Former Tory leader, IDS, has made a niche for himself around the theme of 'broken britain', and, at the heart of his Centre for Social Justice is a concern about family breakdown.

In his speech to the US Heritage Foundation he claimed:

We will take over the leadership of a country that doesn’t just face an economic crisis – worse than the one that greeted Margaret Thatcher in 1979 – but also a breakdown of British society.

Across a range of indicators – depth of recession, scale of government borrowing, breakdown of the family, and the level of crime – Britain is in worryingly bad shape.   [1]

Family Division judge, Mr Justice Coleridge, has also sounded the alarm about family breakdown:

"What, I hope in all humility, I am drawing attention to is the endless game of 'musical relationships', or 'pass the partner', in which such a significant portion of the population is engaged, in the endless and futile quest for a perfect relationship which will be attained, it is supposed, by landing on the right chair or unwrapping a new and more exciting parcel," he said.

With many children growing up "scarred" by the effects of their parents' break-ups, he said that it could no longer be seen as just a matter for the individuals involved.  [2] [3]

The recent horrific event in which a man murdered his partner and children, and then killed himself, is at the extreme end of 'family breakdown' and was not a one-off occurrence.  [BBC]

When the NHS was founded by Nye Bevan in the late 1940s there was an egalitarian belief that peoples' health should not be at the mercy of their wealth - or lack of it - but that clinical need should be the criteria for access to treatment.

This should mean that a poor person with a more serious condition would get priority over a more wealthy person with a less serious condition.

This represented a marked shift for a country in which medicine had previously been a private - a market - matter.

Along with the development of the welfare state - begun by Lloyd George before WWI - the national insurance system was beefed-up to offer a safety net, cradle to grave.

Furthermore, the 'commanding heights' of the then economy - coal, steel, transport, and the Bank of England - were nationalised to ensure the economics of the 1931 National Government never again inflicted the kind of poverty seen in the 1930s.

Although opposed by many Tory voters, the 1951 Churchill government did not roll back most of these social and economic reforms.

Churchill was not what we would call today a 'free marketeer'.   [Paul Addison]

At the time the theories of the likes of Hayek and Milton Friedman were regarded, even by some mainstream Tories, as the 'economics of the lunatic right'.

The crisis of 1970s was to change all that. By 1979 there was a widespread perception - not backed up by the facts - that the unions were too strong and out of control. (The reverse was the case, btw.)

Margaret Thatcher did not talk about Hayek and Friedman during the 1979 campaign, but about lowering taxes.

The British people have often been persuaded that it's possible to have excellent public services AND low taxes, and this was one of those occasions when it was 'sold' to them by the Tories.

By 1997 the globalised free markets were the only show in town, and the show was world-wide.

The ten-point Washington Consensus had taken over as the driver of government policy, without ordinary people having a clue as what had taken place.

Economic democracy, as Attlee's government saw it, was dead.

The social norms of the late 1940s - on which the NHS rested - were also dead, a completely different - and much older - set or norms had replaced them.

In this article for the New Scientist, Mark Buchanan explicitly contrasts market and social norms.

The argument goes roughly like this:

I am bidding on ebay in competition with other would-be buyers for, say, a digital camera.

In this context market norms are in operation: competition, search for a best-buy, hiding the limits of what one will spend, planning for the last sixty seconds: in sum, ego-centric strategies to defeat the competition.

On ebay an attempt has been made to modify 'market asymmetries' by publishing previous buyers' feeback, but this cannot fully prevent buyer's - and sellers - from being cheated.

The influence of game theory - in which buyers and sellers are encouraged to see themselves as trapped in the prisoner's dilemma is perhaps well illustrated by the use of "shorting". [NYT]

In this context social norms - concern for the other party's well-being - are totally off limits.

Last summer on a very hot day we met an elderly guy in the shopping centre in a state of collapse.

Several people stopped; one guy phoned for an ambulance; we stayed until the ambulance arrived.

Social norms were in operation: putting off other plans in order to support someone in need.

Which norms were in operation when the guy murdered his family and then killed himself?

To postulate an answer let's dig further into the murky world of Thatcherite neoliberalism.

Margaret Thatcher's 'ethical' world view encapsulates - and is restricted to - competition.

Under this thesis, as Norman Tebbit famously put it, the Good Samaritan was only able to do what he did because he was wealthy!

The Lady Herself expressed matters similarly in her famous parody of the Sermon on the Mount in which she also justified market norms, though her classic statement: "There's here no so such thing as society", which sums up the eradication of social norms within neoliberal dogma.

The makers of the TV documentary The Trap, found a more terse description of the new, er, 'relationships' than Maggie's!

The, er, 'ethical' world of Objectivism - in which altruism is off limits because it intrudes on another's 'autonomy' - has taken over, and with it social norms have taken a massive - possibly fatal - hit.

This can be seen at several levels.

Growing inequalities now dictate that partners must both work in order to have anything approaching a reasonable standard of living.

In this they are supported by 'research' from a US think tank which believes babies don't suffer, so you can safely ditch Bowlby's work on Attachment Theory.    [Jane Waldfogel]

Oliver James begs to differ, as does Unicef.

Compare the minimum wage with Joseph Rowntree Foundation's minimum income standard.

I calculate that a couple with two children would need to work - between them - 72 hours to obtain the MIS of £402.83 per week.

And since that would involve tax, extra hours would have be added. The dimension of their dilemma, and the impact on their children, should be obvious but that's a social norm so it gets ignored, along with the possibility of later mental illness.

Their lives are further degraded by the fact that jobs are now much less secure - it's called 'precarity' - due to the growth of the 'reserve army' of the unemployed and 'inactive', and competition from inward migration, both of which are deliberately designed to keep wages low.   RA

The rule of the profit motive also drives the search for the cheap labour which dictates where goods are manufactured; hence the flight of jobs to the sweatshops of the Far East.

Unemployment in Britain is now massive in comparison to the 1950s, when full employment - for social as well economic reasons - was bipartisan policy.

Today, if you want to keep up with the consumerist-hedonist party, debt is the norm.

Cartesian Dualism

Market norms gain further traction from Cartesian Dualism.

Under the terms of CD, the unemployed, criminals, and the mentally ill are to be seen as entirely responsible for their own predicament.

'It's not my problem'.

This suits neoliberal autonomous individualism just fine. Expensive social programmes can be wound down, and taxation can then be reduced.

There is one further component of this lethal anti-social cocktail: libertarianism.

"What's in it for me?"

Libertarianism invites us to ask this one question of life.

It's the bedrock market norms' response to social norms.

There's absolutely nothing in it for me in waiting with a guy who's suffering and who needs an ambulance.

He should be 'autonomous' enough to wait on his own. To suffer on his own. It's probably all his fault anyway.

Market norms turn out to be social Darwinism dressed up in intellectualised clothing.

Let's now turn to another guy who murdered his family before killing himself.   [TEL]

He had built up a successful business, bought a large estate, got all the trappings of the high life.

But it was all built on that foundation stone of neoliberal growth: debt.

Then along comes his very own credit crunch.

It seems he had one thought in his mind:

'They' are not getting their hands on what's mine.

This is the nightmare - but logical - outcome of market norms destroying social norms.

Speculatively his wife, his children, his horses, his property, had to be trashed in one final explosion of violence.

Speculatively, he was unable to switch to those lost social norms in which he would have explained to his family that they would have to 'downsize'.

He could have realised that the love of his family might trump financial catastrophe; that social norms offered a way out.

But that's not the heroic individualism Ayn Rand would have wanted him to live up to.

[BBC]    [TEL]    [BBC]    [BBC]    [Tel]

Something Primordial

I am left with the visceral sense that something crucial is missing from this account.

Something primordial, atavistic, has re-emerged as social norms have been hosed down the drain by the commodification of all aspects of life.

I think Mark Buchanan puts his finger closer to it when he writes:

Our relationship with money has many facets. Some people seem addicted to accumulating it, while others can't help maxing out their credit cards and find it impossible to save for a rainy day.

As we come to understand more about money's effect on us, it is emerging that some people's brains can react to it as they would to a drug, while to others it is like a friend. Some studies even suggest that the desire for money gets cross-wired with our appetite for food.

And, of course, because having a pile of money means that you can buy more things, it is virtually synonymous with status - so much so that losing it can lead to depression and even suicide.

In these cash-strapped times, perhaps an insight into the psychology of money can improve the way we deal with it ...

In reality we are not that rational. Instead of treating cash simply as a tool to be wielded with objective precision, we allow money to reach inside our heads and tap into the ancient emotional parts of our brain, often with unpredictable results.

To understand how this affects our behaviour, some economists are starting to think more like evolutionary anthropologists ...

New Scientist

In much the same way, Paedar Kirby cites the work of Jonathan Friedman on the manner in which market norms resurrect
'Primordial Loyalties'.

Civilization - that long road away from the jungle of pre-history towards its apogee after 1945 - is once again in retreat.

Libertarianism, the rejection of the ethical dimenension of religion along with the froth of dogma and ritual, and plain old fashioned greed - with the guilt removed - are creating a world in which the end of social norms, and the pursuit of market norms, point in one direction.

Mark Fisher has it right:

It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Capitalist Realism

Meanwhile, back in the present, IDS is in government, and Dave's 'Big Society' agenda is providing a smokescreen for further attacks on social provision.

IDS is that ultimate Tory oxymoron, a man who wants social norms to emerge from an economic system based on competition, winners and losers, and a 'reserve army' of unemployed. (The latter necessary to control wage rates, btw, with charities filling in where once there was a social-welfare state.)

IDS is either an extreme cynic, or genuinely has no realisation that neoliberal free market, er, 'ethics' have seeped into every corner of daily life, leaving nothing untouched.

BTW, this is wholely intentional, as Paul Treanor confirms:

Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services, and without any attempt to justify them in terms of their effect on the production of goods and services; and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs.

To return to Mr Justice Coleridge's description of modern 'relationships', this is exactly what we should expect when social norms meet the consumerist dystopia.

Partners also have been consumerised and, like last month's iPod, can be upgraded for a newer - 'better' - model.

The devastation caused to any children involved - and the lessons about life absorbed - are set to be a potent cause of rising incidence of crime and mental illness in the next generation.

The neoliberal catastrophe is complete.

The Neoliberal Catastrophe: More Links

Children 'used as ammunition' in separations

Antidepressant use rises

Bankers' earnings surge towards pre-crash levels

Britons on the breadline

Choc Finger's Big Bet

Executive pay rises while shareholder earnings fall

Goldman Sachs finds $5bn for pay and bonuses amid fraud investigation

Hedge funds accused of gambling with lives of the poorest as food prices soar

In an unequal society, we all suffer

Life expectancy gap 'wider than in Great Depression'

LSE Depression Report

Neoliberalism co-opted the 1960s counter-culture

Politics, economy and crime

Productivity does not explain wage differentials

Save the Children

Street Gangs

The crime equation

Violence and abuse rife in food factories

Justice Coleridge's reading of the situation – whereby men and women are too keen on sexual adventure, and not keen enough on married life – is too simplistic.

Many things are wrong, but a huge part of the problem is that great emphasis has been put on minimising the difficulties mothers may face in obtaining childcare so that the can stay in the labour market, and little emphasis has been placed on the idea that for families to thrive and be happy, parents generally have to expect to spend quite a bit of time at home, looking after each other, as well as the kids ...

Deborah Orr, The Independent 18 June 2009

Mr Justice Coleridge, a Family Division judge, said the consequences of family break-up for the wider society are now so great it can no longer be treated as a purely private matter.

Action is needed, he said, to achieve a "fundamental change" in individual attitudes and behaviour to re-establish marriage as the "gold standard" for relationships.

The problems are so great that no one political party on its own could resolve them and only a national commission drawn from a wide constituency would have any any chance of success, he said.

Judge Coleridge sparked controversy last year when he said family relationships in Britain were in "meltdown", likening the problem to a "cancer".

In his speech to the Family Holiday Association at Westminster, he blamed unrealistic expectations about relationships for the extent of the disputes and breakdowns which "overwhelmed" the family courts.

"What, I hope in all humility, I am drawing attention to is the endless game of 'musical relationships', or 'pass the partner', in which such a significant portion of the population is engaged, in the endless and futile quest for a perfect relationship which will be attained, it is supposed, by landing on the right chair or unwrapping a new and more exciting parcel," he said.

With many children growing up "scarred" by the effects of their parents' break-ups, he said that it could no longer be seen as just a matter for the individuals involved.

uk.news.yahoo  17 June 2009

Family breakdown is now a national tragedy

We will take over the leadership of a country that doesn’t just face an economic crisis – worse than the one that greeted Margaret Thatcher in 1979 – but also a breakdown of British society.

Across a range of indicators – depth of recession, scale of government borrowing, breakdown of the family, and the level of crime – Britain is in worryingly bad shape.

I established the Centre for Social Justice five years ago. It works with all political parties. It has won credibility by pursuing the very opposite of cosmetic change.

We’ve brought together Britain’s most effective poverty-fighting charities in a national alliance. Within this alliance every kind of social challenge is being addressed.

Drug addiction. Family breakdown. Homelessness. Long-term unemployment. Indebtedness.

We’ve awarded these poverty-fighters with privately raised cash. We’ve befriended them. We’ve fought for them when they have become entangled with government bureaucracy.

The best policy conclusions we have recommended to the Conservative Party – and to Britain’s other mainstream parties – have emerged from what we have learnt from them.

Three years ago we published a report that documented the scale of social collapse in Britain. It was called Breakdown Britain.

A year later we produced Breakthrough Britain. Breakthough Britain contained 188 policy recommendations.

They were based on the idea that a strong family, a completed education, good employment opportunities and freedom from drugs and other addictions were the basis of a life free of poverty ...

For David Cameron – for me – and for modern British Conservatism – social policy is central. What I have argued for some time is that this is not an add on but integral to conservatism and for four good reasons.

First, unless Britain starts to mend its broken society the cost of fractured families, of poorly educated workers and dysfunctional adults will make Britain’s economy uncompetitive.

The recent report ‘Bankrupt Britain’ demonstrates that as the economy turns down this becomes more critical, not less.

In the last ten years alone the cost of welfare spending in Britain has spiralled upwards by close to £100bn. The single biggest component of government spending is the permanently unemployed… the permanently ill… broken families… people with addictions.

Then there are the costs associated with crime. Most of the criminal justice budgets have grown by nearly 50% in real terms. This money hasn’t reduced crime but contained the problem. Although a lot more people are in prison we have seen large increases in violent crime and anti-social behaviour. If you look at the prison population you find young men – mainly from broken homes – addicted to drugs – and with a reading age of 11.

Reforming society is not a soft option but without it big government becomes inevitable.

Second, in emphasising social policy we are rediscovering the conservatism of Edmund Burke.

We are not just against big government but ALL forces that crush the social institutions that lie between the individual and the state. These institutions could not matter more for our future and could hardly have been more neglected in recent times.

There will be no sustainable reduction in the size of the state if civil society doesn’t become stronger – nurturing more self-sufficient and vigorous citizens. There’ll be no possibility of light touch regulation if certain moral values are absent from our culture. There’ll be no competitive economy if families don’t encourage their children to learn and excel.

Third, the cohesive society.

Currently 47% of voters see Republicans as out-of-touch. Only 15% see the party as “in touch with ordinary people”.

The groups the Republicans were seen as closest to are big business, rich, well off people, Christians and the armed forces.

You cannot lecture people about freedom if parents think the life chances of their children are set at birth and that they are set for failure.

Talk of liberty is at risk of being seen as a self-serving arrogance from those who already have everything.

This, surely, is at the heart of the American dream. A cohesive society where every parent really believes that their kids have a chance of a better life than them.

The fourth factor is a by-product of the other three.

In emphasising society conservatism isn’t just seen as the party of the wealthy and the strong – a party that is good for me. It will also become a broadly-based party; meeting that natural sense of decent people that their government should be good for them AND good for their neighbour.

Speech by Iain Duncan Smith to The Heritage Foundation, Washington

Centre for Social Justice 09 March 2009