Owen Jones's Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Class, a recently published exploration of class hate in Britain has, as discussed in a recent this is my england review, really just given more structure to feelings that have been building in me for many years.
Jones's tour of Britain takes us through the smashing of industry, the dismantling of working class values and institutions, and the tightening grip of privileged people on jobs in the media and politics. The middle class takeover of the Labour Party and the resulting abandonment of a traditional Labour ideal is also covered - that ideal being a desire to better the conditions of all working class people rather than encourage them to aspire to bourgeois values, tastes and attitudes.
Along the way, representatives of our country's trades unions are quoted, notably Mark Serwotka of the PCS. For me, though, Jones's enquiry into the vilification and mockery of the British working class leaves a significant stone unturned. Under that stone is another middle class takeover - the takeover of large chunks of the union movement for which Serwotka speaks.
In my recent review of Jones's book, I wrote about how my maternal grandparents lived largely happy and always productive lives without ever aspiring to home ownership or to acquiring the trappings of the more affluent. My grandfather, though, was once offered a route to a much bigger wage packet.
Some time during his long career delivering and then sorting mail, my late granddad was given the opportunity to work full-time for the union of which he was a member and for which he had been a shop steward and branch secretary. He declined the offer.
Some time later, his younger daughter's husband (my dad), who was working as a gardener for the Greater London Council Parks Department, and who was also a part-time union official, was made the same offer by the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE). He accepted. This was the catalyst for a very dramatic change to my family's material circumstances - from a council flat to home ownership; from holidays in the Wales and on the south coast to chunks of summer spent in Languedoc. A fairly lengthy treatment of how this sudden shift has informed my sense of identity was part of a long ramble I wrote in June, ostensibly meant to be about the place of Queens Park Rangers F.C. in my affections.
From 1977 to the day he retired during the first decade of the twenty-first century, my dad worked hard for NUPE (and later UNISON), having joined the ranks of the full-time officials not long before Mrs. Thatcher's determined assault on the union movement. Trying times. A majority of the members whom he represented were low-paid public service workers - street cleaners, highways workers, school and hospital cleaners, hospital porters, ancillary nurses, school dinner ladies, refuse collectors. In many cases, these people ceased to be employed directly by the public sector as the services they performed were put out to compulsory competitive tendering under the Tory Government. It was a constant battle to try to maintain the already tough conditions under which they worked. Private contractors sought to offer lower wages, longer hours and less secure contracts. My dad was among those fighting their corner for many years. It meant long days, heated arguments and mountains of paperwork for him. But he struggled on.
As the years wore on, though, he found he was increasingly isolated in his determination to keep the wages, conditions and dignity of our country's lowest paid workers at the heart of what he was doing. One by one, an old guard of full-time union officials was retiring. Like my dad, these were people who had made the transition from shop steward to branch secretary to full-time officer. That they were paid more than the members they represented did not lead to such union officials losing touch with where they had come from. On the contrary, having experienced first-hand what it means to be poorly paid and badly treated, these officers were superbly equipped to understand their members' concerns and ensure that their grievances were adequately articulated at the negotiating table.
As that breed of union official began to retire, though, their replacements were coming from quite different backgrounds. University educated middle class people began to pop up more and more commonly in the role of full-time trade union official, having never done any of the jobs their members did. In the area of public services unions, this development really seemed to pick up pace from 1993 onwards. That year, NUPE merged with the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) and the National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO) to form a giant new trade union, UNISON.
Although a NUPE man, Rodney Bickerstaffe, was the first ever General Secretary of UNISON, my dad quickly complained of a NALGO cultural takeover at the regional level. NALGO had represented largely white collar public sector workers and, as such, more of its members and its officers were middle class people.
By the time my father retired, he was a rare example of a full-time UNISON official who had once been a subscription-paying member of one of its predecessor unions. His younger colleagues had university educations, different backgrounds and, it seems, a lack of empathy for the least well-paid and most vulnerable members.
Well into his sixties, an age at which, in many jobs, employees can perhaps be expected not to do the most physically demanding work, my dad was getting up in darkness to meet groups of disgruntled bin men at their depots in the early hours before their shifts started. Why? Did no one think that tasks like that might be more fairly given to younger colleagues still earning their stripes? The problem was that my father's younger colleagues did not like being sworn at by men angered at the constant erosion of their pay and frustrated at the union's efforts to defend them. The new breed of officers did not like going to smelly refuse collection depots on cold, wet mornings. They felt more comfortable in meetings held in town halls and at a more civilised time of day - and in conversations with white collar members whose salaries, backgrounds and culture more closely resembled their own. So they didn't volunteer to sort out the actually more pressing problems of the more badly treated men who empty the bins. They left that to old timers like my dad.
Now my dad is a few years into his well-earned retirement, I wonder who at UNISON or with other major unions really feels like focusing their efforts on the poorly-paid members who need the most help and support. The middle class takeover of the Labour Party may be more widely understood than what has happened to some of the unions, but it is no more serious a betrayal of the people for whom both institutions were founded.
Jones's tour of Britain takes us through the smashing of industry, the dismantling of working class values and institutions, and the tightening grip of privileged people on jobs in the media and politics. The middle class takeover of the Labour Party and the resulting abandonment of a traditional Labour ideal is also covered - that ideal being a desire to better the conditions of all working class people rather than encourage them to aspire to bourgeois values, tastes and attitudes.
Along the way, representatives of our country's trades unions are quoted, notably Mark Serwotka of the PCS. For me, though, Jones's enquiry into the vilification and mockery of the British working class leaves a significant stone unturned. Under that stone is another middle class takeover - the takeover of large chunks of the union movement for which Serwotka speaks.
In my recent review of Jones's book, I wrote about how my maternal grandparents lived largely happy and always productive lives without ever aspiring to home ownership or to acquiring the trappings of the more affluent. My grandfather, though, was once offered a route to a much bigger wage packet.
Some time during his long career delivering and then sorting mail, my late granddad was given the opportunity to work full-time for the union of which he was a member and for which he had been a shop steward and branch secretary. He declined the offer.
Some time later, his younger daughter's husband (my dad), who was working as a gardener for the Greater London Council Parks Department, and who was also a part-time union official, was made the same offer by the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE). He accepted. This was the catalyst for a very dramatic change to my family's material circumstances - from a council flat to home ownership; from holidays in the Wales and on the south coast to chunks of summer spent in Languedoc. A fairly lengthy treatment of how this sudden shift has informed my sense of identity was part of a long ramble I wrote in June, ostensibly meant to be about the place of Queens Park Rangers F.C. in my affections.
From 1977 to the day he retired during the first decade of the twenty-first century, my dad worked hard for NUPE (and later UNISON), having joined the ranks of the full-time officials not long before Mrs. Thatcher's determined assault on the union movement. Trying times. A majority of the members whom he represented were low-paid public service workers - street cleaners, highways workers, school and hospital cleaners, hospital porters, ancillary nurses, school dinner ladies, refuse collectors. In many cases, these people ceased to be employed directly by the public sector as the services they performed were put out to compulsory competitive tendering under the Tory Government. It was a constant battle to try to maintain the already tough conditions under which they worked. Private contractors sought to offer lower wages, longer hours and less secure contracts. My dad was among those fighting their corner for many years. It meant long days, heated arguments and mountains of paperwork for him. But he struggled on.
As the years wore on, though, he found he was increasingly isolated in his determination to keep the wages, conditions and dignity of our country's lowest paid workers at the heart of what he was doing. One by one, an old guard of full-time union officials was retiring. Like my dad, these were people who had made the transition from shop steward to branch secretary to full-time officer. That they were paid more than the members they represented did not lead to such union officials losing touch with where they had come from. On the contrary, having experienced first-hand what it means to be poorly paid and badly treated, these officers were superbly equipped to understand their members' concerns and ensure that their grievances were adequately articulated at the negotiating table.
As that breed of union official began to retire, though, their replacements were coming from quite different backgrounds. University educated middle class people began to pop up more and more commonly in the role of full-time trade union official, having never done any of the jobs their members did. In the area of public services unions, this development really seemed to pick up pace from 1993 onwards. That year, NUPE merged with the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) and the National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO) to form a giant new trade union, UNISON.
Although a NUPE man, Rodney Bickerstaffe, was the first ever General Secretary of UNISON, my dad quickly complained of a NALGO cultural takeover at the regional level. NALGO had represented largely white collar public sector workers and, as such, more of its members and its officers were middle class people.
By the time my father retired, he was a rare example of a full-time UNISON official who had once been a subscription-paying member of one of its predecessor unions. His younger colleagues had university educations, different backgrounds and, it seems, a lack of empathy for the least well-paid and most vulnerable members.
Well into his sixties, an age at which, in many jobs, employees can perhaps be expected not to do the most physically demanding work, my dad was getting up in darkness to meet groups of disgruntled bin men at their depots in the early hours before their shifts started. Why? Did no one think that tasks like that might be more fairly given to younger colleagues still earning their stripes? The problem was that my father's younger colleagues did not like being sworn at by men angered at the constant erosion of their pay and frustrated at the union's efforts to defend them. The new breed of officers did not like going to smelly refuse collection depots on cold, wet mornings. They felt more comfortable in meetings held in town halls and at a more civilised time of day - and in conversations with white collar members whose salaries, backgrounds and culture more closely resembled their own. So they didn't volunteer to sort out the actually more pressing problems of the more badly treated men who empty the bins. They left that to old timers like my dad.
Now my dad is a few years into his well-earned retirement, I wonder who at UNISON or with other major unions really feels like focusing their efforts on the poorly-paid members who need the most help and support. The middle class takeover of the Labour Party may be more widely understood than what has happened to some of the unions, but it is no more serious a betrayal of the people for whom both institutions were founded.
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