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542   25 November 2002   

Digby Jones, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, is rapidly becoming a joke.  He is wrong to designate the UK as unfriendly to business, and to argue for the "tax burden" of industry to be reduced. The greater problem is that the Government, without a coherent view of its relationship with the corporate sector, can easily become too slack, too cosy, to concessionary in its approach.  Digby-Jones would be better advised to change tack, think positive, and seek a major realignment of business with Government.

Companies should accept that they are inevitably the primary tax-gatherers of society - they should stop Digby-Jones complaining, take tactical advantage of their position, and simply strike a hard bargain in return. 

What are the components of such a re-alignment?  And how should a good socialist like me approach the negotiation of a "new deal" - a new settlement with the corporate sector? 

First, I acknowledge that both Governments and Corporations need each other.  This relationship has been a factor in European politics for over five-hundred years (to my recollection, as a Cambridge historian with a bent for European history), and is nothing new.  But the relationship has both broadened and deepened in the last fifty years, in the context of modern mass democracy, coupled with the emergence of consumer societies.Electorates have conflated with consumerates.  Both Governments and companies increasingly see themselves as providers of goods and services to all citizens. If supply-systems fail, the blame ultimately finds it way to the door of Government (e.g. the fuel crisis, Summer 2001).  Corporations in their turn have the most acute need for efficient primary public systemsas assured by Government (highways, transportation, telecommunications, banking).  In particular, the emergence of Value Added Tax as a universal European phenomenon has given direct expression to that community of interest.  The corporations have a keen commercial interest in trading with the State (PFI, Government Borrowing) and Governments have a keen interest in ensuring that supply-systems operate effectively right across the whole spectrum of citizens' requirements.  I start, therefore, from the position that both sides need each other, and must negotiate an honourable deal.

What should be on the table, when the two sides first meet, in this Grand Negotiation?  I set out my initial thoughts, keenly aware that others will have a different agenda - Let me know what you think I have left out

A.   What do the Corporations need most?

  • Fungible, reliable currency, coupled with efficient money transmission systems - in this context, the decision on the Euro is important, without being critical to the relationship;
  • Best possible highway, transportation, energy-supply and telecommunications systems;
  • Adequate labour availability, both as to quantity and skill-quality; Labour has gone too far is adapting educational systems to commercial requirements, and the pendulum should now swing back towards freedom of individual choice, rather than the tyranny of collective need;
  • Labour flexibility, right to hire and fire without constraint - here, there is room for re-designing support systems, for the benefit of both employers and employees;
  • Speedy business dispute resolution, enforcement of payment claims - it is easy to underestimate the importance of skilled, efficient systems of authoritative adjudication,. but markets cannot flourish without such governmental support.

B.   What does a socialist Government need most?

  • Recognition and enforcement of workers' rights during employment, including union recognition - full recognition of workers' Human Rights;
  • Effective compensation and support for employees facing job-loss - our old-fashioned system of Redundancy Payments (for some) should go, and be replaced by Adjustment Pay for all - occupational pensions should be phased out, and taxes increased to pay for improved universal State pensions and State-guaranteed-savings;
  • Efficient collection and transmission of taxes - the corporate sector stop complaining, and realise what a tactical advantage it has, in the tax-collection sector;
  • Root-and-branch company law reform, to reduce the incidence of criminality and other illegal, anti-competitive and anti-social conduct;
  • Active compliance with regulation of standards, H&S, environment and product quality - this will continue to be a battleground (public interest v "red tape") but socialists must insist on corporate compliance, even if sometimes cumbersome.

The Socialist List has three primary components - workers' rights, effective tax collection, and quality control.  The Corporate List has only one central component, namely labour market flexibility - coupled with the choice of non-intrusive tax-collection methods which do not directly inhibit trading transactions, and which allow the ebb-and-flow of business to continue with minimum impediment.  Its other objectives are peripheral, and relatively easy for our society to deliver..

Given that Agenda, there is a deal to be done.  I have my own ideas about a possible deal - but what do you think?  If you were negotiating for Socialism, where would your emphasis lie?  And it would be great somebody were prepared to set out the notional negotiating brief for the corporate sector...

What about it?  Drop me a line

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543    25 November 2002   

anguished activism

This weekend, I had an intensely political Saturday.  Three public speeches underlined the difficulties faced by concerned Labour Party members, faced with the growing managerialism of their Government. 

I heard the charismatic Michael Jacobs, General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Mark Seddon, the rising Editor of Tribune, and the urbane Welsh Leader of the House of Lords, Lord (Gareth) Williams of Mostyn.  But their concerns were different, in bewildering ways.

Gareth Williams was the "star" for me.  Speaking at Cardiff, the brilliant Welsh barrister is the man who leads for Labour in the House of Lords.  He is not a conventional political animal at all: he has risen through the most conventional of career paths - brilliant Cambridge academic career, Bencher at my own Inn (Grays), a successful "Silk", Chairman of my trade union (the Bar Council), then ennobled under John Major in 1992.  He has never contended for elected office.

  • Yet he has all the natural egalitarianism of Welshness. His socialism runs deep, educated as he was at Rhyl Grammar School, rising without political activisim to become Leader of the Welsh Circuit.  He is sparking speaker for all seasons, careful in debate, witty in entertainment, always effortlessly eloquent.  He subtly distanced himself from the autocracy and intolerance of the present Labour Administration, the blundering bloody-mindedness of the Home Office, the Government's careless infringement of human rights, its continuing abuse of its Common majority.  All this was the more powerful for being expressed in oblique compliments, doubles entendres, the subtle choice of adjective.  If the script of his impromptu address had been transcribed, it would have revealed no disloyalty.  Yet the choice of material, and the manner of its delivery, left no room for doubt.  Here is a troubled, anguished socialist.

Mark Seddon, delivering the Keir Hardie Memorial Lecture at Aberdare on Saturday evening 23 November, was quite different. He is the quintessential young (early 40s...) "Old Labour" activist, loyally seeking political advancement through the labyrinths of the Labour Party, struggling to maintain his elected membership of Labour's NEC, fighting for a Parliamentary seat, asserting traditional Labour values, and affirming a traditional identification with the TU cause, in particularly with the Firefighters.

  • Mark Seddon deserves to succeed - he is an intelligent, hard-working, stimulating journalist and politician.  We need his simple re-assertion of a society committed to defending the oppressed, helping the poor, and caring for those in need.  But he offers no new way ahead - his call is to turn back, to re-assert the old values and old conventions - that Ol'  time religion.  But that is no longer enough - the world has moved on, and the socialist way ahead lies in different directions...

Michael Jacobs did attempt to chart that way ahead.  He was addressing the Welsh Fabians, meeting for their annual Conference in Cardiff.  He is of the same age and generation as Mark Seddon.  He argued that Labour had lost its magic, its sense of moving towards the distant goal of a better and fairer society.  Just as "Science" had displaced the magic of religion in the 19th century, so the inspirational magic of socialism has been displaced by political managerialism.  "New Labour" (which remains a pejorative term for the Welsh, and cannot be properly articulated without curling the lip) had deliberately drained any inconvenient idealism from the Party, for pragmatic electoral reasons.  He called for the "re-enchantment" (his term) of the Labour movement, the re-capture of its idealism.

  • Jacobs is clearly heading my way.  But the brutal truth is that re-enchantment is not a practicable proposition.  I may, as a Cambridge historian, try to imagine a pre-1750 world, before the Age of Enlightenment and the Advancement of Science - but that is not to "re-enchant" today's religion, to re-endow our churches and chapels with any new relevance.  However, I know precisely what is needed, as a matter of political judgment, to inspire new socialist perceptions, while holding onto the immense global gains which socialism has already made. 
    • This is my prescription...

     

  • The need is for -

a new assertion of individual, human rights, a new leavening of all State initiatives by a growing sensitivity to human oppression, injustice and the abuse of power - the most important equality will in future be the equal enjoyment of those rights.

new forms of participatory democracy, greater individual lay involvement, communally and regionally, in the governance of society - for every citizen, there must be real equality of access to the governance of society.

a new judicial order, developing the institutions of independent assessment and regulation, expanding on the role of citizen juries, drawing on much more extensive lay involvement - equality before the law is acquiring a new and much more extended meaning, and that process should continue; and

a new drive to contain and manage the emerging political salariat, whose manipulation of the electoral processes is already threatening our other freedoms - many of the enemies are freedom are now to found in the political salariat..

I observe - (you will have noticed..) - all the current political conventions - all these initiatives are NEW. 

These will be my own themes for the coming political season... 

Watch this space.

Let us know where your priorities lie...  Drop me a line

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