Ross McKibbin

Ian Gilmour could scarcely have timed the publication of this book better. The last few weeks really have been a Marxist ‘conjuncture’: a heightened moment when social realities can no longer be contained by dominant ideologies; or, in the idiom of an un-Marxist age, the moment when the sky is darkened by chickens returning to roost. Within the same few days the true nature of the recession – that it is now largely out of control – has been generally admitted, even by those who throughout the last election campaign stoutly declined to say anything sensible; the precarious position of British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce cars which, like Jaguar and Rolls-Royce aeroengines, had been so unwisely privatised, became all too public; Black Wednesday itself, when delusion and false pride were punished with a speed uncommon even in Classical tragedy. One minute the Prime Minister sees the pound as Europe’s hardest currency; the next it is chased out of the ERM, softer than the peseta. And finally, the astonishing decision to obliterate half the country’s coal industry – a decision itself a direct consequence of the way gas and electricity were privatised by the Thatcher Government. In the midst of all this Lord Gilmour has published his account of Thatcherism, Dancing with Dogma, a felicitous title to a book which comes wrapped in the fine photo of the author dancing with Dogma which readers of the London Review saw last July – he slightly uneasy, she unnaturally coy. She had just dismissed him from her Cabinet.’

The pollsters will no doubt eventually discover why voting Conservative is regarded by so many as a solitary vice to be disclosed (and then anonymously) to none but the returning officer; in the meantime we can only speculate about the election result on the basis of not very good evidence. Nevertheless, despite that, and what was recorded in those genuinely puzzling polls (particularly the exit polls), it seems reasonable to argue that a Labour victory was always unlikely, because 13 years of unremitting effort had gone into making it unlikely.

This is a timely and exceptionally interesting book. 1976, the year of IMF intervention, together with the winter of 1978-79, represents in purest form what was for most people (insofar as they have any memory of the Seventies) characteristic of that decade: persistent economic failure and social disintegration at home, humiliation abroad. It is a memory that has also had profound political consequences. In the public mind the Labour Party is inextricably associated with these failures and humiliations; though it bears no more ‘responsibility’ for them than the preceding Conservative government, the Conservatives have been much more successful at distancing themselves from their own part in the debacle; and it is undeniable that the Labour Party was in office for most of the decade (just) and during what is now thought to be its lowest moments. Thus, as Labour tries to convince us that it is a responsible party led by grave statesmen, it is speaking from within the long shadow of the Seventies. And it seems very likely that during the course of this election the Conservatives will have been insinuating into our consciousness all those now familiar words – ‘chaos’, ‘ungovernable’, ‘inflation’, ‘trade unions’, though not ‘unemployment’ – just in case we have forgotten the Seventies.’

In Imperial Russia there was a ‘What is to be done?’ genre of political writing which was – except, perhaps, in the case of Lenin – rarely optimistic. On the contrary, there tended to be an assumption that there was too much to do and probably no chance of doing it. In Britain we find ourselves, mutatis mutandis, in an analogous situation. We have a government which has scarcely any reason to exist and hardly anything of importance to say to the electorate, but we face an almost unendurably long election campaign which that government has at least an even chance of winning – in which case nothing will be done at all. When, therefore, we ask what is to be done, we must also remember that the problem of arrival is inseparable from the problem of what we do when we arrive.’

The clamorous whispers of an impending election remind us that the present government must soon devise a plausible electoral campaign. Given the events of the last four years, this will not be easy: on any objective reckoning, almost no government this century will present the electorate with such a record of wilful failure. But, of course, objective reckonings matter little in the outcome of British general elections, and ‘failure’ has several definitions: even from failure many gain, or think they gain, which is why the political system devised by the Conservatives in the Eighties will long outlive Mrs Thatcher. Nonetheless, there will be some testing moments for Central Office, and their campaign is likely to be dominated by a combination of audacity and reticence.