Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

We need a crusade of popular social democracy

Helena Kennedy | 07.02.2009 16:15 | Culture | History | Social Struggles | South Coast | World

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my dear and noble friend Lord Eatwell on initiating this debate and I also congratulate him on his speech. I start, as he did, with a quote.

"From time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next, when one orthodoxy is overthrown and another takes its place ... There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time: barely a decade into the new millennium, barely 20 years since the end of the Cold War and barely 30 years since the triumph of neo-liberalism-that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed which became the economic orthodoxy of our time ... The global crisis ... has called into question the prevailing neo-liberal economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years-the orthodoxy that has underpinned the national and global regulatory frameworks that have so spectacularly failed to prevent the economic mayhem which has now been visited upon us".

Those words, said in the past week, came from a Labour Prime Minister-not ours, I regret, but Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister.



The free-market economic consensus of the past 30 years is crumbling around us. We indeed live in changed times that demand radically different solutions. Already, we can see the consequences of economic recession: people losing their jobs; families facing the loss of their homes; household brands going to the wall; more people in poverty; and, this week, the advent of industrial unrest and increased insecurity. On the economy and the future of our wider society in the months ahead, there will be stark and difficult choices for all of us, including those in government.

However, in all the choices that we make, there can be no going back. We are not in 1979, 1989 or even 1999; this is 2009 and we must never make the same mistakes again. We can no longer afford simply to leave it to the market. Last week in Davos, David Cameron said that we needed a return to a 1980s style "crusade of popular capitalism". However, it was the pursuit of that popular capitalism of the past that led us to the poor regulation that got us into this almighty mess in the first place. Let us not forget that it was that so-called truly popular crusade of capitalism in the 1980s that sold off our council houses without replacing them, that allowed building societies such as Northern Rock to demutualise to their eventual peril on world markets, and that privatised energy utilities, which now exploit their consumers and employees alike. The country is not bankrupt but the mantra of free markets-the neo-liberal economic consensus of the past 30 years, which I am afraid seduced my Government too-is bankrupt.

I am not against the market but what is government for if it is not to inject the moral component into the market? Just as we witnessed with the Government's intervention in the banking sector-an important step change-we need a wholly different approach to the wider economy.

This week, following on from the banking crisis, the impact of the recession took an equally ugly turn, with industrial unrest growing across the country. But let us be clear: these strikes are not about xenophobia; they are about global corporations and unfettered free markets gone crazy, and it is that which fundamentally needs to be addressed.

These new times demand a radically different approach in government economic policy. We cannot simply go back to some so-called golden economic age of increasing consumption, spiralling consumer debt, and cheap and increasingly deregulated labour. What our country needs now more than ever as a response to the economic recession is not a crusade of popular capitalism but a new crusade of popular social democracy. We need a bold new economic consensus which promotes well-being, social justice and environmental sustainability, and which takes our country in a new direction towards the good society. I believe that a good economy can deliver a good society. However, that should not mean nationalising our banks on the one hand and privatising Royal Mail and the Post Office on the other; nor should it mean setting ambitious carbon reduction targets and then building a third runway at Heathrow.

There are alternatives to the failed neo-liberal economic policies of the past 30 years. There are better ways. When the wealthiest 1 per cent own 21 per cent of the nation's wealth, and when the bottom 50 per cent own just 7 per cent, the good economy should ensure tax justice, greater redistribution of wealth and income equality. It should ensure that those at the top pay their fair share. It should also tackle the irresponsibility culture of the super rich, and that could include a new tax on bonuses, with revenues used to fund tax cuts for those on lower and middle incomes. With millions facing the prospect of unemployment, the good economy should be about embarking on a green New Deal to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in a green industrial revolution and investing in energy for the future. The good economy should be about making sure that businesses pay their fair share of taxes, and we should close loopholes that enable corporations to avoid paying.

With the biggest banking crisis in our history, the good economy should be about setting up a people's bank, using the existing Post Office network. Now is the time to guarantee every local community access to safe, secure and dependable banking services. We should not be afraid of imposing a maximum APR for loan and credit card companies and ending rip-off credit. Why should companies such as Provident Personal Credit be legally allowed to exploit the poorest in our society and charge 189 per cent APR for a loan of just £50 when the Bank of England base rate is just 1.5 per cent? It is loan sharking and a disgrace.

We should be ending the gender pay gap in a specified timeframe. The good economy should be about insisting on not just a minimum wage, but a living wage for the entire country, just as we have here in London. We should also insist that all companies awarded government public procurement contracts meet a standard maximum ratio of difference between the most and least well paid among their employees. When the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that child poverty could double in the next decade if we do not find more money to tackle it, the good economy should be about prioritising and finding all the money needed to end child poverty for good.

With that in mind, we should scrap plans for Trident. Spending £70 billion on a nuclear weapons system designed for the 1980s is not a good use of taxpayers' money. We should immediately scrap plans for ID cards, which could cost £18 billion over the next decade. When 6 million of us are faced with fuel poverty this year, the good economy should be about imposing a windfall tax on the greedy energy and oil companies to ensure social and environmental justice and to raise £6 billion to enable the Government to honour their commitment to end fuel poverty by 2010. On student funding, it is absolutely right for Labour to rule out lifting the cap on fees. We should instead be looking at introducing a graduate tax that is fair to everyone. In the good economy of the future, we should allow councils to build the millions of new social houses that are desperately required.

The Government need to seize this moment and make the choice fundamentally and radically to renew our country. The opportunity now exists to usher in a new social democratic economic consensus with the values of equality, social justice, security, and sustainability at its heart. If we choose, we can create a good economy and a good society. We can work together to enable greater freedom for all our people by giving real power to the many, not to the few. I hope that we can rise to the challenge.

Helena Kennedy

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. Please cite the source URL when reposting articles — IMC Admin
  2. Just hide it — [sighs]
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech