by Owen Jones
The left continues to champion the most marginalized groups in society-as indeed it should-but all too often this has been in search of something to 'replace' the working class with. A classic example is the Respect Party founded by George Galloway as a left-wing, antiwar alternative to Labour. Respect rightly took a stand against the rampant Islamophobia that has gripped Britain in the era of the 'war on terror'. But Respect's electoral base was overwhelmingly in Muslim areas, such as East London and parts of Birmingham. It did not pitch to working-class people as a whole; instead, itsubstituted them for a Muslim community that was understandably particularly angered by the brutal invasion of Iraq. Class politics was abandoned for communalist politics. 'The left has accepted that it's still class based, but it's gone off on single-issue campaigns and not related them back to the class issue,' says left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell.
One of the 'safe havens' that the left has retreated into is international politics, particularly when it comes to taking a stand against wars in I raq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Now, itwould be unfair to portray this simply as the obsession of sandal-wearing middle-class liberals living in Islington. That was certainly the image conjured up by New Labour minister Kim Howells back in 2006, in response to an anti-war question from Labour MP Paul Flynn: 'It is not enough to assume that if people eat the right kind of muesli, go to first nights of Harold Pinter revivals and read the Independent occasionally, the drug barons of Afghanistan will go away. They will not.'
Howells might be surprised to discover that middle-class people are actually more likely to support the Afghan War than working-class people. One typical poll by Ipsos MORl in 2009 revealed that, while 52 per cent of the top social category backed the war and 41 per cent opposed it, just 31 per cent of the bottom social category backed itwhile 63 per cent were in the anti-war camp. When I asked Mrs Parry in the former mining village of Ashington whether we should bring the rroops home, she summed up the stance of many working-class people: 'Yes. Definitely. Definitely! It wasn't our fight in the first place!' Similarly, the movement against the war in Iraq mobilized hundreds of thousands from a range of backgrounds--the author included-in one of the biggest political struggles of recent times. Working-class antiwar sentiment certainly surprised journalist Nick Cohen, who is a staunch backer of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When I put it to him, he was momentarily lost for wolds, before conceding: 'I'm genuinely surprised by that.'
The problem comes with the priority given by the left to international issues. Many working-class people may oppose the war, but that does not mean their opposition trumps concerns like housing or jobs. It is difficult to focus your energies on what is happening thousands of miles away when you are struggling to pay the bills, or your children are des- perately searching for secure work or an affordable house. While the BNP are cynically offering hateful solutions to many of these bread- and-butter issues, left-wing activists are more likely to be manning a stall about Gaza outside a university campus. Again, an important issue: but the same energy and commitment that has been shown in opposing unjust foreign wars has not been applied to championing the pressing issues facing working-class people.
Yet as a government of millionaires led by an Old Etonian prepares to further demolish the living standards of millions of working- class people, the time has rarely been so ripe for a new wave of class politics.
After all, the relentless championing of the interests of the wealthyhas had disastrous effects for all of us. The destruction of industry that began with Thatcherism left the economy dangerously reliant on the City. The dismantling of council housing helped send house prices soaring, creating a housing bubble that is now imploding, and injecting record levels of debt into the economy. The crushing of the trade unions contributed to the stagnation of wages in the noughties, leading many to top up their income with credit and, in doing so, stoking up a debt-fuelled boom. The credit crunch is, in part, blowback from the class war started by Thatcher over three decades ago.
Disillusionment with the free market has not been stronger or more widespread since the launch of what Tony Benn calls Thatcher's 'counter-revolution' in 1979. Polls consistently show overwhelming suppert for higher taxes on the wealthy. To add to the brew, Labour is out of office because it lost working-class support, and millions of disenfranchised working-class people have abandoned the ballot box altogether. This is why the biggest issue in British politics today is the crisis of working-class representation; those same people so often caricatured and dismissed as'chavs', 'Tony Blair tried to bury it, but class politics looks set to return,' was the headline of one Guardian column by Polly Toynbee, in which she observed; 'Over the years denying them-and-us class feeling may have alienated more voters than it won:
But what would a new class-based politics look like in twenty-firstcentury Britain? It is clear that only a movement rooted in the left can meet the challenge. The politics of the soggy centre have demonstrably failed to meet the needs and aspirations of working-class people, driving millions either to apathy or into the clutches of the far right. As the left's numerous disastrous experiments in bolting its agenda on to those of other groups has shown, its own future as a political force depends on re-establishing a base in working-class Britain.
At the centre of a political agenda must be a total redefinition of aspiration. 'I think you start from the basic notion of aspiration,' says Jon Cruddas, 'because this was the real cynical element within the worst elements of New Labour post-l001-the way they stripped out from the notion of aspiration any communitarian element. Any sense of duty, obligation, any sense of something that unites people, rather than this dominant atomized, consuming, acquisitive self: The new aspiration must be about improving people's communities and bettering the conditions of the working class as a whole, rather than simply lifting able individuals up the ladder.
A return to class politics as it was practised and preached in, say, the 1970s, would not be appropriate. After all, the working class on which it was based has changed fundamentally. The old smokestack factory skyline has gone. With it has disappeared (or is rapidly disappearing) the largely male, industrial working class, with jobs-far-life passed on from generation to generation, and whole communities based around the workplace. A new movement has to speak to a more fragmented, largely non-unionized workforce marked by job insecurity and growing numbers of part-time and temporary workers. The jobs they are doing are generally cleaner and involve less physical exertion, but they come without the same sense of pride and fulfilment that many of the old industrial jobs had. Skilled jobs with prestige have, in many cases, given way to shelf-stacking.
Class-based movements of the past looked solely to the workplace. This is still important: after all, it is what defines the working class and, on a day-to-day basis, it is what shapes working-class life. But, with people so much more likely to jump from job to job-s-which, in some cases, can happen more than once a year-progressive movements today have to establish roots in communities as well. In their own per- verse way, that is exactly what the BNP have been doing: throwing themselves into community politics. From local fetes to dealing with anti-social behaviour, litter picking to campaigning for affordable housing, the BNP has, with varying levels of success, striven to establish a presence.
We have seen how working-class people are increasingly less likely to vote. Barack Obama owed his election as US president in 2008 to the mobilization of hitherto disenchanted, poorer voters, regardless of how this movement was then squandered: in other words, the extension of the electorate was key to victory. One of the priorities in this country must surely be to similarly mobilize those working-class people who, because of the increasing irrelevance of politics to their lives, have become effectively disenfranchised.
It will also mean straddling the internal divisions within the working class that widened under Thatcherism. These should not be overstated.
As John McDonnell puts it, 'There have always been different elements within the wor
king class. The difference between skilled workers and unskilled workers; the difference between temporary workers, and all the rest of it.' But Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair's former head of strategy, argues convincingly that 'the conditions of employed, homeowning working-class people are so different to the conditions of people in social housing', with what he calls 'worklessness' being more concentrated in the latter, for example. I have certainly encountered heartfelt--and understandable--working-class resentment against those who, it is believed, are falsely claiming benefits.
Part of the problem is that unemployment has become depoliticized. The fight against itused to be one of the lett's great crusades, as epitomized by the iconic Jarrow March in 1936. Fewer people were out of work in the 1970s than today, but back then it was seen as the definitive political issue of the day. Margaret Thatcher's Tories savaged James Callaghan's government with the notorious 'Labour Isn't Working' poster, when a million were out of work.
Because successive governments have manipulated unemployment figures using incapacity benefits, the terms of the debate have been changed. Unemployment becomes recast as a public health issue-and specifically about whether a sizeable chunk of claimants are really ill enough not to work. The argument used by both New Labour and Tory politicians to drive claimants off benefits is essentially correct: individuals and their families are, generally speaking, better off with work. But they completely neglect to answer the question: 'Where are the jobs to put unemployed people into?' Even where there are jobs available, they are often low-paid, temporary and of poor quality.
Another core demand must surely be for decent, skilled, secure, well-paid jobs. Itwould not just be for the sake of the unemployed. It would also provide a possible alternative for many low-paid service sector workers. 'The thing we talk about is trying to have an industrial policy,' says Eilis Lawlor from the New Economics Foundation. 'That means actually deciding that you're going to support and promote industries that would fill the "missing middle" of skilled jobs, and you would tilt them spatially towards poor areas and areas that have been affected by recessions, but also policies to target particular industries.' The fag end of the last Labour government began toying with an industrial policy-but after thirteen years of collapsing manufacturing, it was nowhere near bold enough. But now, with even the Tories talking about 'rebalancing the economy' and 'Britain making things again', there is ample political space to make the case for a new industrial strategy.
The campaign for good jobs could be the catalyst for far-reaching social change. Jobs could be created to help solve the deep-seated problems affecting working-class communities. Housing is one of the biggest crises facing many working-class families: a national programme to build socially owned housing would need an army of skilled labour, as well as stimulating the construction industry and in turn creating yet more good jobs. As Defend Council Housing's Alan Walter put it in the dying days of New Labour, now that the market had failed to provide for people's needs itwas time to 'invest in building a third generation of first-class council homes that are well built and designed to the highest environmental standards, with good community facilities and transport links, and we can finally get away from housing being something you speculate on and concentrate on providing homes for the twenty-first century:
A jobs movement could also meet the challenge posed by environ- mental crisis. A 'Green New Deal' that builds a thriving renewable energy sector and launches a national crusade to insulate homes and businesses could employ hundreds of thousands of people. 'I think there's a role for government there in actually marrying its economic policy with environmental policy; says Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott.
There are large numbers of people who are not unskilled, but semi-skilled people working in construction or the building trade, for whom the government can make a very, very big difference. Itcould do good things like insulating homes, and at the same time creating a new green sector. The products that they'd actually be fitting in the homes could help the manufacturing base. You'd get some kind of multiplier effect through this government action that creates jobs and new industries.
As well as providing an array of new jobs, it would give working-class people a stake in the environment by transforming it into a bread-andbutter issue. This is class politics with a green tinge.
Clearly, these new jobs would not replace the old ones, and nor should they. Get rid of all the cleaners, rubbish collectors, bus drivers, supermarket checkout staff and secretaries, for example, and society will very quickly grind to a halt. On the other hand, if we woke up one morning to find that all the highly paid advertising executives, management consultants and private equity directors had disappeared, society would go on much as it did before: in a lot of cases, probably quite a bit better. So, to begin with, workers need to reclaim a sense of pride and social worth. Doing so would be a big step forward in making the case that the wages and conditions of low-paid jobs must be improved in order to reflect the importance they have ir. all of our lives.
We have seen how work in modern Britain is much more insecure than it used to be. British employers have more freedom to dispose of their workers than practically anywhere else in the Western world. There is an army of temporary agency workers, lacking even basic rights, who can be dismissed at a moment's notice. As well as the feeling of insecurity that hire-and-fire conditions breed, it is thoroughly dehumanizing to be treated like chattel or a mere economic resource that can be thrown away as soon as it is no longer needed. There have been recent cases of workers being sacked by text message or even by megaphone. Job security must be at the heart of a new progressive movement.
But it must he about much more than wages and conditions. A new politics with class at its heart needs to address the deep-seated alienation many workers feel, particularly in the service sector: the sheer tedium and boredom that often accompanies routine, repetitive work. It is not just about skilling up jobs and providing variation in workers' daily tasks, though that is part of it. It is also about giving workers genuine control and power in the workplace.
One of the ideas floated by the Tories before the 2010 general elec- tion was to create supposed workers' co-operatives in the public sector, offering a 'power-shift to public sector workers' and 'as big a transfer of power to working people since the sale of council house homes in the 1980s,' as then-Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne put it. In reality, he was audaciously raiding traditional Labour language as a ruse to cover up the privatization of large pieces of the public sector. But this rhetoric could be taken at face value, upping the ante with the response: 'Why not apply the same principle to the private sector?'
Such a call would be about bringing genuine democracy to the economy. With so many disillusioned with the ravages of the market, it would surely strike a popular chord. Instead of economic despots ruling over the British economy with nothing to keep them in check, key businesses could be taken into social ownership and democratically managed by workers--and consumers, for that matter. It would be a real alternative to the old-style, top-down, bureaucratic form of nationalization introduced after World War II by Peter Mandelson's grandfather, Herbert Morrison. Working-class people would be given genuine power, instead of being mere cogs in the machine.
Inevitably, solutions must be sought to working-class concerns that hitherto have been cynically manipulated by the right. For example, rather than dismissing the anti-immigration backlash as ignorance and racism, a modem class-based politics has to understand it as the misdirected frustrations of working-class people at unanswered grievances. If anti-immigrant sentiment is to be defused, it means recognizing and tackling the issues that are really to blame and affect working-class people of all colours, like the lack of affordable housing and secure, well-paid jobs.
The tragedy, of course, is that the scapegoating of immigration has meant that the elites who are really responsible have been let off the hook. If working-class frustrations could be redirected towards those really respo
nsible, there would be a genuine opportunity to unite workingclass people, regardless of their background. 'Something like £70 billion is stolen from the Exchequer every year through tax evasion. That is never couched as ripping off the white working class,' says journalist Johann Hari. 'But some poor Somali person running for their lives: they're ripping you off, rather than those ripping billions of pounds off. A much healthier and more productive way to think about the divisions in our society is for white working-class people and immigrants to think of themselves as on the same side, against the corporations and very rich people who really are ripping them off.'
Anti-social behaviour is another good example of a working-class concern that could be reclaimed from the right. Although overblown as an issue, it disproportionately affects people in working-class communities and is a genuine blight on some people's lives. On the one hand, a new class politics has to attack the root causes, like youth unemployment, poverty and a lack of facilities for young people; on the other, it has to defend people from being terrorized in their own communities but without falling into New Labour's trap of stigmatizing young working-class kids. 'New Labour's emphasis on anti-social behaviour and attacks on civil liberties was about encouraging people to attack one another and blame one another for what was going in their communities, rather than the system itself,' says John McDonnell. 'And that doesn't absolve individual responsibility or anything like that-but it's trying to get it into context. In every working -class community, you've always had rogues, you've always had people who behaved badlyand what you try and do is overcome that-but people do that by controlling their own communities:
