Chapter 21: Anatomy of FailureLiberal Party's electoral fortunes; Emerging New Left; Limits of Political Mechanism's power; King Cnut and King Charles; Of tides and men.
It took less than a week of the 1988 election for it to be clear that the 1985 Liberal 'A Plague on Both Your Camps' vote was collapsing. With the Communists and the Greens talking much the same language on economic matters, the Liberals were unmasked, their eye shadow began to fade and their face powder became ever more blotchy. Soon it became obvious that they were really the same old worn-out establishment politicians as the rest of them. But worse than that, they were superficial, changing their policies in response to opinion polls, trimming their ideals in the quest for votes.In suburbia they began to be seen as losers: a serious charge. The chic voter went Green or returned to the fold they had left in 1985 and the thinking voter left them in droves. Under the circumstances the Liberal vote held up surprisingly well. But this might be more indicative of the inertia in the system that restricts the rise and fall of parties to more graceful trajectories of a decade of two rather than dispatching them in and out of the political firmament like shooting stars.
And so what we saw in 1988 was the beginning of a broad based movement across the election hall from the old establishment politician parties (the 'true' right) to the new radical structuralist parties (the 'true' left). The Liberals were no more than a wayside inn, a temporary one election stop-over for voters moving with their feet to the Christian Democrats with their promise to replace 'the Barabbasque' with Catholic values; the Communists with their promises to curb the money power and no longer permit money to be used to control peopleís lives; and the Greens with their insistence that happiness would come from green fields, good food and clean water and that this in turn could come only from a shift in our way of looking at the world, which means a new relationship between man and nature and a new partnership between industry and the environment.
This New Left was demanding real action in 1988. They were not going to be fooled by sweet words. The values being brought to bear to regulate behaviour in the public domain had to change. This was the message of 1988. And in Sweden with its three yearly elections and its proportional representation it was through the ballot box that this action was sought .
Most of those voting may also have believed in the ability of their ballot boxes to change Sweden's little world. Most of them may not. It is beside the point. You can use only the power at your disposal. Sweden, unlike China, has the vote so it was through the vote that this message was delivered.
The election was a gauntlet from the New Left. It had made its challenge and it had backed it up by taking one out of every ten seats in the Swedish National Parliament through representatives for the Communists and the Greens.
Swedes are schooled to believe that the political mechanism calls the shots. Many politicians share this belief because they call only for shots which are harmless. These are easily provided.
But the structuralists will find matters otherwise. They will find the political mechanism to be held in a vice-like grip between the education mechanism on the one side, with its slow-acting low level conditioning of people's wants and the administration mechanism on the other side with its limited experience of radical change and hence its reluctance to expand the artistic boundaries of what is possible.
And these in their turn will sense the power surging through society and knowing only too well the direction of this flow from the financial mechanism through their own corporate worlds towards the religious mechanism, and being themselves subject to the direction of an encrusted establishment which has long since ceased to question the rightness of this situation, they will float with the current, oblivious of the turning of the tide far out in the estuary.
Indeed, familiar with the gentle drift, they will seek first to continue on their merry way gently down the stream, then they will struggle to avoid being drawn back upstream. Finally they will cease their struggle exhausted from their pointless fight. Some will sink. Others will resume their old ways drifting gently upstream instead of downstream.
Cnut, the last of the wise Scandinavian monarchs of the Viking age, understood these matters better than his courtiers. That is why he had the good sense to seat himself on the shoreline as the tide came in around him. 'Look', he said to them, 'Mighty king that I am, I cannot stem the tide. Do not seek to turn the tides. Seek instead to find a way to work with it, that it may serve you. Otherwise you will surely drown!' How sad that such moral learnings have been stolen from our children and wise kings portrayed as fools who sought to rule the waves.
Charles, the next wise monarch of the British Isles, is following in Cnut's footsteps. He too will need to orchestrate such 'photo opportunities' for the education of his court.
The tide may be on the turn and historic forces will not cease their restless motion, but such tides turn only every few generations and the land- and seascapes where earth and air and water meet may take many different forms as shoals are formed, channels force their way through the beach and waves crash down upon the shore.
Indeed man himself can with his mind and energy slaves work engineering wonders of such great cunning and with so much strength that for a time and for some places it would appear that even the tide has been turned.
But at what cost such great engineering works? And after all is done, to what purpose? And to whose benefit? Those with landed interests or those whose hearts and whose livelihood are inextricably bound up with the sea?