Thread by @admcollingwood

🧵A while ago, I wrote a thread, 'the Hypernormalisation of Britain'. Surprisingly, it has been received well, with almost 450 retweets so far.

This is a THREAD about the Agents of #Hypernormalisation in Britain. It will try to explain how we reached our current state. 1/n

https://twitter.com/admcollingwood/status/1479484192765394952

Our story centres on three events in 1955-56. Two are barely known and the third is misunderstood, but they created modern Britain. The first event was the publication of The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland, the Oxford academic and Labour MP. No book has had more... 2/n

...influence on postwar British society. In it, Crosland argued that the Labour Party should stop focusing solely on economic policy as a means to achieve its socialist ends: there was more than one way to skin a cat. Instead of attempting to control the commanding...3/n

...heights of the economy through nationalising evermore industry, Labour could achieve greater equality of outcomes by smashing existing hierarchies and status structures in the social sphere. He also argued that Labour should build a society that involved more...4/n

...personal "freedom," "dissent," and "even frivolity," and which eschewed "abstinence." In 1964, Labour entered government for the first time in 13yrs. Crosland, and Roy Jenkins, who had written The Labour Case, a book that also called for a more liberal society, provided...5/n

...the intellectual muscle behind Harold Wilson's two stints as prime minister. The institution of marriage was attacked by making divorce far easier. Abortion was legalised. Grammar schools were replaced with Comprehensives. Marijuana possession was taken less seriously...6/n

...The death penalty was abolished. Homosexuality was (rightfully) legalised. Justice flipped from punishment to rehabilitation. The concept of multiculturalism was born. Coupled with the rapidly ebbing adherence to the Christian faith, and with some delay as the...7/n

...changes filtered through, these steps led to a social revolution. The old taboos and societal expectations were smashed for good. Individual expression, and the pursuit of personal pleasure became more important than national, community and family obligations, culture...8/n

...and ties. Jenkins called it 'the civilized society'; however, James Callahan, a social conservative who would himself become Labour Prime Minister, resentfully called it 'the permissive society'. The Conservative Party never once tried to turn back this...9/n

...legislative programme.

Shortly before Crosland published The Future of Socialism, an Eton-educated battery chicken farmer called Antony Fisher founded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). He had served as a fighter pilot for the RAF during the Second World War and...10/n

...was alarmed by Labour's 1945 election victory, given their platform of nationalisation and central economic planning. He had read a summary of The Road to Serfdom by Frederich von Hayek in Reader's Digest, but when he visited the Austrian economist at the LSE, Hayek...11/n

...had told him not to pursue a career in politics. Instead, Hayek said, Fisher should set up an organisation that would influence politicians and public policy from the outside. No think tank has had a greater influence on British life than Fisher's IEA. In 1979...12/n

...Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, and was going to use the ideas of the IEA to remake Britain. She would smash the unions, privatise huge swathes of publicly owned industry, aggressively deregulate the City of London's financial sector, cut direct taxation, slash...13/n

...spending and industrial subsidies, crush the supply of money, and open up the British economy to international competition. As Crosland and Jenkins had used social liberalism to revolutionise Britain, so Thatcher used economic liberalism to the same ends. If the result...14/n

...of the former was 'the permissive society', the result of the latter was 'the permissive economy'. Individual economic agents -- whether people or corporations -- were expected to act in their own selfish interests. Gone were the old ties and obligations corporations...15/n

...had to the country and communities in which they operated. What now counted was only their ability to offer shareholders a return on equity. Gone also was the government's obligation to think of economic security and manufacturing capacity, and to protect individual...16/n

...workers from the biting winds of capitalism. Instead, the windows would be thrown open to labour competition from anywhere in the world, even from countries with far lower wages and poorer working conditions. Labour never once tried to turn back this process. Shortly...17/n

...after the foundation of the IEA, and as Crosland was publishing The Future of Socialism, the UK was embroiled in the Suez Crisis. Britain wanted to prevent the Suez Canal from being nationalised, and plotted a coup de main with Israel and France to prevent it happening...18/n.

Under severe pressure from the US, the plan failed. It is often considered the final nail in the coffin for Britain's great power status; however, that had happened in Singapore in 1942. In fact, it was a matter of confidence. The People's confidence in the ruling elites...19/n

..., now exposed as bungling liars, was shattered. Meanwhile, the elites' confidence in Britain was likewise destroyed. The ruling class thenceforth believed that Britain could no longer be an independent state with strategic manoeuvrability. Instead, they sought to anchor...20/n

...Britain in two places that could: Brussels (with its large internal market and economic power) and Washington (with its full spectrum geopolitical might). They hoped that by doing so, Britain might have a voice in two globally powerful decision centres. And, as Britain..21/n

...became more deeply enmeshed with the global economic order the US had set up during the Cold War (GATT, the IMF, the World Bank, the EU, and the be WTO), evermore power was removed from politicians and placed in the hands of a technocratic elite that made decisions on a..22/n

...supranational level.

The election of the Labour Party in 1997 brought together the three key events of 1955-56. They understood that Crosland was right: they did not need to seize the commanding heights of the economy to achieve their progressive revolution. So they...23/n

...left untouched the Thatcherite financial and economic reforms. Indeed, they went further, privatising more public assets, inviting private capital into the public sector, and even making the Bank of England independent. This handed yet another key economic lever...24/n

...,the ability to control the supply of money, away to unelected bureaucrats, who also controlled British trade policy (EU and the WTO), industrial policy (EU), workers rights (HCHR and ECJ) and financial regulation (Bank of England and Financial Services Authority)...25/n

Blair and Labour also continued the post-Suez trend in foreign policy, making Britain even more an addendum to the foreign policy of America, which was about to embark on a monstrously hubristic crusade to remake the world in its own image. Instead of controlling the...26/n

...country's economy and foreign relations, Labour sought to achieve social revolution. It threw open the borders to massive immigration "to rub the noses of conservatives in diversity." Its Equality Act replaced the British concept of fairness with the alien one of equity...27/n

This legally forced the public sector to consider protected characteristics more than meritocracy. Its Human Rights Act of 1998 forced British Law to consider the views of the European Court of Human Rights, an activist court that treats the European Convention...28/n

...of Human Rights as 'a living document', and consistently extends its meaning and scope to cover areas such as the rights of prisoners to vote. The Labour government even extended the opening hours of pubs, just as Antony Crosland had advocated in The Future of Socialism...29/n

The New Labour movement under Tony Blair thereby cemented the three trends set in motion in 1955-56.

And we accepted then all. We were happy to be free of the old taboos and social restrictions; to be able to take drugs without danger of arrest; to be able to divorce...30/n

...when we wanted; to be able to get a woman pregnant without being socially pressured to marry her. The holders of capital and the wealthy were delighted with their enhanced economic freedom to shift manufacturing capacity and capital wherever in the world it was able to...31/n

...generate the greatest return. And politicians liked having the important decisions taken from Brussels, Threadneedle Street, Washington and Strasbourg, because it gave them somebody to blame while absolving them of their responsibility to make difficult decisions and...32/n

...uncomfortable compromises.

But then it all went wrong. First, manufacturing and its jobs disappeared forever. Then, we fought an unimaginably expensive forever war for the cause of liberal democracy. Then, the deregulated banks almost destroyed the entire world economy...33/n

We started noticing real world effects of divorce -- the higher welfare bills, the streets plagued by feral youths, the disorderly schools. We started feeling the effects of unconstrained sexuality on loneliness, confidence and the ability to form long term relations. We...34/n

...saw the huge gap that appeared between the winners and losers of the global economy. We saw the breakdown of once strong communities, caused by mass migration, industry loss, and an emphasis on individual self expression. We saw the lawlessness on our streets. We saw...35/n

...that equity wasn't fair at all, and the strain it put in the unity of society. And slowly, we realised that there was nothing politicians could do. They had given up all their power. In doing so, they had handed it to a class of people unwilling to give it back. Yet we...36/n

...had also given up our power. By embracing individualism, we had relinquished our ability to take collective action. And so we retreated to the internet, where we argued with eachother and acted out the pretence that we, or the officials were tribally cheered and jeered...37/n

...,had any clue how to change things. In doing so, we handed power to a new set of unelected elites, the social media corporations, whose algorithms kept us in #hypernormalised outrage, and divided into ever smaller identity groups, preventing any real change at all. ENDS

I dedicate this mega thread to @bencobley, who loves them.