Europe – Like it or Lumpen it……

These people are not a threat to democracy. As the events of this season of sophistry and stupidity evidence they are the threat OF democracy. Reason has given way to rhetoric and discourse has been drowned by the voice of the mob. We have witnessed what Madison. (1987) described as:

“.....moments in public affairs when people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage or misled by artful misrepresentations of interested men” call for measures they will later regret.  In these moments, the “cool and deliberate sense of the community” is at risk (1) 

The demarcation and division in society is plain to see. The intelligent and the young voted to remain in the EU. A slender majority were persuaded that the promoters of Brexit had their best interests at heart. With universal suffrage in a representative democracy the gullible get a vote. As do the lumpenproletariat, the;

“chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements."

These are what Marx described as a "class fraction" that constituted the political power base for Louis Bonaparte of France in 1848. Marx argued that Bonaparte was able to place himself above the two main classes, the proletariat and bourgeoisie, by resorting to the lumpenproletariat as an apparently independent base of power, while in fact advancing the material interests of the "finance aristocracy".Marx’s rhetoric equated the lumpenproletariat, the rentier class, and the apex of class society as equivalent members of the class of those with no role in useful production. The unconfined joy of racist scum on Friday morning was shared by City money traders. The significant difference is that the latter were substantially better off on Friday afternoon. They may be inconvenienced if they have to move from London to Frankfurt in a year or so but they can retain the second home in the Cotswolds and the ski lodge in Switzerland. 

As for the people who don’t like immigrants coming to Port Talbot they will have to stay where they are. The only visible benefit they will enjoy is a sea view uninterrupted by a steelworks. They will of course have the vocal support of their Labour MP who today (26 June 2016) called for the resignation of the socialist leader of his party.Those in the Rhondda and Blaenau Gwent will find it increasingly difficult to get to the beach as the transport infrastructure crumbles through the absence of EU subsistence and withdrawal of international investment. As to whether their MP’s and AM’s will be able to protect them from the self-interest of the prosperous South East of England- and Wales- remains to be seen. 

The plain fact is that in parts of Wales many who voted for Brexit through blind prejudice against immigrants will suffer if the latter are the only ones ‘pulling their weight’ there. The social, economic and educational elites who voted to Remain could privately harbour their own prejudices. That is in favouring the enterprising immigrant over people with no teeth and tattoos who vote for demagogues. If socialism is now merely an affectation of the Bohemian Bourgeoisie let it be tested if Cardiff is hit by a cappuccino and croissant crisis post-Brexit. Far better that history repeat itself as farce not tragedy. For the Labour Party in Wales to distance itself further from socialism to appeal to the lowest of denominators and make any concession to xenophobia or class prejudice would be a betrayal of its basic principles.

(1) (Madison. 1987. The Federalist Papers. Harmondsworth: Penguin.)

RULING FROM A RENTED HOUSE

The tenth anniversary of the opening of The Senedd building of the National Assembly for Wales will be marked on St David’s Day, 1 March 2016. The building may be presented as the product of architectural patronage and representative of the collective aspiration of the people at that time. Any such claim is contested in a draft paper available on the Academia.com website. 

https://www.academia.edu/21105408/Ruling_From_a_Rented_House

That is a case study  of the process of housing the newly devolved regional government of Wales from 1997 to 2006. It examines the proposition that the location of the National Assembly and subsequent commissioning of a new debating chamber designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership was the consequential outcome of a series of events rather than the intentional creation of a building which might symbolise a new form of regional democracy. 

The events under examination may be summarised as follows;

·        At the outset there was an attempt to minimise the anticipated costs of housing the Assembly and a dispute arose on the value of the assumed location, Cardiff City Hall.

·        A wider bidding process then ensued between rival locations within and outside the capital which may be seen to have been divisive.

·        The final decision was made between a location at The Pierhead, Cardiff or Bute Square, Cardiff, the final choice favouring the former. In either case the seat of regional government would be part of a commercial property development.

·        A competition was then mounted to select an architect for the debating chamber, The Senedd, which would be built at the The Pierhead.

·        During its procurement and construction concern over mounting costs resulted in the dismissal and alienation of the architect.

·        In the course of events there were several changes of leadership and little continuity or personal commitment to the new building.

·        In the ensuing political and public debate concerning the building some politicians adopted the language of architectural patronage to defend and rationalise decisions.

A conspicuous failure was in the implementation of the project and the failure of provincial civil servants and their advisers to properly understand and appreciate the aspirational elements that were being articulated by the architects. Independent adjudication concluded that advisers to the Welsh Office were substantially at fault in the dispute that arose with the Rogers Partnership.


The paper offers some observations on the true cost of housing the Assembly. 

A report published in March 2008 by the Wales Audit Office stated that the cost of the Senedd increased from £12M in 1997 to £69.6M in 2006. That was an increase of 580% compared with the original budget forecast in April 1997 (phase 1) and was four years and 10 months late. 

The conclusions of the Audit Office may be considered generous in some respects.

It will be noted that in the course of events the figure originally stated in the 1997 White Paper as the indicative cost of ‘setting up’ the Assembly was £12m-£17m

The lower figure of £12m formed the basis for bids to house the Assembly.                                                        

The following figures may more accurately reflect the actual cost

Capitalised rental of Crickhowell House                    

£1.5m pa                                                                               £25m

(Note ‘market value’ of capitalised rent circa £40m to investor – see below)

Concession of 200 car parking spaces                                       £0.688m

Initial costs of alteration to accommodate Assembly              £14.8m (to2000)

Expenditure on Pierhead Building                                 £3m??

Construction of TheSenedd                                                            £69.6m

                                                                                Total Circa           £112m+                                 £112m+

This can then be expressed as;

·         936% over the original budget of £12m or

·         658% over the upper limit set for Cardiff City Hall at £17m

The foregoing may then be seen to more accurately reflect the costs of ‘setting up’ the regional government.

Since that‘setting up’ the Welsh Government has also established new sub-regional offices in Merthyr Tydfil, Llandudno Junction, Carmarthen and Abersystwyth. The total cost was in the region of £91.5m which included Llandudno Junction (6,500 m2) at £22m and Aberystwyth at £21m[i].

Coupled with the capital cost of the ‘decentralisation’ of the Welsh Government administration were financial incentives for staff required to move if their posts were relocated. Relocation packages for staff moving to the Merthyr Tydfil office cost £2.9m alone - £2.1m of which was for excess travel fares. It was reported that "there was so much resistance from staff due to move from their Cardiff offices to Merthyr Tydfil", excess fares were subsidised for five years instead of the standard three[ii].

The overall value for money from the programme was "uncertain", according to a report by the Auditor General for Wales on the Assembly relocation strategy of 25 March 2014[iii]

A conclusion of that report was that:

“The Location Strategy had clear objectives, but the Welsh Government did not establish effective governance arrangements until 2008 and underestimated the cost of the Programme”[iv]

Finally some overall comment is made on ownership. In March 2014 it was announced that Ty Hywel (formerly Crickhowell House)had been acquired by a family of private investors based in Kuwait for £40.5m from the owners, Aprirose[i]

We have then a situation where the Senedd building, which it was claimed would, in its symbolic form, represent the open, modern democracy of Wales, is inextricably joined to a rented building. This then presents an interesting variation on David Harvey’s observations on collective symbolic capital and monopoly rents(Harvey 2012 pps 103-109).

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[i]http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/national-assembly-wales-office-acquired-6770330

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[i]http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/empty-rooms-new-welsh-government-1798510

[ii]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-26721637

[iii]http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/llandudno-junction-915m-welsh-government-6875070

[iv]https://www.audit.wales/system/files/publications/WAO_Welsh_Government_Location_Strategy_Report_English_2014.pdf

Harvey, D. 2012. Rebel Cities. London: Verso.

 

1973 - The year it all went to shit

Two years ago there was little coverage of the 40^th anniversary of the year when ‘The Sixties’ were finally dead and buried, 1973. Perhaps the media are waiting for the Golden Jubilee, or more appropriately, the Rust and Shit Jubilee that the year deserves. It may by then be recognised how significant 1973 was and how it marked a watershed. Many of the events of that year may have largely passed from immediate memory but have echoed since. For example, Britain was recovering from the after-effects of a boom, which had been fuelled by cheap credit and consumer confidence, followed by a banking crisis. As the UK Government announced its economic recovery policy the Opec nations, aggravated by the latest Arab-Israeli conflict, quadrupled the price of oil. Sound familiar?

Some things have of course changed dramatically but can be seen to flow from the events of that year. The response of the Miners Union to the counter-inflationary wage capping proposed by the government was a 40 per cent pay claim which triggered a State of Emergency. When asked by the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, what he wished to achieve in that dispute the Scottish miners' leader, Mick McGahey, is supposed to have replied that his aim was to effect a change of government. In the event a hasty general election was called and fought on the issue of "Who governs Britain?"  The people’s choice then was a minority Labour government. 12 years later the issue was to be decided more conclusively in favour of a Conservative government. Thirty years after that, in the wake of this week’s general election, a pair of maps have been circulating on the internet illustrating the coincidence of the remaining Labour vote and the former coalfields of the UK 

 (https://twitter.com/VaughanRoderick/status/596967966647971840?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=VaughanRoderick&utm_content=596967966647971840)

It can be argued that 1973 signalled the rise of middle-class dissatisfaction and that the subsequent wage and price inflation of the following five years contributed to this. That impacted on middle-class living standards, effectively eroding the differential between white-collar and blue-collar salaries during the decade and the determination of the trade unions to preserve or close wage differentials was then perceived to be a form of ‘proto-communism’. Were those who voted for Thatcher in 1979 thus drawn into a class war?

 “If the 18 years of Conservative government that followed had an animating force, then it was the resolve of the affronted British bourgeoisie to get a little of its own back, and the explanation lies here in the world of Slade singing "Merry Christmas Everybody", Edward Heath's barking voice resounding over the radio, the television set suddenly failing, and the curious sensation invoked in the breast of every civilised person by the sight of a street-full of houses at dusk where, mysteriously, no light shines.” (DJ TAYLOR Independent Sunday 29 December 2013)

The antics of the Far Left certainly assisted the paranoiac rantings of the right wing press through the 1980’s. As they could only portray the hapless Miliband as ‘slightly weird’ rather than ‘Loony Lefty’ the recent election campaign saw new bogey-men emerge to engage the attention of an Even Further Right. However, among these is the old stalwart Europe. On January 1st 1973 Britain officially joined what was then called the Common Market - the EEC. What was perhaps most depressing about last week’s election results was the apparent vote in favour of kicking Europeans out of Britain rather than Britain getting out of the EEC. The cold comfort is that the latter issue might serve to rip the guts out of the Conservative party over the next few years. The harsher truth is that within the former coalfields UKIP came in second to Labour in several constituencies.

1973 presaged an uglier and less optimistic world and the release of The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd that year was remarkable in that it anticipated rather than reflected the zeitgeist of the following decade. Roger Waters’ sixth-form doggerel does not of course match the gravitas of ‘September 1 1939’ by WH Auden (who died in 1973) whose words still reverberate from a year more widely accepted as changing the world forever.

They certainly came to my mind watching last week’s election results;

" Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again."

In short, to paraphrase Auden, we face the prospect of another lower and more dishonest decade. As suggested above, the decade of 'The Sixties' started around 1963 and was finished off in 1973. There was demarcation, depressingly so in the USA with the assassination of JFK in the USA, but in Britain The Beatles first number one, 70,000 people marching from Aldermaston  and the slide of the Conservative party during the Profumo affair gave cause for optimism. It appeared to signal a new and better era and Harold Wilson led the Labour party to victory the following year. For those of us who were fortunate to spend our childhood or teens in that decade the future appeared bright. Wilson's first Labour government introduced an era of liberalisation and social change including the relaxation of laws on censorship,homosexuality, abortion, immigration and divorce. Capital punishment was abolished. The emphasis was on social change and increasing social opportunity, particularly through improvement and expansion of the education system and developing rapid scientific progress - the 'White Heat of Technology'. It seemed possible that one day everyone would have a Ford Cortina and eat cheese fondue.

However, what Wilson's governments failed to do in that and later tenures was significantly improve the long term economic performance of Britain. Whilst not personally committed to nationalisation Wilson presided over an era which saw public ownership of badly managed major industries. These and other sections of the economy were badly hit in the global economic crisis precipitated in 1973. Those who had acquired homes in the prosperity of the 1960's were left exposed by inflationary interest charge rises following the Secondary Banking Crisis of that year. The sixties were over and the rot was in. Those who had prospered were keen to conserve what they had gained. Wilson eventually resigned in 1976 with a peerage, littering honours on his cronies in the infamous Lavender List. 

The altogether more malignant strain of Tory that emerged under Thatcher in 1979 threatened all of the aforementioned social advances of the 1960's. The consolidation of the power of their successors in last week's election will almost certainly lead to further social division.  If the Labour party is to defend what was achieved until 1973 it has to rebuild from the bedrock of support in its traditional heartlands. These, as suggested above, are the former coalfields and industrial centres of Britain. The traditional values and objectives of the Labour Party remain relevant in these areas. They are not conservative because they have fuck all to conserve. The harsh statistics presented by the poll are not the whole picture. Other measure affirm a more optimistic picture, not least the fundamental sense of decency, fair play and social commitment evidenced by levels of voluntary work and charitable giving in Wales which, per capita, shame the Conservative constituencies of middle England. 

In Wales there is therefore a very specific challenge given the measure of regional devolution and a Labour party in control of the Assembly. The fightback needs to start here with a labour party that can demonstrate to the rest of the UK that social, if not socialist, policies are in everyone's best interests. We have to deliver the best healthcare, education and an enviable environment. Those who oppose such aspirations must be viewed as enemies of this infant state.  Last week's vote suggests that the Conservative party may not be the principal object of concern. The whingeing scum who voted for UKIP in the valleys need to be told that immigration is not the problem - they are. The Labour party needs to be committed to the pursuit of excellence in Wales, to social justice and the ideals that led to the 1964 election victory. We have to be tough on UKIP - tough on the causes of UKIP.