Sunday, 5 April 2009

Why Jack of Kent Turned Left

In 1967, the increasingly disenchanted Kingsley Amis published the essay Why Lucky Jim Turned Right.

Lucky Jim, of course, was the title of his 1954 novel, perhaps one of the funniest in the English language.

The novel's hero, Jim Dixon, shares the prevailing vague pro-welfare state views of the time. However, by the late 1960s and 1970s, Amis was one of a number of hitherto leftist writers and pundits moving over to the Right. Others included Woodrow Wyatt, Paul Johnson, and - later - Brian Walden.

Many of these figures became Thatcherites rather than Tories; moreover most ceased to be socialist and became anti-socialist instead.

This post, however, is the story of my journey forty years later in the opposite direction.

By way of background, some personal history. I was brought up on council estates in a large English city. I attended not the city's famous grammar schools (I failed my "Eleven Plus" exam), but the same school as had my mother, aunt, and uncle, the generation before. By the 1980s, it was a huge "comprehensive" rather than a "secondary modern". Apart from my teachers, and the occasional doctor, I did not meet a graduate or a professional until I was about sixteen. Only two or so people in my year went to university.

Against this, the fact that my parents could buy a former council house transformed my family's fortunes at a stroke. Self-reliance was an attractive creed. The attraction of Thatcherism was re-enforced by the Right being clearly right on defence and nuclear weapons (I didn't then realise that many on the Left did not share the CND unworldliness).

So, by 16, I was insufferable. I even joined the Young Conservatives. Harry Enfield had not yet coined "Tory Boy" as a character, but I was his precursor.

As it was, I got dubbed instead after a less brilliant creation, Alan B'Stard.

And, to give the Conservative Party its due, they were kind and helpful in providing opportunities. By 18, I was working in the House of Commons as a researcher, in the very last year of Margaret Thatcher's premiership.

A little after, I was even turned down for a job at Conservative Central Office by the youthful and not yet charming David Cameron himself.

As I got older, I became less interested in party politics. I began to realise that to a large extent it didn't really matter which party was actually in control, certain public policy trends were as-good-as-inevitable. The Foreign Office would always press for closer European Union; the Home Office would always press for ID cards; and the Ministry of Defence would always press for BAe to get large contracts.

Only the combination of a crisis and a politician with an alternative policy agenda would ever break the relentless march of conventional thinking: Churchill on the failure of appeasement in 1940, or Thatcher with the collapse of postwar consensus in 1979.

I also realised that my own personal story of self-reliance, of getting "on my bike" to one of the world's greatest universities for an undergraduate degree, and then gaining various legal qualifications, was not a solid basis for a wider social policy. It became less significant to me that I had done any of that, and more significant that many with whom I went to school, and were no less intelligent, had not even thought about university and the professions, let alone tried and failed. I was an exception to a disappointing rule.

And so, for a range of reasons, I ceased to be an active party member, and indeed I have not been a member of the Conservative Party for over ten years.

I nonetheless continued to think of myself as right-of-centre. The main practical benefit of this was that I was able to tease the various earnest leftwingers I encountered. Sadly, irony (and indeed sometime humour) can be more common on the Right than on the Left.

But I justified being right of centre by calling myself a libertarian. As William Weld, a US politician, once said: keep the government out of one's wallet and out of one's bedroom.

My skepticism about the "State" seemed to apply evenly in both social and economic contexts.

On the social liberal side, I became more engaged with civil liberties and human rights. I began to see the priorities of personal privacy and then freedom of expression as the preferable bases for a properly and fairly constituted society.

But, whilst the economic liberalism was still there, I could still see myself as right-of-centre, notwithstanding the astonishing failures by Conservative politicians and pundits to "get" civil liberties and human rights. (Appealing to Magna Carta is not the stuff of practical politics: see here.)

And then came the Credit Crunch.

My faith in economic liberalism was extinguished (I wrote about it here).

Economic actors, left to themselves, do NOT by some "invisible hand" bring the greater good. On the contrary, economic actors left to their own devices will undermine capitalism itself. Adam Smith's dictum was now wrong. And the political Right will now be without a distinctive economic policy for a generation.

Now that the ballast which kept me (in my own view) right-of-centre had gone, I tipped steeply to the Left.

My objection to the hopelessness of the current UK government remains, but I find my criticisms premised on assumptions I associate with elements of the political Left rather than the Right: taking human rights and civil liberties seriously, distrusting both the market and the authoritarian state, endorsing non-selective and publicly-funded education, and a belief in the merits of diversity and general social improvement as goods in themselves.

I still value my time on the right-of-centre (as I saw it), and I will miss standing alongside pundits such as the brilliant Graeme Archer in promoting secularism and social liberalism to the right-of-centre.

But it is time for me to go.

And I hope I can cease being a Conservative without becoming an anti-Conservative.


Peter Gates said...

Don't worry Jack,

Your not alone in your abandonment of economic liberalism, the Conservative Party have been leading that charge for a long time now!

I think the Conservatives flirting with economic liberalism under Thatcher/Keith Joseph was just a temporary state and they are retuning to their old patrician ways.

How did you define your economic liberalism? You mention Thatcher. Specifically what about Hayek, Mises, Rothbard?

They certainly would not agree with you that recent events have been caused by economic liberalism. Credit bubbles pumped up by central banks, tax payer's bailing out failed banks, regulation requiring the use of rating agencies.

A very good review on these matters can be found here.

and also here

Why do you think of it as left and right? Is is not a spectrum between freedom and statism/collectivism? Both major UK parties are currently closer to each other and the statism/collectivism end.

So maybe you're not really making that big an intellectual step along my spectrum, but you are making a much bigger one in a cultural/identity sense.

Could it be a bit like how many people takes years to admit publicly that they are an atheist when the stopped believing in God years ago. It's the saying it out loud that is the hard bit

You say "Economic actors, left to themselves, do NOT by some "invisible hand" bring the greater good".

Oh be careful, "the greater good", next you'll be saying "won't someone think of the children" and "something must be done".

I didn't know we'd all agreed what the greater good was yet.

Your reminding me of one of the many great satirical quotes from the move American Psycho, when Patrick Batemen says

"Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. But we can't ignore our social needs. either We have to stop people from abusing the welfare system. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights while also promoting equal rights for women but change the abortion laws to protect the right to life."

I always prefer it if people talk clearly and specifically about what they think is good or even the greater good. An appeal to the greater good seems like a rhetorical device designed to shut down further inquiry. I'm not for once suggesting an eminent lawyer such as yourself would do this deliberately. Maybe it's just the language of our times ;o)

Thanks for your post, always enjoyable.

Cheers, Peter

Owen said...


MsMarmitelover said...

Now what?
Nobody to vote for is there?

LeeT said...


Do you still feel that party political involvement is worthwhile? I certainly think it is. We often forget there are lots of people of good will in all parties.


Faithless said...

I've never been an economic libertarian.

But if I had been, Frank Partnoy's book Infections greed would have cured me.

Not only is it (as I have always seen it) fatuous to suggest that everyone acting in their own self-interest produces a beneficial economic environment, since the advent of computers it's become possible for investment banks not to know when products are not even in their own best interest.

Robin W (long term supporter of Sense About Science) said...

As you say, the BCA's reputation is the heart of the matter... so I'm planning on writing to them the thank them for shooting themselves in the foot. They are damaging their own reputation far more than Simon's article, which I wouldn't have seen for weeks or months (I'm interested in this stuff, but you can't keep on top of everything!)

They've brought themselves and lack of evidenced-based therapies to my attention, whilst their recourse to suing rather than scientific debate has motivated me to spread the word.

I'm going to point this out, and let them know that in the last 2 weeks I have told as many people as possible about the case, attended last tonight's event (which had a great turnout), and am willing to help out Simon's campaign however I can etc etc etc and the longer they go on, the more people they are going to expose themselves to, who will also go on to do something about it.

I've been having a scout round as to who best to write email. The name that came up immediately was 'Dr' Antoni J - any other suggestions?

Keep on keeping on!

iszi said...

great blog


Alice said...

I really enjoyed reading this, Jack. And I admire your boundless energy and having the counrage to change your mind - I'd be hopeless at that!

I agree - market forces and leaving everyone to manage for themselves is a great theory, and often defended on the grounds that the alternative is intrusive or encourages laziness. But in reality, it's a system all ready to be twisted and exploited - so it's not people's own efforts or lack of that decides their fate anyway. Might as well all pitch in and work together.

Thanks for linking back!