Remember the Big Five!
Jan 30, 2013 8:39:15 GMT -5
Post by Gerard on Jan 30, 2013 8:39:15 GMT -5
The "Big Five" were all born in the closing decades of the Victorian age, and grew up before the First World War. They were the children of empire; none of them has a twenty-first century equivalent. Ernest Bevin was a one-off even in his own day. Clement Attlee - Captain Mainwaring in excelsis - belonged to a species which is now extinct. So, in a different way, did Hugh Dalton, the booming, intrigue-obsessed, Old Etonian class traitor. Careful scrutiny reveals a few faint parallels between the chirpy Cockney "Ken" Livingstone and the equally chirpy Herbert Morrison, but the differences are much greater than the similarities. Cripps was the youngest of the five, but at first sight he seems even more remote from our day than the other four.
Cripps, the iron Chancellor, was preceded by a long line of earlier incarnations - the brilliant barrister and bien pensant progressive of the 1920s; the half-baked Marxist convert of the 1930s; the partyless wartime patriot and potential Churchill rival of the early 1940s; the frustrated dirigiste planner of 1945 and 1946; and the would-be anti-Atlee putschist of 1947.
All over Western Europe, the dominant theme of the early post-war period was the gradual emergence of a regulated welfare capitalism, based on a tacit contract between the State, capital and labour. Almost everywhere, the State accepted responsibility for the level of output and employment, capital accepted a significant degree of public ownership and a division of the social product more favourable to labour than ever before, and labour accepted a predominantly privately owned economy. But it is insular prejudice to imagine that Keynes was the sole architect of the reformed capitalism of the post-war period. Erhard and Monnet were at least as important. All this gives a special fascination to Cripps's Chancellorship.
Cripps's abandonment of Marxism owed a great deal to his Russian, and still more to his Indian, experiences. Cripps the Chancellor left an impress on Britain's political economy which endured for thirty years. Cripps the emissary wrote on sand.
And is it not charming the way that Hong Kong belongers still speak of "potato Cripps" where we who are as yet on the threshold of our own colonial experience would apply the more sober expression "crisps"?
Cripps, the iron Chancellor, was preceded by a long line of earlier incarnations - the brilliant barrister and bien pensant progressive of the 1920s; the half-baked Marxist convert of the 1930s; the partyless wartime patriot and potential Churchill rival of the early 1940s; the frustrated dirigiste planner of 1945 and 1946; and the would-be anti-Atlee putschist of 1947.
All over Western Europe, the dominant theme of the early post-war period was the gradual emergence of a regulated welfare capitalism, based on a tacit contract between the State, capital and labour. Almost everywhere, the State accepted responsibility for the level of output and employment, capital accepted a significant degree of public ownership and a division of the social product more favourable to labour than ever before, and labour accepted a predominantly privately owned economy. But it is insular prejudice to imagine that Keynes was the sole architect of the reformed capitalism of the post-war period. Erhard and Monnet were at least as important. All this gives a special fascination to Cripps's Chancellorship.
Cripps's abandonment of Marxism owed a great deal to his Russian, and still more to his Indian, experiences. Cripps the Chancellor left an impress on Britain's political economy which endured for thirty years. Cripps the emissary wrote on sand.
And is it not charming the way that Hong Kong belongers still speak of "potato Cripps" where we who are as yet on the threshold of our own colonial experience would apply the more sober expression "crisps"?