I had an email from an old friend this morning who said:
I'm increasingly disillusioned with politicians, why are there no statesmen anymore?
That reminded me of a conversation with my eldest son at the weekend, who asked me who my idol was when I was his age. Not being quite sure what he meant I asked him who his was, and Nelson Mandela was the answer. The idol he was referring to was the person who might inspire him to pursue a good life.
First I was relieved that we weren't about to discuss pop stars.
Second, I explained that when I was his age I was not aware of Nelson Mandela or others like him. That was because he is 13 and Soweto was what really awakened awareness of South Africa for me and I was 18 at the time. But, more important than that, I also explained that either my concern was more parochial in the 70s or there were plenty enough people to inspire me here in the UK. Politics was full of very big characters who I found inspiring. I remember watching the party conferences for pleasure as a teenager and being motivated by people of vision and, I think, integrity, and I reeled off a long list of names, all unfamiliar to my son, of course.
Where did the statespeople go?
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Richard, you could be accused of “golden age” nostalgia and false consciousness, but then so might I, since that is my feeling too. It seems to me that the reason for the phenomenon is that there USED to be a real clash of ideas and values, honourably held, and capably – more than capably – promoted, whereas now the dead hand of an ossified, but still powerful, neo-liberalism sits across the body politic, just as an ossified Marxism-Leninism sat across the Eastern Bloc and beyond – a sort of intellectual incubus, sucking out the intellectual and moral elan from the system. How else are we to explain our current state, when a loathsome apology of a Government, based on lies and acting in destructive self-interest can manage to take a lead in the polls, instead of being subject to a popular uprising and the storming of the latterday Bastille? What is need is a latter-day Charter 77 Movement, but first we need voices – famous voices – to rouse the general public from its state of narcolepsy (as another contributor refers to it) and shatter the false consciousness created by Thatcher’s infection of the body politic with the parasitic virus of neo-lberalism, which is a sort of intellectual syphilis, leading eventually to madness, paralysis and then death.
Andrew
I agree
Russell Brand has tried
Go well
Richard
The media want a different type of person to be a Politician.
They see characters, who statesman are, as odd and strange. They then make fun of them. Looking at parliament now, most are the same sort of person, it doesn’t matter tories or labour. They are all the same.
I also think money. We don’t pay the Mps enough. With local council leaders earning more than the PM we are in sad and desperate situation.
Whilst I am sure you wont agree. Even a type of person like Boris has done so muc for London and did well during the Olympics.
You seem to be suggesting that Johnson is a statesman?!
Who the hell got the Olympics here in the first place? Who introduced the Oyster Card? Who initiated the bike hire scheme? Who introduced the Congestion Charge and had plans to extend the zone which Johnson quashed? The Congestion Charge was mainly to do with reducing air pollution caused by traffic congestion and, thanks to Johnson, the pollution now exceeds EU levels again.
And look back at Ken’s past stewardship of the GLC – the Fares Fair policy instigated by my friend Dave Wetzel – so successful in reducing fares and increasing revenue that Thatcher abolished the whole Council.
Ah, but Johnson did spend vast amounts of dosh to get rid of Ken’s sensible bendy buses and substitute his own little vanity-project doubledeckers, didn’t he?
Livingstone also ran his affairs through a company to avoid tax, so that instantly disqualifies anything else he did if we apply the same logic as given to Gary Barlow.
Oh come on – let’s not be stupid – the governemtn has wholly backed off suggesting what Livingstone did was avoidance
Barlow’s was a blatantly packaged scheme
If you are going to comment please make it intelligent
Richard, are you now saying using a personal service company is not now avoidance? That’s excellent news!
I think it is
But on a scale of 1 to 10 it’s now pretty low, whether I like it or not
I think the question of “the good life” is central to this. I agree that Nelson Mandela was perhaps the last great statesperson. Politics now seems to be merely a matter of pursuing a narrow self interest & being able to count the things we feel will achieve it. I do not think we even pursue national interest because we are rapidly losing the sense of what a nation is. The debate about Scottish independence only serves to highlight this. What we see before us is not the possible creation of two nations but the disintegration of the whole idea of nationhood. No wonder there are no statespersons. We are losing the sense of goodness in the body politic which nurtures them.
I believe you may be overlooking the most excellent Caroline Lucas of The Greens. She is a tireless, relentless campaigner, unafraid to challenge any+ all in the pursuit of her goals, which are in no way selfish or self-serving.
She’s conscience-led, and her conscience told to simultaneously oppose fascism and fracking in her direct protest against the Balcombe Site. Here’s what she said, “As an MP, I’m in the privileged position of being able to make the case against fracking in Parliament.
I’ve tabled motions, championed debates, and put questions to the Prime Minister — and will continue to do so.
But the Government is ignoring the evidence, and is set on a reckless and irresponsible new dash for gas, offering the fossil fuel companies generous tax breaks as well as senior roles within Government itself.”
I believe the Green Party are also the only ones to promise full reinstatement of a competition-free NHS and champion a Universal Basic Income, which would simultaneously eradicate Homelessness and Poverty. As a bonus, it’d tackle lack of demand in consumer markets and would break the necessity of work to survive, so that people are free to create or research or do whatever they like, previous experiments with this like in Namibia where Crime fell by 42% have proved it’s efficacy. : sounds like the creation of a kind of Utopia, where the Arts will flourish, alongside an explosion in Open Source research in Green Technology and Green Energy and just Tech of any kind.
You are right
I did overlook Caroline, which, as she is a friend, is somewhat remiss
If you had you would’ve only opened yourself to the charge of bias, or SOMETHING…
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I wouldn’t worry, the essay was in the form of an open question, not attempting to be definitive. Now, if you’d written a piece on those likely to affect the most change…. Not so good.
Sorry to have overlooked Caroline Lucas, and, of course, Michael Meacher, (with whom you have done excellent work) and the late Tony Benn, in my blanket dismissal.
There are a few who do manage to escape the hold of the neo-liberal hegemony, but they are mocked as nutters or marginalized as dangerous fanatics – little boys exclaiming the truth, while the generality of the on-lookers applaud the Emperor’s fine new clothes!
Thanlks for being a voice of sanity, Richard. Go well.
Yes, good point Alex, she was very impressive on QT last week showing up Farage for the fraudulent populist he is; come to think of it, she was a damn sight more impressive than the rest of the panel as well.
On that basis, as well as the fact that the European elections are PR rather than FPTP, I’ve already voted (by post) for the Greens. The Greens have the policies a proper progressive party should have. The only thing that may prevent me voting fot them at the GE is, of course, the idiotic FPTP voting system that might mean, in my desire to get rid of this appalling government, I feel compelled to vote Labour.
Many will share your sentiments, I suspect
You CAN’T think like that. I know it’s tempting. But that’s what perpetuates this situation.
“The Greens have the policies a proper progressive party should have.”
Pity then that their demands for ever higher energy costs – which is what their policies will result in – will put me out of a job as the firm I work for moves its operations to areas where energy is cheaper. Even the TUC doesn’t support Green policies in that area.
You have made this point repetitively
Please do not do so again
To be honest i’ll be voting Green on May 22nd, and i hope others do too, if only to fire a massive warning shot across the bows of the Labour Party.
They’re still creating policy and campaigning as if its 1994 – the world has changed. They themselves say the tabloid press doesn’t wield the same power it once did to decide elections, yet still behave as if they do.
They may still sneak home next year, one or even a handful of polls doesn’t mean that much, but i commented here a couple of years ago – what’s the point of holding power if you’re not going to use it.
Any party or politicians that stop following the evidence is doomed to fail, electorally, intellectually, morally.
Richard -I think your point in general is a good one but possibly rose-tinted with nostalgia. The ground was being laid for Thatcher well before her ‘timely’ arrival.
By 1971 the bretton Woods agreement was over and the gates opened for globalised financial markets to play currency wars alongside banking deregulation. By the late nineteen sixties some commentators were becoming aware that banks were controlling the money supply and many labour supporters believed that People like Gaitskell and Healey pushed the Labour Party to the right. 1945-71 is seen as a a sort of ‘golden age’ but was over by the time you were 12 and I was 11! Thatcher just picked up what was already happening and vastly accelerated the process.
I campaigned in 1970!
I lost….but I suspect I also had no influence at all
You campaigned aged 11 (if my maths is correct)!! Quite a prodigy -‘the child is father to the man.’
I was politicised at 11 – the work of the 11+ that introduced me to the reality of inequality of opprtunity
The 11+ created equality of opportunity between social classes. It created *different* opportunities for those with an academic bent and those without but eliminated the discrimination against those bright kids whose parents could not afford to send them to a Grammar School. I grew up in a working (class) town and the 11+ gave working-class kids the chance to get an university education and a career.
It never felt that way to me for very good and personal reasons
I suppose that I should pity you but my personal experience demonstrated that the Butler tripartite system did massive amounts to help working class children and promote social mobility: in my day a majority of Oxford undergraduates were working class and Manchester Grammar sent more boys to Oxford than Eton did. In my town I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of middle-class boys who got into either Grammar School (partly because the state primary schools taught all their marginal pupils exclusively for the exam and the sole middle-class school taught French, Latin, History and Geography as well – but that could be viewed as balancing out the assumed advantage that accrued from their better-off background).
Good point Simon
People point to Thatcherism, but forget the same things happened in other countries at the same time — some with Labour governments.
Think Hawke and Keating in Australia, Lange and Douglas in NZ. Labour in both. Roger Douglas, the NZ treasurer in the 80s (with his Rogernomics) made Mrs T look like bleedin’ Fidel Castro by comparison.
Talking about statespeople – isn’t it an age thing? The crop of current politicians are simply too young even if they were competent, which they’re not. Tony Benn was statesmanlike. I think our obsession with youth has cheated us of experience and wisdom in our political leadership. On top of this we’ve ended up with a generation of politicians who rather than regrading parliament as the pinnacle of their careers regrad being an MP as a convenient stepping stone to some cushy consultant job.
“I suppose that I should pity you but my personal experience demonstrated that the Butler tripartite system did massive amounts to help working class children and promote social mobility”
Respctfully, we’ve never had the Butler Tripartite system – the Germans had theirs built for them after WWII by British officials but the same system was never put in place in the UK.
Technical schools were seen simply as dumping grounds so those children who wanted a technical education had their education ruined by being forced to ‘co-habit’ with the scum and the dross who should never have been in mainstream education.
The relatively few technical schools that were a success were in the main very close to major industries and the industries made damn sure what was being turned out in the TSs met their standards so that the young men and women leaving them could be trained up fully for their prospective careers.
I base that assessment on a conversation I had with a couple of long since retired Technical school teachers / instructors who openly told me that the major firms in the area made it very, very clear to local councillors (many of whom worked in the self same firms) what standards the TS had to meet….and they were high which is why it was seen (locally at least) as being equally good as a GS (if not better in terms of employment opportunities afterwards).
Sadly, this was not repeated for the majority of those who ended up in TSs. There was a report done back in the 60s which I think echo’s Mr. M’s comments.
To say “respectfully” when you are trying to imply that I am a liar is incorrect use of the English language.
“I base that assessment on a conversation I had with a couple of long since retired Technical school teachers / instructors” So you admit that you do not actually know what you are talking about. I base my comments on knowledge of the benefits that accrued to my working-class friends who attended Grammar schools and Secondary Techs (quite a few of my friends went to Secondary Moderns but they got more benefit from primary school teaching them the basics).
“major firms in the area made it very, very clear to local councillors (many of whom worked in the self same firms)” – but since in the large majority of cases the LEA was the *County* council …
“Technical schools were seen simply as dumping grounds so those children who wanted a technical education had their education ruined by being forced to ‘co-habit’ with the scum and the dross who should never have been in mainstream education.” That again demonstrates your ignorance: any dumping ground would be in the local Secondary Moderns: you had to achieve a decent standard in the 11+ to get into a Secondary Technical School. Secondary Techs had a different syllabus that prepared boys for skilled non-graduate occupations (albeit I know a handful of graduates who transferred into a Grammar school sixth form from Secondary Tech after ‘O’ Level).
It is quite true that local industry cared about the quality of the Secondary techs which was the source of their draughtsmen, engineering apprentices and many other skilled workers but it could not dictate to a distant County Council or its education professionals and I suggest that “being seen as equally good as a GS” was a figment of your interlocutors’ self-esteem.
Please can we have a ban on suggestions that those not in mainstream education, whether because they have exceptional artistic talents or because they have learning difficulties (that includes people such as David Blunkett) are, or should include “scum and dross”?