Familiarity with Italian political and religious culture has given little insight into British political life, until the last decade. This evening the United Kingdom is on the verge of becoming a fully blown corporatist state. At the close of nominations for the leadership of the Labour party at noon tomorrow a corporatist political party will crown its stalinoid candidate for the office of prime minister, and all the executive powers of Crown prerogative will fall under their control.
It is a truism that history never repeats itself; but the evils associated with authoritarian state corporatism will act, are acting already, even if in a fashion transformed but recognisable from over half a century ago.
Individual liberties have been abolished, even habeas corpus; evidence obtained by torture is readmitted into legal proceedings; the right to be secure from delivery into another criminal jurisdiction has been abrogated; trial by jury limited; the freedom to go about lawful business without a requirement to identify oneself is gone; failure to proffer information on statuses and wealth is criminalised; no one may conduct their life within the law without constantly proving their conformity.
A network of appointed state officials has siphoned off the authority and funding of elected local authority; large sectors of society no longer form their exchanges and relationships with one another in families and familial structures, but with the state as it advances into every aspect of private life by means testing and regulation, the creation of moral hazard.
We never experienced the first round of these systems' establishment - indeed our grandfathers fought them. So they are not recognized for the threat they present to a proper and democratic political system, and a moral way of life.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free'
About Me
Posts
Heroes
- Axel Leijonhufvud
- E.E.Evans-Pritchard
- Edmund Leach
- Francois Couperin
- Joan Robinson
- John Maynard Keynes
- Louis de Soissons
- Mario Draghi
- Noam Chomsky
- Pablo Picasso
- Paul Klee
- Pietro Porcinai
- The Earl of Onslow
- Umberto Boccioni
- Wassily Kandinski
- Wilhelm von Humboldt
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(254)
-
▼
May
(28)
- Just Looking
- Leaving Home
- Bleeding Labour
- Labour Executive Lies
- Homework
- The In and Out
- Bereft but hungry
- Black holes in the Mediterranean
- Garden glory
- Mussolini was better looking
- Corporatism
- Room with a view
- Stranded Assets
- Monarchy and the Democratic State
- How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?
- The Writing on the Wall
- A Commonplace Book
- Beeching's legacy
- Labour rules
- ‘Every school - whatever its intake and wherever i...
- Why are we putting up with this?
- Dead to rights
- Fire and dust
- Conservatives hold Hatfield (and Welwyn)
- The relevance of Trollope
- Reality and romanticism
- Maps and their meanings
- From pluralist democracy to dictatorship of the state
-
▼
May
(28)
Fallen Angels
- David Cameron (for risking the disorderly dissolution of the Euro)
- Giorgio Napolitano (for stance on Budapest 1956: Prague 1968: Italy 2013)
- Mervyn King (for bailing-out Northern Rock)
- Nicholas Kaldor (for inventing VAT)
10 comments:
I find what you are saying incredibly offensive (but I'll try not to respond in kind) - especially as it runs counter to so much of what I have seen in practice. Most of the trade unions, who supposedly now control the country, have had many of their demands thwarted by the Labour Government - and quite often the main source of resistance has been the Treasury led by Gordon Brown (corporate manslaughter is one example among many). I have quite a lot of experience of Eastern Europe and have seen what totalitarianism can do - and what we have in the UK is not totalitarianism.
Of course you should be aware that Churchill said very much the same when the Labour Party came to power in 1945 - and he was clearly proven wrong by subsequent events.
My guess is that I could quote facts and my perceptions until I am blue in the face - and there would be no change whatsoever in your central hypothesis. The only way to challenge you central hypothesis is for you to use it to make some predictions as to what will come to pass before the next General Election (or 2010 if you don't think that there will be one) and then to see how they stand up in the future. Go on put them down on the record - are you prepared to let you theories be subject to some scientific testing - or are they driven purely by hot air and prejudice.
By the way, when was the right to face criminal prosecution in foreign courts abrogated - there has not been such an absolute right for a long time since the first extradition treaty was entered into - you may want to say that the scope of extradition has been extended unfairly or whatever (e.g the Nat West case) - but that is not the same as saying the right has been abrogated.
In my grandfather's day the only ever real contact he had with the State was an occasional visit to the Post Office to buy or renew a gun, dog or game licence. Except for the time he fought for this country.
Decades of centralism and the growth of the Leviathan State, under both Labour and Conservative governments, have meant a concommitant increase in the powers of the State over all our lives and its intrusion into every aspect of our daily living.
It's not just the pernicious and creeping assault on our personal liberty, or the nibbling away at freedoms we have enjoyed since Magna Carta, or the signing away of the rights of British subjects to US police officials (and lickarse labour will not be forgiven for this) but also an undermining of the traditional role of the police and a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between them and the public to secure their role as the State Police.
Brown is not the only Stalinist in government. No, we are not yet in a totalitarian state but the groundwork has been done. Instead of a network of informers, we have electronic snooping. Places on quangos are reserved for party members and fellow-travellers. Citizens are locked into State dependency and obedience through Welfare slavery. The judiciary are being brought under political control and their independence undermined. We already have 'protective custody' in place; citizens can be held in prison for life for committing a trivial offence with Slabour's new indeterminate sentences.
Yes HG these are dangerous times - but there's enough will left in the British people to shake off the shackles of the Labour police state and regain our freedoms.
TBNGU - it is odd that you lead with
"trade unions, who supposedly now control the country, have had many of their demands thwarted by the Labour Government"
because HG never mentioned unions, still less asserted that they control the country.
These days I don't know of anyone who thinks they do - you are harking back to pre-Thatcher days.
As any fule kno, genuine trade unionists are among the first up against the wall under totalitarian regimes. Their being ignored and thwarted by McBroon's corporatist regime is entirely in keeping with HG's thesis.
(TBNGU - kinda sounds like a traditional dinosoar union ...)
"Individual liberties have been abolished, even habeas corpus; evidence obtained by torture is readmitted into legal proceedings; the right to be secure from delivery into another criminal jurisdiction has been abrogated; trial by jury limited; the freedom to go about lawful business without a requirement to identify oneself is gone; failure to proffer information on statuses and wealth is criminalised; no one may conduct their life within the law without constantly proving their conformity."
May I quote you HG? So succint. So true. So alarming.
TBNGU is "Offended"! Ha ha ha Ha! Is he an oppressed minority? Now you KNOW its not allowed to "offend" anyone these days, you naughty girl. Imagine how he'd feel if you actually insulted him!
If you would like to quote something I've written you are always welcome, Lilith; all these things are happening, but by grouping them the threateningness may be overstated.
ND remarked that some of the effects being produced should be put down to the sheer stupidity of those fiddling about with arrangements that they don't fully understand.
I'm not a conspiracy sort of person, more a trends and changes can take on a will of their own if checks and balances are removed - they aren't there for nothing, sort of person.
I agree about incompetence/ignorance being a factor. So much makes so little sense however. I remember starting work at Lloyds of London straight out of university and being SHOCKED to my naive liberal core by what I found there, the randomness of decisions, the financial waste, the mindless sexual harassment and discrimination, the arbitrary nature of decisions that cost dear. The incompetance was astonishing but there seemed a conspiracy to keep things the way they were. Some it cost very dear.
It was no place for a lady. Or anyone with a brain and self respect. Perhaps government is a little the same.
Not allowed to be 'ladylike' any more L, as well as not allowed to 'offend' others.
I shall wear short, white, lace gloves, a panama with band, and make white and spiteful remarks with a steady social smile. I shall do such things...
Now you are talking HG. Middle Classness As A Martial Art!
My (much missed) late mother in law could bitch with enormous grace and sang froid, forcing her victims to either crumble or bite back. The very few that bit back were friends for life.
I am not often ladylike. I can do demure.
You do demure, I'll do ladylike (being from Hatfield), then L, and the best will be that often they don't even realise they're dead.
Post a Comment