Alan Budd on the Tories’ real motives
Sir Alan Budd's sudden resignation from Osborne's Bureau for Rebuttal is the perfect moment to remind ourselves of his astonishing – but essentially correct – analysis of Tory economic policy in the 1980s (from Adam Curtis's 1992 documentary Pandora's Box).
Sir Alan told Adam Curtis:
"The nightmare I sometimes have, about this whole experience, runs as follows. I was involved in making a number of proposals which were partly at least adopted by the government and put in play by the government. Now, my worry is … that there may have been people making the actual policy decisions … who never believed for a moment that this was the correct way to bring down inflation.
"They did, however, see that it would be a very, very good way to raise unemployment, and raising unemployment was an extremely desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes -- if you like, that what was engineered there in Marxist terms was a crisis of capitalism which re-created a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since.
"Now again, I would not say I believe that story, but when I really worry about all this, I worry whether that indeed was really what was going on."
Update: Thanks to everyone who tweeted this, but the real credit goes to James Doran for uploading the clip and Daniel Trilling for spotting the quote.
Posted by Clifford Singer at 10:24am on 7 July 2010
Tags: Conservatives
Comments
Employment, the in believ!
Posted by Robert S. Wolverton at 09:15pm on 16 July 2010
The MoD are still practising a form of this slavery, under the protection of the Official Secrets Act.
It is all on my website which I created in 1998.
There would not be an RAF or Army if the wives of senior offcers were allowed to work for themselves, but the officers are only senior because they have a wife to travel the world with them, because unless they have a wife to run the stations,(not housework) they would not get the promotional posts. Then we are divorced at retirement and we never see our children again, or the promised pension.
Posted by Eileen North at 04:49pm on 21 August 2010
Brilliant Clifford ... it’s so important to keep thinking about what they have said previously and to keep such explanations - as the ghosts of the past - present as they formulate things anew…
Posted by jane shallice at 11:39am on 8 July 2010