Its Hour Come Round At Last: Instead of being thankful that New Zealand’s democratic constitution transforms days of retribution into peaceful transitions of power from one combination of political parties to another, National's far-right seethes with frustration, and consoles itself with fantasies of imposing a day of retribution of its own. On that day, all those who have deprived them of their rightful power and status will get what’s coming to them.
WHAT ROUGH BEAST SLOUCHES towards Wellington to be born?
What sort of National Party are the people who brought down Bill English trying
to establish? And will there be enough reasonable men and women in National’s
caucus on Tuesday, 27 February to stop them?
In the movie, Schindler’s List, the hero, Oskar Schindler
(played by Liam Neeson) attempts to persuade the SS labour-camp commandant,
Amon Goeth (played by Ralph Fiennes) to refrain from picking-off random
prisoners with his hunting rifle. For a few days, Schindler’s appeal appears to
be working. Eventually, however, the commandant’s murderous impulses get the
better of him and he resumes his deadly sport.
For 12 years, Bill English has played the role of Oskar
Schindler: cajoling, persuading and, on occasion, outmanoeuvring the far-right
of the National Party into running with a moderate, liberal-conservative
political agenda. It was by trading on the popular appeal of this agenda that
John Key and Steven Joyce were able to give the National Party three general
election victories in a row.
Not that English was some sort of bleeding-heart liberal in
disguise. On the contrary, his Catholic faith mandated a deeply conservative
stance on many of the social issues which Key supported as proof of National’s
liberal bona fides. By the same
token, however, it was English’s Catholic faith that caused him to reject the
swingeing economic austerity measures imposed by right-wing finance ministers
in the UK, Canada and Australia.
Not only was English convinced that austerity was
economically ineffective, but he also recognized that it was politically
counter-productive. Not that the economic and social policies of the
Key-English era were entirely benign – far from it. The National Right had to
be appeased with anti-worker and anti-beneficiary measures that were intended
to – and did – inflict a great deal of unnecessary suffering on
tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders. In the hands of a different finance
minister, however, matters could have been a great deal worse.
This was the knowledge with which the National Right, like
SS Commandant Goeth, found it so difficult to be reconciled. Why be just a
little oppressive of the poor and marginalised when you possess the power to
grind their faces in the dust? Why restrict oneself to fastening legal
leg-irons on the trade unions when you can legislate the evil socialist bullies
out of existence altogether?
For the far-right, political power only becomes real when it
is used. To exercise restraint is to allow those within your power to set the
limits of their own persecution. Far from being a manifestation of strength (as
Schindler suggested to Goeth) the willingness to exercise restraint is a craven
demonstration of weakness.
In his fascinating Newsroom
essay on Bill English’s political career, Bernard Hickey describes the occasion upon
which his subject was so moved by the recollection of his own and his wife
Mary’s family histories that he wept:
“He talked of his admiration for his father-in-law’s family
ethos and hard work in raising a big family in Wellington, despite the
struggles of arriving with little from Samoa in an unfamiliar city. He also
talked about a quiet chat he had with a kaumatua on a marae about the problems
of Maori youth, and the need for strong communities with their own resources.
His point was that he admired the self-reliance and quiet conservatism of
family and community life. He saw his role as helping those communities and
pulling Government out of the way to let them get on with it. It wasn’t an ugly
or dry form of libertarian scorched-earth politics. It was a deeply humane and
thoughtful approach where Government was supposed to treat people with empathy
and dignity and as individuals, rather than as just another beneficiary locked
into welfare for life. His views on helping to lift people out of poverty were
a precursor to his championing of the social investment approach, which he was
only just starting to roll out through the Government as Labour returned to
power in late October.”
It was during this part of his talk that English was obliged
to pause for a few moments:
“The tears rolled down his nose and splashed onto the
lectern. You could hear a pin drop. The audience was with him though. English's
story was utterly authentic and thoughtful and showed a depth of humility and
humanity that struck a chord that night. He got a standing ovation when he
finished.”
English’s moderate conservatism, Hickey seems to be saying,
is born out of a love for ordinary people. By contrast, the vicious
conservatism of the far-right is born out of the gnawing fear that ordinary
people might one day decide to exact retribution from those who have found it
expedient to grind their faces in the dust. That fear begets hate which, in
turn, is translated into institutional and physical violence. The great paradox
of far-right aggression, however, is that by oppressing the poor, the
marginalised and the dispossessed it only brings the terrifying day of
retribution closer.
Instead of being thankful that New Zealand’s democratic
constitution transforms these days of retribution into peaceful transitions of
power from one combination of political parties to another, however, the
far-right seethes with frustration, and consoles itself with fantasies of
imposing a day of retribution of its own. On that day, all those who have
deprived them of their rightful power and status will get what’s coming to
them.
That’s where we are now. English’s moderation is deemed, by
his colleagues, to have failed the National Party. New, and much more
aggressive leadership is required. Those panderers to, and enablers of, the
poor and marginalised – Labour and the Greens – must be driven from the
Treasury Benches as quickly as possible. And Winston Peters, that conservative
turncoat and traitor, must be cast into the ninth circle of political hell –
and his worthless party with him.
William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, saw it all happening
nearly a century ago, in the fretful aftermath of the First World War. “The
best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”, he
wrote in his most famous poem, The Second
Coming.
The final lines of that poem can still send a chill down the
spine:
… but now I know
That twenty centuries
of stony sleep
Were vexed to
nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast,
its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards
Bethlehem to be born?
This essay was jointly
posted on Bowalley Road and The
Daily Blog of Thursday, 15 February 2018.
