The world fell apart in
1991 and since then we’ve been living through the looking glass. People who
don’t remember the Cold War can’t grasp how permanent it seemed. When I was a
child, the idea that the USSR would cease to exist was as preposterous as the
idea that the USA or UK would break up. Even when I moved to the USSR, I didn’t
dream that it was on the verge of break up. There was shock in Russia in
1991 and chaos, not least in the minds of people. Suddenly, almost everything
everyone believed turned out to be false. The Party was a sort of religion. We in
the Komsomol were the youthful
acolytes. You didn’t question the truth in our meetings. You didn’t even hint
at doubt. You agreed or kept silent. But
suddenly, self-evident Komsomol truths became as empty as the places where we
used to have our meetings. Everything people thought they knew turned out to
be questionable. Career paths that previously had led to success now led to
failure. A taxi driver earned more than a professor, because he did something
that didn’t depend on the state. In bewilderment no-one knew what was true
anymore.
When people cease to
believe in God, it’s not that they believe nothing it’s that they believe
anything. This is attributed sometimes to Chesterton, but it’s also an expansion of
the idea in Dostoevsky that if God does not exist, then everything is
permitted. I have seen this at first hand in Russia. People who had lost their faith in the Party needed
something to fill the gap. They started
to believe anything. There were cults.
I don’t wish to
criticise anybody’s religion, not least because I have no rational
justification for what I believe. There was a revival of interest in what had
for centuries been the foundation of the Russian character, the Orthodox
Church. But there was incredible ignorance. I met people who brought icons out
of hiding. But they didn’t know who the icons depicted. But the simplicity of these
people’s faith was genuine. It protected them and they remained grounded in the
traditions of a thousand years.
But Russia was suddenly
open and became flooded with charlatans.
I received a visit from the mother of one of my students. Her daughter had
joined the Hare Krishnas. She’d changed her name and was refusing to even speak
to her parents. I went to try to rescue her. Their guru was from England. He
had a very pretty Russian “wife” who translated all he said and lived like a
little king on the back of donations. My husband used his connections to find
out what he could and I did the same. I spent a few days with the Hare Krishnas
getting the full on treatment. We knew the guru was a charlatan, but the
brainwashing was too powerful. I couldn’t get through to my student. She had
ceased to reason. All I saw was a blank face, eyes glazed. The person I had
known had ceased to exist.
The reforms that
Gorbachev began in the Soviet Union can be likened to the reforms that Neil Kinnock
began in the 1980s. John McTernan is very good on this.
It
has often been observed that the Left won the Sixties - in terms of equalities
and social issues - and that the Right won the 1980s – in terms of economic
management. All true. As is the fact that no political party represent what
mainstream voters really want – a socially liberal party that is also
economically liberal.
It was because economically
the Right won the 1980s that Labour could no longer keep on with the ideas of
the past. This became still more abundantly clear with the fall of the Berlin
Wall. Given the choice between Capitalism and state Socialism, people simply
voted with their feet. The ideological foundation of the Left creaked. What to
do? The only sensible thing was to build a new foundation. This is exactly what
the Labour party did. New Labour was about making free market economics work
for everyone. The idea no longer was to overthrow capitalism, but to make it
fairer so that no-one was left out. If an economy grows, there is more to share
round.
Sensible people on the
Left realise that this is the only game in town. The rejection of capitalism makes
everyone poorer, most of all, the poorest. Believe me I've been there. It didn't work. Apart from the nobility in the inner circle of the Party we were poor.
The Left’s role is to use economics
to make the economy more wealthy, but to use what we know about economics and the growth obtained for
the benefit of all. If we can just make a bigger cake, there will be more for us to divide up. Everyone will get enough. Above all, the poorest will get a bigger slice than if the cake were smaller because we made a mess of the economy. The debate between Left and Right becomes as much as
anything a debate about competence in running an economy and a country. This is quite dull, but it will have real world rewards.
But some people and an
especially large number of them in Scotland, simply don’t get this. They
complain to me bitterly about Red Tories. They obsess about issues of the 1980s
like nuclear weapons. They think the process by which Labour transformed itself
into a modern party was a mistake. Those on the Left who were unwilling to make
the intellectual transformation that was made by the Labour party have found
themselves without a coherent role. They
go on demonstrations. They occupy
buildings. They complain about cuts. They leak secret documents. They wear
masks. They oppose, but what they lack is a coherent alternative plan.
Much of the Nationalist
left in Scotland is stuck in some sort of odd time warp. They have not made the
intellectual leap from the 80s. They reject the intellectual change made by the
Labour movement. The foundation of this is that they cannot get over their
hatred of Margaret Thatcher. They cannot accept that she won the economic
argument of the 1980s. She remains the devil incarnate and bogeywoman all
rolled into one. An independent Scotland has become the Nirvana where all
things are possible. It’s a place where there will be ever more increases in public
spending and no cuts whatsoever. There will be manna from heaven, only the
manna is black liquid that looks like treacle. There are mantras that everyone
keeps repeating. They involve words endlessly repeated and chanted like 'Trident', 'cuts', 'bedroom tax', 'wicked Tories', 'Norway'. When facts change like the fall in the oil price, they just believe
ever more in the coming Nirvana. There’s no way of disproving that this Nirvana
exists. It’s like heaven. You just have to wait and see about the hereafter.
I don’t wish to be
nasty about my nationalist friends. Many of them are perfectly reasonable and
many have the best of intentions. But I found throughout the summer that I could not reach most of them intellectually. We could not have a rational
discussion. This has increased since the referendum rather than decreased. They
prophesised that Scotland would vote Yes, but when the prophesy was
disappointed, they simply dusted themselves off and began prophesising again.
The guru is always right: it’s always possible to reinterpret the prophesy. The
end of the world didn’t after all happen today, but wait: it’s actually going
to happen next year.
In Russia today the
popularity of a man who has led his country to disaster is sky high. I told
friends and family months ago that this path was folly. But they would not
listen. I told them what would happen to their savings, but they did not care.
I hate seeing leaders worshiped. I hate coming across people who can see no
wrong in the Party and who are unable to reason and criticise. This is all too familiar. The intellectual
case for independence was destroyed in the summer by reason and has become still
more untenable since owing to the collapse of the oil price. But support for
the SNP just keeps rising. This is not politics. This is religion. Hare Alex,
Hare Nicola. It’s Scotland that needs rescuing now.
If you like my writing, please follow the link to my book Scarlet on the Horizon.
The first five chapters can be read as a preview.
