A future for the unemployed

Last week George Osborne cut £535m from the Department of Work and Pensions budget at a time when currently 2.51m (542,000 of these are classified as having been long-term unemployed) people are registered as unemployed and a further 8.16m people identified as inactive. Furthermore, Ian Duncan Smith has indicated that 2.6m people currently in receipt of Incapacity Benefit will be reassessed and those available for work will be transferred onto Jobseeker’s Allowance. He estimates that approximately 50% of these people will be added to the overall unemployment figures. Thus with 3 weeks of being in government the Con-Dems have managed to ensure we will have 12m people out of work, with possibly a further half a million to follow as the cuts start to take effect on public services.
Additionally, it is now known that 7.67m people are currently employed on a part-time basis, many of whom opt for this type of work because they are unable to secure full-time employment. The government, for its part, welcomes people taking this approach as it helps keep unemployment below 8% (Source: Office of Labour Market Statistics).
The Con-Dem approach to tackling unemployment remains vague and tomorrow, Chris Grayling, the Minister of State at DWP will meet with private training providers such as Serco (infamous for their running of Yarls Wood immigration detention centre) and A4e to outline how any new programme might work. We already know it is their intention to scrap all existing welfare to work programmes, such as Flexible New Deal, Future Jobs Fund, Pathways to Work and Flexible Routeways. We also know these will be replaced by the Tory flagship provision – Work Programme.
The only clear issue is that the funding arrangements for the new provision will differ substantially from all previously run contracts. According to plans already outlined, training providers will only be paid when someone has been in a sustainable job for 12 months. The existing mechanism allows for a training provider to claim a small service fee in order to cover costs and the balance paid once a person has been in employment for 3 or 6 months (depending on the contract). This will change under new measures and will be replaced by a mechanism where providers will generally only receive a payment when the ‘client’ has been in employment for a year – an approach that will clearly mean smaller providers and third sector organisations will be unable to bid for these lucrative contracts. The effect of this will be that local organisations who have an intimate knowledge of their area and the needs of the communities they serve will be substantially ‘disenfranchised’ because of Tory commitment to centralising services and their fascination with ‘big is beautiful’.
The government rationale for the Work Programme is that it will be cost effective to contract independent training providers to deliver this provision. However, the government seem to have failed to recognise a key flaw in their strategy. The total number of job vacancies for the period February – April, 2010 was 475,000, whilst the number of jobless people potentially seeking work for the same period was approximately 11m. Whichever way you look at it, the figures don’t add up. Understandably the Tories and their lap dogs, the Liberal Democrats, have been hesitant to suggest how training providers will be expected to create jobs.
In order to tackle unemployment in this country it is critical a number of key issues are addressed:
• First we need to create a substantial house building strategy to tackle the critical need for homes in the UK and address the high level of unemployment amongst those working in the ‘trowel trades’. This would include the creation of 1m new homes each year for 5 years and would be under the auspices of local authorities through social housing trusts and would offer employment to approximately 750,000 people.
• Introduce a series of programmes to tackle the high level of unemployment amongst young people – including restoring the Future Jobs Fund and introducing a significant apprenticeship programme in order to offer 250,000 new apprenticeships – automatically cutting youth unemployment by a third.
• Nationalisation the banking and finance industry in order that profits from these companies can be used to rebuild our industrial base. Further savings could be achieved by scrapping the Trident programme and reinvesting the money saved into local business initiatives.
• Renationalisation of the rail and postal system to protect existing jobs and rebuild our transport infrastructure. This would include a massive investment in improving our rail network
• Through the creation of worker-owned co-operatives and other common ownership programmes, establish a coherent industrial policy to support the establishment of a competitive and technologically advanced engineering industry in the UK. We were once one of the foremost industrial nations and this was allowed to slip into decline under Thatcher, Major and later by Blair.
• Develop ecologically friendly energy sources – wind farms, wave, solar etc. These new technologies would help establish many new jobs and add to the wealth of local communities.

This approach, whilst openly and unapologetically socialist in its emphasis, would tackle head on the issue of rising unemployment. Of course, critics would argue we can’t afford it right now because our national debt is so high, but in 1945 our debt was 216% of GDP compared to 51% today and a post-war Labour government initiated polices that by 1951 had created full employment.

If we could do it then – we can do it again!

Conservatives, Liberals and the cuts

Cameron and his Con-Dem buddies would have us believe that this is a government 'for the people and by the people'.Yet, let's take a look at some of the facts. In the recent statement outlining the details of the £6bn worth of savings in government spending, Osborne emphasised there would be no effect on frontline services.

Now, socialists throughout the last election were constantly arguing that this was untrue, but regrettably we failed to convince the electorate. Now let's take a look at how these cuts will affect people - for example, if we look at the prime minister's own constituency of Witney. Here the cuts to the local authority will only account for approximately 1.7% of funding - no great loss and residents will see little effect on services for the elderly, for the vulnerable or for the jobless. However, if we look at Harriet Harman's (the acting Opposition leader) constituency, we see that these cuts will amount to no less than 16.3% of fuding, simply because in that area they have more vulnerable people, more elderly, great social need and more unemployed.

Similarly, today on the Andrew Marr show, Ian Duncan Smith outlined how he was going to get Britain 'back to work'. But this new programme will have a budget that has automatically been cut by £535m before the Prequalification Questionnaires and Invitation to Tenders for new welfare to work programmes have been published. Of course, IDS has said that with new efficiencies he will 'force' private contractors to improve on their performance. Perhaps now is a good time to point out to IDS that if 10 people go for 3 jobs, that still leaves 7 people unemployed. Currently in the UK we have 2.6m people unemployed and if his figures are correct, these numbers will soon be joined by a further 1m people who were on IB and will now be seen as available for work. Against this, DWP advise that there are currently only 600,000 vacancies. Even if private contractors fill every one of those posts, it will still leave 2.9m unemployed.

Evidence once again that the Tories are a party for the rich and never for the working class.

The way forward for Labour

The candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party continue to vie for nominations and one can only hope John McDonnell manages to secure the 33 necessary votes to place him on the ballot paper. Unfortunately, there is a real danger Diane Abbott’s entry into the race might split the left vote and leave them both sidelined.

The tragic part of this is both candidates are supremely loyal socialists who, if elected, would radicalise the Labour Party in a way not seen since the days of Keir Hardie, Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, Stafford Cripps or Aneurin Bevan. In fact, there is a strong argument that either Diane or John would take the party on a left-wing path that Labour has never truly accepted. After all, when it comes to the election of a leader, the party has a history full of missed opportunities – take for example Hugh Gaitskell against Harold Wilson (who was then a left-winger), Jim Callaghan against Tony Benn, or even Neil Kinnock against Eric Heffer. Even Michael Foot, with all his allegiances to CND and the Tribune Group proved to be a disappointment to many on the left.

Of course, the reality is that, once again, the party will probably adopt a safer route and select an ‘Ed’ or a ‘David’, rather than take the risk of being true to its conscience. Consequently, as committed as he may be, John McDonnell is unlikely to gain sufficient votes to get through to a second round, much less gain the reins of leadership. But this shouldn’t be enough to stop people voting and fighting for John or joining his campaign. A solid left vote for an LRC endorsed candidate would send a resounding message to any new leader that there is an urgent need to push aside the ideas of the New Labour project.

Many of the problems Labour now face stem from a false belief that Tony Blair, Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell could be the salvation to all the party’s ills. This right-wing triumvirate convinced members that abolishing Clause IV, changing the rules surrounding conference procedure and restructuring the party would bring electoral success. It was a mythology that kept them at the heart of government for many years, whilst dedicated party members resigned in droves.

The Labour party won the 1997 election for a number of reasons – in part because the electorate were sick and tired of the Tories, in part because the party offered some very real radical programmes, but also, Tony Blair presented as a charismatic, affable politician in whom the electorate could believe; making him a key vote winner. Unfortunately, by 2001 voters were starting to see through the ‘spin’ and Labour started to lose votes. This spiral was gaining momentum by 2005, but because Labour had established a substantial majority in 1997, it allowed the party some leeway. By then the Labour majority in the house of Commons had reduced from 179 to 66. and when Gordon Brown took over as leader in 2007 it was, in many respects, ‘all change’.

By 2007, the UK had lived through 10 years of Blairism, along with the Iraq war and conflict in Afghanistan. The electorate were starting to see through the media hype of the Third Way, Communitarianism and the New Labour project, and like a plumber trying to block the leaks with his finger, Brown struggled to stay in power. All the polls were sending a clear message that voters were unhappy with the Labour government and they wanted change.

At the same time, Clegg and Cameron were being put onto centre stage as clean faced, bushy tailed young men with new ideas that could cure the ills of the country. Of course, everyone knew we had been through a recession and that we would all have to draw our belts in, but unfortunately, in the 2010 election, the party was unable to expose the underlying right-wing nature of modern Toryism and Liberalism.

So now we have to fight back the right to be considered reputable and worthy of the right to govern this country. We have to show the country and the people in it we can still bring equality and fairness to everyone. And we have to remind electors that once Labour brought to this country an exciting programme of nationalisation, alongside a planned economy and a welfare state where no-one was allowed to fall by the wayside. Labour needs to show that it is a party that brought a national health service where anyone could have free medical care at the point of need, regardless of their background, their upbringing, or their wealth.

If Labour can do that, Conservatives, Liberals and all their wealthy hangers-on will quake with fear and a roller coaster of left-wing ideas will engulf this country, destroying the Con-Dems and pushing them back into the pit of iniquity from which they came.

Tacitus