"Almost" Part 9: Chapter 26

Quentin was elected on Tuesday 27 October 1931, with a fairly narrow margin. His opponent, from the Labour party, kept hammering at him on the issue of unilateral disarmament. Quentin opposed this, because it would cause even more unemployment.

Ever since his son had been attacked in London, Quentin was very focused on unemployment. To his credit, he had never used the attack in a speech, but it became general knowledge anyway. Rather than undermining his credibility, it helped his cause. People said: “Quentin is one of the few rich people who has suffered more than financially.” They assumed that he would fight hard to restore employment.

By the end of 1932, the situation was becoming truly desperate. Solutions abounded. Free trade! Protectionism! Unions! Breaking the unions! Government spending! Raising taxes! Lowering taxes! Deficit financing! But everything seemed intractable. Nothing worked. Society reformed itself again and again, like a mouse in a lab contorting itself to avoid random blows. Still the ranks of the unemployed grew.

And everything changed with it. Youths lived with their parents longer. Marriage declined. Children were postponed. Creativity in the workplace declined. University students stayed in school. The regular rhythms of life were undermined. The allegiance of the youth fell away. Mired in habits and slogans, elders were revealed as impotent. Society had nothing to offer the young, and so could command no obedience. The social contract weakened.

And yet, there was a salvation in society. All was not lost. In desperation, thinkers of every stripe turned towards the Government to solve the problems. Freedom had proven too unstable. The concept of the ‘benevolent state’ was born, and it was a very new beast.

For most of human history, of course, the State was a rapacious predator, providing meager protection at a most terrible price. Ordinary men quailed in its presence. War, repression, random punishments and the denial of basic rights – the State was military in nature, endless in authority, murderous in practice. Governments were not born from the desires of the ruled, but from outlaws too lazy to move on.

And the free countries – the countries which had tamed the State, and made it serve the individual – they had been attacked by a militaristic, statist Germany, and now, shuddering and bleeding under the wound, even fourteen years later, they turned to the State to protect them again. Thus can the body weaken further, even after throwing off the infection.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Churchill and others had been involved in the great debate of protectionism, and it was a debate lost to the memories of the younger generation. The protectionists they opposed had a simple argument: we can help English workers by taxing goods coming into the country...