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Dave Hallsworth
posted 2 March 2005

I am always rendered breathless or plunged into a deep sleep when reading documents or books by sociologists. It brings to mind Charles Darwin and his discovery that sections of the bird and animal kingdom cut off for generations from their roots breeds develop entirely different. It is the same in academy; cut off from all but their immediate fellow academic specialists, they have developed a new language, only part of which is understandable by those outside the peer group.

This is true of Tony Blair and the Ideal Type by JH Grainger, a reader in political science at the Australian National University. I don't know whether those Down Under are better or worse than our lot. You have to do some hard reading to find out if you agree or disagree with the author. To give you a taste:

The question which arises is how the benign, indeterminate Blair, coming to office with eirenic, utopian leanings, subjectively develops seemingly 'without uncertainties, mysteries, doubts' not only such monocratis and decisive tendencies but also loses with almost Palmerstonian esprit such a string of imperative policies, innovatory - together with the personae to go with them - at home and abroad. The liberal who deprecates the politics of power shows that he can thrive on them, make a virtue of them and display a fecundity of initiatives which have their impulsions not within the fertile liberal pluralisms within the Cabinet, party or Parliament but within the unrevealed Caesarist command structure sustained by largely incognisant and innominate, loosely structured posse or comitatus of advisers, intelligencers, prompters and minders.

Tell you something: Microsoft Word hates him.

To understand the reason why leading members of society act as they do you need to study the whole of society, the forces acting on each other in that society, what forces are acting together and those acting against. Max Weber, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim were the sociologists that led, in the time people really wanted to find out how society worked; they had their equivalents in Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin in other fields. JH Grainger is a follower of Max Weber, who posits that bureaucracies become self-sustaining amongst other things.

But one has to understand what had gone before to understand how New Labour now looks unassailable in British politics - nothing would have been possible for Blair and Brown but for the ground clearance made by Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher found herself prime minister of a country whose predecessor had been defeated by the trade union movement, particularly the miners' union, whose shutting down of the power stations had plunged Britain into darkness and Ted Heath out of leadership of the Tory party.

Showing her determination and reaching for her sword, Margaret Thatcher swept all before her. The Tories and 'old fashioned' Labour had needed the trade union movement in order that the union leaders sell whatever sacrifices was required of their members. It was felt that the trade union bosses were well able to judge the mood of the working people and able to keep the government informed.

Margaret Thatcher revealed that the trade union movement was a complete farce, a front for the trade union officials and small groups of active members who filled the committees and branches at the lower levels. Ordinary workers just paid their union dues and went home, or even had the employer deduct their dues from their wages.

Margaret Thatcher's battle with the miners' union led by Arthur Scargill, a feared militant, demonstrated that the hardest and toughest of the unions was a paper tiger, led by people only posing as workers' leaders. Can you imagine any responsible leader leading their members in a pitched battle against the police, with their members unarmed and clad in T-shirts and jeans and trainers, whilst the police faced them in armour with riot shields, helmets and long truncheons? A walk-over, a farce, lions led by donkeys.

Margaret Thatcher, no sooner that having accomplished her tasks, was rejected by her fellows into tear-stained obscurity. Politicians are not allowed to speak the truth lest they uncover the realities of the world. She was followed by Tory nonentities each worse than his predecessor, who left the door open for New Labour and promptly shut themselves out.

Tony Blair does not have the freedom of action that JH Grainger imagines, wondering why Blair and Brown are so slow in taking charge and changing things. The truth is they were as much prisoners of circumstances as the rest of society. The strength of Blair and Brown was to realise that there was no turning back to the old ways; new ways had to be sought. A new state machine was needed, one that was close to and responded to ordinary people. The police were completely reformed, and organised; doctors and teachers joined them as the new social workers, whilst the original social workers were increased out of all recognition and armed with tremendous powers. Secondly Blair and Brown, whilst saying they were increasing social wealth at the lowest levels and boosting our schools and hospitals spending, employed more and more bureaucrats to cut back and review every aspect of spending. Promises made to various constituencies were dropped like hot coals.

To do all this Tony Blair had to ride on top of things like a surfer. JH Grainger elaborately describes the wave that consolidated Tony Blair's power, the usurping of his own cabinet's role, then that of Parliament itself, with other forces in society such as the monarchy and the church imploding in on their own inadequacies. Such was the lack of confidence throughout the whole of society during this period that Blair faced little opposition, and that which he did face proved ineffectual.

Only the middle class remaining in the political arena, and Blair knows how to work them to his ends as he demonstrates daily, they are suckers for the sincere look, and a shovelful of their own prejudices, especially of the working class as bone idle, thick, and work shy, who need 'looking after'. Blair too promises 'tranquillity', something all long for, and to look after us.

Trouble is of course once you have cornered power for yourself, who can you trust? You find yourself increasingly falling out with your former main allies. Things increasingly start going wrong, there was no WMD, the Iraq occupation goes on, and on, it gets lonely up there on that surfboard. But,as JH Grainger points out: 'Tony Blair ends the discourse, asserts monocratic authority as decisionist prime mover, cuts through the confabulation of politics to what he considers to be the ipso facto.'

So the buck stops with Tony Blair. Still the problems of Britain carry on, with its diminished economic ability and its political exhaustion - which translates to cannot afford - don't know what to do. Tony Blair and the Ideal Type can be summed up as arguing that Blair is a self-serving shit. This we are forced to agree with from our own observations.