The news was delivered in a midnight whisper on Saturday night. Bradford and Bingley is nationalised. And Paul Newman’s dead. The words prompted surprise and shock. How can Paul Newman possibly be dead?
Then followed a lengthy moon-lit conversation with a late-returning spouse about Newman’s age, health, films, style, salad dressing-backed philanthropy and un-fashionably long marriage to Joanne Woodward. And all the while his jaunty flashing smile hung over our words like a fading neon sign.
Paul Newman is dead. The end of an era.
Bradford and Bingley nationalised?
It wasn’t in the same league.
Why not?
The general public doesnt need to be told that B&B’s demise (hot on the heels of HBOS) has far more long term significance than the passing of a much-loved 83 year-old.
So why the absence of public outcry, shareholder outrage and voter comment we hear daily from the streets of America?
Don’t we care? Dont we have the same level of understanding about the way our capitalist world functions? Has the grim list of banking failures, closures and lay-offs already produced recession fatigue? Is it because Scots have simply refused to become conscious members of the share-owning democracy that flourishes south of the border and truly blossoms across the Big Pond?
America prides itself on being the home of capitalism. Stateside, there is no shame in business failure, and the American dream has been part-built by entrepreneurs. England is a country which supported Margaret Thatcher’s privatizations. But Scotland resolutely refused to privatize water, create opt-out schools, or warm to the notion of competition in any way. Even though the economy of Edinburgh in particular depends upon capital and competition, how many Scots have portfolios of shares. Or perhaps more to the point, how many admit to share ownership in polite company?
A Scot established the Bank of England. A Scot laid the ground rules for modern capitalism. A Scot has been Chancellor for over a decade – and at his instruction Scottish Labour councils have been big investors in the private sector through PFI deals to construct schools and hospitals.
But the wider Scottish public never accepted the PFI philosophy.
And the massive profits from some PFI deals was a last straw, stoking massive dissatisfaction amongst core Labour voters which contributed to the SNP’s election victory last year and the party’s prolonged honeymoon.
The Scottish public has always been dubious about the power of private cash. The principle of building public assets with private money was barely accepted by voters and as problems emerged with the fabric of some PFI buildings that annoyance grew, compounded by revelations that some companies made millions from modest investments. To date the SNP haven’t been able to make their alternative to PFI work – without being able to issue bonds, or encourage councils to issue bonds, private money hasn’t been rushing to invest in the Scottish Futures Trust. Perhaps the new financial situation will change that situation.
Government security suddenly seems even more appealing, reliable and trustworthy than it ever did. And in Scotland it has always appeared very appealing indeed.
Maybe too appealing. And here’s the rub. The current private sector meltdown may provoke a wholesale dash for the protection of the state. And yet, in Scotland, the public sector is already large and – despite all moves at streamlining and modernization – often slow, cumbersome, bureaucratic and more likely to establish another umbrella group than risk backing people with great ideas to act in their community or business sector.
It’s true that the private sector is not automatically any better. And the combined short-sightedness, greed, and excess of City spivs has given the whole private sector a bad name. And in Scotland its name (on the streets) has always been mud.
It’s this emotional unwillingness to accept capitalism – even while being employed in it, paid by it and (indirectly) investing in it – that’s fuelling the lack of reaction to news of capitalism’s collapse. And that may mean the wider Scottish public doesn’t get truly involved in what happens next. Until we see dole queues, unemployed shipbuilders, and large Ravenscraig-like totems of national identity fall, Scots may fail to see this crisis as real.
Economic downturns, in the collective living memory of this society, have been prompted by real change, not airy-fairy stock exchange “flutters”. Like the aftermath of war, the supply of oil or Thatcher and the end of large-scale manufacturing with dole queues snaking through the heart of industrial Britain. Visible and measurable damage to the core of Scottish society, is the working definition of a recession. And that core has always been skilled working class men not white collar workers. Even though the latter vastly outweigh the former, our emotional clock has not been reset to accept this reality.
But maybe that’s not a bad thing. Scots have long been holding out for something better. Not necessarily a Socialist Republic but a system that reflects Scottish belief in community, public benefit and equality. Currently that belief equates with public sector control. And no wonder.
In the Thatcher era, the public sector was our only repository for Scottishness. It was where we stored the national DNA. Since the Union, Scottish identity has been reflected more by our institutions than our accents. A broad-based education system, a legal system favouring statute over precedent, tenemental cities creating density and community, historically lower rates of ownership and higher rates of public transport use.
But with the courage to explore new models like community ownership, social enterprise, local income schemes, credit unions and small-scale municipal action (truly thriving democracies like the Scandinavians are built on municipalities of less than a thousand people) Scots may now be able to inch towards a different blend of ownership and management that makes the most of our assets and aspirations.
Beyond American-style capitalism and Soviet state control is a “Nordic” model. Scotland is long been psychologically equipped to embrace it – perhaps the moment has just arrived.
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