Austin Mitchell’s new book Revenge of the Rich: The
neoliberal revolution in Britain and New Zealand, published by Canterbury
University Press, charts the development of a market-driven neoliberal creed,
where governments are devoted to efficiency, cost-cutting and austerity at the
people’s expense.
Many New Zealanders will remember Mitchell’s best-selling
book The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise (1972). In this new
outspoken opinion piece, Mitchell - who was a long-serving British Labour MP
for Grimsby denounces the economic policy of the last three decades as “a long
march down Dead-End Street” – a neoliberal experiment that has benefitted the
rich and eroded the “good society” with its welfare state and government
commitment to the betterment of the people.
In Revenge
of the Rich Mitchell considers how neoliberalism became government policy
in Britain and New Zealand and discusses its consequences in terms of greater
inequality, lower growth and higher unemployment. He believes this book is the
first to look at the rise and fall of neoliberalism as the prevailing ideology
in the two countries where it was imposed “further and faster” than in any
others.
“In both
countries industry declined, assets were sold to survive and the social
balances which had been tilted to the people after the war were tilted back to
wealth. Taxes on business and the rich fell as their share of Gross Domestic
Product increased. The result, in each country, was a revolt of the people, voting
for proportional representation in New Zealand to tie the hands of the
politicians and, much later, voting for Brexit in Britain as the people and the
regions left behind by the austerity said ‘enough is enough’.”
Mitchell says that gaps between the rich and the less well
off in both Britain and New Zealand have been widened over the three decades of
neoliberalism. Ultimately, he would like readers to take a hopeful message from
the book: “Things don't have
to be this way and alternative policies become possible if governments listen
to the people rather than follow an ideology,” he says.
In the book’s foreword the Rt. Hon Helen Clark, who was
prime minister of New Zealand 1999–2008 says:
“Agree with it, or disagree with it, love it or loathe it,
Austin Mitchell’s writing provokes us to reflect on what our common future
could be. It is written in a lively fashion with highly quotable turns of
phrase.”About the author
Austin Mitchell taught at the universities of Canterbury and Otago and was one of the early lecturers of the Political Science Department at the University of Canterbury. In the UK he has been successively a Fellow of Nuffield College, a journalist for the BBC and ITV, and the Labour MP for Great Grimsby from 1977 to 2015. Mr Mitchell lived in New Zealand for eight years while lecturing in political science at the universities of Canterbury (in 1964 – 67) and Otago, and returned to UC as a Canterbury Scholar in 2016 to deliver a series of summer lectures.
Canterbury University Press - $25.00
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