Re: [A-List] EWP: Hugo Young to join?

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Mark writes:

> Subject: [A-List] EWP: Hugo Young to join?

This may be a bridge too far in our bridge-building exercises. I'm sure he'd
love to join, of course.

-----

Yes, the thought of SDP founder member and perpetually staid and sensible
Hugo Young joining anything aspiring to the complete overhaul of our system
of political economy is more than a little far fetched. However, Young does
identify certain features of contemporary British politics which have been
highlighted here, namely the gap that exists waiting to be filled by new
parties. While Young is more likely to be enthused by the prospect of a
David Owen type vehicle, perhaps led by Michael Portillo (in Europe, out of
the eurozone), he also points out the gaping hole on the left when he raises
the issue of trade union militancy. The EWP ought to fill that gaping hole,
if only because most of the British left (such as it is) remains mired in
pre-1976 fantasy and is still trying to come to terms with Thatcherism, the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the oil crisis, not to mention ecological
degradation. Thus Young's article is useful as an illustration of just how
deep the crisis of legitimation permeates the British state, in that the
Labour Party's transformation into the state party, achieving a degree and
depth of hegemony undreamt of by Thatcher (who still had clear enemies in a
way that Blair does not), threatens to undermine that hegemony and with it
the legitimacy of the system that serves New Labour's sponsors so well. Roy
Hattersley has been making similar noises of late, and among the good
reasons that unreconstructed right wing social democrats like Hattersley and
Third Wayers like Young worry is that the crisis of legitimacy threatens to
throw up the far right (like the BNP) or the far left (like the EWP,
hopefully). Rather a "consensus" driven system in which two parties give the
appearance of competition whilst agreeing on the essential elements of the
political and economic settlement. Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats have
until the next general election to usurp the place of the official
opposition and thereafter become Tweedledee to New Labour's Tweedledum,
otherwise we can expect Owen and like minds to move into action, assuming
that they have not already done so in preparation for the euro referendum.

BTW, among the internees on the Isle of Man during WW2 was Tiny Rowland,
Edward Heath's "unacceptable face of capitalism" but praised by Nelson
Mandela for pioneering Western investment in Africa (yes, it's true!). Prior
to his Lonrho career he was known as Rowland Fuhrop.

The World Socialist Web Site has an interesting obituary on him.
See http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/july1998/rowl-j29.shtml

Michael