IN the 1950s Tory and Labour leaders alike told uS never had it so good'. post-war CLORORE made politicians academics alike assume class inequalities were pearing and class antagonism becoming a thing of the past.
But today inequality is no longer concealed.
Thatcher and Keith champion the inequality. The new Tory myth is not to deny that inequality but mystify source.
We have the unequal', Margaret claims, because result of effort, initiative and, above all, enterprise. It is this myth which a new CIS report, The Wealthy, concentrates on exploding.
The report reveals the vast scale of inequality Britain; the huge scope conspicuous I wy consumption of the bourgeoisie; and shows how this wealth is not the result of effort' or 'initiative', but derives from accidents birth. luck, exploitation and swindling. Taxation It also exposes the impotence of efforts at re-distribution through and innumerable ways in which those who have keep it away from those who have not.
The report looks at three crucial areas of power and privilege; first, the cisT on or rotar wear second. the distribution of income; third, the pattern of ownership of a vital raw material land. Its conclusions are It is. virtually impossible calculate total wealth. wealthy make every precise facts. Nonetheless indicator is the ownership company shares.
The pattern of ownership of company shares is because as the report says, decide what goods will be produced, who will work to produce these goods, what they will be paid. and what the prices of those goods will be.
The value of privately owned shares is about £17 billion in total. staggering 80 per cent of shares in private ownership are owned by one per cent of the population, and just five per cent of the population own 98 per cent of all privately owned shares. Shareholder The growth of giant financial institutions has ownership and control of shares even mOIC. at the expense of the small shareholder.
The existence of a large number of huge firms today might impression of a dispersal of power and control. In fact the growth of huge corporations has concentrated economic power. The CIS reveals this vividly in relation to the board of British Petroleum.
Every single director is also the director of up to a dozen other large concerns. And LUIS system of directorships extends also between and capital, especially between the large companies and merchant banks who have enormous power. As the report indicates: "The directors of the merchant banks are regarded as the core or me establishment. Most of them hereditary firms, and families still dominate most of the boards.
Elite Despite the proliferation of unit trusts in the 1960s, economic power still rests in the hands of a tiny elite who control the major financial and industrial concerns.
The Diamond Commission on the Distribution of Wealth came to the Margaret Joseph of right to be Thatcher wealth is the wealth and complete the and effort to conceal 0110 important, concentrated give the report interlocking land and housing finance Ownership concentrated. the table shows concentrated.
Distribution of are Top 1% Top 10% The rest.
mesear en The top conclusion that ownership of shares, were the most constituents of wealth. all three is highly The accompanying precisely how Different Assets 1976 income.
Shares Land Housing
54.2 52.0 8.6 89.6 84.1 37.5 10.4 15.9 62.5 Source: Royal Commission and Labour per cent of the population own 8.6 per cent of all housing, while the top 10 per cent of society own nearly 40 percent of all housing _ a fact well worth bearıng in mind when you next have difficulty finding a flat or getting a mortgage!
The same people own the most shares, the most houses and the bulk of the land. That's why it is possible to talk of a ruling class The wealthier you are to start the Wealth generates and high interest rates only give this process a boost. Lending money to government, building societies, or indeed large firms, even for a short period of time, will lead to huge profits.
Therefore it is no surprise to learn, as the accompanying table shows, that income is also highly unequal.
The CIS report is full of juicy little details of the mechanisms by which The Distribution of income in the U K Income share Top 1% • Top 10% Next 40% Bottom 50% wealth, Source: Royal Commission and Labour Research. the rich rip off the tax collectors and the rest as. interesting are some of the charming portraits of our betters. For example, there is the Duke of Westminster who, apart from a few other minor interests, is a landowner He owns 15,000 acres in Cheshire, 14,000 in North Wales, 100,000 acres chaps over each other.
Even Tory leaders table shows:
But to Oxford. in Scotland, a mere 900 acres in an estate in Northern Ireland, together with property in Canada, Hawaii, Australia, not to mention 300 acres in Mayfair and 300 acres alone is worth t1000 million).
As the report notes: Part of the celebrations at the stag party for the 26-year-old Earl of Grosvenor (the Duke's other title) involved young pouring E100 bottles Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1961 more interesting 1s breakdown of the directorships, the wealth and the background of the To be in the Cabinet it helps to be a member of the landed gentry like Lord Carrington, who owns about half of Buckinghamshire, George Younger, the Scottish secretary and heir to the third Viscount of Leckie, or Sir Ian Gilmour, a hereditary baronet.
An alternative qualification is to be a director of at least a few large companies, as the accompanying precist background you must have breeding of the 19 Cabinet ministers who went to public school, six went to Eton, nine went on to Cambridge and seven