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Sean Gabb
==
Free Life Commentary
Editor: Sean Gabb
Issue Number 43
Thursday, the 14th September 2000
Thoughts on the Fuel Crisis,
and why it May be the Death Knell
of the Conservative Party
by Sean Gabb
As I write this article, a blanket of silence has fallen over South
London. The roads are empty of traffic. A few busses are moving far down
on the Woolwich Road, and I am sure the police are out cruising a few of
the less salubrious council estates. But the only movement I saw when I
went out this morning to buy a newspaper was people on foot or on
bicycle.
No one that I know has been inconvenienced by the petrol strike. I was
marginally annoyed not to have got to the filling station before the
pumps ran dry. But I still have a quarter of a tank - enough for
emergencies - and Mrs Gabb and I made sure to stock up well on food and
drink yesterday at the local Asda. My mother is sitting on a food
mountain that the European Commission might envy. All my friends have
food enough to last a fortnight. And most of us have some means of
defence in case the less provident classes come looking to share our
modest plenty. We can therefore sit back and proclaim our unworried
sympathy with the blockades and strikes that have paralysed this country
and parts of Europe in protest at the high taxes on petrol.
Watching television last night, it was cheering to see how desperate
Tony Blair's face has become. He looks like a hunted animal, and the
retreat of his hairline can no longer be hidden by careful styling. It
was also enjoyable to see the BBC at last reporting how unpopular he is
among ordinary people.
The only fault in the media coverage has been the treatment of William
Hague and the Conservative Party. Mr Hague was shown last night looking
rather cheerful, and the journalist reporting his reaction suggested
that this was the breakthrough that the Tories needed to come back as a
really serious opposition. I disagree. The protest is doing no good to
this Labour Government, and may be the start of a process that brings it
down. But for the Conservative Party it is a disaster. If there were
anyone of strategic vision left in the Party leadership, there would be
panic in Central Office. The past seven days have been almost as bad for
the Conservative Party as a second election defeat. Let me explain.
For the past hundred years - ever since the rise of organised labour -
the Conservative Party has mediated every middle class grievance. It has
not done this very well since about 1940, but it has done the job well
enough never so far to have lost its political monopoly of the right.
Edward Heath, for example, was a shockingly bad opposition leader in the
1960s. But he still managed to benefit in 1970 from disillusion with
Labour. He was then a disastrously - indeed, a treasonably - bad Prime
Minister. But the Conservatives still managed to ride the popular
disgust at Labour in the late 1970s. This is no longer happening.
By increasing numbers of people, the Blair Government is seen as perhaps
the worst in English history. At home, it is destroying both civil
liberty and national identity. It is purging the judiciary, the police,
the armed forces and the civil service of anyone who might object to its
politically correct agenda, and is filling these institutions with its
own active supporters. It is using the security services to spy on and
disrupt any group it does not like. It has quietly amended the electoral
laws so that its creatures in the police and local government can rig
any important ballot. Symbols of national greatness and continuity are
systematically denigrated or ignored - or, in the case of the Monarchy
and Church of England, are gleefully assisted in the work of self-
destruction. Abroad, it is delivering us into the power of a corrupt and
potentially tyrannical European Union that is already discussing the
abolition of our common law and trial by jury, the banning of political
parties that do not support membership, and the stationing of foreign
troops in any place where popular opposition is seen as more than
usually dangerous. The Government is also sending British servicemen
abroad to fight in wars that do not advance our national interest, and
that frequently involve atrocities against civilians.
Against all this, the Conservative Party has not raised one effective
voice. Of course, where civil liberty and Europe are concerned, Labour
is only completing what the Conservatives started, and opposition now
would require acts of contrition that people like William Hague have not
the intelligence or courage to attempt. Again, where political
correctness is concerned, there can be no action. The Conservative
leadership has conceded moral legitimacy and cultural domination to the
left, and is reduced to seeking respectability by not challenging any of
the core leftist doctrines. But in spite of this, there is room for
opposition. The Conservatives could have opposed the Serbian War, and
made serious trouble about the sending of troops to Sierra Leone. They
did not. They could have opposed the packing of the administration with
Labour supporters and the fixing of the electoral laws. They did not. At
the moment, they could at least be promising lower petrol taxes. They
are not. Above and beyond the usual call to betray their own supporters,
the Conservatives are committing political suicide.
The current protests are the most visible symptom of this Tory suicide.
They are the physical equivalent of the Tory inability to benefit from
the growing public disenchantment with Tony Blair and to rise much above
30 per cent in the opinion polls. There is talk in the newspapers about
how European the English are becoming - how we are copying the French in
taking direct action against government policies we do not like. If by
this it is meant that we are becoming more hot blooded or inclined to
public violence, the newspapers are wrong. We are beginning to act like
the French simply because our political system has become as fraudulent
as theirs has always been. There is no point in letting the Conservative
Party mediate our grievances, because these grievances either will not
be mediated at all, or will be mediated so faintly or incompetently that
there is no point in hoping for success.
And so if William Hague had any glimmer of political vision, he would
wipe the idiot smile he has allowed to settle on his face during the
past few days. This is not so much a breakthrough for his party as proof
of its growing irrelevance. Had he been one inch of the leader he should
have been during the past three years, these protests would not even
have been imagined.
The protests will not succeed in their immediate aim of getting lower
petrol taxes. But the immediate aim is not that important. What is
important is that the lower middle class workers of this country are
beginning to sack their representatives and speak for themselves. After
years of watching in rage but isolated silence as their livelihoods were
damaged and their dearest interests destroyed, they have discovered
their own powerful voice. The protests are the equivalent for this class
- which is my class as well - of the 1926 National Strike. That happened
because the old industrial working class saw itself as sold out by its
Labour Party representatives. It was a failure in its immediate aim of
stopping the wage cuts. But the class consciousness and class solidarity
that the Strike enabled set an agenda in British politics for the next
fifty years. The farmers and self-employed lorry drivers are driving
home at the moment, and petrol taxes will not be cut this side of the
next budget, and perhaps not even then. But millions of conversations
have been started in tens of thousands of pubs throughout this country.
Internet connections that were bought in the vague hope of helping
children do their homework are suddenly being claimed by parents to
exchange news and opinions. The fightback against the destruction of our
ancient freedom and our national independence has entered a new and
exciting phase.
Certainly, we lack any expression of our class in electoral politics.
But that expression will emerge in time. There are always politicians in
search of a following, and it is up to us to ensure that the
representatives we choose next time are not the Quisling Rightists who
run the Conservative Party and who took over and destroyed the
Countryside Alliance.
For the moment, though, it is enough to exult in the solidarity and
power that we have found for ourselves. And I am waiting for the penny
finally to drop in Conservative Central Office, and for the smile to
vanish from William Hague's face - forever.
==========================
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