Less obviously ‘ethical’ was Britain’s support for George W. Bush’s bombing of Iraq in 1998. In Sierra Leone, too, the British government intervened; violent rebels had threatened the legitimate government, not to mention vital British interests. Perhaps as a result of this injection of realpolitik, the British venture was successful, but this ‘humanitarian’ approach to military action divided conservatives and socialists alike. The question of the propriety of invading another nation because one disapproved of its rulers was one that did not deter the new administration. If a minority was oppressed, they were right in every respect, and come what may.
Legislation throve in those fecund years. The Human Rights Act of 1998 was passed and thus the European Convention on Human Rights became ‘native’. The National Minimum Wage Act, passed in the same year, was opposed by Tories on the grounds that it would lead to unemployment. It did not, and this failed prophecy did little for the Conservatives’ reputation. Welsh and Scottish devolution brought about another, unintended, change. Blair was fond of invoking ‘the British people’, but with the reassertion of Celtic identity came something like a crisis of Englishness. The West Lothian question remained; it was an anomaly and, some said, an injustice. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs were allowed to vote in the British parliament on purely English affairs.
The matter of the euro had bedevilled the government of John Major. Publicly, Blair expressed himself in favour of the currency, but his chancellor was less enthusiastic and proclaimed five ‘tests’ for Britain’s entry into the eurozone. The crucial ones were whether economic convergence with other European nations could be achieved, and were they flexible enough? The answers remained doubtful, and therefore the euro was rejected. Gordon Brown’s Five Tests, it is worth noting, were Thatcherite in inspiration. Despite this, the Tories affected scorn as their response.
It cannot be doubted that in one respect Labour fell short. Where the Tories had been able to mine a rich and colourful seam of scandal, involving sexual indiscretion, bribery and perversion, New Labour could offer only a dusty bundle of financial improprieties. There were some exceptions, of course. In January 1998, the son of the home secretary Jack Straw received a police caution after admitting to possession of cannabis. Straw himself had recently declared that he would not support the drug’s legalization. Most scandals, however, were of the ‘Geoffrey Robinson’ type. Robinson, the Paymaster General, was accused by the Conservatives of hypocrisy after it was revealed that he had failed to register an offshore trust, having abolished tax relief on savings over £50,000. It was a dreary effort. The revelation that Robin Cook had been conducting an affair was more tragic than comic. Meanwhile, the Conservatives under William Hague set new procedures for the election of the party leader; whereas the decision had rested solely with the parliamentary party, the new rules gave all party members the vote, which inevitably led to a swing to the right.
The problem of restricted opportunity had to be addressed and so the welfare-to-work scheme was launched, intended to lift the unemployed out of welfare dependency. In a similar spirit, the March 1998 budget promised ‘work for those who can, security for those who can’t’. Behind the soundbite lay nothing that Thatcher herself would not have approved. However, disaffection still flourished. In the spring, 200,000 joined the Countryside Alliance on a march on London. The Alliance had arisen partly as a response to a private member’s bill to outlaw hunting with hounds, but also to the government’s perceived indifference to the concerns of the countryside. There were to be many such public protests during the Blair tenure. The Alliance rarely won its battles, yet its very existence was an omen. The old divide between the metropolis and the land was to become not narrower but wider in succeeding years.
In September 1998, foreign affairs remained to the fore. The government confirmed that it would grant full UK citizenship to 100,000 citizens of the remaining British dependencies. Asylum applications were shown to have risen by 6,000. In a small but resonant echo of the new influx of women to parliament, Marylebone Cricket Club voted to admit women to its membership. At so early a stage, any government would be obliged to pour out a stream of promises; nonetheless, such announcements were evidence at least of excellent intentions.
1999 was as frenetic a year as its predecessor. In January, Paddy Ashdown stepped down as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Robin Cook’s ex-wife wrote a book, serialized in The Times, in which she wrote of his having felt that he had ‘sold his soul to the devil’ by abandoning his socialist principles in favour of the Blair regime. Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Edward to Sophie Rhys-Jones, photographs of whom frequently showed her in poses and styles reminiscent of the late Princess of Wales.
The decline of manufacturing gathered pace, with The Economist reporting that manufacturing employment was 57,000 lower in July than in February 1996, the biggest single loss being British Steel’s decision to shed up to 10,000 jobs. The last tin mine closed, at South Crofty, thus ending 3,000 years of tin mining in Cornwall. It was reopened in 2001, having been bought by a Welsh mining engineer, and was once again Europe’s only remaining working tin mine. Crofty aside, the mining industry in England could boast of no amelioration. The Annesley-Bentinck coal mine, the oldest in the UK, was closed. Elsewhere, too, the signs were bleak. Fujitsu announced it was to close its Newton Aycliffe semiconductor plant. The TUC urged the government to take ‘remedial action’. Blair was sympathetic but made clear that he could not help the ‘twists and turns’ of world markets, instead promising to ‘help the hurt’.
For those with eyes to see, some modest gains were apparent. British Aerospace took over the Marconi defence electronics arm of the GEC, becoming Europe’s biggest defence and aerospace company. Signs of progress emerged elsewhere, too. The government again voted to lower the age of sexual consent for homosexuals. Other liberal measures were assured of a similar progress. The death penalty was formally abolished for all offences, in accordance with Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In February 1999, the Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence case was published. The report became famous for its controversial use of the term ‘institutional racism’ to describe the workings of the Metropolitan Police, though a close reading of the report reveals something more circumspect:
It is vital to stress that neither academic debate nor the evidence presented to us leads us to say or conclude that an accusation that institutional racism exists in the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] implies that the policies of the MPS are racist. No such evidence is before us … It is in the implementation of policies and in the words and actions of officers acting together that racism may become apparent.
The expression referred to a culture in which even black officers were by their own admission often complicit. Clearly something had floated up between the cracks of policy.
The government suffered three defeats in the House of Lords over plans to abolish the hereditary component of the upper chamber. Blair himself expressed a certain affection for the sanctuary of ermine and scarlet, but remarked, ‘I just don’t see what it’s got to do with Britain today.’ The House of Lords Act of 1999 reduced the number of hereditary peers to ninety-one; thus the great reform of the upper house was at last achieved. But if Blair or his successors imagined that an elected house would be more pliable than a hereditary one, they were quickly disabused.