Steve Richards: The banks debate in Britain has a 1970s parallel
[Steve Richards became The Independent’s chief political commentator in 2000.]
The determined resilience of bankers seeking millions in undeserved bonuses has a tiny echo with the actions of militant union leaders in the 1970s. The more revealing parallel is the response of different governments to the two enduring crises, or rather their feeble paralysis in the face of daunting and new developments that challenge all they had come to believe. Conservative and Labour ministers were slow to respond effectively in the 1970s. Labour and Conservative ministers have been slow to respond now. In the face of something new, speed terrifies them.
In the 1970s, successive Conservative and Labour governments sought and failed to address a series of industrial emergencies. A miners' strike helped to bring down the Tory government in 1974. The "winter of discontent" led to the fall of the Labour administration that came next. Lessons were not learnt for an entire decade. Now the Coalition follows a Labour government in choosing to tolerate the darkly comical level of banking bonuses, having demanded a more stringent approach in opposition. Lessons are not learnt.
In the early 1970s, the Tory Prime Minister, Ted Heath, introduced a pay policy to ease the emergency. As Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson was scathing in his disdain for such an ineffectual approach. Wilson insisted that if he were in power he would have nothing to do with a pay policy. He would sort out the unions in a different way. Within months of entering No 10, Wilson and then Jim Callaghan negotiated an incomes policy too. It broke down in similar circumstances to Heath's. Like characters in a film noir the leaders in the 1970s were drawn to their own downfall by repeating mistakes of their predecessors, even though they recognised their opponents' errors when they were originally made.
Yesterday Ed Miliband unearthed another devastating quote from David Cameron when he was leader of the Opposition in which he pledged to place rigid limits on bonuses in the banks that are currently state owned. Now he seeks no such limit. Like Wilson's attack on Heath's incomes policy, the ferocity of Cameron/Osborne's pre-election onslaught on the banks is revealing...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
The determined resilience of bankers seeking millions in undeserved bonuses has a tiny echo with the actions of militant union leaders in the 1970s. The more revealing parallel is the response of different governments to the two enduring crises, or rather their feeble paralysis in the face of daunting and new developments that challenge all they had come to believe. Conservative and Labour ministers were slow to respond effectively in the 1970s. Labour and Conservative ministers have been slow to respond now. In the face of something new, speed terrifies them.
In the 1970s, successive Conservative and Labour governments sought and failed to address a series of industrial emergencies. A miners' strike helped to bring down the Tory government in 1974. The "winter of discontent" led to the fall of the Labour administration that came next. Lessons were not learnt for an entire decade. Now the Coalition follows a Labour government in choosing to tolerate the darkly comical level of banking bonuses, having demanded a more stringent approach in opposition. Lessons are not learnt.
In the early 1970s, the Tory Prime Minister, Ted Heath, introduced a pay policy to ease the emergency. As Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson was scathing in his disdain for such an ineffectual approach. Wilson insisted that if he were in power he would have nothing to do with a pay policy. He would sort out the unions in a different way. Within months of entering No 10, Wilson and then Jim Callaghan negotiated an incomes policy too. It broke down in similar circumstances to Heath's. Like characters in a film noir the leaders in the 1970s were drawn to their own downfall by repeating mistakes of their predecessors, even though they recognised their opponents' errors when they were originally made.
Yesterday Ed Miliband unearthed another devastating quote from David Cameron when he was leader of the Opposition in which he pledged to place rigid limits on bonuses in the banks that are currently state owned. Now he seeks no such limit. Like Wilson's attack on Heath's incomes policy, the ferocity of Cameron/Osborne's pre-election onslaught on the banks is revealing...