“‘How liberal is Labour?’”

Is that a serious question?

And the person asking that is an ex-Labour party member, door-knocking campaigning member, to boot! Namely, me!

They are not liberal in anyway, shape or form.

‘How liberal is Labour?’

Not very.

Bah, Aaron, you beat me to it!

How progressive are the Lib-Dems? – that’d be a better question.

Many Labour voters believe in their right to tell others what to think, feel and do. When those labour voters are politicians and employed by the State , they believe in the right of using the State
apparatus to impose their will on others. The Labour Party has never wanted an intelligent, well trained , well paid ,physically and mentally tough population with an abundance of initiative and drive who can can think and act for themselves, free from State influence. For example when miners became unemployed and used their skills to become successful in running businesses, Labour hated it as they were no longer able to control them.

Liberalism involves encouraging people to aquire the skills, education and right mental fortitude to travel their own path in life. A major reason of the success of the Quakers and non-conformists was that they were taught subjects relevant to business and industry in their schools and not just the Classics, which was the main subjects at public and grammar schools. After all it was the Liberal mindset which encouraged the creation of the Industrial Revolution which challenged the Tories, their hereditary land ownership and the powers which went with it. Nowadys , instead of tenants tugging their forelock to the local squire, those in counil accommodation and government employment have to show respect to the State.

If people become highly skilled, well paid and run successful businesses, then they tend to leave the Labour Party and unions which threaten their existance . The most important impulse of any organism or organisation is survival- that is why the closed shop was so important to the unions and the unkilled unions resisted those unskilled becoming skilled and joining the craft unions.

When the Labour Party is happy for people to become independent in thought word and deed it will become Liberal.

erm, given that this event features Shirley Williams and Michael Crick, I don’t suspect anyone will be putting the case for Labour’s liberal values forward – sounds as if they’re just setting the question up to knock Labour down. Which I imagine is an approach the audience to an event with Shirley Williams and Michael Crick will be happy with.

as for this –
“For example when miners became unemployed and used their skills to become successful in running businesses, Labour hated it as they were no longer able to control them.”

No, when miners became unemployed Labour hated it as entire areas became residualised, employment-free zones. Miners didn’t en-masse become small businessmen, they sat on the dole or retrained for jobs which didn’t exist for many many years. This isn’t controversial; however much the most ardent Lib Dems on this site hate Labour, I reckon they would agree with that?

7. tim f . Of course Laour hated it when miners became unemployed as any sane person would.
What Labour did not like was when miners used their skills to run businesses and become independent of Labour and the unions. Part of the reason why the former coalfields have such problems was that Labour never addressed the needs to train miners in the skills after the mines closed. There has been a continuous decline in the numbers employed in the mines since 1945, partly due to seams becoming uneconomic and increase in mechanisation. In addition, if far more open cast mining had taken place, then we would have a larger coal industry. However, I believe those who worked in open cast operations were not part of the NUM and therefore this organisation was not keen on expanding this part of the coal iindustry. As Hammond of the EETPU said ” The miners were lions led by donkeys”.

A smaller coal industry employing fewer but more highly skilled miners which bought equipment from British companies producing state of the art equipment could have survived . After all JCB makes construction equipment which is sold around the World. Former miners could have been trained in advanced mechanical and electrical skills and perhaps set up companies manufacturing mining equipment which was then sold around the world. After all it was a farm worker who designed the first threshing machine towed by horses in the nineteenth century.

However, would the NUM or the Labour Party like a former miner becoming a skilled mechanic or electrician running his own company?

“Part of the reason why the former coalfields have such problems was that Labour never addressed the needs to train miners in the skills after the mines closed.”

Labour? I think you may have become confused about who was in government in the 1980s and most of the 1990s. Labour didn’t come to power until these people had been out of the mines for over a decade, so blaming them for skills shortages is a bit much.

“However, would the NUM or the Labour Party like a former miner becoming a skilled mechanic or electrician running his own company?”

Don’t know about the NUM. I’m (genuinely) sure the Labour Party would be delighted.

Mark, Labour were in power for sizeable portions of the 1960s and 1970s, during which time mining employment fell from 700,000 to 200,000 (cite). While Mrs T and Ian McGregor finished the industry off, the suggestion that mining communities were also massively hit under Labour with little or no retraining taking place is absolutely true.

10. john b . Thank you . I did not know the decline in numbers of miners in the 60s and 70s. The inability of Labour and the unions which have dominated education since 1945 to educate and train the unskilled and semi skilled people required for future high skilled employment, is a major cause of our problems. The exception is Jim Callaghan who asked what was wrong with our education system in 1976 when it became obvious to him many teenagers were leaving comprehensives with inadequate literary and numeracy skills.

If Labour scoffed at the idea of enterprise during the 1980s, then why did it propose market socialist ideas such as worker co-operatives, as a policy tool to save manufacturing jobs? This combined the socialist focus on economic democracy fused with the liberal focus on liberty and personal responsibility. Such enterprises may receive an initial ‘bunk-up’ of state support, but after that they’re on their own.

As for those laid-off, you try getting capital from the banks in that time and place. The business plan for setting up a firm in a post-industrial depressed area is hardly going to tempt even the most philanthropic of venture capitalists, that demands a decent return.

12 Steve . Labour have not appreciated how long it takes to produce a skilled workforce. 5 years for an apprenticehsip and 5-10 years of high quality experience afterwards. Depends upon the technology developed. Supporting people without the skills is not much use. What is needed is to turn an unskilled and semi skilled workforce into a highly skilled workforce with state of the art electrical and mechanical expertise.

The inability of Labour and the unions which have dominated education since 1945 to educate and train the unskilled and semi skilled people required for future high skilled employment, is a major cause of our problems.

Not really – at least not unless you also believe that its possible to polish turds as well.

Look, its a simple as this.

In his 2006 budget speech, Gordon Brown threw out the prediction that the UK economy would only need between 600,000 and 900,000 unskilled workers by 2020. That’s about 2-3% of the labour market.

If you translate that into a basic measure of intelligence, IQ, which, imperfect though it is will do nicely to illustrate a point, then if you take an IQ of 70 as the minimum level at an individual is capable of living independently (and, therefore becoming employable) and you then reserve all the predict unskilled job for those individuals with the lowest IQ score, then you’ll run out of unskilled jobs to distribute by the time to reach those individuals with an IQ of 75-76, a level of at which the majority of people will certainly be functionally illiterate if not actually illiterate.

There are limits to what you can achieve by relying on training and education, which is not the universal panacea that the government would like everyone to believe it is, and that leaves future governments with a simple choice – either you accept a significantly higher level of structural unemployment and pay the costs of supporting structural unemployment at a level 2-2.5 million adults or you intervene in the labour market to create the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs you need to absorb the excess labour.

Unity, surely it’s also possible to cap child benefit at child #3, & make contraception/abortion more widely available, in the hope that this will discourage those of low intelligence from creating more like themselves. (Though I take the point that these are the people least likely to behave rationally).

You were actually the one who brought this to my notice. We will have serious problems if there are millions of basically obsolete people. I believe that people of low intelligence, who rely on the state, are the people authoritarian governments are built upon. You can bet that Karen Matthews et al wouldn’t give a toss about the Convention on Modern Liberty.

We are seriously fucking staring into the abyss. It is not possible to bring those jobs back without ruining the economy (funnily enough, & not coincidentally, this is BNP policy). In 20-30 years we could be waking up to a nightmare.

PS-
Do not for one minute think I am trying to say anything about all people on benefits. I live on a council estate. The first thing you learn is that the decent types & the lowlife live in the same houses, often with the same family arrangements, but have a different lifestyle. It is disconcerting.

PS- Are you going to update your blog soon? 😀

I thought the diversion of the thread into the Coal Dispute was bad enough but the notion that you need something as psychologically suspect as a ‘high IQ’ to do skilled work is bollocks.