From: "Paul Bowman" <paul.bowman-AT-totalise.net>
Subject: AUT: RE: Fwd: Harry Cleaver and Surrealism
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 12:47:58 +0100


Scott,
you put post from non-list members on this list and then claim not to agree
with them when challenged (_and_ to make matters worse do not trim your
posts properly! - GRRRR!). You need to sort your netiquette out sunshine -
less tolerant lists than this one would be putting you under a warning for
such inconsiderate behaviour. Have your own ideas and ask your own questions
for whatever's sake.

Philip Ferguson apparently knows all about the class struggle in Britain.

> > Having been in Ireland and Britain in the early
> > 1990s, I cannot say that I
> > noticed a crescendo of class struggle.  In fact, the
> > class struggle had
> > basically dropped away in Britain by the early 90s.

Having been in Britain in the late 80s and early 90s, I can say this
assessment kind of ignores the impact of the Poll Tax. No doubt your
brain-dead Leninoid friend would consider the mass resistence of the British
working class to Thatcher's flagship as not part of the "class struggle" no
doubt confined in his particular dogmaverse to conflicts between employers
and employees. The impact of the Poll Tax was not just political (fall of
Thatcher and a retreat from the politics of confrontation under Major's
"classless society") but also financial. The impact of 12 million local tax
payers refusing to pay their local tax would have completely destroyed local
government (which in Britain manages much of the health, education and
welfare system) had the central government not agreed to foot the bill - the
actual cost of this I don't have the figures for (any offers?) but a look at
the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR) graph covering the direction
of government borrowing in the years preceding the Poll Tax (up to 1989),
the Poll Tax years itself (89 - 93) and what happens after, is informative.
link:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/e_info/forc/forc96/sefbrief/psbr.gif

Now Orthoids would say that this period also coincided with the end of the
late 80s boom, but I remain to be convinced. Certainly come 1992, with
Thatcher gone, the pound pegged at 3DM (itself a product of an ideological
wish to see cheap imports - to avoid the boom leading to import-based
inflation - and to hell with any local (provincial, traditionally Labour)
manufacturing, in favour of Britain as London City-centric (Tory),
service-based economy), and a skyrocketintg PSBR as a result of the failure
of the Poll Tax assault on British working class living standards (and
Labour local government bases, their only remaining base given the
destruction of the industrial and union base - Thatcher was always a class
warrior rather than a profiteer), George Soros and his collegues could
easily see that Sterling could not be defended in the ERM. So no, I don't
accept that the ERM crisis of 1992, at least in Britain, had nothing to do
with class struggle - true that struggle had been fought and decided a
couple of years earlier, but that's latency for you...



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