Neil Kinnock in 1987 on Tory Cuts to Apprenticeships and Vocational Training

I found Neil Kinnock’s book, Making Our Way (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986) in one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham on Friday. It was written by the former leader of the Labour party, now an EU commissioner in Brussels, to make the case for the Labour party and genuinely socialist policies against the Thatcher administration. Unfortunately, after losing the election the following year, in 1987, Kinnock and the party’s leadership gradually rejected these, and turned from promoting manufacturing industry to courting and promoting the financial sector instead. This was done by Mo Mowlam and Gordon Brown in the party’s ‘prawn cocktail’ offensive, which eventually produced Blair and New Labour. The book’s arguments are still sound, however, and in many ways similar to those in Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy by Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring, Henry Neuburger and Adam Sharples (Nottingham: Spokesman 1986).

One of the areas of government policy criticised by Kinnock is the attack and cuts to vocational training and education. The red-headed leader points to the fact that Britain’s industrial competitors, such as German and Japan, placed a very high emphasis on creating a skilled workforce that could serve their manufacturing economy. This was reflected in their school systems, which also included vocational, technical education. Science and engineering were also much more respected and promoted, so that these countries had many more of these to work in industry. Advocates of greater support and promotion of engineering in British education, for example, have for a long time pointed out that while in Britain the term ‘engineer’ may refer simply to metal-worker – a skilled or semi-skilled worker, for example, in Germany it’s status is much higher, and will denote professors of engineering and highly skilled technicians on a level with scientists. Kinnock also points out that Germany also has a far higher number of apprenticeships, designed to provide young workers with the skills they need. Yet in England, the number of apprenticeships was not only smaller, but actually declining. Kinnock describes this, and criticises the Youth Training Scheme, the government scheme that was introduced to combat unemployment by teaching young workers industrial skills. He writes

When the impact of government policies on training is examined an equally alarming picture emerges. The traditional method of vocational education and training for the 16-19 age group – or, at least, boys in that age group – has been the apprenticeship. But during the last few years the numbers of apprentices starting in British industry has declined drastically, from 120,000 in 1979 to 40,000 in 1983, while in the latter year in GErmany 620,000 young people were beginning high-quality apprenticeships. The decline in the number of apprenticeships has been due partly to the massive contraction of manufacturing industry and partly to cuts in government support for local government. Little of the reduction has come as a result of the modernization or reform of initial training. And while government economic policies were wiping out apprenticeship opportunities, the government was also closing Skillcentres, abolishing 16 Industry Training Boards and withdrawing Exchequer support for industrial training and retraining. Apologists for the government insist, of course, that the operations of the Manpower Services Commission and the Youth Training Scheme in particular are more than making up for these losses. It is true that the efforts of people in the MSC, the YTS and the associated activities can produce training of high quality. But the scale of that standard of provision is simply not great enough to compensate for the losses, let alone meet modern training and retraining needs in a country where mass unemployment adds to the crises causes by a history of undertraining.

The apprenticeship system, the Training Boards, the Skill-centres all fell short of perfection. But they have not been replaced by a superior system meeting the comprehensive training skill supply of the nation. They have been replaced by forms of mass provision which beautify the unemployment figures but too frequently fail to enhance either the employment prospects of individuals or the strength of the economy.

The YTS has the advantage that it is universal and, at long last, is being extended to two-year duration. But that extension, the facility for qualification, the opportunities for continuing education and the resources for instruction and for payment to trainees have been grudgingly granted. As a result, Tory politicians have not met the requirements identified by those experienced in education and training. The arguments of the latter should be heeded. They are not empire-building and they do not make the case for greater quality or quantity of support and improved programme content and opportunity out of selfishness. Rather, they recognise that half-hearted provision means downhearted trainees, incomplete and devalued training and, in many cases, a cynicism which overwhelms youthful and parental hopes.

Given the history of deficiency in British training and the division in attitudes and therefore expectations between ‘education’ and ‘training’ in our country, it was not surprising that the approach to change should be faltering, cautious and prone to the errors of snobbery, conservatism and complacency. In many ways, change on the scale that has been needed for decades would amount to a cultural, educational and industrial revolution against ignorance, short-sightedness, convention and vested interests. The decades have certainly passed; and some of the change has come – but slowly, and circumstances now require urgency. That urgency is simply not manifested by the government, and industry, with a few honourable exceptions, has neither the will nor the feeling of obligation to meet large-scale additional provision spontaneously.

Trained and educated human abilities, the incomparable requirement of resilient economic recovery and advance for the Britain of the 1990s and beyond are not being developed to anything like the extent necessary to meet national needs. The seed corn is either being devoured, as education and training are cut or constrained, or not even being planted. The consequences for the harvest are clear and awful. (pp. 140-2).

The situation has changes since then. Higher education has been massively expanded to the point where about 45 per cent of school leavers go on to university and there was an attempt, back in the 1990s, to reintroduce apprenticeships. The main argument, however, is as true as ever. Britain’s industrial base was deliberately decimated by Thatcher to break the back of the unions and produce a prostrate, servile workforce ready for exploitation. The various workfare and WRAG schemes are the result of this. This is intended to give the impression that the government is actively trying to give new skills to the workforce and maintain the illusion that there are still jobs out there, for anyone willing to make an effort. The reality is that simply the opposite. There are few jobs, with a vast number of candidates competing for them. And this is precisely what is demanded by the Chicago school of economists, like von Hayek and Milton Friedman, who inspired Thatcher. Their theories demand an unemployment rate of 6 per cent to keep wages down. All the while, of course, giving cheap, publicly subsidised labour to business, including big firms like Tesco’s that definitely don’t need it.

And so what Kinnock said about the YTS applies in spades to them. Workfare is indeed a form of mass provision which beautifies the unemployment figures but too frequently fails to enhance either the employment prospects of individuals or the strength of the economy. They are a ‘half-hearted provision’ which has produced downhearted trainees, incomplete and devalued training and, in many cases, a cynicism which overwhelms youthful and parental hopes.

It’s time workfare, and the whole benighted Tory approach to manufacturing industry and a genuinely skilled workforce was thrown out with them and the other Thatcherite ideological rubbish, before another thirty years goes past.

Lobster’s Robin Ramsay: Scots and Welsh Nationalism Not Anti-English, Just Anti-City of London

I found this comment about the non-racist, non-Fascist nature of Scots and Welsh nationalism by Robin Ramsay, the editor of the parapolitical magazine, Lobster, in his piece ‘Contamination, the Labour Party, Nationalism and the Blairites’ (Lobster 33, Summer 1997: 2-9) expressing his opinion that Scots and Welsh Nationalists are racists or even anti-English, but simply against the dominance of the City of London that has damaged their countries, along with the rest of England outside the metropolis.

At any rate, the British Left does not assume that qua nationalists, the Scots and Welsh Nationalists are racists and fascists; and never has, as far as I am aware. But it is my experience that this Welsh and Scots nationalism is not even anti-English. Scots and Welsh Nationalists don’t see the people in the North (or Midlands, or East of West) of England as their oppressor. Their oppressor is in London and the Home Counties – the English establishment, which at its core is the City of London, and what might be best described as the overseas lobby in Britain – the financial, political, administrative and cultural remnants of the British Empire.

Where this essay 9is going may now be apparent. For the financial interests of that overseas lobby in London and the Home Counties against which the Welsh and the Scots Nats are struggling, have all too frequently taken precedence over the interests of industrial, non-metropolitan England, as well as Scotland and Wales – most recently and most nakedly in the 1980s.

The rest of the article is an examination of the way the Labour Party in the 1980s turned to take its economic direction for the City of London, with the result that the City’s interests, and those of the overseas lobby, superseded that of domestic manufacturing, with the consequent devastation of British industry that followed.

Although much has changed in the 17 years since the article was written, it remains substantially true. The Scots SF authors, China Mieville and Ian M. Banks, stated in an interview that they voted Scots Nationalist, not because they really wanted independence, but because the Scots Nats had better welfare policies than Labour. One of the Left-wing bloggers and commenters on this blog, Jaypot, has stated that she supports Scots Nationalism because of the effects of Tory rule on her homeland and certainly not because she hates the English. Indeed, she has said several times that she hopes an independent Scotland would galvanise us in the south to throw them out. Unemployed in Tyne and Wear put up a piece on their blog describing Alex Salmond’s promise to the people of North-East England that he would develop trade relations with their region, including placing valuable manufacturing contracts with local companies, if Scotland became independent. Furthermore, the authors of Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy, Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring, Henry Neuburger and Adam Sharples, have also pointed out that British domestic manufacturing has suffered from a lack of investment due to the orientation of the financial sector towards investing overseas, especially in the former colonies.

And the reaction this weekend of the Tory press to Wales’ campaign for better welfare and NHS services, rather than the austerity campaign, privatisation and misgovernment of the metropolitican Tory elite was a piece in the Daily Heil vilifying Wales. Mike ran a piece over at Vox Political pointing out how inaccurate the story was, and how it bore no relation to the Wales in which he lives. And we can expect such attacks to increase as more people in Scotland, Wales and the English regions begin considering that they might be better off without a government, whose sole aim is the enrichment of a very narrow, metropolitan elite.

Union Action for the Unemployed: The Invasion of the Ritz and in the 1980s

One of the pieces contained in Colin Firth and Anthony Arnove’s selection of radical and democratic texts from British history, The People Speak: Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport, is Jack Dash’s account of the invasion of the Ritz Hotel in 1938 by himself and other members of the National Unemployed Workers Movement. Dash (1907-89) later became a docker and trade union leader. He said at one point that his epitaph should be ‘Here lies Jack Dash/ All he wanted was/ To separate them from their cash. His account runs as follows:

We decided to invade the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly. Everything was well planned. The press – that is, the London and national newspapers (and in those days before the swallowing up of the little fish by the big ‘uns under free enterprise there was quite a number of them) were all informed in advance. At the appointed time about 150 of our unemployed members, all dressed up in such remnants of our best suits as had escaped the pawnbroker, walked quietly into the Grill and sat down. This did not have the quite hoped-for effect, for due to a mistake – the only organizational mistake I can remember on the part of the campaign committee – we had overlooked the fact that the Grill was never open in the afternoons, only in the evenings. However, we continued as planned, took our places at the tables which were being set by waiters in readiness for the evening, and then pulled our posters from beneath our coats, with slogans calling for an end to the Means Test and more winter relief for the aged pensioners.

Can you imagine the looks on the faces of the waiters! They stood still in their tracks. Up rushed the management supervisor demanding to know what it was all about. He was politely told by our elected speaker, Wal Hannington, that we would like to be served with some tea and sandwiches because we were very tired and hungry, but he was not to be anxious and could present the bill which would be paid on the spot.

When the supervisor regained his breath he said, in a very cultured, precise Oxford-English voice: “I cannot permit you to be served. You are not our usual type of customer. You know full well that you are not accustomed to dine in an establishment of this quality. If you do not leave I shall have to send for the police.” (This had already been done.) In reply our spokesman informed him that many was the Saturday when wealthy clients of the Ritz would drive down to the East End workmen’s caffs in their Rollses and Daimlers and have a jolly hot saveloy, old Boy7, what! Slumming, they called it, and they too were in unusual attire and frequenting establishments that were not accustomed to such a clientele; nevertheless, said our spokesman, these gentlemen were treated with courtesy and civility and nobody sent for the police. The Ritz, he added, was not a private members’ club but a public restaurant ; he requested the supervisor to give orders to the staff to serve us with the refreshments we had asked for.

The appeal might just as well have ben addressed to the chandelier which hung from the ceiling. The supervisor stood there with a look of scorn, waiting for the police to come and throw us out. We refused to budge, insisting on our right as members of the general public, with legal tender in our pockets, to be served with what we had ordered. Meanwhile Wally had mounted the orchestra platform to address us; waiters and kitchen staff stood around dumbfounded at our temerity. But our speaker was incensed and in good form, and the issue of class privilege was clearly put. I noticed several of the staff members nodding their heads as the speaker touched on salient points. His speech was never finished, however, for the Grill was soon surrounded by the police. A couple of inspectors came over and consulted our organizers; we were ordered to leave, and did so in an orderly manner. As we filed out several of the waiters came up to wish us luck in our campaign, and pressed money into our hands.

‘Jack Dash, The Invasion of the Ritz Hotel (c.1938)’ in Colin Firth and Anthony Arnove, The People Speak: Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport (Edinburgh: Canongate 2012) 296-7.

The invasion of the Ritz Hotel was also featured a little while ago in a previous episode of the One Show on BBC 1.

The authors of Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy, Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring, Henry Neuburger, and Adam Sharples also note the establishment of centres for unemployed workers in Brmingham, Coventry and Sandwell, as well as the establishment of a Birmingham Trade Union Resource Centre and support given to a Workshop in Coventry to support unions campaigning against the closure of their firms. West Midlands County Council also had an Economic Development Unit had a trade union liaison officer. It also produced a ‘Jobs at Risk’ information pack for workers whose companies were either in difficulties or about to close down. (p. 59).

I’m sure there are organisations like the National Unemployed Workers Union campaigning for the unemployed. Unfortunately, the trade unions have been decimated by Thatcher and successive administrations, while local authorities have found their spending savagely attacked. No doubt part of this was to prevent Left-wing councils spreading such subversion by empowering the hoi polloi. We could, however, do with a few more very visible protests and campaigns to raise the profile of unemployment, and just how savage, degrading and inadequate current welfare provision is. Pointing out that IDS’ reforms are leading to deaths of 38,000 per year, so that no-one can claim ignorance, would also be an immense help. I do wonder if a mass march on Chipping Norton, or invasion of the Carlton Club following the example of Jack Dash and the Ritz wouldn’t do any harm, either.

The British Financial Sector’s Role in the Promotion of Foreign Industry

In a previous blog post I mentioned the statement by the authors of Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy (Nottingham: Spokesman 1986) Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring, Henry Neuberger and Adam Sharples, that one of the causes for the decline of British manufacturing industry was a lack of investment and the concentration on short term returns by British banks. Later in the book, the authors expand on this statement by showing how the lack of investment in British manufacturing by the British financial sector is actually a legacy from the days of the Empire. According to the book, most British financial institutions, in contrast to their German and Japanese counterparts, were geared to investing in and developing the former British colonies, at the expense of the ‘mother country’. They write

The City’s International Role

The British financial system has failed to meet the needs of domestic industry because historically it has been geared to financing trade, in particular within the British Empire. When capital was raised in London it was more often than not for foreign investment, such as the US railroads. The City is now an international centre for managing foreign currencies – ‘Eurocurrencies’. Banks operating in the UK lend vast amounts of money overseas, many of them foreign banks.

This international role has had far-reaching results. British investors divert more of the national income to overseas investment than any major nation. For example, the two largest insurance companies, the Commercial Union and the Royal, do 70 per cent of their insurance business overseas. Since the removal of exchange controls, 60 per cent of unit trust investment has gone abroad.

In Germany and Japan, by contrast, industrial reorganisation has been closely linked with the provision of long-term finance tailored to the needs of domestic industry. Financial institutions have accepted responsibility for industrial performance, and so developed a detailed understanding of the problems facing industry, both technical and managerial. This tradition of industrial banking laid the basis for special credit institutions. In West Germany, the Kreditanstalt fur Weideraufbau – owned by the federal and regional governments – concentrated on regional policies, with the banks focusing on industrial financing. The Japanese economy is dominated by large holding companies, which include both industrial and financial companies: these have worked closely with MITI, the main government department responsible for industrial policy.

This bears out the Austrian Marxists, Karl Kautsky’s observations about the role of British capitalists in developing and promoting overseas rivals to Britain itself from about the time of the First World War. If these policies have continued – and I really don’t expect they’ve changed much in the nearly thirty years since the book was written – there needs to be a complete revolution in the priorities of the British financial sector. One of the solutions the book proposes is the establishment of a state-owned national investment bank for domestic industry, as recommended by the Labour party and the TUC. I like the idea, but it would face strenuous opposition from the established, vested financial interests, who fear any criticism and encroachment on their domination of the financial sector and British industry.

Third World Thatcherite Britain and the Grab for North Sea Oil

Last week both David Cameron and Alex Salmond held separate meetings in Scotland with the petrochemical companies in order to discuss the vital question of the ownership and future of North Sea oil. This is a vital issue. The Scots Nationalists I’ve talked to in the past have all been of the belief that not only should an independent Scotland have a right to the oil reserves off its coast, but that this would support the newly independent nation’s economy. Although this wasn’t mentioned in the news reports, Britain faces the same question. If Britain does not retain revenues from the North Sea if Scotland leaves the UK, then the British economy will plummet. It’s a question of economic survival.

I was taught at school that Britain has a ‘third-world economy’. This meant that Britain was like the various nations of the Developing World in that its economy was heavily based on primary industry. In the Developing World these industries were either mining – the extraction and production of diamonds, for example, or copper in the African Copper Belt, or the various nations around the world specialising in a particular agricultural product – groundnuts, bananas, coffee and so on. In Britain in the primary industry that fundamentally supports the country’s prosperity was North Sea oil.

The authors of the book Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy (Nottingham: Spokesman 1986), Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring, Henry Neuberger and Adam Sharples, make exactly the same point:

Third World Britain

Under the Thatcher experiment, Britain’s underlying economic decline has continued and gathered pace. Only North Sea revenues now disguise its true extent. Without them it would be impossible to sustain the living standards which the working population currently enjoys. Britain’s present levels of employment, industrial activity and public services are all being paid for on borrowed time. (p. 20).

They then survey the way the Thatcher government effectively devastated the UK economy, while Labour unfairly got the blame for economic mismanagement.

It is worth emphasising how disastrous Tory economic policies have been for Britain in purely economic terms. The Tory Party has never succeeded in cultivating an image of compassion or concern for social justice: but at least, so the convention goes, it can be relied on to promote ‘sound’ economic policies and generally do the things that are in the interests of business growth. The Labour Party, by contrast, seems to have a acquired a reputation for economic mismanagement. The really remarkable achievement of the Thatcher Governments has been to find a set of policies which, while designed to make ‘economic efficiency’ the overriding objective in almost every sphere or our lives, has actually had the effect of making our economy less efficient – as well as having all the more predictable results such as a huge increase in social deprivation, inequality, injustice and division. As a result we are now in a situation where socialist economic and industrial policies offer the only serious hope not only of healing deep social divisions but also of reconstructing a viable and efficient economy.

Employment levels in manufacturing, construction and the public services plummeted after 1979. The international climate worsened, it is true, following the oil price rises of that year. All the major Western countries have faced increased unemployment during this period. But in Britain’s case, government policies have played an almost uniquely important part in creating a fall in national output and an increase in unemployment. By pursuing exceptionally high interest rates as part of the attempt to reduce money supply growth and inflation, and then letting the market determine the level of the exchange rate, the Tory Government precipitated a massive crisis in the manufacturing sector in the period 1979-81 – especially among companies which were relatively dependent on export markets or which had recently expanded investment or stocks in anticipation of sales growth. Meanwhile attempts to reduce public spending and borrowing resulted in a further deflationary effect: there was a particularly severe impact on employment as capital projects and welfare services were sacrificed to pay for the escalating costs of increasing unemployment – not merely a vicious circle but an insane one.

If we look at another traditional measure of economic success or failure, the balance of payments, we see a similar story. Since 1982, a surplus on manufactured goods has been replaced by large annual deficits – the first such deficits since the Industrial Revolution. Imports and import penetration have risen sharply in virtually every sector of manufacturing. These imports have, of course, been paid for out of oil revenues. But declining oil revenues will no longer be able to offset the growing manufacturing trade deficit in the late 1980s and 1990s.

They then go on to consider some of the contributing causes to British industrial decline, such as the price of British goods, lack of investment in research and development, and the lack of an education workforce, some of which is now extremely dated.

Nevertheless, I think the main point is still valid. Thatcher destroyed the British industrial base, and it is still only North Sea oil revenues, which is propping the economy up, despite the Tory and New Labour attempt to promote the financial sector. If Britain loses these revenues, then the British economy will collapse. My guess is that we would still be in the Developed World, but go from one of the most prosperous to one of the least.

The result of this would a further massive collapse in living standards, accompanied by bitter discontent. In the Developing World, mass poverty traditionally gave rise to extremist political movements – Marxist revolutionary groups, and the various Fascist dictatorships like those of General Pinochet, Manuel Noriega et cetera ad nauseam used to contain and suppress them. The same is likely to arise in Britain. This would effectively discredit all of the main political parties, as all of them have been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Thatcher’s legacy. But those most effected would be the Tories as Thatcher’s party.

No wonder Cameron was up in Scotland last week trying to keep hold of North Sea oil. If that goes, then so does a large part of British prosperity and the Conservatives/ Thatcher’s image as the party of British prosperity.