I was born in 1952. I have lived through some terrible economic times. In the early 1950s the UK was still feeling the effects of six years of the world war. The cost to the public purse of such a catastrophic event is hard to quantify. However, it is safe to assume by today’s costs it would have cost UK several £ Trillions. Vast tracks of the British mainland were in the process of rebuilding from the countless bombing raids carried out during the war.
The Empire which had been plundered for centuries by the English ruling elite to keep the few in opulence was disintegrating. The jewel in the British Imperial Crown, India became independent in 1947. This was a huge dent to the thieving British treasury.The slow drip, drip as the 66 nations that would ultimately tell Mother England to beat it, was almost a daily occurrence in my formative years. This meant less and less money for the treasury to misappropriate.
Just as now those departing colonies were being told they could not survive without Westminster overlordship and the largesse of the very generous English tax payers. Funnily enough they have all prospered and none has ever asked to return to the bosom of Mother England.
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent.
Nations of Europe that had used their Marshall Plan money wisely had invested in their industries and infrastructure were taking the UK markets and customers. Many of the freed colonies wanted nothing to do with their old colonial power and looked to other nations for trading relationships. Where previously they had been given no choice they could now choose the best for their country instead of what was best for England.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/marshall-plan
Meanwhile, the UK used the bulk of their Marshall money to bolster their armed forces to try and hold on to the remaining parts of their empire. This was to prove yet another disastrous policy and a waste of money by the UK Westminster government. It is not just a recent phenomenon the idiocy and financial impropriety by our London masters. The humiliation of Suez finally brought some reality home to the Little Englanders.
In those days we still had thriving industries. Steel, coal, shipbuilding, car manufacturing, engineering companies of all sorts to support those industries. The nationalised companies like British Telecom, British Gas, British Rail, British Steel, the regional electricity and gas companies all individually employed thousands and thousands of workers from John O’Groats to Lands End.
However, the polarisation of our politics and lack of true democracy or oversight in UK caused us to slip further and further behind our competitors. While the old enemies on mainland Europe renewed their constitutions and realised cooperation was better than conflict by forming a Common Market, invested in their infrastructure and industries, Britain remained aloof. Their Anglo exceptionalism just would not let them admit the reality, that the days of the British Empire and Raj were over and never again would England’s navy rule the waves.
Just as there had been during the height of the empire, poverty was still a curse on the British working class. Unlike the revisionism of today by some, 95% of the peoples of the British Isles had little or no benefit from the imperial times. At best their poverty hovered just above abject and total!
The welfare reforms implemented by the Atlee Government while welcomed, were slow in reaching most people. Social housing took time to build, and it was always a struggle to get the funding from central government to build. They were too busy waging costly rearguard conflicts in Aden, Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Singapore and countless other far flung destinations. The money wasted on these imperial wars could have been better spent lifting Brits out of poverty back in UK. Money should and could have been invested into our ageing industries. Instead, London squandered £ Billions on fruitless colonial wars.
By the time of my teenage years, the UK was known as the sick man of Europe. Just as the Americans would aid colonies against British rule to justify their own global aspirations so our spivs in UK operated against British industry, workers and our economy to feather their own nest!
Managers of the nationalised industries were almost kamikaze in their interactions with their workforces. Antagonising the workers more than negotiating settlements was the normal management approach. Forcing unions into industrial action was the tactic. Then, as now, of course, the right-wing media and commentators were telling the public that nationalised industries were bad, inefficient and controlled by those bad trade unionists.Meanwhile, the private ownership companies were allegedly better than good, so logically the only way to stop these big bad trade unions ruining the nationalised industries was to sell off the companies and break the unions! The lie worked!
Nationalised meant inefficient, privatised meant efficient. Management made offers, Trade Unions made DEMANDS! Management offered pay rises Trade Unions, REJECTED generous management offers! Management classes benign and generous working classes aggressive unreasonable and greedy!
If you don’t believe me, go and look up archived papers of the day. Then there was no internet and nobody to balance the lies and propaganda of the establishment. That is why today the establishment and its media scribes hate blogs like this. We expose their lies and propaganda. We hold them up to the light! We tell the other side of the story.
Ever since 1945 and the introduction of the welfare state the right-wing politicos, media and press barons have been working towards undoing any equality, fairness and decency our one and only Socialist Government put in place post-war.
In the 1970s Britain was in such a mess we had the humiliation of a huge devaluation to the £. We needed bailouts from the IMF. This action was necessary to avoid the UK becoming a failed state. Back then some of us knew Westminster was a shambles for Scotland and unfit for purpose.
We had so many strikes that at one point we had a three-day week and rationed electricity. It was really tough times but we managed to get through it, just. The nationalised industries though starved of investment and goodwill by the establishment and media kept many millions in employment and families above the poverty line.
The discovery of Scottish Oil and gas allied to the emergence of Margaret Thatcher gave the Tories and right-wing establishment the capital and resources to implement their retrogressive masterplan. The social houses and nationalised industries were sold off one by one. In England they even bundled up the water authorities and sold them off in 1989! They sold it to the people in England and Wales on a false premise. This was the only way to get investment into the ageing pipe systems and reservoirs. It would ensure the highest quality drinking water and safest pollution free rivers and seas around the coastline.
The reality is the exact opposite. The rivers and coastline around England and Wales today are awash with raw sewage. Human excrement is literally surrounding England and Wales on their part of our island. It is OK for some though, £59 billion has been taken out in dividends for water company shareholders. Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1981. Worse still, the water companies have sold off 35 reservoirs to mainly property developers. In 2022 England is suffering yet another drought, why is anyone surprised?
So what about the investment in new pipelines and repairing leaks? For the whole of England and Wales, the daily loss from leaks and other losses, from all of the two nations’ main water companies is 3bn litres of water, a fifth of their total supply. This is private ownership efficiency for you! Don’t sit there feeling superior because Scottish Water is still in public hands.They are coming for that very soon!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/14/observer-view-woeful-state-uk-water-industry
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/water-firms-drought-hit-uk-27791000
I could do similar horror stories especially about electricity and gas. We have the highest rail travel costs in the developed world and one of the worst rail networks. Again shareholders have done appreciably better than the consumers.
However, in all my decades on this earth, nothing has even come close to what we are facing now. Twelve years of extreme right-wing, bordering on fascist government have us on a trajectory for a complete breakdown of our society as we know it. Revolution is only one misstep away!
Brexit, Covid, Ukraine, Austerity, Greed, Tax avoidance on an industrial scale, poverty wages and the destruction of our welfare state means that the upcoming winter will result in hardship that has not existed since Victorian times! Prepare yourselves for dead bodies on the street. Begging and lawlessness that will be uncontrollable by the police. Be prepared to see the army and their weapons on our streets. Steel yourself for massive civil unrest.
Homelessness, unemployment, hyper-inflation, spiralling food costs will ravage our communities like never before! This time though it won’t just affect the poorest and most vulnerable in our midst. For sure they will feel it first and worst. However, the blight of poverty is about to claim some new victims.
The people, who up till now thought poverty was for others, are in for a shock.The policies of unfettered Tory capitalism have new victims in its sights! The I’m alright Jacks are about to meet Mr.Karma! I take no pleasure in this, well maybe just a little. Those that have watched our poorest communities being ignored for decades are about to experience the same hopelessness and abandonment issues the poor have known forever. It is the turn of the middle classes to feel angry and abused. They are the ones that are going to have to explain to their children why there is no electricity, no food on the table and why Daddy doesn’t have a job or car!
Swathes of businesses will close. Millions will lose their jobs and ultimately their homes and lifestyles The MSM lies about the generosity of the UK benefit system are about to be laid bare! They will experience first hand the downward spiral of hopelessness, addiction and despair. In 2022, in Tory UK there is no safety net, no sympathy and no help.This reality is coming to a postcode near you soon, brace yourself!
What really gets me in all this, is that so many seem to be oblivious to the tsunami of destruction that is heading towards us all. I expressed my anger at the deliberate false flag reporting narrative this week that emanated from the Anti-Tory Government protests. Those people in Perth shouting, “Tory Scum Out!” actually get it. They know what is coming down the line towards us all.Those clutching their pearls in posh Scotland are in for a rude awakening.
Meanwhile, inside the hall in Perth, the two Tory sociopathic arseholes were talking about tax cuts and grinding the poor further down into the dirt. The unemployment that is growing by the day and resulting in a lower tax take is being ignored. The reality that with fewer people in work there will be less disposable income to spend in the High Street generating less VAT and Corporation Tax. This is lost on these Tory ideologues.
Businesses closing means less taxes for the Treasury and more welfare spending. It is a vicious circle and these Tory haufwits want to cut taxes for the rich and large corporations! Tax cuts do not help those most in need.Trickle down economics does not work. Privatising industries does not work! The British Union does not work! Neoliberalism does not work!
Blaming those that know this, that seems to work! That was what Perth proved. Our corrupt media convinced those facing imminent disaster that the only problems they should concern themselves about were an egg allegedly being thrown, though not captured by a single mobile phone or unionist media camera. Tories being called scum and a British scribe posing as a real journalist getting called out for his lack of veracity. All the other matters should be ignored.
Why when there are so many visible signs of an impending clusterbruach are there still so many that cannot or will not see the reality? The truth though is tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people inside the UK are going to suffer and die in the months ahead. Particularly worrying is that neither of our governments give a tuppeny toss nor do they have a single plan in place to mitigate this upcoming grim reaper of a winter!
It really is time to man the barricades folks!
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The ‘great reset’ isn’t happening, it isn’t ‘on the horizon’, it has been happening for the past 40 years. There was a couple of glimmers of hope. The first first in 1997 when labour won their general election victory. Who remembers D-REAM “Things can only get better” being belted out during their campaign? It certainly was a dream because unbeknown to most was the sad fact that preceding that election john Smith was conducting his ‘prawn cocktail’ offensive – or more capitulation, wining and dining with the high heedyins in the city of London, assuring them that Thatcherism was alive and well (Gordon Brown even hung her picture on his wall). Labour still claim that it was the only way they could win.
The scene was set for the continuation of Tory policies with privatisation not just of corporations, but of money itself where labour boasted a series of ‘government surpluses’. The city loved this because that was only possible by further deregulation of the financial system where most newly created money (by banks) was being pumped into the real estate and financial markets and so WE were running the deficits rather than the government. Brown’s tenure saw the biggest house and land price increase in history. His ‘light touch’ ponzified the U.K. economy and we reaped the whirlwind in 2007.
The govt of course rewarded the corrupt behaviour of the city whilst millions suffered. The bankers were bailed out – not the people. The banks continued (under state licence) to ponzify real estate. The city was emboldened and the revolving door between WM and the square mile expanded. Gordon Brown landed himself a nice job in the square mile – well he served them well!
With the Labour Party fully corporatised, our next glimmer of hope was a holyrood election victory in 2011. The 3 years which followed caught the kleptocracy off guard. The full might of the billionaire Tory media and the corporatised English parties won the day of course. What followed, I’m sad to say was the corporatisation of the SNP with the ‘public good’ policies quietly shuffled away and our energy assets handed out to the greedy gammon. The great reset continues unabated and is almost at it’s conclusion.
The past 40 years has seen the dismantling of the state and the empowerment of a small cabal of elites controlling our banks, land, food (and seeds), pharmaceuticals, and energy systems, our media, and of course let’s face it – our politicians. It ain’t just here of course. In the run up to his election victory, Barrack Obama reputedly told the Wall Street billionaires that he was the only guy who could keep the pitch forks away from their door. He served Wall Street extremely well.
Our political class has been captured. It is down to us now, to dare I say it – ‘take back control’.
An excellent analysis. One slight quibble, it was Brown that went on the prawn cocktail circuit not John Smith. Not that this excuses Smith. The “greatest Labour PM we never had” was British American Project alumni, married to a fairly senior MI6 officer. I suspect that given the opportunity Smith would have been Blair with a Scottish accent.
Yes, there were no heads on pikes resultant from 2008. The guilty were protected by their political satraps. Fred “the shred” was stripped of his Knighthood and half a dozen others were disqualified from working in financial services for various durations.
The lesson to draw is; the first heads on pikes need to be the politicians.
British industry was sabotaged by Thatcher on multiple fronts. It’s worth noting that Thatcher more than any previous Tory leader fell under the influence of MI5, primarily through her consigliere Airey Neave. Wilson and Heath were at least interested in the tripartite, German model of industrial relations (Callaghan not so much). The TUC were antithetical to this approach mainly because of the influence of the CPBG within their structure. The CPGB was bankrolled by Moscow, MI5 was fully aware yet did nothing.
As for the “Captains of industry”, they too were vehemently opposed to the cooperative German approach to industrial relations. Sitting down to conduct open and honest negotiations was foreign to the principals of the Anglo caste system.
I can place with reasonable confidence a letter published by the Glasgow Herald (as it then was) by Lord Weir, Chairman of Weir pumps to 1986 or 1987. The letter bemoaned the decline of Private schooling in Glasgow. “Where, oh where will my future managers come from?”
An infuriating parallel tale. Jim McColl (est. wealth £800m) started as an apprentice machinist at Weir pumps in 1967, aged 16. After completing his trade qualifications, McColl left Weirs to gain a BSc in Technology & Business Studies from Strathclyde University in 1978. McColl returned to Weir pumps that same year but lasted only three years. We can’t know for sure why McColl left Weirs so quickly after returning. Perhaps Weirs wasn’t such a warm house for a lad fae the schemes.
In 2007, McColl purchased Weir pumps from the Weir group.
This Anglo caste system with its private schooling is foreign to the history and character of Scotland. Every week day, a charter bus for the nearest private school picks up and deposits the kids from the middle class, English ghetto in my town. What few private schools survive in Scotland, depend to a large extent on the custom of middle class, English incomers. Private education is a generations long tradition, an existential necessity for these people.
One of the few positive initiatives of our otherwise useless administration was to impose full business rates on these institutions earlier this year. Their “charitable” status was always built on shifting sand. Their “charitable works” were merely to perpetuate the English caste system.
Brilliant article Roddy.
The greatest irony is that Scottish Independence could be the best thing that ever happened to England, provided it shakes them out of their delusions and exceptionalism, and introduces a little humility into their diet. Let me stress humility, not humiliation.
Sure, from Scotland’s perspective, there’s growing resentment at the colonial plunder of our resources. Why wouldn’t there be? It’s theft in all but name.
But just for a second, let me set the injustice suffered upon Scotland to one side, and state the other uncomfortable home truth, that even WITH the plunder of Scotland’s wealth and resources, the UK has “still” singularly failed to embrace inward investment and bettering the lives of it’s people. It’s economy is a house of cards; value on paper that’s out of kilter with value in cold reality. A house is NOT worth a £1 million just because somebody says it is, even if there is somebody dumb enough to hand over the money.
The UK is so used to filling it’s coffers from foreign shores that it never really recognised the worth of a sustainable, balanced economy which was robust and able to survive temporary adversity through it’s background level of health and vitality.
The British way has always been maximum out for minimum in, and once the host can sustain it no more, there’s no rest or rehabilitation, there’s no recovery or rebuilding, but an immediate search for the next host. That’s not just parasitism, it’s unsustainable parasitism because you extract too much from the host.
Scotland needs rid of this insatiable parasite, but this insatiable parasite also needs to wise up and realise that 19th Century Colonial economics simply have no place in the 21st Century. You cannot expect other nations to simply hand over their wealth.
Your capacity to generate wealth is in your people; the same people the UK spurns as a burden to prosperity, and a crop to be harvested for the few pence they keep in a jam jar.
Scotland can save itself from this catastrophe with freedom and plentiful resource. (Just bloody well get on with it!) At least I hope it can. But I sincerely believe England’s rehabilitation as an honourable Nation requires it to wean itself off Scotland and start living within it’s own English means.
Yes, that probably is a huge adjustment to make, but it still needs to happen as the first step towards England finding itself and starting it’s own recovery.
You say the economic model the UK is perusing, is not working.
The powers that be, the elite, do not agree with you.
The UK economic model is producing more millionaires and billionaires.
If in bad times, the poor die, this does not damage the success of the model.
The elite do not care if the poor die, poverty is part of the model , it is necessary to maximise corporate profit.
Poverty for a third or more of the people, is not an accidental consequence of the economic model , it is an inbuilt and designed consequence.
Corporations are psychopaths , incapable of feeling empathy.
Please watch the great American film “Corporation” for a rundown on the evil legal entity that is a company.
I did the searching to find the links that you didn’t post Jim.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/
“The Corporation – Official Trailer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exY4u0XsEGI
The Corporation – Documentary
8,215,438 views 7 Nov 2017 Based on Joel Bakan’s bestseller The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, this 26-award-winning documentary explores a corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures.
2hours 24 mins 20 secs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpQYsk-8dWg
or a Playlist in 25 parts:
THE CORPORATION [1/23] What is a Corporation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y&list=PLFA50FBC214A6CE87
Apparently there is a sequel too:
1:46:39
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel (2020)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPcHjF8RmYY
😉
I bow to those with greater political knowledge and understanding than I however, I’ll never forget the extreme disappointment I experienced after Tony Blair got to work. Although the head teacher of Fetes warned us about the man’s dishonesty and lack of commitment well before he became PM, we ignored him.
The hope is that with social media and sites such as this we’ll gain a better understanding and knowledge of all politicians in future.
Sorry Roddy, “Fettes College”.
Jim Bryce: I agree with what you say, but the consequences will still be catastrophic on several levels. These parasites, as Breeks calls them (rightly, in my opinion) will not care until they do care because they will be made to care.
Parasitism is rife in our era, as are shallow analyses of what is happening by the institutions that should be ensuring that the reality is broadcast rather than the delusion. Delusions are also rife at the moment. Are they an escape? I don’t know.
The thing about not wanting to know is that reality always intervenes eventually and what you are then forced to face is so much worse: like stage 1 cancer, if you don’t have it treated, it moves on to stage 2, then 3, then 4 and 5, and death ensues. It, too, is a parasite, but one from within.
The Tories and their hangers-on parasitical friends in big business are riding high right now, but the stars are aligning against them. They will be toppled. It is how they are toppled that is far more crucial: if it is violently, and we can never rule that out, although I pray it won’t be, they will pay with their lives for what they have done; if it is peacefully, they will have to have an agreement wrung out of them that will reverse the policies they have introduced to fleece us.
That will take as huge an effort as the post war consensus and rebuilding did when the Tories knew that the men who returned from the war were having no more c**p fed to them, and the women who had kept the country going were not going to put up with ‘back to the kitchen sink’ for long. Real societal change for the better comes directly from economic policies that benefit the majority, that work from the bottom up, not the top down. That is what genuine revolution means, not allowing and enabling the country to be shorn of all humanity and its shared wealth siphoned off to the ‘deserving’ rich. Thatcher never learned that lesson and nor did her successors, including New Labour and the Lib Dems, and it seems that the NuSNP, in its best neoliberal cloth, has not learned it either
Vivian, no it was john smith and mo mowlem who embarked on the prawn cocktail offensive. Good book to read is Treasure Islands by Nicholas shaxson which covers that period.
I think even the most comfortable, cosy, union supporting, think of themselves middle class, are in for a rude awakening these coming months.
This is all going to hurt and not just the already fuel, energy, food poor in our society. And of course as it hurts people who cannot pay are not going to pay, and people who are struggling to pay which will be very many, will I suspect resort to cancelling direct debits, standing orders, and reverting to taking back control and getting utility bills that they pay.
And what do the corporate money people do when millions and millions take back control and decide what they can pay.
Ditto rising mortgages. Who gave the masters of the universe the money to impoverish so many. Where did they get the money from. How did they create it. Why can the people not have created this money themselves. Why do they have to pay huge twenty five year mortgages. And if the BOE has its way it seems that fifty year mortgages could soon be on the block. Fifty years of interest- and to who. But what if millions and millions take back control and decide what they can pay.
Covid 19 was a huge experiment in population control. Restricting people’s movements. confining them to their homes, stopping people meeting, setting up stop and enquire checkpoints, issuing fines, prosecuting some whilst not others. I suspect we will see this again as we move forward.
But you know what. When people say no, and they say it in their millions, there is little if anything the elites can do. Mind you the great Tory Sir Winston Churchill once opined that workers they should give people agitating about famine some lead in their bellies. Maybe they think they can do this again.
Change is coming. Long overdue.
“There are none so blind as those that will not see!”
Thats so very true isn’t it ? https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=386023010374626&set=a.244596027850659
Facebook, aye it must be true eh!