Could it Happen Here? A Postscript
| Author | William Gutteridge |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7905200306 |
| Published date | 01 July 1979 |
| Date | 01 July 1979 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
WILLIAM GUTTERIDGE
Professor
of
International Studies
at the University
of
Aston
in Birmingham
COULD
IT HAPPEN HERE?
APOSTSCRIPT
(To pages 72-86
of
volume LJI No. 1/79)
Only the outcome - the 'denoument' - will establish the real
danger of resemblance between the situation in February 1979 and
that which Edward Heath's administration faced five years ago in
1974.
It
does, however, provide a timely opportunity for re-appraisal
of the question "Could
It
Happen Here?" and, if it could, what form
"It" would take and how we can best forestall it or, if we want to,
mitigate its consequences.
Nothing has happened in the meantime to suggest
that
any
government can by the wave of a magic wand - the deployment of
its security forces - bring to heel militantly dissident elements in the
labour force. The error in the supposition - still in the back of some
people's minds -
that
in the last resort the Army can be brought in,
not only to perform mundane tasks in an emergency,
but
to enforce
the government's will in the matter of pay policy or anything else has
been progressively demonstrated. Soldiers may be able effectively,
given the limits to their numbers, to act as firemen, ambulancemen or
even tanker drivers and have earned the admiration and gratitude of
the general public, without the opprobrium attached to general strike
breaking, by so doing. But the very discreetness of their contribution
in these roles has served further to show the virtual impossibility on
several grounds of their going beyond what may be interpreted as
quasi-military skills and functions into the more general
job
of
keeping the services going in a vastly complex industrial society.
The question is - what conclusions can and must now be drawn
from the evident - and fortunate? -governmental impotence in
this respect. Perhaps it is actually most important in a general sense
for the population at large to realize
that
agovernment as such, of
whatever political complexion, is impotent. There is very little it can
do, certainly within a democratic framework, radically to change the
direction of a society which, on occasions seems bent on its own
dissolution, not because it actually wants revolution,
but
because it
has got on to a slippery slope or into an inexorable downward spiral.
One reason why powerful popular movements to restore
commonsense
and
humanity are not emerging is probably
that
progressively we have come to rely too much on government
initiatives. In other words, we are protected from the consequences
of
our
own acquiescence in arrangements and situations which ought
July 1979 249
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