Last week saw the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition as I attended a picket in the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. From the perspective of the grubby-fingered trader in human misery I am becoming, Barnsley Town Hall 2006 was not Orgreave 1984. There were no cavalry charges to spice up my copy, just half a dozen strikers offering tea and gentle teasing.
Nevertheless, more people downed tools last Tuesday than during the miners strike two decades ago. In fact last week’s stoppage was the largest in Britain since the General Strike of 1926 with more than a million local government employees stopping work.
They were protesting government proposals that they should work longer and pay more to receive the same pension. Of course this change is billed as a ‘reform’, the catch-all phrase for anything new, whether good or bad.
The ‘r’ word is used promiscuously these days to refer to economic changes foisted on governments by ‘economic realities’. All too frequently these changes mean hello reform, goodbye job. Or in this case, hello reform, goodbye pension scheme. Apparently there is not enough money in the coffers for the government to stick to its current arrangement with council workers (most of whom are low-paid and female). It’s funny how, when it comes to spending money on things which most of us consider desirable, there is never enough cash. But when it comes to blowing up people on the other side of the world, money is no object.
But no, the kitty is empty and local government workers must sacrifice their ‘privileged’ position on the altar of ‘reform’. Much the most ludicrous aspect of the current debate is the idea that librarians and cleaners are ‘privileged’ because they can currently retire at 60 to enjoy a pension averaging £3,800 a year. On the day of the strike, Ruth Lea, director of a Thatcherite think tank was filmed haranguing a picket for defending his ‘privileges’. Without being privy to Ms Lea’s bank statements, I would assume that she gets by on considerably more than your average dinner lady.
And this is precisely the point. The people who lecture on ‘economic reforms’ and the ‘cold, hard realities of the market’ are never the ones who feel the full force of capitalism’s tender mercies. Rather it is those in the middle or bottom of the economic ladder who have to shuffle down a rung or two. Miraculously, ‘reform’ always seems to benefit those who propose it. By using the ‘r’ word, they try to dress up increasing economic insecurity as positive. Those who resist are thus dead-enders, small ‘c’ conservatives clinging to a world of economic security which no longer exists.
But this is not the case. Reform in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing. Good reform is good and bad reform is bad. In modern British politics ‘reform’ is proposed as the solution to all the country’s ills by both Tony Blair and David ‘Call Me Dave’ Cameron. And in a sense they are right. Schools, hospitals, the railways - they all need to be reformed in order to work better. But the question is how. Yet both men seem to think that their policy - to introduce the profit motive in ever more areas - is good simply because it is reforming.
Along the way it is the ‘privileged’ class of public sector workers who will have to implement these reforms which will destroy or degrade their own jobs. Meanwhile, Mr Blair and co will continue to enjoy their ‘unreformed’ cushy salaries and fat pensions courtesy of the taxpayer. There will be no performance-related pay for them.
The prime minister’s business backers will also go on in their unreformed way, i.e. hiring enough accountants to avoid paying tax. A more judgmental man than I would call that scrounging. Certainly it’s something which needs to be reformed.
To those who sing the praises of ‘reform’, the reply is simple: after you.