Back to basic hypocrisy
SEX, corruption, resignations and suicides — not necessarily in that order
- have rocked an increasingly weak government and exposed John
Major's "Back to Basics" campaign as a hypocritcal sham.
International Viewpoint #254 March 1994
P
GILL LEE* — London, 7 February 1994
R ECENT opinion polls
have shown Labour twenty-four points ahead, a lead which, if transferred to a general election, would mean the defeat of the Conservative government and the loss of one-hundred and sixty of their seats. Declining middle class support in the South of England has been accompanied by growing opposition from otherwise rightwing tabloid newspapers like the Sun and Today. Under the headline "Rotten to the Core" Today's editor argued in mid-January that the Conservatives were "Sinking in a sea of scandal". This was in response to news that the Conservative run Westminster Council (in London) had gerrymandered votes by selling off council homes, while thousands remained homeless. Today argued that Prime Minister John Major was "dangerously out of touch (as) shown in his wriggling and squirming over Back to Basics... (and) in his cynical launching of a moral crusade which backfired on him."
The financial scandals have since grown. Westminster Council is said to have borrowed its ideas on housing from Conservative flagship Wandsworth Council (London). Individual Conservative MPs, such as Theresa Gorman and Alan Duncan, are said to have personally benefited from the sale of council houses and Duncan has been forced to resign amidst allegations of impropriety. Dr Michael Dutt, implicated in the Westminster "homes-forvotes" scandal has just been found dead with gunshot wounds. Most serious of all, the Public Accounts Committee, Parliament's watch-dog on public expenditure, a majority of whose members are Conservative, has just delivered the most damning report in its one-hundred and forty year history. It sets out a catalogue of mismanagement, incompetence and fraud - twenty-six different scandals involving millions of pounds. 16
### BRITAIN
While the financial scandals may prove to be more long lasting in their effect, the government's trauma was initially sparked by a series of allegations about the sexual impropriety of MPs. Tim Yeo, the Environment Minister, was forced by his Constituency party to resign as a minister because he had fathered a child from his adulterous relationship with a Conservative local councillor. The wife of a Conservative Minister, the Earl of Caithness, shot herself after rumours of marital problems. Conservative Transport Minister, Steven Norris, narrowly escaped sacking after revelations about a string of lovers. And in a wonderful piece of quintessentially British farce, Conservative MP David Ashby, denied a homosexual relationship and explained sharing a hotel double bed with a male friend thus: "It was much cheaper... It halved the price", he argued. His wife did not agree and spilt the story to the tabloids who lapped it up.
### Human beings
Many voters would normally share the view expressed by Health Minister Virginia Bottomley that "It is well understood that politicians are human beings just like the rest of us". But the fathering of illegitimate children by Conservative MPs became a matter for public scandal and outrage because of the explicitly moral Back to Basics campaign launched by the Conservatives at their annual conference last October, a campaign aimed in particular at single mothers.
Back to Basics began as a clarion call from the right of the Conservative Party. While right wingers like Education Secretary, John Patten, had long been vocal on morality, for example warning against the loss of a belief in sin, defeat over Maastricht prompted the Party's right into an explicit moral campaign. In the run up to the Party Conference in October, ministers such as Treasury Chief Secretary Michael Portillo, Welsh Secretary John Redwood and Social Services Minister Peter Lilley made a series of speeches calling for a mixture of greater self-reliance, less dependency, and more selective welfare benefits. The problems of the British economy were to be dealt with by cutting taxes and slashing the welfare state. Single mothers became a particular target of Conservative abuse, blamed in a series of speeches for an increase in juvenile crime, falling educational standards and living off the welfare state. In July, John Redwood made a much publicised visit to the St Mellon's housing estate in a run down area of Cardiff and expressed his shock at the number of single mothers there who were apparently well contented not to be living with men. "In (St. Mellon's) people had begun to accept that babies just happened and there was no presumption in favour of two adults creating a loving family background for their children. It is that which we have to change, he argued. At Party Conference Michael Portillo joined the rush for the reactionary moral high ground. "It is time to return to plain speaking and traditional values... Personal responsibility has been undermined by a state which does too much." The high point of the right's ideological offensive was a speech to the Conference from Peter Lilley in which he recited a "little list" of fraudsters which included "young women who get pregnant just to jump the housing list"
John Major may have signed his own political death warrant when, rather than distance himself from the rightwing speeches of his ministers, which were clear statements for a moral crusade, he appeared to endorse them: "We stand for self-reliance, decency and respect for order. We must go back to basics and the Conservative Party will lead the country back to those basics right across the board: sound money, free trade, traditional teaching, respect for family and the law", ran his conference speech. Amidst the scandals
* The author is a member of the editorial board of the British Fourth Internationalist paper, Socialist Outlook.
International Viewpoint #254 March 1994 which broke in January, Major was to try and argue that Back to Basics had never been about personal morality but "about policy issues of concern to ev-
"None of my ministers have interpreted (Back to Basics) as an attack on single mothers", he argued in defence of MP Tim Yeo, caught making his own personal addition to their numbers.
Major's denials cut little ice, especially since in the same week the Government announced plans to strip single parent families of their priority status on waiting lists for council homes, placing them in hostels instead: "It solves the baby sitting problem", argued Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley.
Back to Basics was not just a farce in which an ideological attack launched on single mothers and absent fathers collapsed in the popular perception that "Ministers appeared to have been fathering more children in secret love nests than the medieval popes", as the Guardian put it. Back to Basics was a desperate attempt by a desperate Government to paper over fundamental problems for British capitalism in dealing with its historic decline as an imperialist power, and the very real crisis it has been thrown into by the economic choices of the Conservative Government. It was an attempt to provide ideological support for a whole series of measures aimed at cutting the welfare state and propping up the traditional family.
Back to Basics also represents an attempt by the Conservatives to reconcile the irreconcilable. Long before Major assumed the Conservative party leadership the Conservatives had been family values the Conservatives claim to support and which many in their constituency base fiercely defend. The expansion of the service sector after the Second World War, with women as a key component of this workforce, and the erosion of Britain's manufacturing base in which most men worked, means that women now make up 49% of the labour force. Since 1970, 90% of all new jobs created in Britain have gone to women. The number of women at work exceeds the number of men in 11 regions of the country. Male unemployhighest level since the 1930s. By contrast just 5.6% of the female workforce is unemployed, but half of women workers are in part-time jobs, often very poorly paid.
### Traditional
Women's entry into the labour force, and high unemployment among men, undermines the traditional family. Recent television documentaries have shown that many young women in areas of high unemployment, such as the pit valleys in Wales, and the Steel towns in Northern England and the St Mellon's housing estate, see little use in having young men live with them and their children. Single mothers are now a "normal" part of society, representing 20% of all households. The acceptance by more and more people that many single mothers do a good job looking after their children, and that the traditional family canup by a lone parent are more likely to be poor, do badly at school, have a drug or drink problem and end up in jail." Single parent families are certainly poor. 42% of single mothers have gross weekly incomes of less than £100, compared to 4% of married couples. Lack of nursery provision makes it very hard for single mothers to work.
The seeds sown by Thatcher's "economic miracle" are growing into the weeds of economic decay as it becomes increasingly apparent that the problems of the British economy are long term, structural and to do with the basic choice made in the Thatcher years to make a fast buck rather than invest long term in manufacturing industry. The problems with the economy are closely linked to the crisis of the traditional family. Failure to invest in manufacturing industry, erosion of working conditions, increasing use of women as a cheap and flexible workforce and the attacks unleashed on the public sector and the welfare state have all combined to create a crisis not just in the economy but in society as a whole.
But cutting the welfare state and forcing its caring functions back into the family and onto women is now a financial imperative for the Conservatives. Spending on social security alone currently accounts for 12.3% of Gross Domestic Product and has increased by 700% since 1950. In targeting the public sector as a whole and the welfare state in
As the Guardian put it: "Ministers groping for a family policy which would appeared to have been fathering match its traditional rhetoric with its increasingly confident free market ideomore children in secret love nests logy. As the party of traditional values, than the medieval popes."
the Conservatives have governed over fourteen years of soaring crime, crisis in the economy and the erosion of the traditional family: as a proportion of all families, single parent families nearly doubled between 1976 and 1991, from
10 to 19%. Fewer than one in four British households now conforms to the traditional image of a married couple with children. Back to Basics was an illthought-out attempt by the Conservatives to deal with a dilemma of their own making.
The changes wrought on British society by monetarist policies have left the economy "technically bankrupt"
according to left Labour MP Ken
Livingston, and have produced fundamental shifts in employment patterns which have undermined the traditional not simply be glued of a police officer in St Mellon's to Redattack: "We spend half our time sorting out domestic disputes on the estate -removing violent fathers. The thought of forcing absent fathers back is pie in the
But the breakdown of the traditional family under Conservative policies, and in response to women's increased economic independence, has caused anxiety among some of the more progressive representatives of the ruling classes, who are afraid of a breakdown in society, as shown in the increase in crime. Even before the outbreak of Conservative hysteria aimed at single mothers, the liberal Observer newspaper had said: "The sad truth (is) that children brought particular, the Conservatives are undertaking a massive attack on the whole working class especially women.
Women make up the majority of the public sector workforce and their jobs and working conditions have been eroded as part of the slashing of public sector spending. Redundancies, privatisations and "marketisation" of services like health and local government have resulted in massive productivity increases for the remaining public sector workforce. Conditions for the workforce and service provision have been directly pitted against each other; for example, maternity pay being cut in order to avoid
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International Viewpoint #254 March 1994 redundancies. Women have also been massively affected as the main users of public sector services. In order to realise many of the formal equalities laid down in law, especially that of entering the paid labour force on equal terms with men, women have depended on the state to "socialise" domestic responsibilities; for example, care for the old, the sick and the young. Cuts in health and social services have resulted in a "re-privatisation" of care back into the family. Psychiatric hospitals have been closed and long term hospital care slashed. 6.8 million people in Britain are carers for relatives or friends. 17% of women are carers and the estimated savings to the state of that unpaid caring is £24 billion. Nursery provision in Britain is amongst the worst in Europe, maternity leave is not a universal right, the state pension age has just been equalised by raising women's retirement age to 65 and wages councils which protected the wages of millions of the poorest paid have been abolished.
Back to Basics was to be an ideological justification for further deregulation and cuts in the welfare state, individuals were to take responsibility for themselves. The attacks on single mothers and irresponsible fathers made explicit in Back to Basics were not new and had been most clearly embodied in the Child Support Act (CSA), introduced the previous April.
At the time of its introduction the CSA seemed like an ideal way to link the Conservatives twin aims of cutting social security spending and ideologically reinforcing the traditional family. The CSA requires mothers on Income Support to claim maintenance from absent fathers, regardless of the mother's wishes and the Treasury pockets the money. Mothers who refuse to pass on the name of the father lose 20% of their benefit for the first six months and 10% thereatter. The Child Support Agency set up by the Act only collects money on behalf of women not on benefit if paid
Feminist campaigners against the Act pointed out the increased risk of violence to women from their ex-partners and argued that the Act posed the risk of renewed custody battles for lesbian mothers. They also argued that the Act was implicitly racist. Half of Black families of Caribbean descent are headed by single mothers. Men of African, Asian and Caribbean descent - who because of racism are more likely to be unemployed, imprisoned or on low wages - would be most vulnerable to 18 the Child Support Agency; and "failure to maintain" could be used as grounds for deportation.
Since the Act came into operation the main opposition has come from affected men and their second families. This partly represents the weakened state of the women's liberation movement but is also a response to the blaring injustices suffered by men on the receiving end of the Act. The income of many men has been reduced to benefit levels as their wages are taken by the Agency to pay for the maintenance of their children. Previous agreements reached in court are ignored so men who had reached "clean break" agreements with their ex-partners- in which they gave over their share of the house to avoid future maintenance payments have now lost their homes but are still having to pay amounts reaching £200
Mistakes
A number of suicides have been linked with the Act, two in Sheffield in just one week. In one case, a separated father and his two young children were found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in their car, while in the other the car had been set alight burning to death the man and children inside. Mistakes by the agency have included a letter demanding money from a ninety-three year-old man for the maintenance of a child fathered by a much younger namesake, and that of a man who was only able to prove the Agency wrong in its pursuit of maintenance from him when his doctor verified that he had been sterilised long before the disputed child was born.
While there are tent around the CSA, there is little in the way of organised opposition. As with many Conservative policies, the Labour Party has failed to offer a coherent alternative. The Labour Party has criticised the working of the agency but refused to commit itself to scrap it. This reflects a much wider retreat within Labour on the question of the family: "For too long, the Left has let the issue of the family become the domain of the Right"
argued Harriet Harman, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Her colleague Marjorie Mowlem told Labour's women's conference this year that the party must have policies with a high "family friendliness" appeal. The Labour Party leadership has refused appeals from lesbian and gay activists to instruct MPs to vote for a forthcoming amendment which would lower the age of consent for gay men to sixteen.!
Failure to oppose on the family reflects Labour's wider inability to oppose on the economy and disagreement within the Labour Party on welfare state policy. There is a growing economic consensus between Conservatives and Labour over the need to limit spending on welfare. Labour leader John Smith and his Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown refuse to make firm spending commitments on Labour's behalf, arguing that spending should be on the basis of what the country can afford. The Labour left, concerned that the "modernisers" within the Party who want Labour to cut back on the welfare state are gaining ground, have launched a "Campaign to Defend the Welfare State". Ken Livingston argues that a Labour Government would have to engage in a policy of robust spending and heavy taxation of the wealthiest 40% of the population. "Labour will be forced to be much more radical in government than in opposition" he pro-
Back to Basics has represented a further stage in the internal implosion facing the Conservatives but has yet to be taken full advantage of by Labour or the working class. For the second year running, 1993 saw the lowest number of days lost through strikes since records began. However, big increases in taxation and the announcement of a three year pay freeze for public sector workers, combined with the open crisis of the Conservatives, may yet push people into action. In fighting to defend the welfare state against Back to Basics broad alliances of the working class and oppressed will have to be built and women's interests pushed to the forefront. * 1. The failure of Labour to instruct its MPs to vote for this amendment resulted in the "compromise" position of 18 being adopted, thus still denying gay men equality with heterosexuals for whom the age of consent is 16.