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Showing posts with label middle class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle class. Show all posts
Sunday, 25 November 2012
Are UKIP any alternative for workers?
I’ve heard a lot of late of the UK independence party so I thought I’d tackle them head on in this blog post. I’d like to give a detailed analysis of whether the working class should see them as any sort of alternative at all to the major political parties.
No doubt UKIP will gain in support in the short term due to the disaffection from the 3 major parties they have some very wealthy backers and have a well known representative in Nigel farage who gets a lot of television and radio air time despite his complaints far more than reel alternatives like TUSC and those genuinely opposed to the cuts.
UKIP are trying to position themselves as anti establishment and we as socialists must be very clear this is a absolute lie given their funding base and the aims of its party
UKIP are yet another establishment party playing on the fears of workers and middle class voters on the issue of Europe and given the Euro crisis its no wonder a reactionary anti EU stance is getting an echo with voters at the moment.
But we must be wary of the dangers they pose.
IN THE 2004 elections to the European Parliament one-third of the UK votes cast went to parties without representation at Westminster. The biggest of these was the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who won 16%, pushing the Lib Dems into fourth place.
UKIP do not oppose the European Union because it benefits the bosses at the expense of workers. They have no problem with privatisation of public services and industries, restrictions on trade union rights, redundancies or forcing wages down. The leaders of UKIP, and many of their backers are mainly has been right-wing Tories who are trying to push the Tory party into opposing the EU.
One of UKIP's biggest donors in the past was Stuart Wheeler. He is a rich businessman and Tory party member who have donated millions of pounds to the Tories. Now he has donated £100,000 to UKIP and called on other Tory party members to vote for them. These right-wing businessmen aren't giving millions of pounds to UKIP because they want more money spent on hospitals and education. They oppose the EU partly from a standpoint of wanting more "free trade" and "deregulation" of businesses. That is, more freedom for big business to gamble with our jobs and pensions, and to profit from the sell-off of more public services.
In their first election TV broadcast on 7 May 2004, UKIP called the EU "a bloated organisation that is riddled with corruption where expenses and subsidies are abused". They should know - they are just as deep in corruption as all the other capitalist parties. Of the 12 UKIP members of the European parliament (MEPs) elected in 2004, UKIP have had to expel two for corruption.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage has taken £2 million of taxpayers' money in expenses and allowances as a MEP, on top of his £64,000 a year salary.
Tom Wise, elected as a UKIP MEP in 2004, has been kicked out of UKIP twice after allegations that he channelled tens of thousands of pounds meant for his researcher into his own bank account. He has now been charged with money-laundering and false accounting.
Another, Ashley Mote, was jailed for benefit fraud in 2007. UKIP had selected him as their number two candidate in the South East despite knowing he was facing charges for fraud, but were forced to expel him a few months after his election in 2004. Incredibly, because Mote's prison sentence was less than one year, he was able to return as an MEP!
A key UKIP slogan is "no too unlimited EU immigration" - a cynical attempt to tap into the real fear that exists about jobs and wages. This fear is not just as a result of the current economic crisis but also present and previous UK governments including new Labours attempts to use migrant labour, particularly from Eastern Europe, to drive down wages and increase the profits of big business.
The only way workers can defend their rights is by taking collective action, like the recent N14 general strikes across mainland Europe showing the potential power of the European working class.
Workers all around the EU need to stand together against job losses, the 'race to the bottom' in terms of wages and working conditions, and the attempts to push through privatisation and to break trade union agreements.
UKIP do not care about workers' rights. John Whitaker, ex UKIP MEP for the North West sacked his constituency office manager after she had a stroke - an employment tribunal found him guilty of unlawful dismissal.
UKIP's attempt to gain votes as an 'anti-establishment' party is contrived. Its policies and actions make it part of the right wing establishment.
So UKIP who may gain in the short term by reactionary views towards the EU have no real practical solution for the working class of Europe or of Britain for that matter and must be treated with the contempt that they treat workers with. They are no alterative and we must be on our guard against them with their rich mates ploughing money into this right wing anti immigrant party.
With UKIP nationally now regularly out polling the Lib Dems and attracting some rather unsavourily far right characters many of which are ex BNP we must always be wary of the far right racist possible fascist threat which if the labour movement fails to give a lead could easily gain in support as a reaction.
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Desperate times call for desperate measures by capitalists
When there is panic all around you you have no idea what to do what do you do?
This is the question facing leading capitalist leaders in Europe today. 5 years into one of if not the biggest economic crisis in history there is still no solution on a capitalist basis to the economic crisis engulfing Europe and many other parts of the world. Europe is affected far more badly than other areas due to the way it was set up with many less wealthy nations trying to compete on the same level economically as the powerhouses of Germany, Holland and Belgium some of the more northern European nations.
But it is becoming increasingly clear to even the capitalists now that Spain will need a full scale bail out very soon and short term ideas at stemming the contagion will just not do. As capitalists think they think short term and long term profit as the Euro crisis burns on engulfing further countries in southern Europe the European Central Bank is coming under increasing pressure to start buying up bad sovereign debt of nations like Spain and to start selling off Euro bonds which are seen as safer investments at this time.
These ideas of the ECB stepping in have been held off and held off until now as a fear of using these schemes will create further upheaval in Brussels where German capitalism are reluctant to continue to bail out countries as it is having a affect back home with rising anger as its seen as Germany propping up a very sick Euro.
So when times get tough and they re set to this autumn with a warm summer in Spain and Greece turning into a red hot autumn with further strikes, occupations, rising unemployment and further attempts to force through austerity against the working and middle class’s in these nations.
Of course I haven’t mentioned Italy and not many have in recent weeks Italy is sure to come back on the menu for needing a full scale bailout at some point. But bail out after bail out will only temper the crisis and provide respite for a time this will not ultimately deal with the real fundamental issues undermining the economies deep down. The ECB will see itself having to play a more hands on roll in the coming months and years as it looks to grapple with the economic crisis does it have the power to prevent a full scale break up of the Euro. I’m not sure it does but when things get desperate desperate measures are often used. We may well see various tactics of short term growth being tried to jump started flagging economies. But and crucially this will have little to no affect as this crisis is not just limited to Europe as I said it’s global. Where will you as a country start trading more with China and the US plummeting southwards too. There really will be no where to turn.
As the working class is pummelled into the ground by austerity it is essential in the battle of ideas that Marxist ideas are popularised in the working class and middle class only socialist ideas and the over throw of capitalism can do now for workers. Its going to get to situations where workers may be able to win huge concessions out of the ruling class if the situation gets to the point where the ruling class is faced with reform or revolution capitalists will get desperate when their system is at stake the fact that many of them do not even understand their own system works against them. But as Marx says there is no final crisis of capitalism it must be over thrown you cannot reform it out of existence it will always find a way out of a crisis and that I’m afraid may mean the ruin of the working class. Let’s not see that happen the working class over the globe will have op opportunities to com to power in the coming period. We as Marxists must arm the workers with the ideas of genuine socialism to transform society to meet the needs of the many not just the few.
Thursday, 5 April 2012
The curious case of the middle class’s
Remember when the government tried to convince us we were all middle class ? Wasn’t so long ago. The idea that we are all doing well and have no need to want more was the myth. I will look here at the fact that this is a complete myth and I shall explain why.
STATEMENTS SUCH as "the working class has disappeared" or "the barriers between the classes no longer exist" have been repeated for many years. This is often backed up by pointing to the de-industrialisation of Britain especially over the last two or three decades.
In fact there are still around four million workers in manufacturing industry in the UK. It is true that increased globalisation of the world economy has meant a large number of manufacturing jobs being transferred to areas such as Eastern Europe and China. But manufacturing jobs lost in the west have often been replaced by low-paid jobs in the service sector, for example in retail, finance and tourism. The fastest growing job sector in Britain is those who clean, shop, child-mind, garden etc for others.
In "white collar" jobs, measures such as performance related pay, imposed targets and casualisation have been increasingly introduced. Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) members in Revenue and Customs for example, have been fighting the introduction of 'lean processing' which breaks down tasks into small repetitive parts to create assembly line type work. Civil servants organised in the PCS have been one of the most militant sections of the working class in recent years and have elected a left union leadership. The con-dems and New Labour politicians and academics tend to talk of the poor being the 'underclass' living off benefits on council estates, or about 'social exclusion', thereby trying to separate the unemployed off from the rest of the working class. Effectively they repeat the old Victorian idea of the 'undeserving poor' and want people to be 'encouraged' into work by the threat of benefit cuts, such as with “the Tories plans to cap benefits at 26 thousand pounds.
It is a strange solution to poverty - to cut the income of the poorest! And by forcing people into low paid work, they do not eliminate poverty. Millions are now described as the 'working poor'.
Capitalist definitions of class confuse the issue. The term "middle class" is often used very broadly, from a white collar worker on low pay in local government or the civil service to a rich businessman.
Official classifications also obscure the real class divide. The highest category according to the Office for National Statistics is 'professional and managerial' which includes people such as teachers and nurses. These certainly do not constitute the ruling class!
Marxists however say that the main class divide in society is between the ruling class - big businessmen and financiers who own "the means of production" on the one hand, and those who have to work for a boss to earn a living and actually create the wealth (value) on the other.
In the past, the average worker sold their "labour power" in a factory. Today, in addition to the millions who still do this there are others working in different fields that also produce new value. Others again, such as many public sector workers, do not strictly fit into this category but are part of the working class because of their social outlook and economic situation. The working class is not homogenous; far from it, there are many sections and layers. There are also middle layers in between the working class and ruling (capitalist) class, what Marx called the petit-bourgeoisie, particularly the self-employed, including small farmers, shopkeepers etc - altogether a wide and varied range of people. Many of them however are in debt to the big banks and have much in common with "workers".
THE LATEST survey by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirmed again what we already know about the growing gap between rich and poor. It says that it is now greater than it has been for the last 40 years. There has been an increase in the number they define as 'breadline poor' to around a quarter of all households.
Another survey conducted by Save the Children pointed out that 1.3 million children (10.5%) live in 'severe poverty'. They say: 'for a couple with a child that means living on an average of £7,000 a year or less than £134 a week'. As a result, 'children are missing out on basic things like living in a warm house, having a proper diet or going on a school trip'.
This is increasing too as the cuts which we still have only seen about 8% of so far are going to compound this further still.
By contrast the wealth of the richest in society has vastly increased. This year's Sunday Times 'rich list' shows that the increase in wealth of the top 1,000 people in Britain has been 20% in one year to around £360 billion. You have to have £70 million just to get on the bottom rung of that list.
Rich list compiler Philip Beresford said: 'The past decade of Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has proved a golden age for the rich, rarely seen in modern British history'. This is no overstatement when you realise their wealth has more than tripled in a decade!
The same trend exists on a world scale with the total wealth of 'high-net worth' individuals rising 11.4% to £18.6 trillion in 2006. There are 94,970 people with assets worth more than £15 million. This layer in society with enormous wealth and power is a minute proportion of the total population.
Whilst socialists support the demand for increased taxes on the super rich, this alone would not end the vast inequalities in society, nor solve the problems caused by capitalism. The rich don't even pay the low levels of tax they are currently supposed to
Exploitation and inequality are built into the system. To get rid of them, capitalism needs to be removed and replaced with a socialist society. The multinational companies owned by the rich need to become publicly owned.
An end to the chaos of the market and the introduction of socialist planning would mean an overall increase in the real wealth of society, not just a redistribution of the wealth that already exists.
IN THE last 20 years, there has been a relative lull in trade union struggle in Britain. In the wake of the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR and eastern Europe, there was a shift of former working-class based parties such as the Labour Party, towards being openly bosses" parties with a full acceptance of the market. This, together with the effects of a long period of modest economic growth, led to a drop in consciousness of socialist ideas.
Despite this, there is still clear recognition of the existence of classes. Surveys have consistently shown that the majority of people in Britain describe themselves as working class. The latest British Social Attitudes survey shows 57% of people consider themselves working class.
The report authors call this 'remarkable' considering that only 31% of the workforce is in traditional "blue collar" sectors. In reality it gives the lie to the idea that class politics is no longer relevant. How much more sharpened will class-consciousness be in the future when big workers' struggles take place and when economic downturn has an impact on millions of people?
Even those who see themselves as middle class, or who are on relatively comfortable incomes, have plenty of reasons to oppose the capitalist system, run for the benefit of big business.
Many problems created by capitalism affect them. The rising cost of university tuition fees for example, or the cutbacks in public services such as the NHS. For the vast majority of people who have private health insurance, it is very limited, only covering routine things.
For socialists it is not just that the working class is exploited under capitalism and therefore has good reason to end it, but also that it has the power to do it. Through struggles to defend and extend their own livelihoods, working-class people develop a greater class-consciousness. On a mass scale this can go together with a growth in socialist ideas.
But in particular, workers have the power to change things because of their role in society - their position in relation to the functioning of the economy and the "means of production". Even small groups of workers taking strike action, especially in an era of high technology, can have a massive effect. This power will be decisive when the working class moves together.
The removal of capitalism, led by the working class and with the support of most of the middle layers of society, can create the beginnings of conditions for a genuinely classless society.
This would be a socialist society where, for example, you would not have a higher chance of dying early simply because of where you were born, and where the resources of society would be democratically planned and used for the benefit of all.
With extracts taken from www.socialistparty.org.uk
STATEMENTS SUCH as "the working class has disappeared" or "the barriers between the classes no longer exist" have been repeated for many years. This is often backed up by pointing to the de-industrialisation of Britain especially over the last two or three decades.
In fact there are still around four million workers in manufacturing industry in the UK. It is true that increased globalisation of the world economy has meant a large number of manufacturing jobs being transferred to areas such as Eastern Europe and China. But manufacturing jobs lost in the west have often been replaced by low-paid jobs in the service sector, for example in retail, finance and tourism. The fastest growing job sector in Britain is those who clean, shop, child-mind, garden etc for others.
In "white collar" jobs, measures such as performance related pay, imposed targets and casualisation have been increasingly introduced. Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) members in Revenue and Customs for example, have been fighting the introduction of 'lean processing' which breaks down tasks into small repetitive parts to create assembly line type work. Civil servants organised in the PCS have been one of the most militant sections of the working class in recent years and have elected a left union leadership. The con-dems and New Labour politicians and academics tend to talk of the poor being the 'underclass' living off benefits on council estates, or about 'social exclusion', thereby trying to separate the unemployed off from the rest of the working class. Effectively they repeat the old Victorian idea of the 'undeserving poor' and want people to be 'encouraged' into work by the threat of benefit cuts, such as with “the Tories plans to cap benefits at 26 thousand pounds.
It is a strange solution to poverty - to cut the income of the poorest! And by forcing people into low paid work, they do not eliminate poverty. Millions are now described as the 'working poor'.
Capitalist definitions of class confuse the issue. The term "middle class" is often used very broadly, from a white collar worker on low pay in local government or the civil service to a rich businessman.
Official classifications also obscure the real class divide. The highest category according to the Office for National Statistics is 'professional and managerial' which includes people such as teachers and nurses. These certainly do not constitute the ruling class!
Marxists however say that the main class divide in society is between the ruling class - big businessmen and financiers who own "the means of production" on the one hand, and those who have to work for a boss to earn a living and actually create the wealth (value) on the other.
In the past, the average worker sold their "labour power" in a factory. Today, in addition to the millions who still do this there are others working in different fields that also produce new value. Others again, such as many public sector workers, do not strictly fit into this category but are part of the working class because of their social outlook and economic situation. The working class is not homogenous; far from it, there are many sections and layers. There are also middle layers in between the working class and ruling (capitalist) class, what Marx called the petit-bourgeoisie, particularly the self-employed, including small farmers, shopkeepers etc - altogether a wide and varied range of people. Many of them however are in debt to the big banks and have much in common with "workers".
THE LATEST survey by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirmed again what we already know about the growing gap between rich and poor. It says that it is now greater than it has been for the last 40 years. There has been an increase in the number they define as 'breadline poor' to around a quarter of all households.
Another survey conducted by Save the Children pointed out that 1.3 million children (10.5%) live in 'severe poverty'. They say: 'for a couple with a child that means living on an average of £7,000 a year or less than £134 a week'. As a result, 'children are missing out on basic things like living in a warm house, having a proper diet or going on a school trip'.
This is increasing too as the cuts which we still have only seen about 8% of so far are going to compound this further still.
By contrast the wealth of the richest in society has vastly increased. This year's Sunday Times 'rich list' shows that the increase in wealth of the top 1,000 people in Britain has been 20% in one year to around £360 billion. You have to have £70 million just to get on the bottom rung of that list.
Rich list compiler Philip Beresford said: 'The past decade of Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has proved a golden age for the rich, rarely seen in modern British history'. This is no overstatement when you realise their wealth has more than tripled in a decade!
The same trend exists on a world scale with the total wealth of 'high-net worth' individuals rising 11.4% to £18.6 trillion in 2006. There are 94,970 people with assets worth more than £15 million. This layer in society with enormous wealth and power is a minute proportion of the total population.
Whilst socialists support the demand for increased taxes on the super rich, this alone would not end the vast inequalities in society, nor solve the problems caused by capitalism. The rich don't even pay the low levels of tax they are currently supposed to
Exploitation and inequality are built into the system. To get rid of them, capitalism needs to be removed and replaced with a socialist society. The multinational companies owned by the rich need to become publicly owned.
An end to the chaos of the market and the introduction of socialist planning would mean an overall increase in the real wealth of society, not just a redistribution of the wealth that already exists.
IN THE last 20 years, there has been a relative lull in trade union struggle in Britain. In the wake of the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR and eastern Europe, there was a shift of former working-class based parties such as the Labour Party, towards being openly bosses" parties with a full acceptance of the market. This, together with the effects of a long period of modest economic growth, led to a drop in consciousness of socialist ideas.
Despite this, there is still clear recognition of the existence of classes. Surveys have consistently shown that the majority of people in Britain describe themselves as working class. The latest British Social Attitudes survey shows 57% of people consider themselves working class.
The report authors call this 'remarkable' considering that only 31% of the workforce is in traditional "blue collar" sectors. In reality it gives the lie to the idea that class politics is no longer relevant. How much more sharpened will class-consciousness be in the future when big workers' struggles take place and when economic downturn has an impact on millions of people?
Even those who see themselves as middle class, or who are on relatively comfortable incomes, have plenty of reasons to oppose the capitalist system, run for the benefit of big business.
Many problems created by capitalism affect them. The rising cost of university tuition fees for example, or the cutbacks in public services such as the NHS. For the vast majority of people who have private health insurance, it is very limited, only covering routine things.
For socialists it is not just that the working class is exploited under capitalism and therefore has good reason to end it, but also that it has the power to do it. Through struggles to defend and extend their own livelihoods, working-class people develop a greater class-consciousness. On a mass scale this can go together with a growth in socialist ideas.
But in particular, workers have the power to change things because of their role in society - their position in relation to the functioning of the economy and the "means of production". Even small groups of workers taking strike action, especially in an era of high technology, can have a massive effect. This power will be decisive when the working class moves together.
The removal of capitalism, led by the working class and with the support of most of the middle layers of society, can create the beginnings of conditions for a genuinely classless society.
This would be a socialist society where, for example, you would not have a higher chance of dying early simply because of where you were born, and where the resources of society would be democratically planned and used for the benefit of all.
With extracts taken from www.socialistparty.org.uk
Friday, 6 January 2012
Where has working class pride gone ?
On twitter a guy i know quite well has been trying to start a trend with the tag #workingclasspride as we feel the idea that you can be proud to be working class and accepting of your class in society is not a bad thing.
Why am i saying all this you may think ?
well for years various polititians new labour and tory have been trying to convince us that we're all middle class now. The idea that you can progress and buy your own home and move up the social mobility ladder has been brought well and truely by many that they are not working class any longer.
I have news for them. Many will realise in the upcoming period that they are not as middle class as they think they are. As this crisis of capitalism deepens and we hit recessions and stagnation over years of slow growth or even contraction many people including those who consider themselves middle class will see their take home pay fall and their living standards slip.
But why is there this stigma about being working class ?
Owen Jones teh author in his brilliant book Chav's highlights it correctly. The working and lower class's have been demonised and pushed from pillar to post so it is seen in the media and everyday society now that it is something to be almost ashamed of to be working class and earn a low wage and get by.
Of course many people are still aspirational but for many that reality of moving on in life and out of being a worker is something the vast majority of us will never realise.
Only when the class based system has been abolished will we see people having true social mobility and being able to fulfill their true potential.
But for the ruling class's including successive governments distorting and masking the fact that more of us are working class than we care to know has worked well for them so far. To convince people they are doing ok and they have little to complain about has worked up till now. But as i say things will change. We are currently going through a transition phase i'd call it where people are starting to realise their potential power as a class. This will take a long time i feel but the opening up of struggles on the industrial plain with strikes and workers action will concentrate many peoples minds that we are the 99% that keeps the 1% going. Not by choice but by nature of the capitalist class based system which keeps us in our place.
But this hash tag on twitter we came up with is great it gets people thinking what is good about being working class and how we can start to feel a sense of solidarity and pride in who we are and face up to the realities of the class system. Only by doing this can we realise our full potential.
Why am i saying all this you may think ?
well for years various polititians new labour and tory have been trying to convince us that we're all middle class now. The idea that you can progress and buy your own home and move up the social mobility ladder has been brought well and truely by many that they are not working class any longer.
I have news for them. Many will realise in the upcoming period that they are not as middle class as they think they are. As this crisis of capitalism deepens and we hit recessions and stagnation over years of slow growth or even contraction many people including those who consider themselves middle class will see their take home pay fall and their living standards slip.
But why is there this stigma about being working class ?
Owen Jones teh author in his brilliant book Chav's highlights it correctly. The working and lower class's have been demonised and pushed from pillar to post so it is seen in the media and everyday society now that it is something to be almost ashamed of to be working class and earn a low wage and get by.
Of course many people are still aspirational but for many that reality of moving on in life and out of being a worker is something the vast majority of us will never realise.
Only when the class based system has been abolished will we see people having true social mobility and being able to fulfill their true potential.
But for the ruling class's including successive governments distorting and masking the fact that more of us are working class than we care to know has worked well for them so far. To convince people they are doing ok and they have little to complain about has worked up till now. But as i say things will change. We are currently going through a transition phase i'd call it where people are starting to realise their potential power as a class. This will take a long time i feel but the opening up of struggles on the industrial plain with strikes and workers action will concentrate many peoples minds that we are the 99% that keeps the 1% going. Not by choice but by nature of the capitalist class based system which keeps us in our place.
But this hash tag on twitter we came up with is great it gets people thinking what is good about being working class and how we can start to feel a sense of solidarity and pride in who we are and face up to the realities of the class system. Only by doing this can we realise our full potential.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Social class's in britain today
So as we find ourselves in the struggle today battling against cuts and attacks from all sides of society where the working class are most at risk. We as socialists try as ever to raise class conciousness in terms of the struggle we face today . This is no easy task at all and can be very time consuming and very little reward for it but we must do this. I will examine how we can go about doing this in more detail in another post but i thought i'd take a general look at class concious ness in todays society and where we find ourselves today.
STATEMENTS SUCH as "the working class has disappeared" or "the barriers between the classes no longer exist" have been repeated for many years. This is often backed up by pointing to the de-industrialisation of Britain especially over the last two or three decades.
In fact there are still around four million workers in manufacturing industry in the UK. It is true that increased globalisation of the world economy has meant a large number of manufacturing jobs being transferred to areas such as Eastern Europe and China. But manufacturing jobs lost in the west have often been replaced by low-paid jobs in the service sector, for example in retail, finance and tourism. The fastest growing job sector in Britain is those who clean, shop, child-mind, garden etc for others.
In "white collar" jobs, measures such as performance related pay, imposed targets and casualisation have been increasingly introduced. Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) members in Revenue and Customs for example, have been fighting the introduction of 'lean processing' which breaks down tasks into small repetitive parts to create assembly line type work. Civil servants organised in the PCS have been one of the most militant sections of the working class in recent years and have elected a left union leadership.
politicians and academics tend to talk of the poor being the 'underclass' living off benefits on council estates, or about 'social exclusion', thereby trying to separate the unemployed off from the rest of the working class. Effectively they repeat the old Victorian idea of the 'undeserving poor' and want people to be 'encouraged' into work by the threat of benefit cuts, such as with David Camerons "s latest proposals to beat the poor back into work whetehr they can or not.
It is a strange solution to poverty - to cut the income of the poorest! And by forcing people into low paid work, they do not eliminate poverty. Millions are now described as the 'working poor'.
Capitalist definitions of class confuse the issue. The term "middle class" is often used very broadly, from a white collar worker on low pay in local government or the civil service to a rich businessman.
Official classifications also obscure the real class divide. The highest category according to the Office for National Statistics is 'professional and managerial' which includes people such as teachers and nurses. These certainly do not constitute the ruling class!
Marxists however say that the main class divide in society is between the ruling class - big businessmen and financiers who own "the means of production" on the one hand, and those who have to work for a boss to earn a living and actually create the wealth (value) on the other.
In the past, the average worker sold their "labour power" in a factory. Today, in addition to the millions who still do this there are others working in different fields who also produce new value. Others again, such as many public sector workers, do not strictly fit into this category but are part of the working class because of their social outlook and economic situation. The working class is not homogenous; far from it, there are many sections and layers. There are also middle layers in between the working class and ruling (capitalist) class, what Marx called the petit-bourgeoisie, particularly the self-employed, including small farmers, shopkeepers etc - altogether a wide and varied range of people. Many of them however are in debt to the big banks and have much in common with "workers".
The wealth gap
THE LATEST survey by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirmed again what we already know about the growing gap between rich and poor. It says that it is now greater than it has been for the last 40 years. There has been an increase in the number they define as 'breadline poor' to around a quarter of all households.
Another survey conducted by Save the Children pointed out that 1.3 million children (10.5%) live in 'severe poverty'. They say: 'for a couple with a child that means living on an average of £7,000 a year, or less than £134 a week'. As a result, 'children are missing out on basic things like living in a warm house, having a proper diet or going on a school trip'.
By contrast the wealth of the richest in society has vastly increased. This year's Sunday Times 'rich list' shows that the increase in wealth of the top 1,000 people in Britain has been 20% in one year to around £360 billion. You have to have £70 million just to get on the bottom rung of that list.
Rich list compiler Philip Beresford said: 'The past decade of Labour government has proved a golden age for the rich, rarely seen in modern British history'. This is no overstatement when you realise their wealth has more than tripled in a decade!
The same trend exists on a world scale with the total wealth of 'high-net worth' individuals rising 11.4% to £18.6 trillion in 2006. There are 94,970 people with assets worth more than £15 million. This layer in society with enormous wealth and power is a minute proportion of the total population.
Whilst socialists support the demand for increased taxes on the super rich, this alone would not end the vast inequalities in society, nor solve the problems caused by capitalism. The rich don't even pay the low levels of tax they are currently supposed to (
Exploitation and inequality are built into the system. To get rid of them, capitalism needs to be removed and replaced with a socialist society. The multinational companies owned by the rich need to become publicly owned.
An end to the chaos of the market and the introduction of socialist planning would mean an overall increase in the real wealth of society, not just a redistribution of the wealth that already exists.
IN THE last 20 years, there has been a relative lull in trade union struggle in Britain. In the wake of the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR and eastern Europe, there was a shift of former working-class based parties such as the Labour Party, towards being openly bosses" parties with a full acceptance of the market. This, together with the effects of a long period of modest economic growth, led to a drop in consciousness of socialist ideas.
Despite this, there is still clear recognition of the existence of classes. Surveys have consistently shown that the majority of people in Britain describe themselves as working class. The latest British Social Attitudes survey shows 57% of people consider themselves working class.
The report authors call this 'remarkable' considering that only 31% of the workforce is in traditional "blue collar" sectors. In reality it gives the lie to the idea that class politics is no longer relevant. How much more sharpened will class-consciousness be in the future when big workers' struggles take place and when economic downturn has an impact on millions of people
Even those who see themselves as middle class, or who are on relatively comfortable incomes, have plenty of reasons to oppose the capitalist system, run for the benefit of big business.
Many problems created by capitalism affect them. The rising cost of university tuition fees for example, or the cutbacks in public services such as the NHS. For the vast majority of people who have private health insurance, it is very limited, only covering routine things.
The state of Britain's infrastructure affects all layers in society; for example if we experience the sorts of floods we felt back in parts of the last decade.
For socialists it is not just that the working class is exploited under capitalism and therefore has good reason to end it, but also that it has the power to do it. Through struggles to defend and extend their own livelihoods, working-class people develop a greater class-consciousness. On a mass scale this can go together with a growth in socialist ideas.
But in particular, workers have the power to change things because of their role in society - their position in relation to the functioning of the economy and the "means of production". Even small groups of workers taking strike action, especially in an era of high technology, can have a massive effect. This power will be decisive when the working class moves together.
The removal of capitalism, led by the working class and with the support of most of the middle layers of society, can create the beginnings of conditions for a genuinely classless society.
This would be a socialist society where, for example, you would not have a higher chance of dying early simply because of where you were born, and where the resources of society would be democratically planned and used for the benefit of all.
So as i have outlined i feel there is still a underlying class conciousness there in society but we as socialists need to redefine this and make it a popular thing to discuss again. The dumbing down of any form of class in todays society has not helped this but to further peoples understainding on class we must first reintroduce it into peoples minds. Only then can workers begin to understand the wider world at large and the contridictions in the system we currently live under which is capitalism which we encourage workers to challenge and debate and eventually to overthrow!
STATEMENTS SUCH as "the working class has disappeared" or "the barriers between the classes no longer exist" have been repeated for many years. This is often backed up by pointing to the de-industrialisation of Britain especially over the last two or three decades.
In fact there are still around four million workers in manufacturing industry in the UK. It is true that increased globalisation of the world economy has meant a large number of manufacturing jobs being transferred to areas such as Eastern Europe and China. But manufacturing jobs lost in the west have often been replaced by low-paid jobs in the service sector, for example in retail, finance and tourism. The fastest growing job sector in Britain is those who clean, shop, child-mind, garden etc for others.
In "white collar" jobs, measures such as performance related pay, imposed targets and casualisation have been increasingly introduced. Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) members in Revenue and Customs for example, have been fighting the introduction of 'lean processing' which breaks down tasks into small repetitive parts to create assembly line type work. Civil servants organised in the PCS have been one of the most militant sections of the working class in recent years and have elected a left union leadership.
politicians and academics tend to talk of the poor being the 'underclass' living off benefits on council estates, or about 'social exclusion', thereby trying to separate the unemployed off from the rest of the working class. Effectively they repeat the old Victorian idea of the 'undeserving poor' and want people to be 'encouraged' into work by the threat of benefit cuts, such as with David Camerons "s latest proposals to beat the poor back into work whetehr they can or not.
It is a strange solution to poverty - to cut the income of the poorest! And by forcing people into low paid work, they do not eliminate poverty. Millions are now described as the 'working poor'.
Capitalist definitions of class confuse the issue. The term "middle class" is often used very broadly, from a white collar worker on low pay in local government or the civil service to a rich businessman.
Official classifications also obscure the real class divide. The highest category according to the Office for National Statistics is 'professional and managerial' which includes people such as teachers and nurses. These certainly do not constitute the ruling class!
Marxists however say that the main class divide in society is between the ruling class - big businessmen and financiers who own "the means of production" on the one hand, and those who have to work for a boss to earn a living and actually create the wealth (value) on the other.
In the past, the average worker sold their "labour power" in a factory. Today, in addition to the millions who still do this there are others working in different fields who also produce new value. Others again, such as many public sector workers, do not strictly fit into this category but are part of the working class because of their social outlook and economic situation. The working class is not homogenous; far from it, there are many sections and layers. There are also middle layers in between the working class and ruling (capitalist) class, what Marx called the petit-bourgeoisie, particularly the self-employed, including small farmers, shopkeepers etc - altogether a wide and varied range of people. Many of them however are in debt to the big banks and have much in common with "workers".
The wealth gap
THE LATEST survey by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirmed again what we already know about the growing gap between rich and poor. It says that it is now greater than it has been for the last 40 years. There has been an increase in the number they define as 'breadline poor' to around a quarter of all households.
Another survey conducted by Save the Children pointed out that 1.3 million children (10.5%) live in 'severe poverty'. They say: 'for a couple with a child that means living on an average of £7,000 a year, or less than £134 a week'. As a result, 'children are missing out on basic things like living in a warm house, having a proper diet or going on a school trip'.
By contrast the wealth of the richest in society has vastly increased. This year's Sunday Times 'rich list' shows that the increase in wealth of the top 1,000 people in Britain has been 20% in one year to around £360 billion. You have to have £70 million just to get on the bottom rung of that list.
Rich list compiler Philip Beresford said: 'The past decade of Labour government has proved a golden age for the rich, rarely seen in modern British history'. This is no overstatement when you realise their wealth has more than tripled in a decade!
The same trend exists on a world scale with the total wealth of 'high-net worth' individuals rising 11.4% to £18.6 trillion in 2006. There are 94,970 people with assets worth more than £15 million. This layer in society with enormous wealth and power is a minute proportion of the total population.
Whilst socialists support the demand for increased taxes on the super rich, this alone would not end the vast inequalities in society, nor solve the problems caused by capitalism. The rich don't even pay the low levels of tax they are currently supposed to (
Exploitation and inequality are built into the system. To get rid of them, capitalism needs to be removed and replaced with a socialist society. The multinational companies owned by the rich need to become publicly owned.
An end to the chaos of the market and the introduction of socialist planning would mean an overall increase in the real wealth of society, not just a redistribution of the wealth that already exists.
IN THE last 20 years, there has been a relative lull in trade union struggle in Britain. In the wake of the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR and eastern Europe, there was a shift of former working-class based parties such as the Labour Party, towards being openly bosses" parties with a full acceptance of the market. This, together with the effects of a long period of modest economic growth, led to a drop in consciousness of socialist ideas.
Despite this, there is still clear recognition of the existence of classes. Surveys have consistently shown that the majority of people in Britain describe themselves as working class. The latest British Social Attitudes survey shows 57% of people consider themselves working class.
The report authors call this 'remarkable' considering that only 31% of the workforce is in traditional "blue collar" sectors. In reality it gives the lie to the idea that class politics is no longer relevant. How much more sharpened will class-consciousness be in the future when big workers' struggles take place and when economic downturn has an impact on millions of people
Even those who see themselves as middle class, or who are on relatively comfortable incomes, have plenty of reasons to oppose the capitalist system, run for the benefit of big business.
Many problems created by capitalism affect them. The rising cost of university tuition fees for example, or the cutbacks in public services such as the NHS. For the vast majority of people who have private health insurance, it is very limited, only covering routine things.
The state of Britain's infrastructure affects all layers in society; for example if we experience the sorts of floods we felt back in parts of the last decade.
For socialists it is not just that the working class is exploited under capitalism and therefore has good reason to end it, but also that it has the power to do it. Through struggles to defend and extend their own livelihoods, working-class people develop a greater class-consciousness. On a mass scale this can go together with a growth in socialist ideas.
But in particular, workers have the power to change things because of their role in society - their position in relation to the functioning of the economy and the "means of production". Even small groups of workers taking strike action, especially in an era of high technology, can have a massive effect. This power will be decisive when the working class moves together.
The removal of capitalism, led by the working class and with the support of most of the middle layers of society, can create the beginnings of conditions for a genuinely classless society.
This would be a socialist society where, for example, you would not have a higher chance of dying early simply because of where you were born, and where the resources of society would be democratically planned and used for the benefit of all.
So as i have outlined i feel there is still a underlying class conciousness there in society but we as socialists need to redefine this and make it a popular thing to discuss again. The dumbing down of any form of class in todays society has not helped this but to further peoples understainding on class we must first reintroduce it into peoples minds. Only then can workers begin to understand the wider world at large and the contridictions in the system we currently live under which is capitalism which we encourage workers to challenge and debate and eventually to overthrow!
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Shame on Wisconsin removing trade union rights
This news story i have just read really upset me. I care alot about unions as some of you who do read this will know, i'm part of a union myself and this move here just looks likea nother heavy fisted attempt by the capitalist system to remove workers rights. Really sad this is and i think it shows how far the capitalists will go to get their cuts package through even in teh United States struggles are continuing.
I think this will only encourage protesters to come back harder with more resolve though so all may not be lost here.
The Wisconsin state assembly has voted to approve a plan to strip public-sector unions of most of their collective bargaining rights.
Senate Republicans used a procedural move to pass the bill on Wednesday.
Republican Governor Scott Walker promised to sign the bill into law as quickly as possible.
AFL-CIO union leader Richard Trumka earlier attacked the Republicans' move as a "corruption of democracy". The plan has prompted widespread protest.
Police have been ejecting demonstrators from the state capitol building after weeks of mass demonstrations in support of public workers.
Mr Walker and Republicans say the bill is necessary to help the state balance its budget deficit.
"This is about protecting the middle class and doing it in a way that avoids massive tax increases and massive lay-offs," Mr Walker said on Thursday.
He added that the bill would give local governments the "tools" they needed to balance their own budgets.
Protesters flood capitol
The US state's 14 Democratic senators had sought to prevent the bill moving forward by fleeing the state, leaving the chamber short of the number needed for a vote.
But Republicans used a procedural move to allow them to vote on the measure in committee instead on Wednesday evening.
Crowds of protesters swamped the state capitol in Madison following the vote.
The state House - the lower legislative chamber - passed the measure in a 53-43 vote on Thursday afternoon, after police had removed protesters from the building.
The state faces a $3.6bn (£2.23bn) budget deficit in the coming two-year period. The bill on labour unions would affect rubbish collectors, teachers, nurses, prison guards and other public workers.
Democrats, labour unions and their supporters, who disparage the bill as an attack on labour unions and on the middle class, spent three weeks protesting at the state capitol building.
On Thursday, Mr Trumka, head of one of the largest labour union coalitions in the US, told reporters the Republican move had engendered solidarity among union supporters.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Mr Trumka joked that unions should give Mr Walker their "Mobiliser of the Year" award for galvanizing support for labour among thousands of protesters and in national polls.
I think this will only encourage protesters to come back harder with more resolve though so all may not be lost here.
The Wisconsin state assembly has voted to approve a plan to strip public-sector unions of most of their collective bargaining rights.
Senate Republicans used a procedural move to pass the bill on Wednesday.
Republican Governor Scott Walker promised to sign the bill into law as quickly as possible.
AFL-CIO union leader Richard Trumka earlier attacked the Republicans' move as a "corruption of democracy". The plan has prompted widespread protest.
Police have been ejecting demonstrators from the state capitol building after weeks of mass demonstrations in support of public workers.
Mr Walker and Republicans say the bill is necessary to help the state balance its budget deficit.
"This is about protecting the middle class and doing it in a way that avoids massive tax increases and massive lay-offs," Mr Walker said on Thursday.
He added that the bill would give local governments the "tools" they needed to balance their own budgets.
Protesters flood capitol
The US state's 14 Democratic senators had sought to prevent the bill moving forward by fleeing the state, leaving the chamber short of the number needed for a vote.
But Republicans used a procedural move to allow them to vote on the measure in committee instead on Wednesday evening.
Crowds of protesters swamped the state capitol in Madison following the vote.
The state House - the lower legislative chamber - passed the measure in a 53-43 vote on Thursday afternoon, after police had removed protesters from the building.
The state faces a $3.6bn (£2.23bn) budget deficit in the coming two-year period. The bill on labour unions would affect rubbish collectors, teachers, nurses, prison guards and other public workers.
Democrats, labour unions and their supporters, who disparage the bill as an attack on labour unions and on the middle class, spent three weeks protesting at the state capitol building.
On Thursday, Mr Trumka, head of one of the largest labour union coalitions in the US, told reporters the Republican move had engendered solidarity among union supporters.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Mr Trumka joked that unions should give Mr Walker their "Mobiliser of the Year" award for galvanizing support for labour among thousands of protesters and in national polls.
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Ken clarke warsn the middle class's about the upcoming cuts
"The middle classes are unaware of the scale of government spending cuts that will hit them this year, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has said.
Mr Clarke said the coalition should be prepared for political difficulty when Middle England feels the full impact.
He told the Daily Telegraph he did not envisage a "quick rebound" for an economy in a "calamitous" state.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said the coalition had not thought out the implications of its strategy.
He told BBC Radio Wales: "What you see is a government which has a plan to get rid of jobs in the public sector but not enough of a plan to replace them in the private sector."
'Very difficult'
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
If someone says it's not as bad as all that, I say [they] just don't realise the calamitous position we're in”
End Quote
Ken Clarke
Justice Secretary
Send us your comments
Mr Clarke told the Telegraph: "One reason we're going to get some political difficulty is that [while] the public knows we've got to do something about it, I don't think Middle England has quite taken on board the scale of the problem.
"That will emerge as the cuts start coming home this year. We've got to get on with it [but] it's going to be very difficult.
"If someone says it's not as bad as all that, I say [they] just don't realise the calamitous position we're in."
BBC political correspondent Carole Walker says that while Mr Clarke supports the chancellor's deficit reduction plan, his tone is downbeat in contrast to the Treasury's recent efforts to point to some more encouraging economic figures.
'Economy stalled'
Shadow Treasury Chief Secretary Angela Eagle said Mr Clarke should be worried about "economic difficulty", not just political difficulty.
"The Tory-led government may have boasted before Christmas that Britain was recovering and out of the danger zone, but their decisions have meant the economy has now stalled and both unemployment and inflation are rising." she said.
"And this is before the full impact of the VAT hike and deep spending cuts have been felt."
She added: "Ken Clarke should come clean that his government made a political choice to reduce the deficit in this way. No other major economy is cutting this far and this fast."
In the interview, the justice secretary also questions Downing Street's hopes of limiting an extension of the vote in elections to prisoners serving up to one year, saying four years would be a more realistic figure.
"
This was an article posted on the bbc this morning. I think Ken clarke raises some good points but waht he fails to recognise is that the cuts wont just be affecting his own middle class they are already have a huge impact on the working class which no mainstream political party seem prepared to wantto represent.
Even labour always a party of the less well off in tradition are banging on and on about teh squeezed middle. That is all they care about. that group in society. SO dont be surprised labour and tories when you gain no votes from the working class that you have abandoned.
I too agree that people dont fully realise the impact of these cuts yet and how they will affect them. Whilst they are biting hard at the lower end of the scale the so called middle class is yet to feel it properly. Once their pay freezes and rising costs for fuel starts to hit home they will start to feel it too.
So it will be interesting which way this group of people go whether they turn against the political system altogether when they realise there is no real choice labour and tories would be cutting services and jobs right now.
Mr Clarke said the coalition should be prepared for political difficulty when Middle England feels the full impact.
He told the Daily Telegraph he did not envisage a "quick rebound" for an economy in a "calamitous" state.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said the coalition had not thought out the implications of its strategy.
He told BBC Radio Wales: "What you see is a government which has a plan to get rid of jobs in the public sector but not enough of a plan to replace them in the private sector."
'Very difficult'
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
If someone says it's not as bad as all that, I say [they] just don't realise the calamitous position we're in”
End Quote
Ken Clarke
Justice Secretary
Send us your comments
Mr Clarke told the Telegraph: "One reason we're going to get some political difficulty is that [while] the public knows we've got to do something about it, I don't think Middle England has quite taken on board the scale of the problem.
"That will emerge as the cuts start coming home this year. We've got to get on with it [but] it's going to be very difficult.
"If someone says it's not as bad as all that, I say [they] just don't realise the calamitous position we're in."
BBC political correspondent Carole Walker says that while Mr Clarke supports the chancellor's deficit reduction plan, his tone is downbeat in contrast to the Treasury's recent efforts to point to some more encouraging economic figures.
'Economy stalled'
Shadow Treasury Chief Secretary Angela Eagle said Mr Clarke should be worried about "economic difficulty", not just political difficulty.
"The Tory-led government may have boasted before Christmas that Britain was recovering and out of the danger zone, but their decisions have meant the economy has now stalled and both unemployment and inflation are rising." she said.
"And this is before the full impact of the VAT hike and deep spending cuts have been felt."
She added: "Ken Clarke should come clean that his government made a political choice to reduce the deficit in this way. No other major economy is cutting this far and this fast."
In the interview, the justice secretary also questions Downing Street's hopes of limiting an extension of the vote in elections to prisoners serving up to one year, saying four years would be a more realistic figure.
"
This was an article posted on the bbc this morning. I think Ken clarke raises some good points but waht he fails to recognise is that the cuts wont just be affecting his own middle class they are already have a huge impact on the working class which no mainstream political party seem prepared to wantto represent.
Even labour always a party of the less well off in tradition are banging on and on about teh squeezed middle. That is all they care about. that group in society. SO dont be surprised labour and tories when you gain no votes from the working class that you have abandoned.
I too agree that people dont fully realise the impact of these cuts yet and how they will affect them. Whilst they are biting hard at the lower end of the scale the so called middle class is yet to feel it properly. Once their pay freezes and rising costs for fuel starts to hit home they will start to feel it too.
So it will be interesting which way this group of people go whether they turn against the political system altogether when they realise there is no real choice labour and tories would be cutting services and jobs right now.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Is a social elite running our country ?
Watching posher and posher : why public school boys run britain last night presented by Andrew Neill who himself has done very well for himself made me realise that the social elite who make it to the very top of running this country and decisin making is shrinking.
To many at the bottom of the ladder this is no surprise but to many in the middle class this is a big surprise. To many who still stand by the belief that labour is for the working class will have gained a stark reality check last night if they watched this show that i watched.
As further down i have posted an article i found about this programme aired on wednesday 26th of January further outlines it isnt just the tories becoming more elitest and exclusive boys club.
For all their gushing rhetoric about change and inclusiveness, MPs of all parties tend to look remarkably similar. And for all their talk about diversity, it is worth noting that a pitiful 11 out of 306 Tory MPs are black or Asian, while Labour boasts just 16 and the Lib Dems none at all.
The figures on education are even more revealing. Of our 119 Government ministers, 66 per cent went to public schools, compared with only 7 per cent of the population as a whole. And what is more, a staggering 10 per cent went to just one school, Eton.
The Old Etonians themselves insist none of this matters. ‘What people are interested in,’ Mr Cameron recently insisted, ‘is not where you come from but where you’re going, what you’ve got to offer the country.’
But, of course, this is precisely what you would expect him to say. And in the BBC2 documentary, we are treated to the entertaining spectacle of the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg — the Old Etonian son of a former editor of The Times who once, almost incredibly, campaigned alongside his old nanny — denying that he belongs to a privileged class. ‘I’m a man of the people,’ he says, barely bothering to conceal a smirk.
As the fortunate beneficiary of a public school and Oxbridge education, I am hardly well placed to start throwing stones. But my own cloistered experience only reinforces my fear that politics is becoming the preserve of a narrow, gilded elite.
Eton crop: David Cameron and Jacob Rees-Mogg are products of England's most exclusive private school
The tragedy is that in the past few decades, we have taken a historic step backwards. Between 1964 and 1997, not only had every British Prime Minister been educated at a grammar school, but many came from distinctly humble working-class backgrounds.
They were the beneficiaries of a golden age of social mobility, an age when the education system promoted bright children from poor backgrounds and Britain’s booming manufacturing industries offered a ladder up to working-class youngsters with few qualifications.
From Harold Wilson and Ted Heath to Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Britain was governed by men and women who had won their laurels through hard work and talent, not birth and breeding.
And one obvious reason why Mrs Thatcher won so many elections was that — as the grammar-school-educated daughter of a Grantham grocer — she instinctively understood the values and ambitions of so many ordinary people.
By the time she became Prime Minister in 1979, however, mobility had stalled. Grammar schools had been scrapped to make way for comprehensives, manufacturing industry was in deep decline, and generations of poor youngsters were condemned to low-paid jobs in the service sector.
But if the contrast between Conservatives past and present is only too glaring, then so is that between the working-class MPs who once led the Labour Party and their metropolitan, Oxford-educated successors.
Leader: Ed Miliband
Picked: Yvette Cooper
Bright: Ed Balls
With Alan Johnson gone, Labour is dominated by three people — Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper — with remarkably similar backgrounds.
The son of a Marxist academic, Miliband grew up in the heart of the North London intelligentsia, while Ed Balls went to the private all-boys Nottingham High School. All three of them were educated at Oxford, and all three went on to Harvard.
And although Ed Miliband can point to a comprehensive school education, his alma mater was hardly your typical state school. Like his brother, David, he went to Haverstock Comprehensive in North London — effectively a finishing school for what even The Guardian calls the ‘trendy, arty and liberal’ teenagers of Camden and Hampstead.
None of Labour’s senior figures, needless to say, has ever held a serious job outside politics for more than a few years. And as if that were not enough, it is worth noting that all five of last year’s Labour leadership candidates had been to Oxford or Cambridge.
But it is not only the party leaderships that seem worryingly out of touch. In his BBC2 film, Andrew Neil visits Stoke-on-Trent, a safe Labour seat that last year faced a highly revealing choice.
With Stoke’s long-serving MP stepping down, many people expected the seat to go to the secretary of the local Labour Party, Gary Elsby, who had lived all his life in the area and had been a party member for 30 years.
But, of course, Mr Elsby’s background was all wrong. He had not gone to private school; he had not gone to Oxford; he had not even gone to Cambridge.
Chosen one: Tristram Hunt
So Labour’s national executive ensured that the seat went to someone supposedly much better equipped to represent the ordinary people of the Potteries: the TV historian Tristram Hunt, son of a Labour peer, educated privately at University College School, Hampstead, and Oxford, and a close friend of Peter Mandelson.
For all Mr Hunt’s brains, he could hardly be said to reflect the anxieties and ambitions of the typical Stoke-on-Trent family. His elevation, sadly, was all too typical of a political elite in which self-made men such as Alan Johnson and David Davis remain rare exceptions.
Thanks to the death of grammar schools and the decline of manufacturing, the ladders have been kicked away. The process has become self-reinforcing: with an increasingly wealthy, narrow elite in charge at the top and a broad, under-educated, neglected mass at the bottom, few working-class children now even imagine they could ever get to the top.
Reversing the slide back to the 18th century, when politics was the plaything of a rich metropolitan elite, will take more than one parliamentary term. An obvious first step would be to bring back state grammar schools, which at their peak offered a real chance to thousands of bright working-class boys and girls.
Another would be to invest in apprenticeships in manufacturing industries, so that school-leavers no longer troop to the nearest call centre. And a third would be to institute open contests for all parliamentary candidates, with shortlists determined by local activists rather than Westminster party fixers.
What makes this issue so urgent is that in the next few years, with the Government’s cuts beginning to bite and a quick recovery highly unlikely, ordinary Britons will be forced to pull in their belts tighter than at any time in living memory.
For many people, economic austerity will mean real pain. They are unlikely to be mollified by pictures of Coalition ministers enjoying themselves on the ski slopes. And if they doubt that the political class understands or shares their hardship, they are likely to look outside the mainstream for answers.
The death of social mobility was one of the greatest betrayals of the past 40 years. And Mr Cameron’s priority must be to turn back the clock.
All this is very interesting to me. I feel that this programme reflected on a culture at the top. A political ruling class that is extremely hard to break into and even harder if you are from a working class background with little money to spare to get you to one of these top colleges or universitys.
I personally feel it is wrong of labour to portray itself still as a working class party as in my opinion it doesnt represent ordinary working people anymore. Was it thinking about the ordinary people when it tried to sell off the post office to consignia ? was it thinking of ordinary people when they propped up the banks and pumped our money into them ? course not, they like the tories are on the side of business and capitalism. Dont get me wrong labour wasnt always like this. It used to represent working people and represent their views at a national level. I think maybe at a local level this is still the case but the ones you find in Westminster today are from a different world to the rest of us.
Unless you have grown up with wealthy parents happy to pay to send you to Eton or any other of these exclusive private schools you are severely impended as to how far you can actually go in life.
As a socialist i dont crave power or fame but the modern day labour party appears to crave both with claiming all sorts when it comes to elections. It is not and will never be a socialist party they support capitalism and what socialist party can seriously say it does that ?
They sold its members out to the big corperations years ago. The big trades unions dont even have a big say in labours internal politics much anymore. It is a sad state of affairs for a once great workers party.
Ed miliband has a huge task on his hands i feel and i'm not sure how far he can go with his modernising the party the party will be unrecognisable from the early days of its creation if Ed and other political careerists get their way i'm afraid.
As the documentary rightly explains the private schools provide nearly all of our modern day polititians and i do feel personally that the abolishment of all private schools bringing class out of the education system would fix this. Having no school better off than another will discourage elitism and lead to a much more fairer society in my view.
To many at the bottom of the ladder this is no surprise but to many in the middle class this is a big surprise. To many who still stand by the belief that labour is for the working class will have gained a stark reality check last night if they watched this show that i watched.
As further down i have posted an article i found about this programme aired on wednesday 26th of January further outlines it isnt just the tories becoming more elitest and exclusive boys club.
For all their gushing rhetoric about change and inclusiveness, MPs of all parties tend to look remarkably similar. And for all their talk about diversity, it is worth noting that a pitiful 11 out of 306 Tory MPs are black or Asian, while Labour boasts just 16 and the Lib Dems none at all.
The figures on education are even more revealing. Of our 119 Government ministers, 66 per cent went to public schools, compared with only 7 per cent of the population as a whole. And what is more, a staggering 10 per cent went to just one school, Eton.
The Old Etonians themselves insist none of this matters. ‘What people are interested in,’ Mr Cameron recently insisted, ‘is not where you come from but where you’re going, what you’ve got to offer the country.’
But, of course, this is precisely what you would expect him to say. And in the BBC2 documentary, we are treated to the entertaining spectacle of the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg — the Old Etonian son of a former editor of The Times who once, almost incredibly, campaigned alongside his old nanny — denying that he belongs to a privileged class. ‘I’m a man of the people,’ he says, barely bothering to conceal a smirk.
As the fortunate beneficiary of a public school and Oxbridge education, I am hardly well placed to start throwing stones. But my own cloistered experience only reinforces my fear that politics is becoming the preserve of a narrow, gilded elite.
Eton crop: David Cameron and Jacob Rees-Mogg are products of England's most exclusive private school
The tragedy is that in the past few decades, we have taken a historic step backwards. Between 1964 and 1997, not only had every British Prime Minister been educated at a grammar school, but many came from distinctly humble working-class backgrounds.
They were the beneficiaries of a golden age of social mobility, an age when the education system promoted bright children from poor backgrounds and Britain’s booming manufacturing industries offered a ladder up to working-class youngsters with few qualifications.
From Harold Wilson and Ted Heath to Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Britain was governed by men and women who had won their laurels through hard work and talent, not birth and breeding.
And one obvious reason why Mrs Thatcher won so many elections was that — as the grammar-school-educated daughter of a Grantham grocer — she instinctively understood the values and ambitions of so many ordinary people.
By the time she became Prime Minister in 1979, however, mobility had stalled. Grammar schools had been scrapped to make way for comprehensives, manufacturing industry was in deep decline, and generations of poor youngsters were condemned to low-paid jobs in the service sector.
But if the contrast between Conservatives past and present is only too glaring, then so is that between the working-class MPs who once led the Labour Party and their metropolitan, Oxford-educated successors.
Leader: Ed Miliband
Picked: Yvette Cooper
Bright: Ed Balls
With Alan Johnson gone, Labour is dominated by three people — Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper — with remarkably similar backgrounds.
The son of a Marxist academic, Miliband grew up in the heart of the North London intelligentsia, while Ed Balls went to the private all-boys Nottingham High School. All three of them were educated at Oxford, and all three went on to Harvard.
And although Ed Miliband can point to a comprehensive school education, his alma mater was hardly your typical state school. Like his brother, David, he went to Haverstock Comprehensive in North London — effectively a finishing school for what even The Guardian calls the ‘trendy, arty and liberal’ teenagers of Camden and Hampstead.
None of Labour’s senior figures, needless to say, has ever held a serious job outside politics for more than a few years. And as if that were not enough, it is worth noting that all five of last year’s Labour leadership candidates had been to Oxford or Cambridge.
But it is not only the party leaderships that seem worryingly out of touch. In his BBC2 film, Andrew Neil visits Stoke-on-Trent, a safe Labour seat that last year faced a highly revealing choice.
With Stoke’s long-serving MP stepping down, many people expected the seat to go to the secretary of the local Labour Party, Gary Elsby, who had lived all his life in the area and had been a party member for 30 years.
But, of course, Mr Elsby’s background was all wrong. He had not gone to private school; he had not gone to Oxford; he had not even gone to Cambridge.
Chosen one: Tristram Hunt
So Labour’s national executive ensured that the seat went to someone supposedly much better equipped to represent the ordinary people of the Potteries: the TV historian Tristram Hunt, son of a Labour peer, educated privately at University College School, Hampstead, and Oxford, and a close friend of Peter Mandelson.
For all Mr Hunt’s brains, he could hardly be said to reflect the anxieties and ambitions of the typical Stoke-on-Trent family. His elevation, sadly, was all too typical of a political elite in which self-made men such as Alan Johnson and David Davis remain rare exceptions.
Thanks to the death of grammar schools and the decline of manufacturing, the ladders have been kicked away. The process has become self-reinforcing: with an increasingly wealthy, narrow elite in charge at the top and a broad, under-educated, neglected mass at the bottom, few working-class children now even imagine they could ever get to the top.
Reversing the slide back to the 18th century, when politics was the plaything of a rich metropolitan elite, will take more than one parliamentary term. An obvious first step would be to bring back state grammar schools, which at their peak offered a real chance to thousands of bright working-class boys and girls.
Another would be to invest in apprenticeships in manufacturing industries, so that school-leavers no longer troop to the nearest call centre. And a third would be to institute open contests for all parliamentary candidates, with shortlists determined by local activists rather than Westminster party fixers.
What makes this issue so urgent is that in the next few years, with the Government’s cuts beginning to bite and a quick recovery highly unlikely, ordinary Britons will be forced to pull in their belts tighter than at any time in living memory.
For many people, economic austerity will mean real pain. They are unlikely to be mollified by pictures of Coalition ministers enjoying themselves on the ski slopes. And if they doubt that the political class understands or shares their hardship, they are likely to look outside the mainstream for answers.
The death of social mobility was one of the greatest betrayals of the past 40 years. And Mr Cameron’s priority must be to turn back the clock.
All this is very interesting to me. I feel that this programme reflected on a culture at the top. A political ruling class that is extremely hard to break into and even harder if you are from a working class background with little money to spare to get you to one of these top colleges or universitys.
I personally feel it is wrong of labour to portray itself still as a working class party as in my opinion it doesnt represent ordinary working people anymore. Was it thinking about the ordinary people when it tried to sell off the post office to consignia ? was it thinking of ordinary people when they propped up the banks and pumped our money into them ? course not, they like the tories are on the side of business and capitalism. Dont get me wrong labour wasnt always like this. It used to represent working people and represent their views at a national level. I think maybe at a local level this is still the case but the ones you find in Westminster today are from a different world to the rest of us.
Unless you have grown up with wealthy parents happy to pay to send you to Eton or any other of these exclusive private schools you are severely impended as to how far you can actually go in life.
As a socialist i dont crave power or fame but the modern day labour party appears to crave both with claiming all sorts when it comes to elections. It is not and will never be a socialist party they support capitalism and what socialist party can seriously say it does that ?
They sold its members out to the big corperations years ago. The big trades unions dont even have a big say in labours internal politics much anymore. It is a sad state of affairs for a once great workers party.
Ed miliband has a huge task on his hands i feel and i'm not sure how far he can go with his modernising the party the party will be unrecognisable from the early days of its creation if Ed and other political careerists get their way i'm afraid.
As the documentary rightly explains the private schools provide nearly all of our modern day polititians and i do feel personally that the abolishment of all private schools bringing class out of the education system would fix this. Having no school better off than another will discourage elitism and lead to a much more fairer society in my view.
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