortega, failed commie who likes to bask in the reflected ‘glory’ of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Clover Moore’s democratic credentials are somewhat less than substantial, but Red Ken is totalitarian down to his jackboot straps.
Even commie Sweden has a centre-right government:
centre right
Belgium: Christian Democratic and Flemish Party
Czech Republic: Civic Democratic Party
Denmark: Venstre, Liberal Party of Denmark
Estonia: Reform Party
France: Union for a Popular Movement
Germany: Christian Democratic Union
Greece: New Democracy
Italy: People of Freedom
Latvia: centre right coalition
Luxembourg: Christian Social People’s Party
Malta: Nationalist Party
Netherlands: Christian Democratic Appeal
Poland: Civic Platform
Romania: National Liberal Party
Slovenia: Slovenian Democratic Party
Sweden: Moderate Party
centre
Ireland: Fianna Fáil
Finland: Centre Party
centre left
Austria: Social Democratic Party of Austria
Bulgaria: Bulgarian Socialist Party
Hungary: Hungarian Socialist Party
Lithuania: centre left coalition
Portugal: Socialist Party
Slovakia: Direction – Social Democracy
Spain: Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party
United Kingdom: Labour Party
communist
Cyprus: Progressive Party of Working People
There must be some other City of London where some other Boris Johnson was elected mayor today. Never in my life have I ever heard anyone so inaccurately described.
So the right win a few elections and it’s time to hang out the white flag?
Boris and Berlusconi the dynamic duo, and a French serial philanderer who had to have lessons in etiquette.And the Germans, well we know how fickle they are.
My God the left must be all of a tremble.
Lets just call a spade a spade - all conservatives are analogous to Pauline Hanson to Suz. This is why she mentioned neo-fascism in the same post.
All accounts are that although Boris is a bit laddish, he is genuinely intelligent and charismatic. Besides its not like he’ll be running it all by himself… he’ll have armies of advisors there just like any other politician does. The Mayor of London as very little power anyway.
My problem with Boris’ election is that talentless race-baiting prat Lynton Crosby will now be closer to god as an election adviser. The world awaits. Sigh.
Journalists - mostly at The Guardian - had certainly been running the line rather strongly that Boris was racist/extremist in a number of ways. They were able to argue this because of statements like the ones you can find here.
The trouble with taking these statements and then arguing that Boris is extremist is that The Guardian were demonstrably taking them out of context. Yes, but, the objection will go, Boris must have known that the media would do this, and it’s not the place for a politician to go about making statements which could potentially have a divisive effect.
The trouble with this argument is, too many people were aware of the original context. Boris had established himself as a top-class journalist before going for the spot of London Mayor. Millions of people from all over the world had read his columns and subscribed to The Spectator. (Geoff Honnor does a good job of recontextualising one such so-called ‘racist’ statement by Johnson at Club Troppo.) So a lame anti-Boris campaign recycling some of Boris’s quotes in The Guardian was never going to have that much strength.
I’ve read a number of Johnson columns, and one book, and subscribed to The Spectator for a time and can certainly say that I’ve never encountered a racist or anti-multicultural or anti-gay opinion. More than once, however, I’ve come across persuasive arguments that bely his Tory-buffoon image.
Not that this quite sees the end of the media’s lame habit of misquoting and miscontextualising various public figures, but the singular failure of it in this case is a hopeful sign.
Council elections are defined in UK by the national governing party getting a shellacking; but its invariably due to their supporters not bothering to turn up. A kind of protest non-vote. The often hard-working councillors cop the kick in the date. Come national election time a couple of years later, turnout returns and the council poll means little.
23 Marlon May 4th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Its a bit more than “a few elections”. The Centre-Right parties now hold national office in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Austria, France and Italy. And I will wager that the Tories will win the next UK election.
The Centre-Left’s last strong hold in Europe is in…Spain. Ole.
And all I am suggesting is that the Centre-Left take note of the cultural agenda of the Centre-Right, which is populist conservatism. Is coming to your senses on immigration and citizen settlement now equated with “hanging out the white flag”?
Its too early to tell whether or not this electoral sweep portends the European political expression of popular conservatism ala “Decline of the Wets” or is simply a psephological coincidence. But it is mighty interesting post-911 coincidence.
If party politics is now reflecting the underlying secular change that I predicted almost a decade ago then the European Centre-Left will be given a stark choice: lose your loonie liberalism that indulges special interest groups or lose political power needed to make good public policy.
The CR is in a slight ascendancy in Europe. (Stocchers conveniently forgets that W. Europe’s two biggest countries, Britain and Germany, have leftists in government (Germany) or is governed by leftists (Britain). However, the CR are expected to administer the CL consensus established in the 1960s and 1970s. Sarko tried to dump that consensus in France and has got himself into trouble. There’ll never be another Maggie Thatcher as head of the British Tories. Her reforms were significant but they hardly touched the Welfare State. And Britain is so comprehensively a multi-cultural society today that a return to an imagined world where fox-hunters ran everything from horseback is impossible.
It is important that everyone eschew “looniness”. But the question remains, what is looniness. Large numbers of Europeans may even think that Strocchers’ imagined world is a world of madness.
Irrelevant nit-picking. What’s important to the Australian conservatives who are celebrating from Boris’s victory over Red Ken is the idea that, despite the fact that there are differences between Australia’s political system, culture and various what-nots and those of the UK, France and Italy, the fact that conservatives are beating lefties in those countries shows that one day, in our beloved far-flung outpost of the former British Empire, conservatism will once more take the political ascendancy.
It’s time to show a little generosity of spirit and allow Jack his moment of consolation. Let him diddle himself with his dreams of a coming Strocchistralia, fueled by the electoral triumph of a conservative boofhead in a municipal election half a world away. It’s not as if Bo-Jo’s actions as Lord Mayor of London are going to much influence on life in this country. A little more influence, maybe, than Jack’s down-under projections of his theories of Oz political behaviour onto the voters of London will have on political commentary in the UK, but not that much.
Before Boris detractors proclaim the end of civilisation as we know it and before Boris lovers hail his ascendancy to the mayoralty as the end of history, it is important to note that the Mayor of London, while she administers from a terribly modern building that doesn’t look like it’s falling down at all, is mostly concerned with tubes and buses, bobbies on the beat, and roads and bridges.
These matters are tremendously important if you want to be able to walk across Waterloo Bridge without being mugged, but these decisions hardly matter at all for what makes London important to the world as the centre of international finance. If bridges were that important, then even Paris would be a much more suitable centre for world finance.
No, Boris is going to be a blond version of Melbourne’s own John So. That is, a hood ornament for a City Brand. Perhaps Bro’ So could give Boris a few elocution lessons, because the Mayor of London should avoid getting caught saying anything intelligible on matters of policy.
Good riddance to Red Ken.
Interesting how he exemplified the morphing of Old Left communism into New Left “culturalism”. One thing both movements had in common was harbouring fifth columnists.
That chicken came home to roost on 7/7, an underlying factor in his defeat.
What a truly nasty comment. In fact Ken Livingstone’s response to the deaths of so many Londoners in those terrorist attacks was exemplary on the day, something which Boris Johnson has acknowledged in his acceptance speech.
What’s important to the Australian conservatives who are celebrating from Boris’s victory over Red Ken is the idea that, despite the fact that there are differences between Australia’s political system, culture and various what-nots and those of the UK, France and Italy, the fact that conservatives are beating lefties in those countries shows that one day, in our beloved far-flung outpost of the former British Empire, conservatism will once more take the political ascendancy.
It fascinates me that Australia is so often at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the US and Britian - while Reagan/Thatcher etc were in power there, Australia had Hawke and Keating. While we had Howard, they had Clinton and Blair. Now we’ve turned to Labor while Britian turns rightwards and the US is in political turmoil…
“And all I am suggesting is that the Centre-Left take note of the cultural agenda of the Centre-Right, which is populist conservatism. Is coming to your senses on immigration and citizen settlement now equated with “hanging out the white flag”?”
ok…but like out of Dateline London & some of our self-interested media types who like their tax cuts over facts & reality on the ground…I’m hearing a certain amount of spin, spin, spin…change the message & change the government.
Think about what those Nations have in common. Mainstream media that beats the drums of FEAR & DIVISION.
Furthermore, a number of the Lefts losses can be attributed to control by Soc Dem Right-Wing, pro-war factions who didn’t deliver the public service NEEDS. Many felt conned & that the govts were more focused on the needs of the INFLUENTIAL & OPPORTUNISTIC than the general citizenry. It isn’t just about “refugees, Muslim & Eastern European immigrants who take the moolah and jobs of the HOME TEAM PLAYERS & act like TIME BOMBS…as some hyperbolic, cashed up media gobs like to tell it.
We’ll see how willing Sarkosy, Merkel & so on are willing to go down the “free market/free trade” path these days…certainly tinkering around the edges of welfare reform, pension delivery, revenue gathering, PPPs & healthcare reforms are on their agenda…but in some ways they are dealing w/ systems that became somewhat moribund w/ subsidies & protectionism and required a bit of FREEING up.
The “clean energy” thing has all govts. spooked & confused…& searching for sponsors or dancing to the tune of NEW being absorbed by OLD…let’s hope Merkel doesn’t throw the baby out w/ the bath water.
And I agree that immigration in the wake of economic downturn & the BORE on TERRORISM have become a prime issue…but the FOCUS by these govts seems to be more on retaining cheap labour whilst looking like responsible guardians of the entry gate….& harping on about Afghanistan/Pakistan (land of the ever vanishing OBL & friends…& pipelines & soma plants) than Iraq (similar to Rudd’s focus).
But imo, if the SAFETY NETS are blown to smithereens…or the PERCEPTION is such…& job security for more than 50-60% put on hold (undermine Unions too fast & the blowback will be vicious), & the pensions/”late in life” investments are turned into RISKY propositions…& the choice of foodstuffs & media diminishes drastically (think WEB)…those govts. will be out on their butts before you can say CON JOB.
Isn’t the war between Unions & the CARR-types interesting in NSW…so much for the synergy between Labor & the Unions. I wonder if Bob Carr & Tony Abbott had a drink together lately? I luv Bob the Chimera.
My previous comment appears to have been spam-binned, possibly because it had a few links in it. Can someone release it, please?
“Its too early to tell whether or not this electoral sweep portends the European political expression of popular conservatism ala “Decline of the Wets” or is simply a psephological coincidence. But it is mighty interesting post-911 coincidence.”
Exactly, you are not real confident are you? In the countries mentioned where they rely on the state to give them a half decent living, they will abandon the new centre right party’s as soon as it becomes crystal clear their fortunes will fall with the stock market.
Nasking has really said it all in a sentence - “Think about what those Nations have in common. Mainstream media that beats the drums of FEAR & DIVISION.”
This art form has never been more clear in the current financial crisis, where the media have spun the perception that it is all down to the government.The diminishing middle class plebs out in the suburbs, be it here or the host of countries mentioned by Jack,are desperate and the end result is,voting in absolute eccentric dills like Berlusconi,Sarkosy and the cartoon character Boris darling..
.
Well, he’s a Marxist shit and therefore has an inherent right to rule more or less indefinitely
Pauline’s tutor at Oxford ;
Give it up. They’ll not listen. Their precious conceits are at stake.
Isn’t this more or less how Rudd got in? You know? The “forgotten” Australians?
“Isn’t this more or less how Rudd got in? You know? The “forgotten” Australians?”
Er, your some what confused, that’s how Howard was elected.
Rudd was voted in to office in spite of the media.The anti-government media bias and spin,only applies to governments leaning just a tad to the left.It is patently clear the media is already after Rudd,but this time the poor souls just don’t know what to do,a Labor Party intellectual as Australia’s P.M. where will it end?
The Packers and Murdochs decide who will govern Australia,and as long as Rudd keeps the fat cats of industry happy,and doesn’t spend to much of the country’s wealth on social welfare, he will be allowed to live in the lodge.
Jack Strocchi [21]:
For once, I do agree with you on that point.
Katz [33]:
True enough.
Everyone:
That’s the problem, Whatshisname IS intelligent and he IS articulate …. if he had been a complete and utter dill, his potential to wreck London would have been much diminished. Now what was that saying about energetic and lazy generals - and about intelligent and stupid ones?
Graeme [29]:
Spot on …. but that doesn’t help Londoners here-and-now. Besides, a hell of a lot can happen between now and the next general election …. even the dissolution of the Labour Party.
Everyone:
The Labour Party played a vital part in the first half of the 20th Century - perhaps uncharismatic Clement Attlee even saved the Royal Family and prevented Britain turning Communist. However, Labour has long passed its use-by date; it is on the nose - and not even Brown can possibly save it. Time for a new progressive force in British politics?
Graham, I think the British Labour Party is, as a whole, more progressive than the ALP, much less of a machine.
Suz [44]:
Then where does that leave us ?? ….
32 Gummo Trotsky May 4th, 2008 at 10:25 am
I dont recall making the claim that the Right-wing turn in British municipal electionswould i nfluence AUS political events. Perhaps Gummo would care to draw our attention to my words to that effect, or is he just running off at the mouth, as usual?
What I am claiming is that the British municipal elections, and national polls, point in the same direction as European national polls over most of the course of this decade: towards the Centre-Right, particularly on cultural politics.
And I have already gone on record as predicting that the LP will lose the next UK election. The defeat of Livingstone is significant since he is a strong candidate, obviously a capable manager and electoral contestant. Bo-Jo, by comparison, appears to be an affable light-weight. So the swing to the Right was probably based on policy rather than personality.
This is exactly as my “Decline of the Wets” theory predicts. The Cultural Left is on the nose with the general populace in most OECD countries. Most notably in Old Europe where cultural policy has been mishandled by Brussels-insulated elites.
That makes about 3/4 of the USE’s population listing to starboard.
Now it is possible that this turn of political events is just a co-incidence. But my expectation is that the trend will continue unless Centre-Left parties ditch the silly and nasty cultural philosophies that are currently hobbling their electoral prospects.
Speaking of projections, I am waiting with bated breath for Gummo to tell us all about the elections that he has successfully predicted. Waiting, still waiting…
Jack Strocchi - the poor man’s Lynton Crosby. It’s the immigrant baitin’ stupid, is his strategy of choice.
Apparently, Lynton Crosby is being feted as the architect of Boris Johnson’s win. Various commentators are waxing lyrical that he will bring the Tories in from the cold in the next UK elections. I reckon it will depend on 2 things as to whether that happens:
1) If Boris Johnson makes a complete cock-up of the job. ie if he turns out to be Boris Yeltsin. (He certainly looks a bit like him.)
2) Whether the next general election will be held after the said Boris has been in power for a couple of years and 1).
The commentators also conveniently overlook the fact that Lynton Crosby was going to be the Tories’ saviour at the last general election and he was a dismal failure.
Only time will tell.
“Clement Attlee even saved the Royal Family and prevented Britain turning Communist.”
The first Earl Attlee (the third - his grandson - is now an elected hereditary peer for the Tories in the House of Lords) was a remarkable man and was, famously, one of Margaret Thatcher’s political icons - “he was all substance and no show.”
But….how exactly did he “save the Royal Family and prevent Britain turning Communist.?”
Geoff Honnor [49]:
Attlee - and the security wallahs - frustrated the Communists at every turn. Had Britain turned Communist, Attlee would have been the first put up against the wall - but do you think Stuttering Albert would have been made Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPPRB and his family made Party cadres …. or would they have had what little remained of their lives spent in a somewhat different way?
Jane [48 -1]:
At least Yelstin was …. forget it …. I can’t type and roar laughing at the same time. You have a wicked sense of humour.
OK, but why do you think it was even possible that Britain would have gone Communist after the war?
From memory I think one Communist MP was elected in 1945. Interestingly, one Communist MLA was elected in Queensland postwar too. But I don’t see any realistic prospect of Britain “going Communist”. France and Italy were far more plausible candidates!
Yeah, it was actually 2 MPs and 103,000 votes in 1945 — I think the CPGB’s greatest ever electoral success. Hardly a red tide of revolution!
Not quite!
Kim and Brett [51~54]:
What? Electoral success was ALWAYS way down the Communist list of priorities; way below recruiting people in professorships or trade union senior positions; way below taking advantage of rationing and shortages to win adherents. Electoral campaigning to win adherents was always far more important than actually winning seats.
True, France and Italy - and Greece too - were more likely to “go Communist” than was Great Britain …. but the risk of that happening in Great Britain was real enough.
There were great divisions and dissatisfactions in Great Britain after the great victory in the Second World War. Talk with early post-war British migrants; the personal experiences and attitudes of some of them made a mockery out of the happy propaganda of a stout-hearted uncomplaining British people steadfastly rebuilding their country from the ashes of the War; some of the most virulent anti-monarchist views I ever heard came from such people. And do not, for even a moment, imagine that, after the War, every highly-experienced British war veteran rushed off to join the British Legion and the Conservative Party [or even the Labour Party!] - or the RSL and the Liberal Party here.
Attlee did a fantastic job …. and Labour reaped the benefit of that in the succeeding decades. Blair did not!
I don’t think anybody is imagining that they did, but how does this equate to a potential Communist revolution? (Or whatever — it’s unclear to me what you’re actually suggesting might have happened.)
Yes, of course elections aren’t the whole story, especially where revolutionary politics is concerned. But at least it’s part of it. The Communist Party of Great Britain got 103,000 votes in the 1945 general election in Britain. Compare that with 4.3 million votes for the Communists in the 1946 general election in Italy, or 5.0 million votes in the 1945 legislative election in France (where the Communists became the largest party). So that’s 40-50 times as many votes than the Communists got in Britain (in percentage terms, the disparity is even greater). And even so, neither Italy nor France went Communist. As far as this goes, it’s negative evidence for strong communist support in post-war Britain.
The reason why I’m curious as to your basis for this claim is that I’ve never heard it before. I’m an historian of modern Britain, though the post-WWII period is admittedly my weakest period. Still, I’d like to think that I’d remember something like this! A quick scour of my bookshelves seems to confirm that there was little danger of a Communist revolution. It barely rates a mention, except for foreign policy (Ernest Bevin was a staunch anti-communist).
(Also, I don’t think that migrants are necessarily representative of Britain as a whole — after all, they’re the ones who left the place, so by definition there was something about it they didn’t like.)
Brett [57]:
Sorry about the delay in responding.
True enough, although migrants are usually not exactly representative of the general population in their former homeland, I think there were enough staunch supporters of the Communist cause amongst the early post-war migrants here to suppose that there would have been a large chunk of them back in the Old Country; this was a view that was reinforced later in conversations [not research] with people in England.
The attitudes of later British post-war migrants, the ones who came after Churchill had been prime minister again and after they had lived under the constant threat of Soviet hydrogen bomb attack, tended to be markedly different.
I’m not surprised that you hadn’t come across pro-Communist attitudes in post-war Britain. It’s the sort of thing you would find only in oral history and in private correspondence. It’s not the sort of thing any government or dominant social group would want widely recorded and advertised - it is tempting to draw an analogy with the relative paucity of reliable information on the actual prevelance of homosexuality or adultery at the time. I don’t know but suspect that even the Communist Party itself would be more likely to print strident propaganda than any dispassionate analysis of their actual support by the general public [why would they want to give the Ruling Class a swag of useful intelligence?].
I have never read Wright’s “Spycatcher” or similar memoirs of British security or intelligence wallahs but I wonder if there might be written reference in such works to the strength of support for Communism - and counter-measures to that - in the immediate post-war period.
I’m not at all surprised that there were pro-Communist attitudes in post-war Britain. But the existence of such is nowhere near to being evidence for a potential Communist revolution in post-war Britain. If support for the Communists had been that widespread, then evidence for it would show up in many places. For example: in Home Intelligence Unit files (which had been keeping tabs on civilian morale throughout the war), Cabinet records (unless you are suggesting that Attlee & co managed to thwart a revolution without even being aware of it), and memoirs, diaries and correspondence of politicians, civil servants and security personnel involved in suppressing it. And it’s not like the history of the left in Britain has been exactly ignored — rather the opposite — so it would have been picked up from the Communist side of things too. I’m extremely sceptical that it’s even possible that something on the scale you’re talking about can have been missed by historians, especially when there are still many people around who were alive at the time and would remember such a massive revolutionary movement.
But homosexuality was illegal. Membership of the CPGB was not. Nor was voting for it. You’d need to explain why virtually nobody did, if Communism was so popular. Britain in the late 1940s was hardly such a repressive place that Communists would be afraid to show their colours.
And I don’t accept that it’s a given that dominant social groups wouldn’t want to advertise a threat from within like this, since they’ve done it before and since. Why wouldn’t they use such a threat to increase their power?
I haven’t either. If you turn anything up I’d be interested to see it!
Eric Hobsbawm’s autobiography springs to mind, but above and beyond this, there’s a very extensive literature on the history of the CPGB. No indication I can see in any of it that they ever thought they had any chance at taking power. In contrast to McCarthyism in the US, there wasn’t even a time when the hoi polloi of academic Communism really suffered any interruptions to their careers.
A communist MP was indeed elected in QLD - Fred Patterson, state member for Bowen, 1944.
Poor old Fred was left disabled after a vicious police attack on him at a demo in 1948.
Yes, and he’s somebody you might expect to remember an incipient revolution. Not that he was that much of an activist, AFAICT, but he was 28 in 1945 and already in the CPGB for nearly a decade. He’d have to be pretty dense not to have noticed the revolutionary mood in the air! EP Thompson too — 21 in 1945, a tanker in Italy and then back at Oxford to finish his history degree (and rejoin the Party). The next year they and others (like Christopher Hill) formed the Communist Party Historians Group. It’s not like we’re lacking historically aware observers of the post-war Communist scene.
The CPGB was a mere shadow of its European counterparts.
The idea of a communist revolution in GB post WWII is laughable. British governments, both Labour and Tory avoided the anti-communist hysteria prevalent in both US and Australia in the early Cold War Era. Harry Pollitt was no Vladimir Lenin.
Spycatcher hardly mentions British communists, unless you count Roger Hollis, head of MI5, whom Peter Wright accused of being a Soviet double agent. It’s interesting that even as late as the Thatcher years Hollis’ allegiances remained murky in the eyes of the British governing classes. (Of course, at some time or other, much of the British spy service was run by Soviet agents, so Roger Hollis was nothing special in this regard.)
Harry Pollitt knew nothing of this.