Richard Reeves
Tony Blair suggested three years ago that the big distinction in politics was between open societies and those which were closed. How far Blair meant to endorse Karl Popper’s view in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) is not clear—Blair, for his many virtues, is no philosopher. But in the early years of New Labour the direction was open markets, a more open democracy and a freer, more liberal society.
Blair removed the difference between the age of consent for gay and straight sex, introduced civil partnerships and tougher anti-discrimination laws. Popperian or not, he shared a liberal conviction that people should be able to construct lives according to their own notion of the good. Labour also presided over the biggest wave of immigration ever, adding more than a million to Britain’s population. And a halting start was made to open up democracy, with what historian Tristram Hunt calls “a magnificent devolution of power” to Scotland, Wales and London. There are entries on the other side of the ledger, too: centralisation in Whitehall; civil liberties damaged by Asbos and detention without trial; and the retreat from thorough-going reform of parliament or rejuvenation of tired party politics. But, on the whole, Blair justifiably claimed to have made Britain a more open nation.
Such openness matters, Popper thought, because the search for a utopian social end-point was doomed. Historicism, the view shared by Marx and Plato that societies evolved to an ideal state, led only to totalitarianism. Nostalgia for a golden age was just political cover: “We can never return to the alleged innocence and beauty of the closed society,” Popper concluded. “If we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and the insecure, using what reason we have to plan as well as we can.”
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prospect
Read David Willetts’s complete essay on the meaning of Margaret Thatcher here
Margaret Thatcher’s reputation as Britain’s most influential and divisive post-war leader was confirmed by a survey undertaken by Prospect and pollsters YouGov to explore her reputation 30 years after the election that brought her to power. Today, just as when she left office, the iron lady splits Britain pretty much down the middle, with 40 per cent of those questioned feeling she made Britain a better place to live, set against 41 per cent who thought she made it worse. Only 6 per cent thought she had made no difference at all.
This enduring division over Thatcher’s legacy does not, however, translate into unpopularity. Indeed, our poll shows that she remains surprisingly popular compared to contemporary political leaders. Perhaps most impressively, Thatcher in her prime is rated as a better prime minister than Gordon Brown to steer Britain through the current economic crisis, by 47 versus 34 per cent of votes. Lest contemporary Tories feel too happy, however, her victory margin is even greater when it comes to leading the Tory party: 49 per cent prefer her to David Cameron, compared to only 24 per cent backing the current Tory leader. (Thatcher still turns off self-identified Labour voters who, when asked to hold their noses, pick Cameron over Thatcher by the slimmest of margins—37 versus 36 per cent.)
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prospect
This is a selection of responses to the March cover story by James Crabtree and Frank Field. To read the article in full click here.
To discuss this article visit First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
A misconceived scheme
13th March 2009
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James Crabtree
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog.
Despite its impressive name, the London Boxing Academy isn’t much more than a shabby warehouse, set back from Tottenham High Road in one of the poorest areas of north London. Inside, a few young black men hit punch bags around a faded blue boxing ring. On the wall is a poster, frayed at the edges, warning: “get a life, ditch the knife.” At the ringside David Lammy, the local MP, listens intently to Chris Hall, the academy’s stocky, shaven-headed founder. Hall explains how he takes 30 young people a year—all too tough for regular school—and gives them an intensive mix of boxing, sports and regular classes. Classes take place in scruffy rooms next to the boxing ring. But, he says, his mix of discipline and encouragement helps aggressive, troubled young men improve both their behaviour and grades. More than anything the academy tries to broaden horizons. “We took them to a west end musical last year,” Hall explains, because “none of them had been to the theatre.” Lammy thinks experiences like this can become part of a larger “encounter culture,” in which Britain’s young people—richer and poorer, urban and rural, black and white—mix with those from different backgrounds. “It isn’t that kids from Tottenham don’t know much about life in Britain. It’s that they’ve never even met anyone from Surrey or Kent. And many of them never will.”
Britain faces the worst recession since the 1930s, bringing with it the prospect of mass unemployment, even urban unrest. About 1.3m young people are already out of work, with more to come. But even this grim news hides deeper problems in the socialisation of our young people. The Good Childhood Inquiry, published by the Children’s Society in February, detailed how today’s teenagers leap ever earlier into an adult world of stress, consumerism and sexuality, without the traditional social structures or rites of passage that once helped them to cope. Just as our nation’s bankers seem to have choked on their freedom, so a new generation of young people—especially those from poorer backgrounds—struggles to grow older, younger. Many emerge with a thin conception of citizenship, sceptical about whether there is such a thing as society—and, even if there is, what it’s got to do with them.
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James Crabtree
Discuss the poll at First Drafts, Prospect ’s website
It seems that we Brits are in a deep funk—even by our habitually glum standards. Prospect asked pollsters YouGov to gauge views about the current slump. Astonishingly, more than one third of respondents predicted riots similar to those sparked in Greece in December, with 37 per cent agreeing that “there will be serious social unrest in British cities,” requiring the army to restore order. Older citizens—those with the longest memories, perhaps—are most pessimistic of all, with nearly half fearing trouble on the streets.
2,270 adults were polled across England, Scotland and Wales, with interviews conducted between the 10th and the 12th February 2009. Unsurprisingly, worries about a return to mass unemployment are also rife—the results show that three quarters of us think Britain is heading for lengthening dole queues, with 73 per cent agreeing that “there will be a return to mass unemployment, not just for a year or two, but for many years to come.”
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Sara Wajid
No other single action on the world stage has mobilised second and third generation British Asians as quickly or fiercely as the invasion of Gaza. Not Iraq, not 9/11, not the de Menezes shooting, nothing.
Within hours the call to join demonstrations started, by text, email and Facebook. My invites came only from British Asian friends—mainly, but not exclusively, from “cultural” Muslims like me; often from the normally politically inactive, even from politically dormant suburban young mums. Old family friends who hadn’t contacted me for years, and who couldn’t possibly know where I stood on Palestine, got in touch, secure in an unspoken assumption that any right-thinking Asian would be on their side.
Although I was shocked by the civilian deaths in Gaza, this assumption quickly rankled. I stopped opening the bloodied baby corpse attachments. The unsubtle antisemitic undertone of calls for a Donna Karan boycott didn’t help.
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Richard Reeves
Never let a good crisis go to waste,” insists Rahm Emmanuel, the hardbitten chief of staff to Barack Obama. Certainly, economic disaster and political disequilibrium create the space for new thinking. They make and break reputations too.
Gordon Brown is trying to bring the British economy down gently. A little like the passengers of Flight 1549 approaching the waters of the Hudson, voters are anxiously wondering if the captain can land safely. In private, even senior government figures now admit that Britain’s economy may shrink by 4 per cent in 2009—a downturn twice as deep as official projections. Latest polls, at least, suggest that faith in the pilot is waning.
As a result Labour circles are full, once again, of post-Brown political chatter. There will be no challenge before the election, of course. But the contours of the debate that will engage Labour in opposition are already becoming visible. It’s a dividing line that fractures the other parties too. On the one side stand those for whom the economic crisis demonstrates the need for a more muscular state; on the other, a diverse group who want to use the state to give more power to individuals.
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Anya Hart Dyke
I’d never been inside a mosque in Britain before September 2008. I have come a long way since then.
Despite the headlines, too little is known about Britain’s second largest religion. The majority of us don’t have Muslim neighbours or colleagues. Perhaps this is why, as I set foot for the first time in a mosque in Leyton, east London, I did so with mild trepidation—feeling as I have done innumerable times when I have been in unfamiliar surroundings, be it in Albania, Cambodia, Morocco or The Gambia. It was quite unexpected; I was still in England. I was there by appointment, yet felt oddly self-conscious. What was the protocol?
I was shown first to the women’s section that was alive with women and girls preparing for an event. I watched closely for hints on how to behave appropriately. Of course, I learned nothing new beyond what my common sense dictated. What on earth had I expected?
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Keith Kahn-Harris
To comment on this article visit First Drafts , Prospect’s blog
Over the past couple of decades, the Jewish community in Britain has been enjoying a cultural renaissance. Yet despite this—indeed perhaps because of this—many prominent Jewish leaders and institutions now claim that Anglo-Jewry is in unprecedented danger.
The British Jewish community’s cultural lethargy used to estrange many of its leading intellectuals. As Stephen Brook wrote in The Club, his perceptive study of British Jewry in 1989: “scan the cultural pages of the Jewish Chronicle and weep.” But since the early 1990s there has been a concerted attempt, both within the mainstream institutions of Anglo-Jewry and at its more radical fringes, to change this. Jewish Book Week, which concluded on 2nd March 2009, drew in over 5,000 people this year, rivaling Cheltenham and Hay. The new Jewish Community Centre for London puts on a consistently exciting and often quirky programme of events; the annual Limmud conference (Limmud.org) brings together over 2,000 Jews for a festival of Jewish learning. There’s been a huge expansion in Jewish day schools which, even if you disapprove of faith schooling, cannot but be seen as evidence of a community willing to invest vast sums in its educational future. And on the other end of this ever widening spectrum, there’s the iconoclastic collective, Jewdas (jewdas.org), which puts on events in squats that mix radical Jewish learning and wild klezmer-DJing, and whose website viciously lampoons the Jewish great and good.
But this cultural flowering, typically a sign of a self-confident and energetic community, has run in tandem with a vocal campaign to convince the public that Britain’s Jews are under threat as never before. British Jewish community leaders, from Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks to novelist Howard Jacobson, have repeatedly and publicly expressed their alarm at what Sacks called in 2006 “a tsunami of anti-semitism.” Since the start of the second Palestinian intifada in autumn 2000, they claim, anti-Jewish feeling in Britain has visibly grown; disproportionate criticism of Israel, they say, masks a resurgence of Jew-hatred, manifested in everything from violent attacks against Jews by radical Islamists to campaigns to boycott Israel from the left.
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Catherine Fieschi
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect ’s blog
Political oxymorons are the new black. “Libertarian paternalism” under Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, now “progressive conservatism” under Phillip Blond. I had trouble with the first and am having even more trouble with the second. Renewed inventiveness in the face of crisis? The telltale signs of ideological bankruptcy—or vote-seeking fancy dress?
Don’t get me wrong, Demos, where Blond is now based, has always been the place where easy oppositions were explored and ultimately dismantled; where intuition was tested and then often shown to be incorrect and a hindrance to creativity and progress. So, it isn’t surprising that the Conservatives’ current attempt at disguise should pique Demos’s curiosity and set an appetising challenge. However, I suggest that Red Toryism is an oxymoron best left alone. Not simply because the terms are incompatible, or the goal unattainable, but because calling the end product anything approximating progress simply strikes me as wrong.
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