Bevan or Thatcher: who’s relevant?
4:22 pm - September 26th 2008
| Tweet | Share on Tumblr |
At the end of Greg Dyke’s programme on Nye Bevan, Michael Heseltine says Bevan is “irrelevant today.” I can only hope that remark was made some time ago, because from where I’m sat, it’s gibber. Bevan is a highly relevant figure.
I mean this in three senses.
1. Bevan was, of course, firmly opposed to the “anarchy of laisser-faire society.” “The amoral climate of the business world exposes the psyche of the individual to unreasoning compulsions” he wrote in In Place of Fear. Everyone who’s calling for tougher regulations of banks, to rein in their swings in mood from greed to panic is, in this sense, a little bit Bevanite.
2. Bevan wanted greater nationalization:
It is a requisite of social stability that one type of property ownership should dominate. In the society of the future it should be public property.
Few will go quite that far. But Henry Paulson has taken big steps in Bevan’s direction, by nationalizing Fannie and Freddie and AIG on punitive terms. Indeed, there’s bipartisan sympathy for Bevanism. Paul Krugman writes:
If the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership.
Bevan would surely approve.
3. Throughout his life, Bevan thought that public spending was necessary to ensure full employment. Neither he nor his contemporaries thought monetary policy was much of a stabilizing device; under the 1945-51 Government, Bank Rate did not change at all (pdf).
Recent conditions have made this view more plausible. The three cuts in Bank Rate we’ve had in the last 12 months have not led to any change in three month Libor, which is still 6 per cent – which suggests monetary policy has been pushing on a piece of string. Meanwhile, low gilt yields mean that higher government borrowing is feasible. If you think macroeconomic stabilization policy is desireable, perhaps there’s something to be said for the “old Labour” use of fiscal rather than monetary policy.
So, in at least three respects – scepticism about competitive markets, support for public ownership, and a preference for fiscal policy over monetary policy – Bevan is, rightly or wrongly, relevant today.
Maybe it is instead Thatcher who’s irrelevant.
| Tweet | Share on Tumblr |  |
Chris Dillow is a regular contributor and former City economist, now an economics writer. He is also the author of The End of Politics: New Labour and the Folly of Managerialism. Also at: Stumbling and Mumbling
· Other posts by Chris Dillow
Story Filed Under: Blog ,Conservative Party ,Economy ,Labour party
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Reader comments
@Chris Dillow: “Maybe it is instead Thatcher who’s irrelevant.”
Or perhaps, as you imply, extraordinary economic circumstances require different govenment responses than you might expect. And that when the going gets rough, political or economic dogma is abandoned for expediency.
In the twentieth century, most UK governments have been controlled by expediency. I’d include the 1905 Liberal government and the 1945 Labour government, which were radical but constrained. IMHO the only UK governments to follow dogma were those of Thatcher, and thereafter government fell into the normal pattern.
And, come on, Bevan isn’t a model for modern social ownership. He was a centralist and not a liberal. Utterly irrelevant, just as Thatcher is.
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
