fabian tract 404 a social democratic Britain contents 1 introduction 2 the anti-growth argument ~ 3 the conditions of faster growth 4 taxation and social control 5 false trails 6 conclusion this pamphlet is based upon a lecture given before a Fabian audience in London in November 1970. ~~~'J-,~I 7/ this pamphlet, like all publications of the Fabian Society, represents not the collective view of the Society but only the view of the individual who prepared it. The responsibility of the Society is limited to approving the publications which it issues as worthy of consideration within the Labour movement. Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1. January, 1971 SBN 7163 0404 X 1. introduction :\.fter an unexpected election defeat, a )arty tends for a time to lose its sense >f direction ; and many people are now ~sking what Labour really stands for the 1970s. The answer appears to me ~laringly obvious. I am speaking not in erms of detail, but of broad objectives. -\nd the objectives seem to me basically hose which most Fabians have believed n for the past 10 years or more. _abour's objectives n my articles in The Times in Septem> er, I defined these objectives as ollows. 'irst, an exceptionaUy high priority, {hen considering the claims on our esources, for the relief of poverty, istress and social squalor-Labour'sraditional " social welfare " goal. ondly, a more equal distribution of ealth, not because redistribution today rill make all the workers rich, but to elp create a more just and humane ,ociety. 'hirdly, a wider ideal of socia·l equality, lVolving not only educational reform ut generally an improvement in our Jcial capital such that the less well off ave access to housing, health and edultion of a standard comparable, at :ast in the basic decencies, to that rhich the better off can buy for them! lves out of their private means. ourthly, strict social control over the wironment-to enable us to cope with le exploding prO'blems of urban life, , protect the countryside from the posed by more industry, more :!Ople and more cars, and to diminish le growing divergence between private 1d s0cial cost in such fields as noise, tmes, river pollution and the rest. ['his is also an aspect of social equality, since the rich can often buy privacyand protection from these intrusions ; only social action can give the less weH off the same protection). This is not necessarily an exhaustive list ; and I discuss later whether there are new objectives of great significance which should ·be added to it. But when I search my mind, these four aims seem to me to constitute the essence of social democracy in the 1970s. Yet can this really be so? Has so little changed in the last decade that our objectives, however modified, remain basically the same? Should we not rather argue trendily for some fashionable version of the "new politics?" My answer is firm~y "No." These four objectives relate to what are still our most urgent social problems ; and no one could possibly say that they are within sight of attainment. Even after 6 years of Labour Government, we still have a stu'~born residue of degrading poverty. We have large inequa•lities of wealth. We have glaring gaps in our provision of housing, health and education. We have a growing environmental problem ; in particular, the complex of urban prdblems---'housing, poverty, renewal, traffic-is not within sight of solution. And there are certain fields, such as nursery schools, where we have scarcely started on what needs to be done. Without doubt, Labour achieved a great deal in many directions -in education, social security, tax reform, regionai policy, conservation and environmental planning. But due partly to slow growth and partly to hostile public attitudes, we achieved less ·than we had hoped and certainly not enough to render our objectives obsolete. There is no analogy with the 1950s, when society had been changed ou't of recog nition since the 1930s by full employment and the welfare state, and a fundamental rethinking was required. That is not the position today-and the evidence is the -lack of any furious ideological ferment within the Party. Of course we must continuously adapt our detai·led policies, and of course new problems will call for new policies. But the basic objectives remain wholly relevant and contemporary. What we need is not some great shift of direction, but a clear reaffirmation of these agreed ideals. These idea-ls all fundamentally relate to how we distribute our wealth and allocate our resources; that is what socialism is about, and what divides the Left from the Right. We shall not get the allocation we want without a certain view of taxation and public expenditure, and of social control and collective responsibility. And we shall not get that without a healthy rate of economic growth. the relevance of growth I start with the question of growth, and a confession of personal error. Lookingback, I was too complacent about growth in The Future of Socialism (though I had learned my error by the time I wrote The Conservative Enemy). I accepted the then official projections which forecast a nearly stationary popu growth bas been lamentable. The fact~ are dreary and familiar. Over the yean we have grown at only half the rate oJ most other advanced industrial countries. We have been successively overtaken in average Jiving standards b:ySweden, Australia, Canada, Germanv. France, Switzerland, New Zealand, -Denmark, Norway, Bohland and Belgium. By 1980, on present trends. we shall have been overtaken by Japan(spectacularly) and Finland, and possibly 'by Austria and Italy. And our performance is not improving. Our annual growth-rate over the last 5 years of 2.2 per cent was loweD -than in the previous decade (an almost sufficient explanation of Labour's de· feat last June). We shall be lucky if we achieve 2 per cent in 1970. This wretched showing, for which all of us who were in Government must share responsibility, exacts a calamitou cost in terms of welfare (both public and private). Certainly we cannot even approach our basic objectives w'ith the present rate of growth. For these objectives, as I have said, require a redistribution of wealth and resources : and we shall not get this unless our total resources are growing rapidly. I do not of course mean that rapidgrowth will automatically produce a transfer of resources of the kind we want ; whether it does or not will did not foresee the huge demands' on our resources for housing, educa-tion and health which a rising population ·brings in its train. And I did not anticipate that successive governments would be so eccentric as to use periodic bouts of deflation-that is, deliberate reductions in growth-as almost their only means of regulating the economy. In the event, our record of economic lation ; hence, like others at the ti~ I • .,_depend C,h the social and political vah1es of the 1couhtty concerned. But. I do assert dogmatically that in a democracy low or zero growth wholly excludes the possibility. For any substantial tra then involves not merely a relative bul an absolute decline in the real mcomte~• of the better off half of the population (which incidentally includes large numbers of working class voters); and this they will frustrate. They will protect their real incomes initially by enforcing ompensating claims for higher money 1comes and so creating a violent wage ~flation, and ultimately by using the allot box to elect a different and more :nient government. In a utopia (or a ictatorship) perhaps we mig'ht transfer per cent of a near-static GNP towards million pensioners and better housing nd clearing up pollution. In the rough emocratic world in which we live, we :mnot. 'he point is illustrated by our own ;:cent experience. The transfer of re:: mrces which we want inevitably ~quires high taxation and public exenditure. But the popular mood is one f intense resentment of high taxation nd of certain forms of public spending Jch as family allowances and suppletentary benefits. This mood unuestiona'bly inhibited the Labour fovernment from doing many of the 1ings it wished. fow the mood is no doubt partly due > myth and ignorance-! cannot conince any of my constituents that they re not paying a marginal (if not an verage!) rate of income tax of 8s 3d t the pound. But it is also due to a arsh rea1ity -the reality of slow cowth. People will never like paying txes; we all want, and reasonably so, tore money to spend on ourselves and ur famir!ies. But we like it even less hen, as has been the case over the st 5 years, our personal spending (as teasured by consumption per head) :ts risen by little more than 1 per cent year. This was a stingy enough in· ease anyway ; and moreover it wholly .iled to match the expectations created the 1950s when, for a variety of utly fortuitous reasons, -there was a .pid and sustained increase in contmption per head. People had come to cpect that this would continue. When did not, and growth slowed down, a ood of frustration set in which gave rise not only to the present exceptional resentment of high taxation, but also to the present exceptional pressure for higher wages. And, of course, it cost us the last election. British experience is confirmed byexperience abroad. The OECD, after studying the matter, recently concluded that " the growth rate of government spending . . . tends to be highest in countries where output growth is highest." It is to the lasting credit of the Labour Government that for a considerable time it resisted this tendency, and increased the share of public expenditure in GNP even though growth was slow. But more recently the trend re-asserted itself, and we reined back hard on public spending as the election grew nearer. We may now take it as a certainty that rapid growth is an essential condition of any significant reallocation of resources. (It is also of course desirable for many other reasons). Growth a-lone can give us the elbow-room we need, and remove the present dispiriting constriction on almost any form of public spending. 2 . the anti-growth argumen As o n a we claim for growth a higher pri ri{y than it ha had in the past, we run 'into some well-entrenched pposi- ti•on and m reover find .that some of our ·upp rtcr are 'ill-cqu'ipped for 't'he argu- ment. On the nc hand there i now a p itive anti-growth lobby am ng t the cnvironrnentali t . On the other hand many f th c who currently preach growth make it sound altogether too ca y; they will the end but ignore the means. ~ tart with the opposition. More and more pc pic are arguing that growth has to high a priority already, and are warning u r'it cos'ts in terms of poll u- ti nand threats to the cnvir nment. The Duke f Edinburgh remarks scathingly that " NP i rapidly a uming the religi u significance of a graven image ; " anti-growth cconomi t on b th Right and Left like Profe sors M ishan and GaDbraith arc among t the m t revered pundit f the day ; and d mwatch j urnalist have had the run I r their live in the la t 12 mon'ths. We must treat any argument ba ed on the environment with in tinctive sym- pathy and deadly eriou ne . ur con- cern i . indeed, embodied in our fourth bjc tivc. And there are very real co ts t c n mic growth. Higher production mean m re pollution f every kind- m rc mokc. noi e, pe ticides, efiluent, arbagc. Jligher living tandards, and particularly the demand f r m re space and m re mobility, mu t mean more cncr a hment on the c untryside. rban learan e will threaten hi t ric building ; urban r ad will ruin exist- ing h u e ; redevel pment will de troytraditional pattern (living. nd these arc n t Is imply in term f ari t - ratic amenity. W rking las people are bee ming m rc and m rc con- cerned. fr m the inhabitant f Acklam Road to the million of angler ; and ne n le the gr wing intere t of I cal Labour Parties in questions of th environment. lt follows that we must not fulfil all our objectives ; it is an rgumen't for discriminating growth and >r applying its fruits intelligently. To ty that we must attend meticulously to 1e environmental case does not mean 1at we must go to the other extreme .nd wholly neglect the economic case. [ere we must beware of some of our ·iends. For parts of 'the conservationist )bby would do precisely this. heir approach 'is ·hostile to growth in ·inciple and indifferent to the needs : ordinary people. l't has a manifest ass bias, and reflects a set of middle 1d upper class value judgments. Its 1ampions are often kindily and dedi- tted people. But they are affluent and ndamentally, though of course not msCiously, they want to kick the dder down behind them. They are ghly selective ·in their concern, being .illi'tant mainly about threats to rural :ace and wildlife and well loved 'beauty10ts ; they are little concerned with e far more desperate problem of the 'ban environment in which 80 per cent · our fellow citizens live. ~'ing ignorant of the need for growth td the plight of ordinary people, they nnot see that there is even a conflict interest over a reservoir on Dart- oor, potash mining in Yorkshire, or e acquisition of rural land for over-mhousing. The fact that Plymouth is t inte:rmediate area with above average temployment, that potash m'ining will ::rease national prosperity, that over- ill housing may relieve the misery of ousands of slum families-these facts 5 are not even put into the balance sheet. The economic argument is totallyignored ; preservation of the status quo is the sole desideratum. Sometimes of course they are splendidly right, and we should over-ride the economic argu- ment (as we did in the case of Swin- combe and as the us Senate did over SST). But what is not tolerable is to pretend that 'it does not exist. At the extreme the approach becomes comical, as when Mishan proposes towns where only horses and horse- drawn vehicles would be admitted, and a ban on all international air travel. No doubt such hairshirt solutions would be good for our health ; they obviously appea.1 to lean and fit professors. But it is easy to see what the result would be. To quote Mishan, "with more leisurely travel restored, one could confidently expect an enormous reduction in the demand for foreign travel." Yes, indeed. The rich would proceed in leisurely fashion across Europe to the Mediterranean .beauty spots where they would park their Rolls Royces and take to a boat or horse drawn vehicle. As for my constituents, who have only a fort- nighl's hoHday, let them eat cake and go back to Blackpool. Now this attitude is no doubt natural, and there is probably something of it lurking in many Fabians. Affluence is dbviously more agreeable when it is a minority condition. Driving round the country wa:s much pleasanter when the roads were nearly empty. For the minority, Venice and Majorca have been ru'ined since the hoi polloi invaded in their charter ft'ights and the local peasantry bought noisy Vespas. And a rural retreat was safer and more serene before demands for lower housingdensities began to decant the urban masses 'into the countryside. But of course the approach is un- etermination to impose on both 1dustry ·and consumer the full costs of e pollution which they create. It will, ' 1 other words, involve (as do all our bjectives) an allocation of resources rhich is not determined by market )rces 'but reflects our social priorities. lut none of this is an argument against 1e growth which we desperately need > fulfil all our objectives ; it is an rgumen't for discriminating growth and >r applying its fruits intelligently. To ty that we must attend meticulously to 1e environmental case does not mean 1at we must go to the other extreme .nd wholly neglect the economic case. [ere we must beware of some of our ·iends. For parts of 'the conservationist )bby would do precisely this. heir approach 'is ·hostile to growth in ·inciple and indifferent to the needs : ordinary people. l't has a manifest ass bias, and reflects a set of middle 1d upper class value judgments. Its 1ampions are often kindily and dedi- tted people. But they are affluent and ndamentally, though of course not msCiously, they want to kick the dder down behind them. They are ghly selective ·in their concern, being .illi'tant mainly about threats to rural :ace and wildlife and well loved 'beauty10ts ; they are little concerned with e far more desperate problem of the 'ban environment in which 80 per cent · our fellow citizens live. ~'ing ignorant of the need for growth td the plight of ordinary people, they nnot see that there is even a conflict interest over a reservoir on Dart- oor, potash mining in Yorkshire, or e acquisition of rural land for over-mhousing. The fact that Plymouth is t inte:rmediate area with above average temployment, that potash m'ining will ::rease national prosperity, that over- ill housing may relieve the misery of ousands of slum families-these facts 5 are not even put into the balance sheet. The economic argument is totallyignored ; preservation of the status quo is the sole desideratum. Sometimes of course they are splendidly right, and we should over-ride the economic argu- ment (as we did in the case of Swin- combe and as the us Senate did over SST). But what is not tolerable is to pretend that 'it does not exist. At the extreme the approach becomes comical, as when Mishan proposes towns where only horses and horse- drawn vehicles would be admitted, and a ban on all international air travel. No doubt such hairshirt solutions would be good for our health ; they obviously appea.1 to lean and fit professors. But it is easy to see what the result would be. To quote Mishan, "with more leisurely travel restored, one could confidently expect an enormous reduction in the demand for foreign travel." Yes, indeed. The rich would proceed in leisurely fashion across Europe to the Mediterranean .beauty spots where they would park their Rolls Royces and take to a boat or horse drawn vehicle. As for my constituents, who have only a fort- nighl's hoHday, let them eat cake and go back to Blackpool. Now this attitude is no doubt natural, and there is probably something of it lurking in many Fabians. Affluence is dbviously more agreeable when it is a minority condition. Driving round the country wa:s much pleasanter when the roads were nearly empty. For the minority, Venice and Majorca have been ru'ined since the hoi polloi invaded in their charter ft'ights and the local peasantry bought noisy Vespas. And a rural retreat was safer and more serene before demands for lower housingdensities began to decant the urban masses 'into the countryside. But of course the approach is un- acceptable. My working class constituents have their own version of the environment, which is equally valid and which calls for economic growth. They want lower housing densities and better schools and hospitals. They want washing machines and refrigerators to relieve domestic drudgery. They want cars, and t'he freedom they give on weekends and holidays. And they want package tour holidays to Majorca, even if this means more noise of night flights and eating fish and cl:rips on previously secluded bea~hes-why should they too not enjoy the sun? And they want these things not (as Galbraith implies) because their minds have been brain-washed and their tastes contrived by advertising, but because the things are desirable in themselves. It is reasonable to argue that these consumer pleasures should take second place to more urgent social claims ; it 'is neither reasonable nor attractive to treat them with lofty C0ndescension and disdain. As I wrote many years ago, those enjoying an above average standard of living should be chary of admonishing those less fortunate on the perils of material riches. Sittce we have many less fortunate citizens, we cannot accept a view of the environment which 'is essentia1Iy elitist, protectionist and anti-growth. We must make our own value judgment based on socialist objectives ; and that judgmentmust, for the reasons I gave earlier, be that growth is vital, and that its benefits will far outweigh its costs. In fact the anti-growth approach is not only unacceptable in terms of values ; it is absurd in terms of the environment itself-however narrowly defined. For the greater part of the environmental prUr imperiai background through the >Llblic school system to a faulty strucure of industry. The fact that our own >olicies for higher productivity, with .11 their !brave talk a'bout technology, estructuring and economies of scale, tad only a limited success should teach 1s some humility. Nobody can claim to ·~now the answer, and there is manifestly to short term panacea. rhe second cause lies in the all too uccessful efforts of post-war British :Jovernments to hold down growth even •elow our productive potential. This hey have done because changes in tome demand-crudely, stop-go and leflation-have 'been used as the main 1strument for controHing (or attempting o control) the balance of payments and he level of inflation. )ne can see why this happened. Altertative instruments, such as devaluation •r incomes policy, seemed fraught with lifficulties : the pound's role as a world urrency, the existence of the sterling >alances, the pressure of the United :tates and other monetary authorities, raditions of free col'lective bargaining, nd so on. \.nd when we finaHy did devalue in 967, and removed the constraint on growth of an overvalued pound, we found that we had not rid ourselves of the other constraint-inflation. So having first curtailed growth in the interests of the balance of payments, we now curtail it 'in the interests of greater price stability. On existing policies we shall go on sacrificing growth to one or other of these two objectives. A future Labour Government must therefore consciously alter the priorities. This requires a political decis'ion. Economists and Treasury officials can Jist the various objectives of economic policy : growth, full employment, stable prices and a healthy foreign balance. But when these conflict, as they almost always do, it is for politicians to deCide the priorities. Governments since the war have dithered and wavered between the objectives, hoping that something would turn up miraculously to reconci'le them ; in the last resort the balance of payments usually had priority, so that when people spoke of the economy being weak or strong they were assumed to be referring to the foreign balance. But with the mounting price which low growth exacts from the British people, I am clear that we must in the future alter the priorities in favour of economic growth. This is easy to say, especially in opposition. We said it loudly in 1963-64 ; and many are saying it again today as though the last six years had never existed. But there is neither point nor honesty in preaching growth unless we accept, as we d'id not in •those six years, the necessary corollaries. If we are not to use changes in home demand to regulate the balance of payments and price inflation, we must have other instruments for the purpose and be prepared to use them. This means, first, a greater flexibility of exchange rates. T am not speaking of a floating rate, but of a willingness to make timely adjustments to the parity whenever the alternative woulld be serious deflation. This after all was Keynes' intention at Bretton Woods. It was for years frustrated by financial orthodoxy, false morality and a Cromer-style anthropomorphic worship of the pound ·sterling. The atmosphere is now much more propitious. It is clear to everyone that the recent changes in the British, French and German parities have improved the world monetary situation out of all recognition. Today the IMF, backed by a growing weight of outside opinion, talks openly of exchange-rate adjustment as an indispensable part of economic policy. I onlly hope that the Labour Party, having paid so heavy a price for clinging to the opposite v'iew from 1964 to 1967, has now learned this lesson. Secondly, inflation. This is currentlyproceeding at the rate of 7 ·per cent per annum. It is no comfort that ofher OECD countries are in the same boat ; they at least (with the exception of the United States) have the compensation, which we do not, of rapid growth. In any case the'ir inflation is more likely to slow down than ours. No British Government could endure indefinitely a 7 per cent rate of inflation. Apart from the appalling social effects, the voters wiiJl not put up with it ; and the Government's majority would rapidly crumble away at by-elections. If there is no alternative method of dealing with it, then squeeze and deflation will follow as night follows day. No doubt, for political reasons, theywill •be employed half-heartedly; and there is no guarantee that they will be successful. But bitter experience ·shows that even a half-hearted and onlypartially successful squeeze can cause an intolerable loss of output and employment. The only alternative~that is, if we really want sustained growth -is a prices and 'incomes policy ; and we had better face the fact. Would that it were not so! For we in Britain have tried almost every conceivable version of such a policy from Crippsian exhortation (oddly, the most successful) through guide lines and early warning to legislation and freeze ; and we are now back to square one. Nor has any other country done much better. Yet the OECD is surely right. " The success of incomes policies has so far been limited. But the alternatives may prove unworkable or unacceptab1e. It therefore appears highly desirable, and probably inevitable, that the search should ·go on ; and it would be wrong to underestimate the possi'l:ii:lities of progress." No progress will be made under the present Government, even if it had not contracted out of the search. For the Unions cannot 'be expected to co-operate against a 'background of stagnation and unemployment ; and the prospectivebattle over the Industrial Relations Bill must in any case rule out anyconstructive dialogue for a long periodahead. But Labour in opposition, havingexplicitly committed itself to growth, must attempt the search. There will be opposition from some, though-by no means all, Trade Union leaders. But we must remember that ·the Un'ions and the Party have their own distinct fields of responsibility, and their own distinct duties and obligations to their members and electors ; neither is, nor should be, the creature of the other. The Labour Party is a broad-based, national, people's party ; it must not be deterred rom finding national solutions to 1ational problems. \ ( et the area of mutual need and com- non interest i , and always has been, :normous ; and a prices and incomes )Olicy will surely prove to fall within it. ~either Party nor Unions can attain heir goals without continuous growth ; md we shall not achieve that growth vithout an incomes policy. The stark tlternative is periodic bouts of deflation md unemployment. This surely pro- rides a sufficient imperative to talks :>etween the Party and the Unions. And 'Y this I do not mean merely hearty )ack-slapping and cheerful cameraderie vhich avoids the awkward issues. I nean serious discussion designed to ead to a practical solution. 4 . taxation and social control We want faster growth the better and more quickly to attain our four objectives- the elimination of poverty, a greater equality of wealth, a civilised standard of social provision, and the improvement of our environment. But growth will not, as I have pointed out, automatically produce the allocation of resources required for these O'bjectives, .though it will greatly help. Only government can produce that allocation ; and the essential means to doing so are higher public spending and greater social control. And here we face a difficulty. For not only are these anathema to the Tories-indeed, they have never been anathematized with a more man'ic and ideological fervour than recently by Mr. Heath-but they are by no means popular with the British public. Take taxation and public expenditure, on which I feel I have shouted myself hoarse over the years. W'ithin any given country, this 'is an issue between Left and Right. But when we make comparisons between countries we find that other factors, notably the cultural tradition of the country concerned , are also a potent influence. It is true that in nearly all advanced countries public expenditure has longbeen r'ising faster than total output- probably since the turn of the century -with the main pressure coming from education, health and welfare services. With the changing age structure of the population, the insistent demand for higher standards, and the growing concern with urban congestion and renewal, we may be sure that the pressure will continue. But different countries react to the pressure differently. Contrary to popular belief, Britain has certainly not taken on the largest public burden. Five of the 14 countr'ies belonging to OECD have a higher burden of taxation than Britain. The share of public expenditure in GNP is lower in Britain than in Germany, France, Sweden, Holland, Norway and Austria. The share of private consumption in GNP is appreCiably higher in . Britain than in all the faster growing industrialized countries. And what is significant is that the ranking of countries in these matters depends as much on their culturail tradition as on whether their governments are Left or Right. Similarly with social control. We shall in any case need more regulation as ·society grows more complex and inter dependent. Pollution is a case in point, which will call for an increas'ing degree of bureaucratic and institutional control if we are to contain it. Mr. Heath's philosophy of laissez-faire and passive government is grotesquely irrelevant in th'is day and age ; and as for Mr. Rubin and h'is Yippies, their philosophy of " down w'ith detail and bureaucracy- let everydone do his own thing" is a sure way of abruptly bringing civilisa tion to an end. Thus we shall need more, not less, control over industry as firms become larger, more complex and more international- in the interests of regionalequality, environmental planning, antipollution and consumer protection. As population and Hving standards rise, we shall need more, not less, control over land use-firmer local authority · structure p1ans to shape the changing ur'ban environment, ambitious regional plans like the South-East study to deal with the prdblem of the conurbations, and new and imaginative plans to control and rel'ieve the pressures on the countryside. The more we care about the environment, the more government action we shall need ; for, as Samud ~ubell once remarked, only God can >reate a tree, but on:ly Government can freate a park. Certainly God alone :annot create an Alkali Inspectorate or top the barbaric depradations of profit 11ungry property firms. \nd we shall need more social control >ver individuals-over where they can ake the'ir cars or build their houses or iispose of their garbage and litter. ~ow in one or two of these fields this :ountry's record compares well with hat of other countries. But if we take he whole field of taxation, public:xpenditure, social control and collecive responsibility -all the essential neans to attaining our object'ives-then :ultural attitudes in Britain are by no neans favourable to us. quote the following passage from The 7onservative Enemy, written nearly a lecade ago : "A Protestant country, md the first to embrace capitalism, we . etain a tradition (though now ·veakened) of self-help and individu- Llism, of free enterprise and Manchester . .:iberalism, and hence an antipathy to ~overnment or civic action and colxtive welfare. A materialist country, ve rate private commercia-l success ex. eptionally high, and the public servant along with the intellettuall, the artist md the churchman) exceptionally low ; tence private outlays are considered ruitful and social outlays wasteful. A tierarchial country, we have a bour; eosie which has always (notably in ducation) made private provision for ts own collective services ; and the mblic communal services have been ·orrespondingly neglected. A socially ivided country, we lack a sense of ommunity ; the middle classes, igtorant of how the other half lives, retain . ' coals in the bath ' attitude, believing he working classes to be 1azy and feckess and pampered by the Welfare State; hence a further bias against social spending. A philistine country, we care little for the arts or for creative urban pl'anning; so we spend less on art patronage or amenities than anycivilized country in the world. An insular and unimaginative country, we have exceptionally low cultural expectations and show an extraordinarypassivity in the face of squalor and discomfort ; hence we endure without protest disgraceful conditions in hospitals, trains or ruml schools (as we do in shops and restaurants). These lingering national traits, although one hopes •they are gradually fading, make it harder to redress the imbalance." There have been some obvious improvements since I wrote that, mainly due to the actions of the Labour Government. But much of the passage would stand today. Indeed at th'is very moment foreign opinion ·boggles, with a mixture of pity and disbelief, at a country which can so vulgarly and with so little public protest dismantle its Consumer Council. Since we have these public attitudes to contend with, as well as bitter party opposition from the Tories, it is surelyobvious that to carry through a radical, egalitarian programme, involving .a major red'istribution of resources, IS a most formidable task which will absorb all our energies for many years to come. 5. false trails Yet at this very moment we hear the siren voices of some Left-wing publicists, both in this country and the United States, urging us to gallop off in a totally different direction. They concede that the basic ·issues are still of some importance. But, having made that quick obeisance, they go on to say that the real issues of the 1970s will be quite different ones_caJienation, communication, participation, automation, de'humanisation, decentralisation, the information network, student revolt, the generation gap or even Women's Lib. Now no doubt these polysyllables all conceal an important truth, even though I cannot myself discern it in every case, and occasionally dislike what I can discern. For example, I find much of the talk of the generation gap .both distasteful and inaccurate. It is distasteful because it often goes with a self-abasing attitude towards youth as a class, and even youthful violence, as something to be compared flatteringly with the old effete Parliamentary system. It reminds me of the cult of youth that was ce1ebrated so odiously in t'he Fascist hymn Giovenezza. For myself, I believe that no generation should abase itself before another-neith~r youqg ,·before old nor old before young ; and I believe profoundly in a non-violent Parliamentary system--even an imperfect one aike ours. As to accuracy, most of those who talk and write about the generation gap are referring in fact to a smaJ;l minority of students. They ignore the overwhelming evidence of opinion polls and attitude surveys which show, for example, that the great majority of the 18-24 age- group vote as their parents do. Of course there is, always has been, and always will be a generation gap ; and of course there is a student revolt (in some sense) with the vast expans'ion of student numbers -and a revolt that has proba'bly on 'balance done good. But we should keep the matter in some perspective. S. M. Upset and Earl Raab, who have done the most exhaustive survey of all the poll materiaL on th'is subject in the United States, come to the following oonclusion. We may like it or we may not, but at least it is based on the best information that can be assembled. " Politically, at least, the significant fact is that the basic direction of the younger generation is in most cases the same as that of their parents ; they go with the parental grain rather than against it." However, that is a digression. My main point is that the new NWl formulations must not be allowed to divert us from the overwhelmingly more importantissues which I have talked about in this , lecture. To illustrate my point, I discuss briefly the most significant and RE or on a local scale to fight a :ansted or a motorway or a reservoir ; · they exist to promote a particular •cial cause, like Shelter and the CPAG ; ·-and these in particular I shall vert to later-they take the form of lmmunity or neighbourhood associa) ns. :tese voluntary and pressure group:tivities have grown spectacularly in cent years. For my part, I have been tergetically involved in many of them, td have no doubt that they are on tlance an enormous force for good. 1ey provide a badly-needed element countervailing power in our society ; and I would like to see them extend and strenghten their activities-for example, in many of the directions in which Ralph Nader has led the American consumer movement. This would, by the way, be a less trivial outlet for the idealism of young activists than throwing smoke bombs at Miss World. But I_§aid " on balance " an enormous force for good ; and I must stress that these activities are not necessarilysocialist in e'ither content or intention. Many of the groups are basicallymiddle class, or even (in the case of some conservation groups) upper class, or even (in the case of the World Wildlife Fund) Princely or Royal in membership and origin ! Now when the interests of different classes coincide, as with protecting the consumer or gettingbetter schools or preserving the coast line, or where the object is plainly to help the under-privileged as with Shelter and the CPAG, ·this may not matter. But in other cases it does matter. I have already pointed to the elitist tendencies in parts of the rural conservation movement. Some urban amenity groups are having the effect, in areas of acute housing shortage, of diminishing the supply of working class housing in the interests of the middle class. There are risks even in education. The voluntary playgroup movement, for example, which I strongly support, could be widening the gap between privileged and under-privileged children ; while the demand from some CASE branches for more parental influence in the schools could easily in practice impose an even more middle class ethos on the schools than they have today. There are times when only the despised local counciiiors and bureaucrats stand guard on behalf of the majority. I conclude two things from this. First, although we should remain ardent supporters of most of these voluntary activities, we should be discriminating in our support and not automatically equate this kind of participation with socialism ; Tories can participate as actively as socialists. Secondly, we must seek ways of involving the majority in what is so far largely a minority movement ; and I revert here to the concept of the neighbourhood or community council. Apart from major decisions of central government, the decisions which most affect most people's lives are decisions about their locality-about particularroads, particular schools, particularhousing estates, particular factories. They are decisions about a motorway route, the exact date of clearance of a slum street, play areas on a housing estate, the smell from a new factory, a new twenty-storey hotel in a quiet residential area, the disappearance of small shopkeepers under town centre redevelopment, and whether lorries should park in a residential street. It is not only a matter of stopping things. People in a locality may also want to do things-to spend money on local amenities, such as a car park, a playing field or old people's benches, and to make appointments to school governing bodies and other local bodies. It is at this local level that people often feel most helpless in the face of authority. They do not want a continuous process of active participation. But theydo want to be consulted about, and to influence, these decisions which profoundly affect their daily lives. Precisely the same is of course true in industry, and constitutes the essence of industrial democracy. Large local government units-and they will become larger whatever form of local government reorganisation we have-do not always practice such consultation effectively. True, one-purpose pressure groups may spring up to challenge a particular decision ; but theyoften prove ephemeral. That is why, in last February's White Paper on Local Government Reform, I tried to give an impetus to the idea of smaller local or neighbourhood councils-urban parish councils, so to speak ; and Michael Young and his colleagues on the Association of Neighbourhood Councils have pushed the idea still further. Naturally the idea evokes both scepticism and hostility. Some, especially though not only amongst officials, see such councils as a potential threat to good administration -yet another irritating pressure group getting in the way of sound government. Others 'think them simply absurd, as did all the respectable, established people in G. K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting H'ill. I do not know how many Fabians remember that novel, but it is worth recalling, perhaps, the answer given by Adam Wayne, the Provost of NottingHill (where I am happy to live). He was asked by the King : " Don't you really think the sacred Notting Hill at all absurd ? " " Absurd ? " asked Wayne, blankly, " Why should I ? " " Notting Hill," said the Provost simply, " is a rise or high ground of the common earth, on which men have built houses to live, in which they are born, fall in love, pray, marry and die. Why should I think it absurd ? " Whether absurd or not-and I doubt if it is -this much is clear. In an age of increasingly and inevitablylarger units, we can see both a no oubt inchoate but very real disntent with the channels open to eople to influence events, and also a rowing interest in specifically neighourhood and community action. This surely something we should en) urage ; and the neighbourhoodmncil opens up a way forward which e should boldly take everi in advance ' legislation. It seems most suitable tat the first experiment is currently eing tried in the Golborne Ward of ·otting HiJ,J. 6. conclusion But even such a challenging idea as this, still less the ambiguous though fashionable formulations I mentioned earlier, must not be allowed to divert us too far from our central objectives. It would, for a start, be electorallyidiotic to be so diverted. We can learn a lesson from American experience last summer and autumn, when the "New Politics " section of the Democratic Party tried, even to the extent of opposing excellent liberal candidates in the primaries, to move the Democrats away from their traditional support in the working class and ethnic groupstowards an essentially middle class orientation and set of issues. It was only when the Democrats reverted in the autumn to the central economic issues that they were able-with remarkable success-to fight off an immenselystrong Republican offensive. It would not only be electorally llllwise; more important, it would be wrong. I have always looked forward, in everything which I have written, to the day when we could stop fussing about growth and the allocation of resources, and turn our attention to more fruitful and cultural pursuits. But that day is not here yet. The basic issues of poverty, inequality, an inadequate social sector and a drab environment are sfill the over-riding ones ; and questions of growth, taxation, expenditure and social control remain incomparably more urgent than alienation or student revolt or the mass media. And that is not to mention the improverished condition of the developing countries. If there were some who doubted this on June 18th, they surely cannot do so now. The new Conservative Government is showing itself the most ideological and reactionary right-wing government that Europe has seen in two decades. It cannot eliminate poverty, for that would involve more generous public spending. It believes i111 inequality; hence Mr. Barber's mini- budget redistributes income from the less well off to the better off, and Mrs. Thatcher's Circular 10/70 reduces equality in education. It believes in the greatest possible freedom for privateprofit making ; so it abolishes IRC, transfers assets from BOAC to the private sector, and talks of the need for general denationalisation. It shows its contemp~ for the consumer by abolishing the Consumer Council. It threatens the regions by its policy on investment grants, and the cities by relaxing controls on spectulative office building. Its commitment to lower pu'blic ·spendingand its ideology of laissez-faire wHJ mean more poverty, more inequality, a meaner social sector and a worse environment. Perhaps it did not need this lecture to demonstrate that our basic social democratic aims remain as urgent as they have ever 1been. If proof were needed, Mr. Heath has provided it. abian society fhe Fabian Society exists to further >OciaJist education and research. lt is Uliliated .to the Labour Party, both na- cionally and locally, and embraces aH ;hades of Socialist opinion within its ·anks-left, right and centre. .Since 1884 the Fabian Society has en- oiled thoughtful socialists who are pre- oared to discuss the essential questions :>f democratic socialism and relate them :o practical plans for building socialism :n a changing world. Beyond this the Society has no collective :>olicy. It puts forward no resolutions of t political character, but it is not an )rganisation of armchair socialists. Its nembers are active in their Labour >arties, Trade Unions and Co-opera- ives. They are representative of the aJbour movement, practical people con- :erned to study and discuss problems matter. fhe Society is organised nationally and ocally. The national Society, directed >y an elected Executive Committee, mblishes pamphlets, and holds schools tnd conferences of many kinds. Local )ocieties-there are one hundred of hem-are self governing and are lively :entres of discussion and also undertake ·esearch. ~nquiries about membership should be ent to the General Secretary, Fabian :OCiety, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, IW1; telephone 01-930 3077. the author Anthony Crosland is Member of Parlia- ment for Grimsby. He was Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning in the Labour Government, and also President of the Board of Trade (1967-69), Secretary of State for Education and Science (1965-67) and Economic Secretary to the Treasury (1964-65). He wrote The Future of Socialism, The Conservative Enemy, Can Labour Win? (FabianTract 324) amongst other publications. He is a former Chairman of the Fabian Society. Cover design by Jonathan Green- Armytage. Printed by Civic Press Limited (Tu), Civic Street, Glasgow, C4. SBN 7163 0404 X abian society fhe Fabian Society exists to further >OciaJist education and research. lt is Uliliated .to the Labour Party, both na- cionally and locally, and embraces aH ;hades of Socialist opinion within its ·anks-left, right and centre. .Since 1884 the Fabian Society has en- oiled thoughtful socialists who are pre- oared to discuss the essential questions :>f democratic socialism and relate them :o practical plans for building socialism :n a changing world. Beyond this the Society has no collective :>olicy. It puts forward no resolutions of t political character, but it is not an )rganisation of armchair socialists. Its nembers are active in their Labour >arties, Trade Unions and Co-opera- ives. They are representative of the aJbour movement, practical people con- :erned to study and discuss problems matter. fhe Society is organised nationally and ocally. The national Society, directed >y an elected Executive Committee, mblishes pamphlets, and holds schools tnd conferences of many kinds. Local )ocieties-there are one hundred of hem-are self governing and are lively :entres of discussion and also undertake ·esearch. ~nquiries about membership should be ent to the General Secretary, Fabian :OCiety, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, IW1; telephone 01-930 3077. the author Anthony Crosland is Member of Parlia- ment for Grimsby. He was Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning in the Labour Government, and also President of the Board of Trade (1967-69), Secretary of State for Education and Science (1965-67) and Economic Secretary to the Treasury (1964-65). He wrote The Future of Socialism, The Conservative Enemy, Can Labour Win? (FabianTract 324) amongst other publications. He is a former Chairman of the Fabian Society. Cover design by Jonathan Green- Armytage. Printed by Civic Press Limited (Tu), Civic Street, Glasgow, C4. SBN 7163 0404 X recent fabian p~mphlets research series 286 David Bull 287 Peter Draper and others 289 D. Bourn, N. Howard 290 Hamish Richards 291 David Stephen tracts 323 Richard M. Titmuss 331 Richard Wollheim 390 Anthony Lester 395 Tony Lynes 396 Tony Lynes 397 John Hughes 399 R. H. S. Crossman 400 Anne Lapping (ed) 401 Rodney Fielding 402 Anthony Wedgwood Benn 403 Thomas Balogh young fabian pamphlets 17 D. Atkinson and others 18 Vincent Cable 19 Anthony Osley 20 Nicholas Bosanquet 21 James Bellini 22 M. Blades, D. Scott 23 Colin Crouch books Bernard Shaw and others R. H. S. Crossman and others Margaret Cole Brian Abel-Smith and others B. Lapping and G. 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The fifth social service Britain and the world in the 1970s 3s 6s 4s 6s cased 30s cased 35s paper 15s paper 12s paper 25s paper 15s paper 18s cased 60s 268 M. Rende! and others 272 Ben Whitaker 273 Society of Labour Lawyers 277 D. Rubinstein, C. Speakman 279 Louis Turner 280 Society of Labour Lawyers 281 Roy Moore 282 a Fabian group 283 Lord Kennet Equality for women 5s Participation and poverty 2s 6d Justice for all 8s Leisure, transport and the countryside 4s Politics and the multinational company 5s Occupational accidents and the law 3s Self management in Yugoslavia 5s Planning for education in 1980 5s Controlling our environment 3s