Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

Tory mythology and the ConDem Coalition’s cuts

g  BY LAURA FRIEL

“WE’RE the radicals now,” British Prime Minister David Cameron announced to a buoyant Conservative Party conference last month. On the cover of the latest edition of the Economist magazine, Cameron is depicted sporting a red, white and blue ‘Mohican’ hairstyle, the classic punk symbol of rebellion utilised to acknowledge the Conservative Party’s ascendancy.
Make no mistake about it, what we are witnessing in Britain is not the taming of the Tories by their coalition partners but a realignment of the Right. The image of Cameron (reminiscent of a poster published by Thatcher’s Young Conservative Movement urging others to “join the revolution”) is one signal; another is the re-emergence of fascist street gangs like the English Defence League.
And ‘fairness’ is to be the watchword for what is set to be the greatest assault on the welfare state since its inception in the 1940s.
Margaret Thatcher had led the first sustained Tory attack through the privatisation of public assets in the 1980s, and now they’re back, poised to cut public funding by £81billion within the next four years... and that is only a beginning.
David Cameron told the Conservative Party Conference last month that there was no “reasonable” alternative to the slash and burn policy dreamt up by the Coalition to address the massive public debt incurred by bailing out the banks. Not that the British Prime Minister mentioned either “bailing out” or “banking”.
But if it was going to be “tough” it was also going to be “fair”, pledged Tory Chancellor (Finance Minister) George Osborne. In the interest of “fairness” and “to sustain public support” those “at the higher end of the income scale” would also be “affected” by the measures taken by the Chancellor.
But regardless of the spin, the British Government’s decision to address the deficit by cutting public spending rather than supporting economic growth inevitably means the hardest-hit will be the poorest, less-powerful, least-organised sections of society.
Despite expressing the hope that the private sector will magically mop up job losses in the public, Cameron’s coalition has no strategy for economic growth - only a jobs and welfare cutting strategy.
In the North of Ireland, the impact of a Tory-led British Government is barely evident yet. But it is already clear that the dynamic of the Peace Process and the operation of the power-sharing institutions are robust mechanisms which can be used to protect and promote the interests of people here.
Persistent lobbying by the First and deputy First Minister, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, successfully secured a £200million rescue package from the British Exchequer to help savers in the ill-fated Presbyterian Mutual Society.
Less clear is the fate of the £18billion capital spending commitment made by the previous administration and backed by the Irish Government. Both McGuinness and Robinson have been united in insisting that, as part of the Peace Process, the commitment must be honoured by the new government.
Speaking in the Assembly, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness made it clear that “Sinn Féin will oppose unfair and unjust proposed cuts by the British Government. Our position remains that we must grow our economy, protect those most vulnerable and work to meet the requirements of those in most objective need.”
A few months ago, comments like these would have been innocuous, in keeping rather than at odds with the dominant discourse around poverty and the tools with which to tackle it. This is no longer the case.
It has only been a few weeks since Cameron’s coalition took office but already the ideological framework around which we are being asked to ‘all pull together’ has changed.
Behind the mantra of ‘fair’ and ‘reasonable’ there has been a shift away from the real towards the perceived. The most evident has been the subjugation of objective need, as a means of triggering our response to poverty, in favour of value judgements around ‘deserving’.
Commenting on welfare provision, Cameron told the Tory Party conference:
“Fairness means giving people what they deserve and what people deserve can depend on how they behave.”
While objective need is unequivocal and measurable, deserving is nothing more than high-handed opinion dressed up as morality. In the hands of the Tories, it is little more than class prejudice.
Now notions of ‘fairness’ replace the quest for equality and ‘reason’ evoked only as a call for acquiescence to the withdrawal of public finance and welfare provision.
Opposition to cuts - whether in the form of workers fighting to keep their jobs, communities defending public services or the jobless, sick and disabled demanding decent lives - has already been labelled by the Tories as ‘unpatriotic’.
Addressing their home rather than Irish audience, in Britain the message was clear: ‘Your country needs you, so put up and shut up.’ Such a notion harks back to Thatcher’s demonisation of striking miners, and Irish republicans, as ‘the enemy within’.
The extent of the cuts in the North of Ireland remains unclear. The British Government’s figure of £1.4billion has been challenged by the Assembly’s Finance Department which has assessed the loss at £4billion “in real terms”.
The subsequent loss of up to 40,000 jobs in the public sector is expected to impact adversely on private sector employment. Further job losses in the private sector are expected to run into thousands. Worse again, the threat of a 40% cut in capital investment, if carried out, will have a devastating impact on an already-struggling construction industry.
The legacy of partition north of the border, an underdeveloped economy, disproportionate levels of poverty, joblessness and ill-health will mean that the imposition of cuts will hit people here particularly hard.
Over a third of employment in the Six Counties is dependent upon public finance, with a disproportionately high percentage of people working in the public sector, as well as many key private sector employers reliant on Government contracts.
Almost 70% of the contracts secured by the road construction industry are based upon public funding with many other industries in a similar position.
Recently-released figures show that unemployment in the North of Ireland has already more than doubled since the beginning of the recession. Those figures are set to rise further still in the wake of the ConDems’ Comprehensive Spending Review.
The economic crisis was triggered by reckless financial speculation by a high-flying, bonus-driven elite. Liberal Democrat Vince Cable’s “spivs and gamblers” had played with the wealth of nations but ordinary families have been left to pick up the tab.
In fact, analysis of the figures show, women, children, the poor and sick will bear more of the burden than the bankers. According to the British Chancellor’s own figures, the poorest 10% will bear the largest load. There is nothing ‘fair’ or ‘reasonable’ about that.
And now we begin to understand what the Right means when it declares itself to be “radical”. The punk image of the Tory leader doesn’t mean the Conservative Party or their coalition partnership with the Liberal Democrats is anti-Establishment.
If our understanding of the Establishment remains the rich, privileged and powerful, then the Tory leaders are already fully signed-up members of that elite.
The current ConDem Coalition Cabinet of 29 members includes 23 millionaires. Cameron and Osborne are both multi-millionaires as well as heirs to considerable fortunes. Their family and boyhood connections include some of the wealthiest business tycoons and bankers in the world.
A guide to the British peerage describes Cameron as “the most aristocratic leader” since Alec Douglas-Home, the last member of the British House of Lords to become Prime Minister, while Osborne is heir to an Anglo-Irish baronetcy. We’re not just talking money, we’re talking old money.
The re-emergence of the Right in British politics is radical and anti-Establishment in only a perverse sense. The scope of their intended assault on the welfare state and their disruption, distortion and disregard for established, progressive and often hard-won notions of welfare and workers’ rights is something that Margaret Thatcher dreamed of.