Iain Dale, silly triumphalism and what freedom is about
I was thinking I really should do a ‘final word for now’ post on the call for a boycott of the Total Politics 2010 Blog Awards which has been dragging on for a few days now and has.
Sadly, these posts got in the way of the much more interesting International Women’s Day stuff at TCF. That, I regret.
I was having trouble motivating myself for yet another boycott post, because it’s not really that important in the grand scheme of things.
But then along came Iain Dale, publisher of Total Politics, for his first official visit to TCF, to gloat about John Harris doing an interview with Griffin for today’s Guardian, and I suddenly felt somewhat more interested in the matter.
Iain Dale’s main gloating is here at his blog.
Oddly, for someone who professes to believe that engagement in dialogue even with those whose view you absolutely abhor outweighs all other considerations, Dale fails to provide a link to the main proposers of the boycott – ourselves, Harpy, Bad Conscience and others. (See here for a similar point by Tim Ireland).
But let’s let that pass.
There are two more substantive issues to pick up.
1 Consistency, principles and tactics
First, Iain Dale accuses bloggers in support of a boycott of ‘inconsistency’, if they do not also support a boycott of the Guardian, for their interview with Griffin.
Iain Dale is, it may not surprise you, talking nonsense.
As I’ve said over at Bad Conscience (where Iain Dale’s been copying his triumphalist ‘in your face, lefties’ comments):
A boycott of the Total Politics blog awards might work, to whatever extent, though of course it may not. A boycott of the Guardian will not work.
It’s as simple as that.
A boycott is a tactic, not a principle (as Chris Brooke also comments on, helpfully quoting Nelson Mandela). At TCF we’ve never suggested otherwise.
To what extent the tactics will work this time around is obviously open to question, as of course is importance compared with other anti-BNP actions. Phil at AVPS doubts it will be effective, and even suggests that our actions actually fuel the BNP’s cause. I respectfully disagree over at Phil’s place, though I do wholeheartedly agree that in general ‘no platform’ is best effected when it is implemented by workers and unions.
2 The concept of freedom
Iain Dale says what he says, however inconsistent his words and practice are (see above), because he has the narrow and logically flawed understanding of what freedom of speech (and liberty in general) is all about.
This narrowness of conception is common to the right. It’s not just him. Much of what passes for the left is also prone to it, because they have been taken in by the right’s narrative of ‘free speech’. Much of what Dave and I write is, at heart, about contesting that.
In my comment back to Iain Dale, I seek to point out, through an example clearly close to his heart, the error of his unthinking ways:
Of course, what is inconsistent [on Iain Dale's part] is to:
a) go on about how important civil liberties/freedom of speech is when it comes to political beliefs you loathe, and that the best way to defeat the opposition is through open and transparent debate;
b) support the curtailing through legal means of the freedom of groups of people to come together and defend their rights through collective action e.g. http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-part-in-downfall-of-dock-labour.html
And of course, Iain Dale will have no idea what I’m getting at.
Seeing his own actions as ‘inconsistent’ would require a quite different conception of what real freedom is – the conception that Karl Polanyi sets out in The Great Transformation in opposition to Hayek’s (and by proxy Iain Dale’s) ‘liberal utopianism’:
Free enterprise and private ownership are being attacked as a denial of freedom [by Hayek and Co]. No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free. The freedom that regulation [e.g. the Dock Labour Scheme] is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery.
Iain Dale and his like will never understand the different, radical conceptions of ‘justice’ liberty and welfare’ of which Polanyi and his radical successors speak; they will never even try to understand it, because it is not in their interest to do so.
They are not interested in recognising the fundamental inconsistency between a) their insistence on maintaining the right of free speech/ movement for those that the left abhors; b) their insistence that it is correct to curtail the rights of free speech/movement of the people that the rights abhors – the working class and their representatives.
For them, the use of legal measures – of dubious validity even in their own terms - to stop BA staff exercizing their democratic right to agree on a course of action with each other, is quite justified; BA staff are clearly dangerous ‘militants’, so their freedoms are not worth quite as much as others’, it would seem.
For Iain Dale and Co, a narrower conception of liberty, based on the retention of private property over and above all other considerations, and freedom of speech for those with the means to speak loudest, is what makes their world safe.
And there’s the rub.
There’s no point in seeking to ‘engage’ people like Iain Dale on this. They’ll never understand, and there’s no point in caring what they think.
In the end they’re the class enemy. That’s just the way it is.
But there’s the polite old wishy-washy liberal of me which still likes to be helpful, even to the enemy. In that spirit, Iain Dale should know who he’s dealing with, when he says that I:
cling to the old student union idea of ‘no platform’.
I’m quite unfamiliar with student union ideas, as it happens. I am familiar, though, with both doorsteps and picket lines, as are quite a lot of my friends.
Paul,
You may have seen this before, but on the liberty point here’s a great paper by Oxford-based philosopher and socialist G.A. Cohen, arguing that the poor are “negatively” unfree.
It’s well worth a read:
http://www.howardism.org/appendix/Cohen.pdf
First principles: never trust anyone who throws ‘student union politics’ around as an insult. They are invariably smug right wing gits. And sure enough – Dale is precisely that.
Iain Dale defends the right to free speech of x and denies the right to strike of y. That isn’t logically inconsistent. Nor is it indicative of him being unthinking.
The only way you have generated an inconsistency is to conflate civil liberties into one “thing”. This just doesn’t work. Your argument essentially takes the form: “if he had the true conception of freedom then he would be inconsistent, therefore he is inconsistent.”
No. He may be wrong, because what he means by freedom may in fact be inaccurate, in that it may not correspond to the ‘true’ notion of freedom. But that does not make him inconsistent.
This may seem like a purely semantic point. In a way it is. But not really. To say someone is inconsistent is to say they make no sense, that they have failed to apply basic logical laws. It makes them very easy to dismiss. To say they are wrong is naturally substantive and has a far less perjorative effect. On matters of political philosophy it is very easy to be wrong, and to be wrong is no great indictment.
Labelling Dale as inconsistent allows you to go on and make the point that there is no point engaging with him and his like. Which in turn strengthens your former position. The newly established fact that Dale et al are dogmatic unreasonable class warriors blinded by self interest lends credence to your conception of freedom – as if the only reason they don’t accept it is their self-interest.
I don’t particularly like Dale’s public persona (I’m sure in private he is a charming man with a good collection of cricketing anecdotes and a fondness for french cheese), he seems quite smug and I find some of his opinions fairly unpleasant. But on this point it is inaccurate to call him inconsistent. Moreover, your treatment of him in a certain sense prevents you from ever engaging with him or his views as you can always dismiss them as being delibirately created to serve capitalist interests.
I’m not too prissy about defending my position on Iain Dale’s inconsistency, because that part of the argument was only really a retort to his own jibe about inconsistency towards TFC, which is inanccurate in that it suggests we have a No Platform principle for all cases against which to measure our actions. This is not true. (In passing, he also ‘forgets’ that we’re not calling for a boycott of his magazine as such, but of one specific element of his magazine’s advertising, and then suggests we’re inconsistent if we ever buy the Guardian again.)
But that’s not really the main point. The main point is that, in objective class interest terms, he’s the enemy. That doesn’t mean that if I ever met him I wouldn’t find him charming, and I’m sure he’d think the same of me, but it doesn’t change the fundamental relationship.
Of course you don’t buy that basic Marxian logic (and I hesitate to call myself Marxian, as you know) but I’ve pointed to evidence (Dockers) to suggest that he’s a fairly active and conscious agent of capital interests, or at least desires to be (read his post, which I didn’t have space to quote, about his lobbying work sought to ‘firm up’ Thatcher’s resolve). Just As Sunny is happy to acknowledge that he wants to ‘crush the right’, and gets abuse as an ‘anti-democrat’ etc. for it, so Iain Dale is happy when it suits him to acknowledge being a class warrior; the difference is that his ‘Mr Reasonable’ persona is useful so it doesn’t often suit him.
And while this is an analysis of Iain Dale, it should be noted that I don’t have any personal antipathy towards him. My first posts on this matter didn’t mention his name, referring only to Total Politics, and I asess his motives/interests now only in response to his personally directed accusations.
Oddly, for someone who professes to believe that engagement in dialogue even with those whose view you absolutely abhor outweighs all other considerations, Dale fails to provide a link to the main proposers of the boycott…
Classic Dale. What a shyster.
I see that your remarks about this on so many blogs has caused Iain to link to TCF (and a bunch of other Left-wing sites).
Just on the question of No Platform as a tactic, and our own consistency, I think it’s important to point out – as Paul has, though he hasn’t put in what I feel to be key – that we’re not calling for a boycott of Total Politics magazine.
We’ve called for a boycott of the Top Blogs poll, with which our names are associated. The blogs that have responded so far likewise all feature in the top list of blogs and have been published in the Total Politics blog guide.
A call to boycott TP altogether would be the same as a call to boycott the Guardian. A call to boycott the only aspect of the magazine/website with which we’re associated is not the same. We have no association with the Guardian.
Iain Dale did not deny the right of workers to strike – he objected to the Dock Labour Scheme giving a privileged group and their descendants for eternity a high guaranteed income, whether or not they lifted a finger to work, and preventing other folk earning a living. The DLS did not resemble the rights for which the TUC fought but the privileges of the mediaeval guilds that enriched their members at the expense of the common citizenry (except that mediaeval thieves would be executed or expelled whereas dock workers retained their rights). He points out that the abolition of the DLS led to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs – and it also saved many thousand more in our remaining export industries.
“Gloats” is not quite the right description, but if he feels that the result of his efforts justify his life, he may well be correct.
Your attempt to launch an attack on Total Politics but not on the Guardian, BBC or any other powerful organisation tempts me to suggest that you should refer to the yellow flag.
Lastly why do you use “US English” instead of English for your website? Surely you are not trolls for Sarah Palin?
I can’t really think of an example where a BNP boycott or protest has resulted in less publicity and popularity for the BNP. Even if you abandon principle entirely in favour of tactics, it doesn’t really work.
But ultimately anybody can boycott what they want for any reason, even if it’s a bit stupid, because I bet you a tenner you read the interview anyway.
“In the end they’re the class enemy. That’s just the way it is.”
Nuff said! and we forget that at our peril.
Peter @1: Thanks for that link. Looksi interesting. Will have a look.
John @77: Not sure how a 25% average reduction in pay, a twelve hour shift starting at any hour of the day, the end of over-time payments and being on permanent stand-by at home just counts as ‘retained rights’ but the main point was not so much to do with the DLS (and indeed I do have some issues with the conservatism that developed in trade unions during the post-war consensus). That was simply an example of the right’s capacity to ignore essential freedoms when it suits it, and to support their active curtailment when it suits it; as Iain Dale was the one to accuse of lack of consistency, I thought it reasonable to comment directly back in his direction.
The Guardian article appeared without me being aware it was coming – strangely, they didn’t forewarn me – and after the posts last week about TP. I wrote to the Guardian last night. As has been said elsewhere on this blog, an essential difference between the the TP blog awards and the Guardian is that this blog was directly associated with TP blog awards; we are not linked to the Guardian.
Ben S @9: There’s been a lot more publicity in the blogosphere than the issue ever merited, which is why you commented here. There’s no reason it should go beyond the blogosphere. What it has done is create a decent discussion on a few left blogs about the tactics of/rationale for boycotts, and that’s been mildly useful, and probably worth the time on two quick posts. Whether the boycott proposed comes to be effective over time, we’ll see, though I’m not going to be losing sleep either way.
Oh, and we didn’t propose a boycott of TP anyway, so your tenner’s safe.
Mick @10: Yes, my post could have been shorter.
Well I guess it was a generic ‘you’, since naming names would take forever…
On another note… quite why the general ‘right’ is not qualified to speak for the working class is kind of baffling. But I suppose I’m one of those who doesn’t, and won’t try, to understand it [???].
@ paulinlancs
Are you replying to me or to someone else? Your comment is completely detached from anything I said. Where did I ever refer to ‘retained rights’? Iain Dale was right to oppose the DLS because it harmed the UK economy and the majority of working men (and all working women – where’s your gender equality gone?) to unreasonably benefit a small group inside Frank Cousin’s union.
What essential freedom are you discussing? I do not regard mass picketing to prevent workers who want to work entering their place of employment as adding to freedom – it is attacking it! If the BNP picketed a factory to dissuade ethnic minorities from entering would you defend that as being one of the BNP’s “essential freedoms”? Of course people have (and should have) the right to strike, but Iain was not denying that – he was pleased that his planning meant that those who were not involved in the industrial dispute had an (admittedly more expensive) alternative so that tens of thousands were not thrown out of work – and we all know that when this happens many never go back because their employers go bankrupt.
@ Mick Hall – Iain went to a state primary school, a state comprehensive, worked as a nursing assistant, then went to the University of East Anglia. “Class enemy”? To which class?
@John77
“@ Mick Hall – Iain went to a state primary school, a state comprehensive, worked as a nursing assistant, then went to the University of East Anglia. “Class enemy”? To which class?”
The party he (Dale) is part of which represents the vested interests of the ruling class. That class and that class enemy!
BenS: “But ultimately anybody can boycott what they want for any reason, even if it’s a bit stupid, because I bet you a tenner you read the interview anyway.”
I certainly won’t be reading the interview!
@ HarpyMarx (of the Marx Brothers, I assume)
“The party he (Dale) is part of which represents the vested interests of the ruling class.”
Iain Dale is a Conservative – that party is in opposition and has been for more than a dozen years.
Under every Conservative government since WWII (I don’t have data for earlier ones but I suspect it was true for most of them as well) the differential between the rich and the poor declined. Under New Labour it has massively increased. Look at HMRC and ONS data on income and, particularly, wealth differentials (and please do not quote Gini coefficients based on tax paid as the tax breaks for the rich and the tax planning industry have mushroomed under Brown so the rich are richer but paying less tax).
I think that you should withdraw your claim that Iain Dale is a member of the Labour Party.
Ben’s bet was with paulinlancs
I am certainly tempted to read both interviews to look for ammunition to use against the BNP, except that I don’t actually know any BNP supporters
“I think that you should withdraw your claim that Iain Dale is a member of the Labour Party”.
Oh the witty riposte John77! The Tories are ideologically wedded to the ruling class and that’s the party Dale represents.
Yes, tis true, HarpyMarx more Groucho than Karl….
John
Two points Mr Dales energetically learnt how to climb a ladder, stopped keeping coal in the bath, and consciously joined a political party whose whole raison d’être is to kick the said ladder away by maintaining the staus quo.(The clue is in the Tory party’s full name)
So yes, he has chosen to place himself in the same camp as my class enemies.
As to your argument about the gap between the economically rich and poor, it is infantile, what you seem to be saying is one party is better than the other, because by a smidgin they exploited people a little less, please?
@ Mick Hall
What do you do that is more worthy and less well remunerated than a nursing assistant?
Iain Dale is too young to have kept coal in the bath
No my argument is not infantile (yours may be). I found Animal Farm childish when I was required to read it, but Orwell’s satirical depiction of Soviet Russia rings more true now than under Attlee or Wilson.
Throughout my lifetime Conservative governments have invariably increased the general wealth of the population and decreased inequality by improving the income and wealth of the poorer/disadvantaged by more than the rich/advantaged (and Old Labour reduced inequality even if it was sometimes at the cost of reducing overall income and wealth), but New Labour has increased inequality. This has been confirmed by HMRC and ONS under Brown’s control despite governmental direction to ONS to select data to disguise the extent by which inequality has increased (read the small print in the ONS report!)
I am not talking about a smidgeon. The widely misquoted remark by Harold MacMillan was that some people (pensioners) have never had it so good because many OAPs had higher incomes from the state pension during SuperMacs leadership than they had received while working. Contrast that with the plight of pensioners under Brown!!
Kicking the ladder away was Anthony Crosland in particular and Wilson’s government in general with the abolition of the tri-partite system, including grammar schools that gave bright working-class kids the chance to benefit from an education that matched their ability and thereby achieve success and benefit society as a whole. When I was a student a majority of Oxford undergraduates came from grammar schools, but not any more. A significant proportion of those from independent schools were scholars – not one of those from my school (in my year or the two years above – I don’t know outside that range but I suspect it still applied) paid full fees. Oxford is now bending over backwards to encourage applications from disadvantaged children and biasing selection in their favour but still ends up with a majority from independent schools because the state sector fails bright kids.