Dare to Be a Daniel

by Tony Benn

  We must think about imports and open-cast mining …

  The environment of a village is destroyed by stripping it, as it were, for open-cast mining. We must have regard also to desulphurisation, assisted-burn and winter-fuel concessions. As many have said, how can we justify subsidy by way of the nuclear levy, a fuel that is three times as expensive as coal?

  The House should not think that that for which I am arguing cannot be done. In 1945, Winston Churchill as Prime Minister, a distinguished predecessor, presented the Fuel and Power Act – I operated under it and so does the President of the Board of Trade – which, when enacted, charged the Secretary of State with the general duty of securing the effective and coordinated development of coal, petroleum and other mineral resources – fuel and power – in Great Britain. That is the statutory responsibility of the President of the Board of Trade. He is not merely a spectator of market forces. Indeed, in 1973 he was a member of a government who introduced the Fuel and Electricity Control Act, which bore on every fuel transaction in the country. When the right hon. Gentleman was a junior minister he controlled the supply of fuel to the aircraft industry. The result of tonight’s Division will not determine the issue that is before us. If anyone thinks that it will, he or she is making a great mistake. In fact, the British public have been awakened to the realities of the mining industry and to the rotten philosophy of the 1980s. We were told that everything was about cash, and that chartered accountants had to be brought in to tell us what to do. That is not what it is all about. The issue is whether our society puts people in a place of dignity and serves them or whether we hand over money to gamblers who create no wealth.

  What has happened – I warn the government about this – is that after ten years during which people took things that they should never have taken, there is a return of self-confidence and hope. It was that sort of self-confidence and hope that got Mandela out of prison and got the Berlin Wall down. Next it will get the President of the Board of Trade out of his office, in favour of a better society.

  HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE ON SOCIALISM, 16 MAY 2000

  On 23 April 1901, Keir Hardie, the then Member for Merthyr Tydfil, moved the following motion:

  That, considering the increasing burden which the private ownership of land and capital is imposing upon the industrious and useful classes of the community, the poverty and destitution and general moral and physical deterioration resulting from a competitive system of wealth production which aims primarily at profit making, the alarming growth of trusts and syndicates able by reason of their great wealth to influence Governments and plunge peaceful Nations into war to serve their interests, this House is of the opinion that such a condition of affairs constitute a menace to the well-being of the Realm, and calls for legislation designed to remedy the same by inaugurating a Socialist Commonwealth founded upon the common ownership of land and capital, production for use and not for profit, and equality of opportunity for every citizen [Official Report, 23 April 1901; vol. 92, c. 1175].

  I had asked for a debate on socialism, but I was summoned to the Table Office and told that as no one had ministerial responsibility for socialism, it would have to be about wealth and poverty in the economic system. A Treasury minister has obligingly attended.

  I want to look back to the roots of socialism, to celebrate what it is about and to see what relevance it may have to today’s society. In doing so, I am bound to refer to some of its origins. The Bible has led to many revolutionary ideas – for instance, that we were and are all equal in the sight of God – which is why, in 1401, the House of Commons passed the Heresy Act, which condemned any lay person reading the Bible to be burned at the stake for heresy. The Bible has always been a controversial document. At the time of the Peasants’ Revolt and the English revolution, people started thinking of common ownership, based on the life of the apostles.

  Socialism is essentially about the moral values that guide society, about democracy and about internationalism. Its history in England is interesting to me because it goes back deep into the past. In 1832 … only 2 per cent of the population, all rich men, had the vote. The progress associated with socialism since then includes the Rochdale pioneers, who believed in cooperation; Robert Owen, the first man to call himself a socialist; the birth of the trade-union movement, when the Combination Acts were repealed; the Chartists, and later the suffragettes, demanding the vote; the demand for representation in Parliament through a Labour representation committee; and, finally, the idea that if people had the vote, they would have some democratic control over the economy as well as the political system.

  If one considers the ideology or the basis of those ideas, Adam Smith and Karl Marx had something in common. Adam Smith said that the rich are the pensioners of the poor; that the rich live off the back of the poor. I do not want to shock the Chamber, but Karl Marx – the first philosopher to study British capitalism – identified a marginal difference of economic interests between those who slogged their guts out creating the wealth and those who happened to own it. Both believed in self-organisation.

  The programme of socialism is sometimes associated with nationalisation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The first nationalised industry in Britain was the Church of England, which was nationalised by Henry VIII. Next, Charles II nationalised the Post Office. When I was Postmaster General, I wondered why. I found that he wanted to open everyone’s letters, and he could do that only by creating the Royal Mail.

  In June 1914, Winston Churchill nationalised British Petroleum. He paid £2 million for a commanding majority shareholding because he thought that the oil should be in the hands of the people. The BBC was nationalised by the Conservative Party. Imperial Airways was nationalised by the Conservative Party. The Army and the police, both of which are nationalised, have no relation with socialism whatever. I hope that Members will put out of their mind the idea that socialism is about running everything from the top.

  The idea of socialism is of common ownership and that things are best done by cooperation. The Co-operative movement was based on that principle. Municipal ownership is a form of socialism. I pay tribute to the Liberal Party, which, in the nineteenth century – when Joseph Chamberlain ran Birmingham – introduced the municipal ownership of housing, gas, electricity, transport, opera, art galleries and airports. I learned to fly at the municipal airport in Birmingham.

  The idea evolved that poor people, who could not afford by their own wealth to acquire the things that they needed – education, health, housing and transport – could buy them with their votes. The welfare state was the final development of this idea. In fairness to Lloyd George, the Budget that he introduced as Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer laid the foundations of the pension system.

  Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of market forces and are protected for the benefit of the community.

  One of the great impetuses in the post-war years for the advance towards the welfare state – with its socialist inspiration – was the argument, which I remember well because I made it myself, that if the nation could plan for war, it could plan for peace. We had full employment during the war. If we could plan to have full employment to kill people, why could we not plan to have full employment in peacetime, and so be able to build the houses and provide all the nurses and teachers that we needed? This idea was strongly entrenched and was in some ways non-controversial.

  What might be called ‘caring conservatism’ – I use the phrase in a general spirit – was the idea in the minds of Winston Churchill and, before him, Harold Macmillan in the 1930s with his book The Middle Way. The idea was carried on by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup [Sir Edward Heath]. The right hon. Gentleman’s powerful words, the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’, were spoken by a Conservative Prime Minister. That may cause some co
ncern to some of his supporters, but that is what he believed.

  If one looks at the people who have described themselves as socialists in the last century, one finds two different types. I have mentioned what we were able to achieve in this country guided by the ideas that I have outlined. The Soviet Union had no democratic basis whatever for its socialism. It was born in revolution and suffered greatly in the war. In the end, the Soviet Union crumbled because, although the Soviet Communist Party, which called itself socialist, was overwhelmingly the largest party, it did not have the consent of the people.

  The other type are the Social Democrats, who abandoned socialism altogether. The most powerful advocates of capitalism today are to be found among the Social Democrats. I do not want to be controversial, but it is a fact that there are no more powerful advocates of market forces and globalisation than those in the party that describes itself as New Labour.

  Although globalisation has brought a great deal of industrialisation, it has also produced acute poverty in the Third World. The gap between rich and poor is wider now than a hundred years ago. There is the grossest exploitation of people in Third World countries. People here can invest their capital in the Third World, where wages are lower, and then lay off people in Britain – who then go on to unemployment benefit – and make their profits in much poorer countries.

  Globalisation is said to be a form of internationalism. However, capital can be exported to another country to benefit from lower wages, but people from other countries who want to come here to benefit from increased wages are shut out by immigration laws. It is a limited, one-sided form of globalisation. Conflicts as deep as those that are caused by the division of wealth and poverty inevitably lead to war.

  We made great advances towards democracy from 1832 to the end of the European empires and the creation of the welfare state, but the power in a globalised economy is unaccountable. Major multinational companies are not accountable to the people whom they employ or to the nations in which they work. I spent my life as a minister negotiating with oil companies and large multinationals that were more powerful than nation states. Indeed, they operated in this country like a colonial power.

  Such activities have severe implications for our political system, and we must consider what has become of politics. The idea of representation has been replaced with the idea of management. I represent the interests of the people of Chesterfield as best I can and I also represent my convictions. People know what my convictions are when they vote and can get rid of me if they do not agree with them. But now we are all being managed on behalf of a global economy. Someone once said that, if we do not control the economy in the interests of the people, we have to control the people in the interests of the economy. That process is going on at a great pace.

  We are told about our international competitors as if competition were at the core of a peaceful world; that is not a view that I share. The lack of accountability has a profound effect on the emerging democracies in the Third World. They are often denied the benefit of the hundreds of years of parliamentary experience from which we gained. However, even in this country, the power of the multinationals is increasingly becoming such that governments tremble before them. I was in the Cabinet in 1976 when we crumbled before the International Monetary Fund, which had serious consequences for the Party and the government.

  We are now moving into another aspect of the political consequences of globalisation – the Third Way. The idea is that it would be better for all the good people at the top to get together. The project is a coalition of people who believe that there is a common view at the top, and that that is the only way in which to manage the economy. It is a one-party state. As a minister, I visited Moscow and met the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the commissars. They had not been elected. I then went to Brussels and met the commissioners. They had not been elected. I met representatives of the Central Bank. They, too, had not been elected. The reduction of democratic control as a result of globalisation is a serious problem, and Europe is part of it.

  I fear the consequences that will arise if people do not believe that they are represented. One consequence is apathy. If people do not vote because they do not believe that it makes a difference, the consequences for the legitimacy of the government who win are profound. Low turnout is one aspect of that apathy. Clinton was elected by one in five of the American people; four out of five did not register, did not vote or voted against him. A low turnout, accompanied by cynicism, is a recipe for conflict and repression.

  My age allows me to recall what happened in Germany before the war, where a despairing people turned to Hitler, who blamed the Jews and the trade unionists for their problems. He told the people that he would give them full employment, and by God he did – he rearmed them, and we had a war as a result.

  It is necessary to say plainly and clearly that peace without social justice is impossible. We cannot have a peaceful society or a peaceful world if the principles of social justice are secondary to the search for profit. A society that is built around people and not profit is what lies at the heart of the socialist idea.

  In the debate to which I referred at the outset of my remarks, Keir Hardie concluded, ‘We are called upon at the beginning of the twentieth century to decide the question propounded in the Sermon on the Mount as to whether or not we will worship God or Mammon. The present day is a Mammon-worshipping age. Socialism proposes to dethrone the brutal god Mammon and to lift humanity into its place. [Official Report, 23 April 1901; vol. 92, c. 1179]

  That is a very religious way of putting it, but it explains the idea that has moved people to do things. All real change comes from underneath. The idea of cooperation rather than competition appeals to most people in their own lives. Competition creates insecurity and anxiety, while cooperation is always dominant when people look after their disabled children or their old parents. I think that that idea is of value.

  I want to leave time for what will be a full debate, so I shall conclude on the policies that may follow from the ideas that I have advanced. First, we must expand the public services and ensure that they are publicly funded. In the immediate post-war years, the idea of National Insurance was based on that of universal benefits. I do not believe that it is right for people to be means-tested before they are entitled to benefits for which they have paid, either through National Insurance contributions or taxation. That is especially true of the need to link pensions with earnings. I am proud to have been in the Cabinet that made that link and I am distressed that it was reversed, at a cost of about thirty pounds a week to pensioners. That provides a good example of what should be done.

  We should have expanded public services for the provision of health care and education, which should be open, so as to allow every child access to the full range of knowledge in schools that are comprehensive in what they offer. Also, there should be access to the media, which does not usually cover the concerns of those who do not have wealth and power. I should add to that list the legal services, which are very expensive but absolutely necessary.

  The second item on my list is the revitalisation of local government. I referred to the great Liberal achievements of the nineteenth century, and there are many examples of such achievements in the twentieth century. Local government should have the funding that it requires, the right to raise its own money – if it can persuade its electors to give it that money – and general powers that are not tied up by specific grants that local authorities administer but do not decide.

  Thirdly, if we are genuinely interested in the idea of full employment, it is essential that we support manufacturing industry. For most of my life as a minister, I tried as best as I could – sometimes successfully, but generally not – to reverse de-industrialisation. In 1948, Britain launched 48 per cent of all the ships launched in the world. In 1970, we had the largest motorbike industry in the world. In 1974, we had the largest machine-tool industry and the largest car industry in Europe. That has all
gone.

  It is in the national interest to protect ourselves from invasion from abroad. We would resist anyone who tried to bomb our car factories, but if somebody buys and closes those factories, it is regarded as an inevitable consequence of globalisation. I do not think that that is a sustainable position. The same is true of privatisation. I hesitate to quote Harold Macmillan, but he said that privatisation was selling the family silver. That is not an example that would come immediately to mind for most families, but it was a vivid description of the sale of our natural assets.

  We must have civil liberties. I refer not just to legal liberties and an end to discrimination, but to the acceptance of trade-union rights. It is amazing that we talk about a global economy, but that we do not legislate to implement the rights given to trade unions in the International Labour Organisation. I have introduced a Bill on the matter – the House may want to consider it – as such legislation is necessary.

  We need a fairer tax system. I cannot understand why any government should ring-fence the rich and say, ‘Whatever we do, we will not ask you to pay more’, when people on benefits are continually being faced with demands to open the books and be examined, in an attempt to deal with benefit fraud. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire [Harold Barnes] may wish to raise the question of the Tobin tax, which would tax international transactions and could provide billions of pounds for international development.

  It is often argued that no one has any power over multinationals, but I do not believe that. Multinational companies spend millions of pounds on trying to win popular support through advertising campaigns, because they know that it is necessary to retain the goodwill of host governments. I believe that it is necessary to treat multinationals as international agents and to negotiate with them as if they were countries.