Particular words seem to have an eerily evocative sense,
onomatopoeic.
Take certain adjectives that which end in –ere.
They seem to have the capacity to capture what sounds like an extreme situation
or emotion.
When, for example, you pass on sincere condolences, the adjective’s suffix somehow demands that
the speaker should stretch out its pronunciation. A sincere apology expresses all the emotion
you can muster from the bottom of your heart.
The result is always to make the second syllable of sincere sound like
the high-pitched chorus of a symphonic orchestra’s violin section.
Take another –ere adjective. The sound and use of the word severe to describe an injury or a
weather storm relies on the sound of the adjective’s elongated suffix to
emphasise the exceptional seriousness of the condition.
Another such expressive adjective is austere. Like sincere and
severe, austere somehow commands the speaker to dwell and drag out –ere to add impact. The –ere
suffix portends once more that it an extreme condition whose emphasis is
conveyed through deliberate enunciation.
Austere can be an apt adjective to describe a personality
type.
My dictionary tells me that a man
who is regarded as particularly harsh or stern could be described as
austere.
It reveals that, in another
sense, a person who lives by a code of strict morals can be described as
austere. Likewise with objects, the
severe simplicity of some art or architecture can be described as examples of austere
beauty.
Austereness both in people and in objects can, therefore,
be regarded as synonymous with severe simplicity, unadorned, plain, stark, grave,
sober and serious.
My father used to
describe the man who ran the Government’s finances when I was a wee boy in such
terms. This was as if to suggest that it
was the politician’s personality which drove or at least influenced the
Government’s economic policy in the early 1950’s.
This same trait and noun has dominated the public debate
in Europe and wider afield since 2007/2008.
The buzz-word or technical jargon has become austerity, less often given
its fuller title of financial austerity.
The conventional wisdom is that the only policy weapon to address the
global economic downturn or crash is by resorting to “austerity.”
And yet, austerity is not the sole or exclusive property
of the science of economics. Politicians
and economists have purloined the noun to categorise policies of draconian financial
cut-backs, “efficiency savings,” and other measures used to redress the national
indebtedness.
Judged as too important to be allowed to fail, many
Governments responded to the crisis by bailing out their nations’ banks. The subsequent price to pay for saving banks
from collapse has been a policy regime with measures to slash the public
finances.
Elections in much of Europe have been – and continue to
be – fought on the basis of the new imperative of economic policy.
The oppositions' alternative to austerity is to make
those responsible for deregulating financial markets and for exploiting the
resulting free rein – that they should pay rather than punishing the poor.
Even though the term “anti-austerity” unqualified is an
almost meaningless ambiguity, a number of so-called anti-austerity movements
and political parties have fought to win a democratic mandate to oppose
austerity.
One is tempted to ask should
there be an anti-sincerity party or a pro-severity movement too?
In another key respect, however, austerity has got no
necessary association with the cutting of welfare benefits paid to people
regarded by some politicians as scroungers.
In the aftermath of World War Two, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer
in the Labour administration of Prime Minister Clement Attlee was the barrister
Sir Stafford Cripps. This was the man my
dad spoke to me about - Cripps was known for his austere personality. The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as
being on the extreme left of the Labour Party.
Tackling the country’s national debt after the War was
the Government’s policy priority.
In his
role as Chancellor between 1947 and 1950, Cripps implemented what the
Encyclopaedia Britannica calls a “rigid austerity programme.”
Measures included rationing to reduce public
consumption, keeping wages static to maintain employment levels, and the promotion
of exports. These were the hallmarks of
the post-war austerity policy.
In contrast to the modern era, the socialist Cripps
maintained a high level of social spending on housing, health and welfare
services.
In retrospect, it seems almost
ironic that one of the UK’s principal and enduring achievements – the creation
of the National Health Service – emerged from the period of post-war austerity.
In the UK, the Conservative Government is now over a year
into a second 5-year term pursuing its repeated manifesto pledge to solve the
deficit before the next General Election.
At the same time, the Labour opposition has elected a new left-wing leader
with a strong mandate based on his “anti-austerity” manifesto.
Is it just conceivable that the opposition’s
leadership might, in time, revert to the old type of austerity – the version
that worked in the left-wing style of Cripps?
A distinguished British academic has recently published
an official biography[i] of the UK’s Prime Minister
David Cameron. Sir Anthony Seldon’s
account follows his earlier books about the four previous British PMs.
In a recent interview[ii], Sir Anthony describes
Labour’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn as
“extraordinarily
credible, powerful, articulate and adept.
In terms of leadership ability, he’s far ahead of the other three.”
With this in mind and as the consequent prospects for
debates about how to fix the UK economy liven up, I am reminded of the
quotation from Cripps’s contemporary, the Nobel prize-winning Irish playwright (and
socialist) George Bernard Shaw:
“if
all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they would not reach a
conclusion.”
©Michael McSorley 2015
