Insecurity and Anxiety in C21 Britain

[aeolium]

A recent report by Compass on insecurity and anxiety in Britain is imv well worth reading in that it reviews, consolidates and presents a mass of evidence about this, as well as highlighting the dangers for the future:

http://www.compassonline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Compass-Somethings-Not-Right-January.pdf

Even though Compass is a left-of-centre think tank, I don't raise this as some party political issue but rather as an existential one. For one thing, there is no party in Britain which has policies capable of addressing the scale of the problem highlighted here; for another, it is as much a question of societal attitudes as political solutions; and lastly it is likely to require supranational change not just change here.

If nothing else, Compass' presentation of the evidence, and the statistics, about life in Britain today is a valuable contribution.

[Serial_Apologist]

Many thanks for linking this document, aeolium.

I shall have a read of it this afternoon, hopefully.

[vinteuil]

Many thanks for linking this document, aeolium.

I shall have a read of it this afternoon, hopefully.

... it will be good to hear in due course whether Serial will be really hopeful after having read the document.

[Serial_Apologist]

... it will be good to hear in due course whether Serial will be really hopeful after having read the document.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, vints. (Or is it the other way around? )

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This is a subject that interests me greatly. I shall read it - "cover to cover".

Thanks aeolium.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a first skim leaves me lacking hope ... i agree that the evidence is persuasive in social terms but the political context must be addressed if you wish to see greater positive and secure lives for the majority of people

our politics is bought and paid for by financial and corporate interests; our political and administrative leadership is the most incompetent in longer than living memory; our constitutional affairs are mangled and will be increasingly intractable, we belong to the EU - an institution in deep crisis and low reputation and popularity yet essential to our well being ... the problems of inequality have been well documented hereabouts as have the failings of the neocon ideas of the last thirty years

the Compass work is helpful if it builds popular support for credible progressive ideas but this country may have to wait for the generations from mine to the current crop of fifty somethings now in power to die out ere any effective enactment of progressive ideas comes about

insecurity is not so much a social ill more an accurate reflection of our social reality and political impasse; in fact more of it would be welcome if it stirred the people to rebel against our corrupt and effete elites and their domination of our polity and commonwealth....

[Don Petter]

... it will be good to hear in due course whether Serial will be really hopeful after having read the document.

I think his 'hopefully' was directed to whether we would all make it to this afternoon.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks again for the link to the article, which I've found most useful. I have a number of criticisms to detail before my brain gives out, however.

Firstly I think the authors underestimate the dire state of British capitalism by the 1960s, in terms of falling rates of profit in the main industrial sectors consequent ironically on strong trade unionism leading to lack of competitiveness with competing countries, especially resurgent Germany and Japan. One thing the ruling class is right about is that money has to come from somewhere, and government room for autonomous movement is restricted by EU rules; the EU is hardly mentioned at all. Printing of more money than what oils the machine and sustains economic processes leads to inflation, proving by the way the Marxian (indeed Smithian) understanding that the amount of money in circulation must be an expression of the amount of labour time put into turning raw materials into products or too much money sloshing around leads to its own devaluation.

Capitalism was caught between wanting to extend purchasing power down into the working class, to keep that class from its wish for material betterment turning into recognition of its unsustainability under capitalism, and the need for business to make adequate profits - all not helped of course by Britain's weakening post-colonial position as a world power despite maintaining a disproportionately sized army, and management complacency in the teeth of technological change and challenge.

The result was "stagflation" - an unprecedented combination of stagnation and inflation.

The other side of the picture was that trade union militancy remained perched between class collaboration and confrontation, as union bosses on high salaries themselves hob-nobbed with capitalists, and restricted militant action by the membership to profit-hitting strikes, "justifying" increased export of capital to lands banning trade unionism and democracy where big bucks could be made out of cheap labour and resources without difficulty.

This was the time when press, bosses and labour governments conducted the sorts of campaigns against grass roots militancy, whether strikes, occupations or squats, that make today's against militant Islam seem amateurish insofar as they prepared the way for Thatcherism with its message to workers claimed tio be misled by overpaid union bosses into pricing themselves out of jobs. No more talk of government spending to keep workers trained for the coming upturn - Keynsianism - that had given workers (actually trade union bureaucrats) too much power while overtaxing and making business unprofitable. Then along came the bribes into home-ownership which have trapped the working class - and now the middle class, whose "proletarianisation" Marx had predicted - into debt and all the real insecurities to which the article is themed.

[aeolium]

What I would say about that, S_A - and you make good points - is that the report is not a historical survey of Britain's economy and society since 1945 but a report focussed mainly on conditions now. There are comparisons with earlier decades in the C20 but mainly to illustrate how in many ways there were better prospects for those in the working class (at least up to 1970s) and the middle class than there are now: better social mobility, less extreme inequality because of high restributive income and capital taxes, better access to social and private housing without the unrestrained damaging property speculation in many cities, but especially London, that makes property unattainable for most people in so many areas. There is also the matter of employment security and rights and there was unquestionably better protection - and things like final salary pensions which increasingly seem like extraordinary luxuries for people now. And when you speak of investment, let's not forget the largely wasted bonanza of North Sea oil revenues.

I would not hold up Britain between 1945 to say the mid-1970s as any kind of model society or golden age but compared with what went before and what prevails now the achievements seem significant. Perhaps there were better run societies, such as Germany and some of the Scandinavian countries: all societies which seemed to adapt better than post-colonial Britain. But I don't think there were the problems for so many groups of people that there are now: employment prospects and student debt for the young, the nature of employment contracts, lack of pension provision, lack of access to housing, and possibly a long-term deflationary future in which low disposable incomes hold back spending (except through dangerous credit bubbles). And that's without mentioning climate change!

I think people need to start thinking about a wholly different economic model - rather as the 1945 Labour government did, though with different answers. And an even bigger challenge is to plot a way of getting from here to there. As the author of the report suggests, it is not enough simply to tinker around the edges of existing models as pretty well all politicians are doing, but root-and-branch change is needed. I think this report - describing and analysing the nature of the problems - is only part 1, and the author is currently working on part 2 which will come up with proposals. That will also be worth reading.