CRISIS TIME: PERCEPTIONS OF TIME AND CONJUNCTION IN POST- WAR BRITISH GOVERNANCE Glen OHara, Oxford Brookes University.

‘CRISIS TIME’: PERCEPTIONS OF TIME AND CONJUNCTION IN POST-WAR BRITISH GOVERNANCE

Glen O’Hara, Oxford Brookes University

Time and relativity

Time is not a linear quantity

Time is not a yardstick against which other elements can be measured

Time is malleable; and it moves itself, depending on one’s standpoint and one’s own movement

Chaotic time...

Foucauldian concept of time is one of a ‘heterodox’ ‘heterotopia’ – a chaotic set of conjunctures

These do not lead anywhere – ‘inevitably’ or otherwise

Instead, they are a series of collages, paradoxes and/ or impressions

The timeframes of modernity Particularly acute in the post-

war era when there was supposed to be one linear timeline

This was a path – perhaps the path – to economic modernity

At a time when scientistic ‘rationality’ was at its height as a way of theorising, and judging, governance

Critical here was the use of macroeconomic statistics to measure ‘progress’ against ‘time’

Time (I): Indefinite time...

Pay policies might involve social partners being able ‘over [the] course of time... [to] come more to recognise and abide by national interest’ (Harold Macmillan’s ‘Modernisation of Britain’ memorandum to Cabinet, 1962)

A time that was suited to a policy making community that wasn’t sure how to proceed

A time that was suited to exhortation – to the vague sense that ‘the time is now’ for less than clearly specified ‘action’ to raise productivity

Time (II) Planning time...

From c.1962 to c.1967 there was a more specified sense of ‘end points’

To ‘plan the target’ as well as ‘planning the path’

This was supposed to effect a change in attitude, and in knowledge, as well as a change in actual objectives and the means (e.g. Investment, clearer objectives) to get there

‘Planning’ time runs into complexity...

Measures to stimulate investment demands take effect over a longer time-scale than measures to stimulate consumer demand. The effect of any set of reflationary measures would... be uncertain; the Government cannot control the behaviour of the economy as closely as could be wished... and it may be difficult to steer a middle course being doing too little to have any significant effect and doing so much that the rise in demand is a good deal faster than intended.

TNA CAB 134/3137, Official Group on planning for reflation report, 21 October 1966.

Time (III): Crisis time

Succession of apparent sterling ‘crises’ mean that decisions have to be made in the very short term

Officials are driven to plan in the ‘FU’ committee for just seven to ten days notice of one of the most complex sets of negotiations of all (with huge consequences) – sterling devaluation

Eventually issues in the collapse of currency stability when the US ‘closes the gold window’

‘Crisis time’ and multiple timescales

What we are facing is not one economic problem but a number, and in certain respects... they are separate problems differentiated by separate time scales. Moreover decisions and policies which may be highly relevant, even decisive, in relation to one particular problem, might be counter-productive in relation to problems with a different time scale... for example, there are certain measures, particularly on the capital account, or on imports, which might operate effectively on the late 1965 or 1966 balance of payments out-turn. But these by their nature might look panicky and thus might have an immediate effect on confidence, particularly if regarded as a step towards, or the last desperate throw before, a more shattering decision.

TNA CAB 130/237, Wilson memorandum to MISC 69, 6 July 1965.

Crisis time and the compression of judgement

‘Can waste vast amount of time on speeches... The on consulting Departments and people within own Ministry, clearing the whole time and constant retyping... this is quite apart from all the committees. Officials attend so many meetings with other officials at top and medium level that most of time taken up. Very little time to think’.

Brittan diary, 24 November 1964: R. Middleton (ed.), Inside the Department of Economic Affairs: Samuel Brittan, The Diary of an ‘Irregular’ (Oxford, 2012), 60.

The shrinking time horizon

The Heath Government’s ‘Stage I’ and ‘Stage II’ pay negotiations in 1972 look ahead only one year – not the three to five or 1962 or 1964-65

By this stage inflation and the collapse of the fixed exchange rate system, and the problems of EEC entry, have overtaken the concept of the ‘long term’ – much against the will of ‘European’ level planners (e.g. Stuart Holland)

Governance in the 1970s comes to feel more day-to-day, and hand-to-mouth

Conclusions

‘Time’ is discursively and ideologically created – witness the very different uses of that concept of Ricardo (on the gradualism of labour’s build-up in value) and in Keynes (on the rapidity of currency circulation)

Time requires to be historical disassembled – it’s experienced differently, at different times, for different reasons

Post-war British governance is a good prosaic case study of these processes: the way in which ‘events, dear boy’ affected the way time was seen

This shows just how malleable it can be, given that there wasn’t a vast ideological revolution in these years equivalent to e.g. 1917-19 in the USSR

Conclusions

A sense of eschatological time now gained a hold

Apocalyptic warnings about ‘the end of British democracy’ or the collapse of the British state were common

Milton Friedman measured the chances of democracy surviving as no better than 50/50

Use of apocalyptic ‘crisis-ridden’ language was partly connected to the concept of a decisive choice – the ‘critical time’

Twitter: @gsoh31Blog: http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.co.uk/

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