Nor did the parents of any of my friends – right or left – discuss it. What would be characterised in today’s hysterical terms as overwhelming debts that threaten the life of the nation simply did not figure in any of their conversations, or more widely. If anybody had solemnly declared that the overriding national purpose should be to cap the national debt’s share of GDP at 80%, they would have been considered deranged. Their generation had more important things to talk about – the defence of the realm, for example, the creation of a good society and the need to do whatever Britain had to do to stay great. The politicians of the day traded their competing visions and debated how they would achieve the common good.
Today’s Conservatives would say they were all dupes – but were they? The debt was plainly affordable and a non-problem. Indeed, the ability to sustain large volumes of government, so-called “gilt-edged” securities, was understood to be part of the national settlement, the fair order of things. There was a vague understanding that Britain had been fighting and winning wars for centuries and creating an empire through its sophisticated approach to creating and managing large levels of national debt.
It was this, as much as martial valour, that had won the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo – or the Battle of Britain. The debt would sort itself out as it had in the past – which it did, falling over the 1980s and 1990s as inflation eroded it in real terms. Nobody would think to crucify the nation’s public services, its security and the wider state over delivering an artificial debt ceiling. My father and his generation were perfectly sane.
The political debate, from 1918 to 1950 or so, was almost entirely dominated by how the fuck do we pay for this debt?
There was a vague understanding that Britain had been fighting and winning wars for centuries and creating an empire through its sophisticated approach to creating and managing large levels of national debt.
So a sophisticated approach to creating and managing large levels of national debt does not include thinking about how to pay it back? How frightfully interesting. I would have thought that refusing to think about how to pay back their debts or restraining their spending was more typical of the Spanish Kings or Napoleon than Pitt the Even Younger.
Someone remind me of when the IMF had to be called in to save the British economy? Has Willie chosen his dates so that he can ignore that?
There was a vague understanding that Britain had been fighting and winning wars for centuries and creating an empire through its sophisticated approach to creating and managing large levels of national debt.
Another Lefty getting misty-eyed about the Empire. That’s two in as many weeks, on this blog alone. Give it another generation and they’ll be editorials in The Guardian (assuming it’s not bankrupt by then) with nostalgic tales of the Thatcher years when everybody could dream of owning their own home.
they’ll = there’ll
Wasn’t one of Chamberlain’s main reasons for desiring peace based on the financial stress of having to arm the UK to a level that it could reasonably challenge Germany?
Quite a large chunk of the UK’s WW1 debt to the US remains in limbo, I’m not sure the US is quite so keen to repeat that today.
“OUTSTANDING WWI LOANS
Britain owed to US in 1934: £866m
Adjusted by RPI to 2006: £40bn
Other nations owed Britain: £2.3bn
Adjusted by RPI to 2006: £104bn”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4757181.stm
So Much for Subtlety,
Re the IMF loan in l976, Britain’s problem then was a disorganised collapse of sterling on the foreign exchange markets: i.e. debts denominated in foreign currencies.
That’s completely different to loans to the British government (mainly by British citizens and institutions) and denominated in Sterling. The latter sort of government debt as Martin Wolf pointed out recently in the Financial Times is little different to money. That is, so called “government debt” is to all intents and purposes “pounds saved by UK citizens”.
Off topic but involving an unrelated pack of liars:
The RSPCA’s prosecution of a Dorset Hunt has collapsed:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3005983/Hunt-victory-malicious-RSPCA-trial-collapses-Charity-accused-harassment-having-mystery-financial-backer.html
We can all guess the Animal Rights nutters’ response, right?
He went on to say: ‘We have now reached the reluctant conclusion that having tried everything under the current judicial system, we now need to make changes to strengthen the Hunting Act. Time and time again, hunts flout the law and escape prosecution by using the false alibi that they were trail hunting. The pro-hunt lobby continually drag out cases and waste public and charity funds.’
Willie is an ignorant c*nt but he is not as c*ntish as this.
David Moore,
Yes. Chamberlain had been raising the military budget after 1936, but appeasement with Germany was necessary to buy time.
Of course, Labour opposed rearmament at this time, thinking that increasing the military would lead to war. Twats.
“Of course, Labour opposed rearmament at this time, thinking that increasing the military would lead to war”
Well it did, didn’t it :-))
Yes, all of that debt was nothing. Britain didnt have capital controls until the the arrival of the Blessed Margaret, it didnt have rationing until 1954, nine years after the UK won WWII. Britiain didnt pull out of Greece in 1947 because of the crippling burden of the debt*. It didnt constantly have problems with the Balance of Payments in the postwar period. It didnt lose the remnants of Empire because the US threatened the Pound in the Suez crisis.
* I dont hink anyone has suggested that Greece should repay the Brits for their support in kicking out the Communists after WWII?
Ken: “nine years after the UK won WWII.”
That will be a shock to the Soviets.
Woodrow Wilson carried his Fourteen Points to Versailles, planning to achieve a just settlement to WWI. The French and British reps told him, “That’s all well and good, but without reparations, we can’t repay our debts to you.” So Wilson threw the 14 into the trash, and supported reparations on Germany. How’d that work out for you?
“The debt would sort itself out”: that proposition is entirely inconsistent with the whole of the rest of Hutton’s political beliefs, which always require detailed government intervention in everything. He is, as you say, a bit on the dim side. God alone knows what his college fellows must make of him. Still, they appointed him. Silly buggers.
Gamecock
I use the “UK won” in the sense they were on the “winning” side unlike, say, Germany.
By this point in this series, I think we need to consider that he isn’t actually lying. He might actually be deluded enough to believe the crap he spouts.
C.f. the endless Murphy moron, liar or incompetent proto-Bond villian* debate.
Of course, in the LHTD’s case, that would be villein. No where nearly competent enough to pander to a long-haired white cat.
ken
March 22, 2015 at 4:16 pm
Very good, sir.
@ ken
well done: I should like to do that but I can’t
@ Gamecock
Had you noticed that Soviet Russia started WWII on the same side as Germany?
The only countries that were opposed to Germany throughout the War were members of the British Commonwealth.
I have *one* thing to say to you KATYN.
I didn’t learn how valuable the Polish pilots were in the Battle of Britain until years after the only one I had known (his eldest son was in my class) died – he was too modest.
I bet his dad didn’t lose any sleep over pumping CO2 into the sky either, or AIDS in Africa or much else of the plethora of lefty handwringing causes. Because obviously we should be looking at the concerns of people in the fucking 1920s to determine what to bother ourselves with 90 years on.
I doubt if Will Hutton is lying when he says his parents did not bother with the National Debt : things were very different back then. As mere youth I came under the influence of a left-wing political groupuscule that believed the US had imposed a huge debt on us for fighting the Germans and was in the process of stripping away all our export markets ( previously organised into a system of Imperial Preference) with a view to world hegemony.The folly of youth! Our enemies were Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union (with Europe and bits of Africa!) movement .People then weren’t in the slightest worried that we were in debt to the US ,except, as someone said at Suez, when the American organised a run on the pound to put us back in our servile place.
DBC Reed: If only folly were confined to your youth. Surprised to hear you go all the way back to the 1930s. You must be 90 odd and you still haven’t learned anything.
john77
March 22, 2015 at 11:41 pm
The only countries that were opposed to Germany throughout the War were members of the British Commonwealth.
=================
France? Finland? China? Members of the Commonwealth?
France was for most of the war either occupied, or a satellite state.
Finland spent most of WW2 fighting the Soviet Union, allied to the Axis until 1944.
China was an ally of Germany until Japan invaded in 1937. I don’t know of any WW2 action between China and Germany but I’m sure someone will be along soon to let me know.
BiW
Scratch Finland.
China declared war on Germany Dec 11, 1941. But, yeah, no known skirmishes between them and the Germans.
You are wrong about France. France had 40 divisions engaged with the Germans by the end of the war, and was the 4th largest allied army, behind the Soviets, Americans, and British.
Back to John77’s original statement:
“The only countries that were opposed to Germany throughout the War were members of the British Commonwealth.”
As the Soviets and Americans dwarfed the British/Commonwealth participants, his statement is absurd.
His statement isn’t absurd in the slightest.
France surrendered to Germany on 25 June 1940.
The Soviets were allies of Germany until 1941, even if only secretly.
The Americans didn’t declare war on Germany until 11 December 1941.
So the statement “The only countries that were opposed to Germany throughout the War were members of the British Commonwealth” (my emphasis) has not been refuted.