Dave's random mumblings…

With the questions I have about the man it was inevitable that I was going to get Blair’s memoirs. It does make me feel a little better that my money is going to the British Legion rather than his Tonyness.

Unlike most post career memoirs this one was written by the subject. Blair says that he wrote every word in longhand “on hundreds of notepads” and as the deadline approached he even had his blackberry taken away. I can believe that, he’s an OK writer, but the book would have benefited from fewer clichés and a few more reflective moments.

Unquestionably he is one of the best communicators as a speaker or interviewee. The moments he talked off the cuff and threw away the speeches was when he was at his best, and his best was brilliant (Labour conference in ’95 or ’96 where he talked about his belief and vision for the UK was astounding). In those moments he showed a passion and created a connection that is sorely missing from the book.

One of the most interesting things in the book were his thoughts on Gordon Brown, it’s clear that their relationship in later years was at best, poor. He admits to never really dealing with Brown and his allies when they started to undermine his position; this led to what some commentators called the “Blair-Brown civil war”. Perhaps his most important admission is that he knew Brown would be a disaster a premier (which he was) but did nothing to change the succession agreement between the two rivalries.

He writing does lead to a sort of honesty that’s missing from many of his contemporaries efforts. Unquestionably one of his biggest triumphs was the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. Yet in his discussions of that time he admits to stretching the truth to “breaking point” when trying to put together a settlement in Northern Ireland. Few, if any politicians are honest enough to admit that they were willing to deceive to make the right things happen.

This same emotional honest is missing from his justification for Iraq. He’s direct and clear that he still believes that it was the right thing to do.

He sees him self as a man who tried to bring out the positives in other, and there is significant evidence that this is the case. This is the man who got Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley to work together for peace in Northern Ireland, no one else could have managed that.

He does admit his admiration for George Bush, he calls him a man of genuine integrity and an idealist. You rather get the impression that Blair felt rather bent over by Bush and the relationship does not always reflect well on Blair. Again there is an honesty that was somewhat unexpected, but at the same time the mistakes are not truly acknowledged.

The title comes from his transition over the course of his premiership.

He started his term as a populist leader that completed the Labour journey to government started by Neil Kinnock and John Smith. Ten years later he had matured into a statesman led by his beliefs, popular or not. Ultimately he had to compromise and reshape some of his beliefs to become Labours longest serving PM, he’s open about the compromises he made and accepts where the journey ended was not where he wanted it to.

It’s interesting, and as these books inevitably do, it’s promises more than it delivers. However My Journey comes far closer than many of his peers in delivering something substantial.

His Tonyness announced this week that he had donated the advance and royalties of his memoirs to the Royal British Legion. The money is to help fund a new center to help the rehabilitation of injured service men and women. Unquestionably this is a very important and worthwhile cause.

However Tony Blair must be wondering what the hell he has to do to get some good press out of this. Up front it’s about $8 million, and potentially substantially more. When his donation was announced the London Times ran a headline “”Guilty” Blair gives £5m book cash to troops”. While the Times has never actually endorsed Blair or Labour outright (the paper gave no endorsement in ’97 and a conditional backing of the Tories in 2001) and has been a vocal critic of Blair over the year, the “Guilty” part of the headline seemed to sum up the mood rather well.

Over the following days the deal was questioned – would they get the full advance (yes)? Film rights? Yes. Foreign sales? Yes. What if the book did not sell? No refund to Blair. Would it be named after Blair? No. And finally would Blair take the tax relief on the donation? No, the legion would get the benefits.

So the deal was real, the money was guaranteed and still there were headlines claiming this was blood money and Blair was just clearing his conscience with it.

Unquestionably the British are a land of cynics and Blair is a global figure with a global reputation to protect. In the US there was a “huh, really?” response to the rather hostile reaction by the British papers. The Washington Post did not understand what it called the “withering response” the announcement was greeted with in the UK.

It’s simple, Blair led the country to war on a false premise, and the country has not forgotten that.

His legacy as a Prime Minister was tied so closely to Iraq and it being seen, in hindsight as a justifiable war.

The so-called “Blair Doctrine” described what a “just war” looked like. In short he felt that using preemptive action to prevent humanitarian disasters, such as genocide was the right way forward, and there is much to commend that idea. It advocated intervention for the right reasons and motives rather than for military ambitions.

In a speech in 1999 Blair proposed that five questions that should be asked:

1. Are we sure of our case?
2. Have we exhausted all diplomatic options?
3. Are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake?
4. Are we prepared for the long term?
5. Do we have national interests involved?

Where the answer to all five questions is “yes” then there is a strong case for intervention.

The British generally see three conflicts in the last eleven years that this test has been applied to by the Labour government

Kosovo – probably the strongest argument for the Blair doctrine. Ethnic cleansing was halted, the Serbs removed and leaders tried for war crimes. While not totally stable today, it’s been left in better condition than in 1999. Not perfect, but it’s arguable it meets the case for intervention.

Afghanistan – The humanitarian side was a secondary consideration to the defensive war that justified regime change after 9/11. So far so good. The Taliban was routed, but al-Qaida was not eliminated. With a few exceptions the west has largely walked away. One thing the Afghanis and al-Qaida have is patience, they know the west will get tired and move away eventually. The way the British, Ottomans and Soviet Union have in the past.

Iraq – Tony Blair’s legacy in the eyes of many British people.

In 2004 Tony said of Iraq under Saddam – “Containment will not work… The terrorists have no intention of being contained. Emphatically I am not saying that every situation leads to military action. But we surely have a right to prevent the threat materialising; and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation’s people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam’s.”

This speech represents a huge shift from the five questions that he used to lay out the Blair Doctrine. In this speech he gave sanction for the removal, by force of a dictator such as Saddam Hussein. This was a war fought based on poor intelligence and designed to stop potential future terrorist attacks. The link to the humanitarian principle is remote at best.

Blair lost a great deal of his credibility in Britain during the final years of his time in Downing Street. First by going to war with Iraq despite it not fitting his own doctrine, despite the intelligence saying that WMDs were present being questionable at best. And secondly refusing to apologize for what he did.

Since leaving office he has had no issue with using his profile and name to amass a significant personal fortune though business interests, meetings and speeches. This donation to the British Legion is seen by many as an attempt to improve his legacy with the British electorate.

The question is was this really a cynical attempt to wipe the slate clean, or is he honestly trying to makes amends? As someone who voted Labour in ’97 and ’01 I hope it’s the latter.

Finally, to answer the earlier question about what Blair has to do to catch a break from the British electorate. Saying you were wrong to start this war would be a good place to start.

Any general election day is something of a celebration of democracy: this one feels a little different, for only the second time in the last thirty years we may see a change of government. As I wrote a few weeks ago, this feel different from 1997, the mood is a lot darker and there is not the feeling of better days to come that was had when Tony Blair and New Labour swept the Conservatives from power so comprehensively.

The electorate once again has the chance to remind those who end up in Westminster just who their ultimate boss is. It’s not the whips or the party grandees, it’s the electorate they have been courting so determinedly for the last few weeks.

I think we all understand the country is in trouble. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have actually seen the books and if it’s as bad as we’ve been led to believe it may be the country is faced with the biggest peace time deficit ever.

Whenever the next Prime Minister is will have to face the debt that’s been run up and make a large number of tough decisions. As a country we have tried to mitigate the recession by spending money the country did not have. This money has to be paid back.

In Greece we can see what happens when a government and people live so far beyond their means. There has been a nationwide social breakdown followed by strikes, arson, rioting and today deaths. While I don’ believe that Britain could head down the same path as Greece, but if the government does not reduce it’s spending to match it’s income then massive social problems await.

Blair and Labour were elected in ’97 with a mandate to fix public services and that took money. This increase in public spending was affordable as long as the economy kept growing at a pace that supported it.

When it stopped growing a couple of years ago swift, and potentially unpopular action was required. To be frank, I think Brown bottled it, with worried too much about being reelected rather than doing the right thing for the country

This election is unlike any other. In 1979 the country was feeling the pain, we were in the aftermath of the winter of discontent and inflation was rampant. It was obvious to all that the economy needed to be sorted and it turns out Thatcher was willing to risk her popularity and was the person to do it.

War and a Labour party that was all but unelectable aided her subsequent election wins, but the wins in the 80’ were based upon an economy made possible by the difficult choices and occasionally painful policies her government followed when they first came to power.

I also believe the same policies divided the country in a way never seem before. There were those who made fortunes off her policies, and a huge subclass that were left behind. Her government squandered billions of North Sea oil money and billions more raised by selling publicly owned companies.

The problems with the economy today are less immediate to most people, the power is there and rubbish does not lay uncollected in the street. The tough decisions were put off by Gordon Brown, but they are still there to be made.

The Australian government did the right thing, they made unpopular decisions and decided to live with the results. It hurt, and is still hurting, but the country will come out of the recession in better shape because of it. Whoever is living in Number 10 next week will have to make hard, painful and unpopular decisions. I hope they do the right thing for the country, not the right things for the polls.

One thing I don’t understand is that if Labour has identified 6 Billion in efficiency savings, why have they waited until now to implement them. They have seen the state of borrowing and if they truly waited until the election to roll out these savings it’s truly criminal to waste billions in taxpayers money.

The new legislation put into place by the Tory govenment that was designed to take certain power away from the unions was not really tested untill the miners strike of 1984. In 1981 the Conservative government threatened to close 23 pits, the unions threatened to strike and the government withdrew the planned closures. Many feel that that the confrontation with the free market government and the heavily subsidized coal miners has just been pushed out rather than truly averted.

That year the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in Yorkshire passed a resolution all but guaranteeing a strike should pits be closed for any reason other than exhaustion of the coal or geological problems that can’t be overcome. Because of the regional manner that the NUM was set up, this resolution was only binding in Yorkshire.

A couple of years later Ian McGregor was appointed to run the National Coal Board (NCB). The NCB controlled all nationalized coal mining in the UK and was the employer of the almost 200,000 miners. McGregor had previously turned around the nationalized British Steel company, taking from possibly the least efficient steel maker in Europe to breaking even. This was done by laying off about half the workforce over a two year period, and the NUM were rightfully concerned that his mandate as head of the NCB was similar.

In early 1984 McGregor announced the closure of 20 mines and the loss of 20,000 jobs. The reason given was to rationalize the public subsidy given to the industry by closing the most unprofitable pits. The government realized a strike was possible, perhaps even probable, and had taken steps.  Coal was being stockpiled by the power stations, a number of power plants were converted from coal to to oil fired and  signing contracts with road haulage companies incase the railways union, ASLEF, struck in sympathy or refused to cross picket lines.

The reaction from the NUM was predictable. Immediately 6000 Yorkshire miners walked off the job over the lack of consultation and called a strike vote for the 5th of March. The NCB announced that five pits (two in Yorkshire, one each in County Durham, Kent and Scotland) were to be closed with in 5 weeks.

On March 12th the NUM president Arthur Scargill announced the miners strike was to be nationwide.

The strength of feeling and observation of the strike was regional, and the government used this in an early attempt to break the union. The call to strike was almost universally observed in the coalfields of Yorkshire, Scotland, the North-East, South Wales and Kent, coincidently the places under most threat

In the huge fields of Lancashire miners were split, however the Lancashire union leaders stated the strike was official and would be respected. No ballot of the workers was ever called by the NUM and Nottinghamshire, an area where pits had been modernized, the mines were efficient and had significant reserves used this as the premise to ignore the strike call.

The NUM leadership and Arthur Scargill in particular allowed each region to call for the strike and never called a national ballot. There were a number of reasons for this. Most importantly it’s not clear that a majority would have voted to strike. Nottingham called a ballot and about 70% in the district rejected the call to strike.  Traditionally strikes have been used to protest wages or working conditions, there is no history of using then to protest closure in the UK.

As the strike wore on there were increasingly violent clashes, the largest and most infamous was the so called “Battle of Orgrave”. It took place near Rotherham in June ’84, about 5,000 miners confronted about the same number of police, some mounted on horseback. This was just the most widely reported of a series of violent riots that took place over the summer resulting in the death of a taxi driver transporting a working miner to work.

The government mobilized police from all over the country to ensure the rights of those that chose to cross the picket lines. There was a policy of not using local police in the districts, the government preferred to bring in police to ensure there was little sympathy between the two sides.

The strike itself did not result in any day-to-day disruption or any significant impact to industry. Unlike previous strikes there were no power cuts and the electric generators were able to keep supplies flowing throughout the strike.

The strike officially ended in March 1985, almost exactly a year after it started. There was no new agreement between the union and the NCB. During a conference called to vote on returning to work Kent was the only NUM district that voted to stay out.

In 1983 the UK had 170 working mines and employed close to 200,000. In 2009, this number had decreased to four and less than 6,000. There was a significant round of closures in the early 90′s and there was very little protest from with in in the industry, despite there arguably being significantly more sympathy for the miners than there was in 1984.

Nottinghamshire miners had been led to believe that their jobs were relatively safe, but more mines in the district were closed by 1994. This was seen as a betrayal of promises the government had made to non-striking miners. They believed that their jobs would be safe and their industry had a future.

I must tell you … that what we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and it must NOT succeed. It must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it…. The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob”

Margaret Thatcher, 1984

We’ve had riot shields, we’ve had riot gear, we’ve had police on horseback charging into our people, we’ve had people hit with truncheons and people kicked to the ground…. The intimidation and the brutality that has been displayed are something reminiscent of a Latin American state

Arthur Scargill, 1984

Untill the mid 80′s the unions in the UK held considerable power, they elected political leaders, could force changes of government and to this day hold substantial power in the British Labour party.

John Smith was only Labour leader for a brief time, under his leadership the party accelerated the reforms started by Neil Kinnock that were designed to make the party electable on a national level once again. Had this reinvention of the party not happened I think it would have been almost impossible for Labour to come to power in 1997 under Tony Blair.

Arguably John Smiths biggest single contribution to making the Labour party relevant was getting rid of the trade union block votes and despite considerable trade union opposition establishing a policy of “one-member, one-vote”. Previously the unions had dominated the party by owning huge blocks of votes, the number depended on the number of members of that particular union and together far outweighed the ordinary members of the party. This policy of bloc-votes dated back to an attempt by other political parties to delay the formation of the party in the late 1800′s.

A series of strikes action by multiple unions during the winter of 1978-79, known as the “Winter of discontent” clearly contributed to the downfall of the James Callaghan’s Labour government. Ironically Callaghan was a staunch a trade-unionist (and could not have become Labour leader had he not) but also a realist. Inflation was high, the economy was shaky and the government had appealed for unions to exercise pay restraint, as part of the government’s policy to control inflation.

The government attempted to limit unions to a 5% pay rise led, this call was ignored when Ford negotiated a 18% pay rise with it’s manufacturing unions and the rest of the motor sector was required to followed suit.  This led to government requests for pay restraint to being widely ignored across the private sector.

This led to widespread official and unofficial strikes across the country in both the private and public sectors starting in late ’78. Lorry drivers, power station workers, rubbish collectors, rail workers, nurses, ambulance drivers and perhaps most infamously grave diggers all walked out. This led to a feeling of crisis in the country. I recall nightly scenes of picketed hospitals, heaps of rubbish, piles of coffins and sitting in the living room with lit candles as we lost power once again.

The effect on public opinion was considerable, in a little over three months Labour went from a 5% lead over the Tories in the polls to 20% behind. This led to Callahan’s government loosing a vote of no-confidence in the house and directly led to the Conservative victory in the 1979 general election.

A major part of the Conservative election platform was to control the growing power and boldness of the unions. The Conservatives under Thatcher made calling a legal strike far more difficult. Wild cat strikes (no-notice walk outs), closed shops (mandatory union membership) and flying pickets (pickets brought in from other trade unions) were all outlawed. The legislation was seen by many as a direct response to the winter of 78/79 that led to the vote of no-confidence in the Callahan government.

After the ratification of the Lisbon treaty by the Czech Republic Europe has taken another step towards a United States of Europe by adopting the first EU constitution.

The upshot of this is it’s time for the first so called “European President” to be appointed as the EU becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

I find it rather ironic that it’s the Czechs that were holding up the ratification of the treaty that gives more power to central government, after all it all worked so well when Chamberlin secured peace in our time in 1938 by giving precisely the same country to Germany to stop any further aggression.

The Czech president was looking for guarantees from the rest of the EU that there would be no flood of claims on Czech property from ethnic Germans who were expelled from the former Czech Republic in the aftermath of the Second World War

But I digress, the front runner to become president of this collection of squabbling states with little more than geography and a couple of world wars in common is Tony Blair.

After such impressive performances in his last two jobs as Prime Minister and then as Middle East peace envoy (who visited the Middle East once in two years) his Tonyness seems an interesting choice. The endorsement of a potential President Blair by Gordon Brown (just an incompetent PM or the most incompetent PM?) and Silvio Berlusconi (a man who has also endorsed fraud, immunity from prosecution and heavy hints at tax evasion) really only adds to the growing farce around Blair’s candidacy.

Tony promised the electorate in the UK votes on the Euro and integration, neither of which he delivered.

My favorite quote is from David Miliband who said the EU president needs “Star power” and a “candidate who can stop the traffic in Beijing and Moscow”. No, Europe needs a political leader with ethics, respect and an ability to bring people together. Star power and ego have nothing to do with it.

The Tories have of course been scoring political points like it’s going out of style, but that’s not been difficult recently with Gordon Brown unable to keep his party in line. European spokesman Paul Francois said  “The British people do not like the Lisbon treaty and if it was used to impose Tony Blair as European president without the British people having a say, it would only underline the treaty’s complete lack of democratic legitimacy,”

After the Tory government of the late 80′s and most of the 90′s it would be difficult for the UK to become less pro-European. After all Labour were pro-EU (at least compared to Thatcher), but somehow Blair and Brown have managed it through ignoring both the electorate and the rest of Europe.