History what-iffery

Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (or, if you prefer, Chou En-Lai), when asked what how he thought the French Revolution had affected world history, famously replied "it's too soon to tell".

This was my first thought when David Cameron (Britain's first prime minister to be younger than me) pulled out of the EU's stability pact last Friday. Since then, I've been on Polish TV and radio half a dozen times explaining Britain's semi-detached relationship with the European Union.

Was it a historical moment, akin to Chamberlain's return from Munich? Or will it all blow over? Too early to say. Was Cameron right to walk away from an EU-wide deal? Depends. Will Britain survive economically whilst the eurozone founders? Don't know. Will the eurozone survive whilst Britain flounders? Haven't a clue. For an answer - be prepared to wait a long time.

We really don't know. Too soon to tell.

Let's look at the reality. From the outset, the eurozone project was extremely naive to couple so many disparate economies in a currency union without any thought to fiscal and budgetary convergence. MAYBE it was a German plot to stop the deutchmark from becoming uncompetitively strong, by shackling it to deadbeat currencies like the drachma and the lira. Set the Greeks and other chronic debtors adrift and the northern European remnants of the eurozone will see their currency soar in value like another Swiss franc.

So if the Germans (until very recently the world's No. 1 exporter) want to go on selling their BMWs to America and their machine tools to China, maintaining the easy-living South within the eurozone makes some kind of sense - as long as the cost of doing so doesn't outweigh the advantage of an artificially weaker currency.

So where does Britain fit in all this? Some voices critical of Cameron says he's pandering to the City. OK - it provides employment for a million people and brings in £40 billion in tax revenues. Now, any meaningful pact to shore up the euro should, logically, involve steps to converge the eurozone's taxes. And this is more than likely to involve a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). Which the City of London fears dreadfully. Given that 75% of all financial transactions in the EU take place in the UK, a tax on them would have the effect of shifting much of the footloose global business to New York or Singapore.

I must say, personally I'm in favour of a FTT. It would introduce a measure of stability to the markets; dealers would have to think twice (shock!) before pressing the 'sell' or 'buy' buttons. And the software behind automated dealing would also have consider this tax in its algorithms. This would moderate the wild swings that affects the global markets from time to time.

An FTT, then, would both smooth out wild vicissitudes and bring in much-needed tax revenues to national exchequers. (As long as they could be trusted to spend them wisely!)

An FTT is one of those Good Ideas In Theory - good in practice only if were to be adopted by the USA and every other market on this planet as well. A level playing field indeed.

The City of London, yes, it's a million jobs - but the UK's manufacturing sector is two and half million jobs (and for the knockers - the UK is still the world's sixth largest manufacturing nation). With around 45% of the UK's exports going to to the eurozone, it's critical to the survival of UK manufacturing that the eurozone does not collapse (or else only the Germans and Dutch will be able to afford things Made in England).

So - anyway, on Cameron, the EU and the eurozone - too soon to tell.

But what about Martial Law, imposed upon Poland 30 years ago today? Too soon to tell?

Well, yes. There are two schools of thought on the day Polish army tanks put an end to the dreams of Solidarity.

1) Had General Jaruzelski not imposed Martial Law, Mr Brezhnev from over the way would have inflicted something far nastier upon Poland (think Hungary 1956 or Czechoslovakia 1968).

2) Brezhnev was washed-up (he'd be dead in 11 months anyway) and his system would implode. One shove - the Polish communist party going for wide-sweeping economic and political reforms - and the Soviet bloc would have crumbled a whole eight years sooner than it did.

I've heard cogent arguments in favour of both scenarios. Intercepts of Soviet signals by NSA purportedly suggesting that a) the Red Army was ready to move in and b) it was not. That the People's United Workers' Party could have a) introduced market liberalisation a la Balcerowicz - and b) that it couldn't. The truth is a messy amalgam of strands of so many factors that it will indeed take 200 years before historians can reach a consensus as to the słuszność (rightness, justness, legitimacy) of General Wojciech Jaruzelski's coup d'etat.

Fewer Poles today believe that Martial Law was 'necessary' to spare Poland from a Soviet invasion than was the case several years ago; as time goes by the spectre of that threat diminishes. Generations who experienced Martial Law - and indeed their children and grandchildren - will have to pass before a clear-headed appraisal can finally be made. My take on Martial Law - Jaruzelski was first and foremost a soldier, conditioned to carry out orders. He had not an inkling of the power that could be unleashed from a society once the shackles of central planning were removed. He had not the vision to do anything other than send in the tanks. He could have done nothing, of course. That would have been an interesting variant - but do please recall that Poland in 1981 was in the throes of the fifth deepest economic depression experienced by any country in the 20th Century.

In the meanwhile, yesterday and today, supporters of Jarosław Kaczyński together with assorted neo-fascists will march up and down chanting "Byłeś w ZOMO, byłeś w ORMO, dzisiaj stoisz za Platformą." In English, so you can appreciate the infantile crassness of this slogan: "You, [Jaruzelski and your communist buddies] were in the Motorised Reserves of the People's Militia, you were in the Voluntary Reserves of the People's Militia, today you stand behind Civic Platform (the majority partner in the ruling government coalition)".

Civic Platform can be accused of lack of boldness when it comes to enacting necessary reforms of public finances, but the party is certainly not the creature of Wojciech Jaruzelski and his cronies. That would in fact be SLD ('Stalin Lenin Dno') - the successor party to PZPR; however it polled but 8% in this autumn's parliamentary elections. Poland today and Poland 30 years ago - what a difference. Let's be thankful for it.

This time last year:
Life without a computer

This time two years ago:
Cheaper by taxi

This time three years ago:
The closest we'll get to the moon for nine years

This time four years ago:
Going underground