Worshipping the Volcano God

Dear Reader,

Every nation has its own collective memory that informs its attitude to policy.  Sadly, this is usually some negative event that has somehow distorted a past 'golden age'.

In Germany, the legacy of militarism and overseas adventures that commenced in the Bismarck era influenced the Federal Republic's constitution which heavily restricts its army operations outside of NATO, making it in effect a force solely for national defence and no more.  Executive power is channelled and curtailed to explicitly prevent the rise of a single dominant leader.  Soldiers may disobey orders and petition a ombudsman to address the issue.  It is illegal to use the swastika, except for academic purposes, even as decals for model kits.

Germany's finances are also managed in the memory of the hyperinflation of 1923.  The control of inflation appears the primary objective of the Bundesbank and this has great public support.

The French reacted to the autocratic nature of their kings when redesigning their state to be based on Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité.  They believe in the creation and maintenance of a citizen's republic.  An example of their egalitarianism is that they do not perform demographic surveys according to race and this is unnecessary in a republic dedicated to equality.  To British eyes this appear also to manifest itself in a relaxed attitude to mass protest, especially relating to agricultural imports, but that may be just British chauvinism.

The Japanese constitution was actually written by the USA and one of its basic principles was the renunciation of war as an instrument of policy.  In 1967 it ruled out possession, use and manufacture of nuclear weapons.

The US constitution was a reaction against distant unaccountable government with is checks and balances meaning that no institution of state can have too much power.  It was a reasoned objection to being administered as a royal colony, supine to the diktats from a court and legislative assembly over which it had no influence.  Individual rights were seen as paramount.

The USA has also had to come to terms with the mistreatment of African-Americans through economic disadvantage and slavery and it is this experience that informs the politics of Americans today.  This does manifest itself in a close scrutiny of racial issues and civil rights to the point of how congressional districts are defined.  The trial of OJ Simpson, on the face of it a simple case of murder, polarised opinion in the USA.  It was widely predicted that had Simpson been convicted, that there would have been race riots in Los Angeles.  As it was, he was acquitted, but lost civil cases for wrongful death.

Defeat in Vietnam also curbed the USA's overseas ambitions until the Reagan Era.  The nightly news footage, body bags and veterans scarred for life for little tangible reward discouraged overseas intervention for a decade, during which time the Soviet Union expanded its influence.

Russia, having endured defeat and invasion for a century from Napoleon to Hitler, via Wilhelm II, built its armed forces to such a level that invasion was unthinkable.  In fact this was the name given to the military planning by the British for a war against the Soviets in the 1940s.  Russia adopted an expansionist policy, such that there was range of buffer states between it and the historic path of aggression, from the west.  The consequence of the military build-up was the the Russian civilian economy degenerated to the point that national bankruptcy and technological inferiority forced the end of the Cold War.

All of these smack of some great natural disaster that has to be appeased somehow.  For Japan it is the horror of war as manifested by the fire-and nuclear bombing by B-29s.  The German experience also included economic collapse.  For Russia it is invasion, the USA has racial discrimination and unaccountable government.  France objected against rule by decree.

So what about that group of islands off of North-West Europe?  What is our volcano?

Modern British politics continues to be informed by the events of the Great Depression, where millions of predominantly working-class people were made unemployed in the greatest economic crash until the one we are going through right now.  The state was not so big as it was now and the amount of assistance provided was apparently meagre.  It was accompanied by a 'means test' which was not a form you filled in listing your assets and liabilities, but having to appear in front of a 'Public Assistance Committee' to account in humiliating detail for your poverty.  The intrusive nature of this was demeaning and the insensitivity of the officials in what was by our standards a class-ridden society did not endear this measure to the recipients of its welfare.

This was the time of occupational health insurance, but it did not include dependants.  And if you were out of work, obviously you were not paying health insurance.  There were exceptions to this, but there was effectively no uniform provision of health care.  Thus in a time when medical science and the understanding of the forces behind good health were in their infancy, the less well-off were very insecure.

It is this mass social insecurity that has defined policy in the UK for the last 60 years.  This is especially so when it comes to the delivery of health services.  The memory of sporadic, means-tested welfare meant that when a political party offered a universal health care system free at the point of demand is was applauded.  This was and remains a vote-winner.  But times have moved on.  We are a richer society.  Families are smaller in size.  Also the NHS has never in its existence provided universal health care and therefore cannot claim to be free at the point of demand, since the services it does not provide obviously have to be paid for somehow.

Yet this central fact is ignored in any debate about Britain's health care.  Any notion that alters the supposed function of the NHS is damned as introducing a 'two-tier' system.  This is a crude attempt at perpetuating a 'class divide' and mobilising the forces of social hate that guaranteed historic success at the ballot box.

It is as if any attempt to dismantle the welfare state is an attempt to crush the working classes under the heel of their overlords and drive them back to the squalor of back to back tenements and out door toilets.  Yet that is the extreme reaction that any debate about the NHS takes.  Thus the NHS is permanently 'under threat' and must be 'defended' at all times.  The net result of all the political energy is that health priorities are missed as reforms are blindly denounced as a perpetuation of the 'class war'.

British people are made to fear the volcano and to worship the god that will protect them from it.  This fear is irrational compared to how other countries' negative experiences have driven their development.

It is strange that a difference in race or religion cannot be used to mobilise political thought in mainstream politics, yet a difference in income and consumption does exactly that. Racialism is frowned upon in our society and some manifestations of it are quite rightly illegal, but socialism lives on.

My next post will talk about where Atlee went wrong and how were are paying the price for all his good intentions.

Sincerely,

Paul