German Unity and the end of the British Empire
Now there's a mad midnight headline for you. I was very struck today, though, by the news that Germany has spent several trillion consistently and with sacrifice these past eighteen years to reunite. The spending is now complete. An entire political generation marked by a determination, at some level, to complete the work of 1848 and make Germany a modern, free nation has seen its work come near frution.
To do this, Germany has sacrificed fast growth. It has borne a huge burden with stability, and barring accidents it will now be able to tun to a central role in the European economy with its state intact and not sold off, and its people not overmortgaged and not in vast personal debt. It may even see taxes lowered and interest rates falling over time as it comes to pay off its debt. The work begun by big, solid, tedious Helmut Kohl will be finished by quiet, devastatingly effective Angela merkel. She'll open borders to necessary immigration and ignore silly-billy anglophone asset strippers, and Germany will have something to be proud of. All that without social decay, ambient stress and the collapse of families.
How many times in recent British history has such a far-sighted example of sacrifice presented itself? I think one; in the management of the end of Empire.
There is a point of view that says that British politicians of the fifties and sixties were drunken boobies who, whilst being over-educated in the wrong things, were ill-equipped to realise that vast change was needed. All they did in this analysis was manage decline.
But decline from what? From a bloated world-Empire which should not have been dominating other people and trading off of historical injustice in the first place. The Maudlings, Macleods, Wilsons, Macmillans and Grimonds of British politics ignored the chance to play up Empire, and to hold desperately on as (for instance) the Portugese or French did in Africa. They realised that economic pain and adjustment were their lot. They adapted. And they didn't scuttle, as the Belgians did in Congo and run. Nor did they trap people in funny-money schemes to perpetuate influence, like French financial organisations. They left a chance behind, even if Africa remained tragically unindustrialised, for people to begin fresh. With more and more assurance of the sense of decolonisation and adjustment to a new world, they behaved like humane men and largely promoted the peaceful dissolution of Empire, under cover of commonwealth.
Think what may have been. Enoch Powell showed a little of it. It could have been the case that the British said 'let's ally the white workers and middle class nationalists to some upper-class leaders who don't manage this dissolution and sacrifice what's necessary for a free, messy world to come about'. We could have had a long string of trophy wars and racism.
Instead, we got largely unrewarded sacrifice, and a degree of civilised value. And more growth over the 1950s and 60s in percentage terms per year than in the eighties and nineties period of 'revival'. And race relations courts and a remarkably open approach to immigration.
Therein lies the second might-have-been. What if, finally shorn of Empire and of a monetary straitjacket by 1968, Britain had got rid of the tired Wilson and had one of those competent humane leaders in charge, to spend the oil, negotiate a sensible european deal, push union reform, and set us up not to waste North Sea oil or to pretend administrative philistinism and psuedo-modernisation was a strategy? Ten years of a Jenkins, a Maudling, a Barbara Castle or a Whitelaw? Imagine what the country would have been like. Instead we got humourless womanless technocrat Heath and a battered, timewasting Wilson so failing to govern and not managing to manage that Callaghan couldn't hold the line and Margaret Thatcher and the monetarists were allowed to wreak their havoc. Then we had a 'boom' based on wasting North sea oil, devastating the industrial base, a false appreciation of mortgaged property, a psychotic share market and the sell-off of everything including an awful lot of common decency. And a sea of credit. Everyone learned how to rip everyone else off, and worse, to expect it.
The Germans have, no doubt without much happiness, laboured to produce for 18 years and now they have a boring, competent leader who won't waste the ultimate product. So my initial comparison breaks down. But at least Britain had decent people managing the 'decline' of its unsupportable and indefensible Empire. Sometimes, one looks back on the oddest things....
Now there's a mad midnight headline for you. I was very struck today, though, by the news that Germany has spent several trillion consistently and with sacrifice these past eighteen years to reunite. The spending is now complete. An entire political generation marked by a determination, at some level, to complete the work of 1848 and make Germany a modern, free nation has seen its work come near frution.
To do this, Germany has sacrificed fast growth. It has borne a huge burden with stability, and barring accidents it will now be able to tun to a central role in the European economy with its state intact and not sold off, and its people not overmortgaged and not in vast personal debt. It may even see taxes lowered and interest rates falling over time as it comes to pay off its debt. The work begun by big, solid, tedious Helmut Kohl will be finished by quiet, devastatingly effective Angela merkel. She'll open borders to necessary immigration and ignore silly-billy anglophone asset strippers, and Germany will have something to be proud of. All that without social decay, ambient stress and the collapse of families.
How many times in recent British history has such a far-sighted example of sacrifice presented itself? I think one; in the management of the end of Empire.
There is a point of view that says that British politicians of the fifties and sixties were drunken boobies who, whilst being over-educated in the wrong things, were ill-equipped to realise that vast change was needed. All they did in this analysis was manage decline.
But decline from what? From a bloated world-Empire which should not have been dominating other people and trading off of historical injustice in the first place. The Maudlings, Macleods, Wilsons, Macmillans and Grimonds of British politics ignored the chance to play up Empire, and to hold desperately on as (for instance) the Portugese or French did in Africa. They realised that economic pain and adjustment were their lot. They adapted. And they didn't scuttle, as the Belgians did in Congo and run. Nor did they trap people in funny-money schemes to perpetuate influence, like French financial organisations. They left a chance behind, even if Africa remained tragically unindustrialised, for people to begin fresh. With more and more assurance of the sense of decolonisation and adjustment to a new world, they behaved like humane men and largely promoted the peaceful dissolution of Empire, under cover of commonwealth.
Think what may have been. Enoch Powell showed a little of it. It could have been the case that the British said 'let's ally the white workers and middle class nationalists to some upper-class leaders who don't manage this dissolution and sacrifice what's necessary for a free, messy world to come about'. We could have had a long string of trophy wars and racism.
Instead, we got largely unrewarded sacrifice, and a degree of civilised value. And more growth over the 1950s and 60s in percentage terms per year than in the eighties and nineties period of 'revival'. And race relations courts and a remarkably open approach to immigration.
Therein lies the second might-have-been. What if, finally shorn of Empire and of a monetary straitjacket by 1968, Britain had got rid of the tired Wilson and had one of those competent humane leaders in charge, to spend the oil, negotiate a sensible european deal, push union reform, and set us up not to waste North Sea oil or to pretend administrative philistinism and psuedo-modernisation was a strategy? Ten years of a Jenkins, a Maudling, a Barbara Castle or a Whitelaw? Imagine what the country would have been like. Instead we got humourless womanless technocrat Heath and a battered, timewasting Wilson so failing to govern and not managing to manage that Callaghan couldn't hold the line and Margaret Thatcher and the monetarists were allowed to wreak their havoc. Then we had a 'boom' based on wasting North sea oil, devastating the industrial base, a false appreciation of mortgaged property, a psychotic share market and the sell-off of everything including an awful lot of common decency. And a sea of credit. Everyone learned how to rip everyone else off, and worse, to expect it.
The Germans have, no doubt without much happiness, laboured to produce for 18 years and now they have a boring, competent leader who won't waste the ultimate product. So my initial comparison breaks down. But at least Britain had decent people managing the 'decline' of its unsupportable and indefensible Empire. Sometimes, one looks back on the oddest things....
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