In 1945 Labour believed in "useful work for all"

[miscsoc]

It's almost inconcievable to imagine a political party proposing that people had a right to useful, meaningful work in this day and age, but it was mainstream 65 years ago.

This just occured to me while watching Gideon give his budget statement, and I found it jarring and sad.

[miscsoc]

1. whoa this has like 200 views

this is less due to my wise commentary than to some baffling idiosyncrasy of my ISP - everytime I click on the thread it goes up like 17 views.

edit: or 130 rather, a few seconds after i posted it. anyway the weird phenomenon has stopped.

[dipsydoodle]

2. When I go in

its only clicks up one. :shrug:

[miscsoc]

3. Maybe DU just engineered that in to recognise my genius

I am worth 17 men.

[Ken Burch]

11. And at least 2 or 3 women.

n/t.

[non sociopath skin]

4. I am often reminded of a conversation I had with Denis Murphy Snr ....

... who was, for many years, a senior official of Northumberland NUM.

Although admitting that it was no Utopia, he reminisced that when he began work at Ashington Colliery, then one of the largest in the country, almost all males had assured, paid employment, even - his words not mine - "the dafties". In other words, even mentally-challenged men had "useful, meaningful" work with a pay packet to take home and a few bob for Saturday night out with the lads.

Now, they'd presumably seen as "shirkers" scrounging around on invalidity.

The Skin

[miscsoc]

5. Or if they did get a job it would be nothing worthwhile.

I've read about how a lot of the miners laid off during the eighties were expected to get new service jobs. I can't really blame a middle aged ex-miner for considering a job flipping burgers or pouring cappucinos for stockbrokers or whatever to be beneath their dignity.

As for the "dafties", that guy you knew had a good point there. I mean we all knew a few people at school who weren't that bright. The people i knew like that are as far as I have heard in pretty dysfunctional lifestyles now - drugs, crime, etc. (They would have left school five years ago or so) Fifty years ago they would have probably been working at the mines down the road, and had some sort of structure to their lives and sense of purpose.

Of course a lot of people in that sort of job weren't in it by choice and were capable of much more - my parents were both pretty smart - actually very academically successful - but pressured into menial jobs by their parents.

The Tories consciously shunted people onto incapacity in order to make it seem like their policies caused less unemployment than they did. It is fucking rich for them now to complain that a lot of people on incapacity aren't really disabled - the reason those able bodied people are ON incapacity is that the government knew their new economy had no place for them and that the public would find that new economy morally repulsive if they were aware of its effects.

[SydneyDundee]

13. Not sure what you are saying here?

are you implying that only certain people are 'worthy" of jobs in the service sector then? that there is a hierarchy of work that, no matter if it is honest and serves a purpose and gets rewarded fairly, that some work is beneath others?....

There is no honest and legal work that is beneath me if it means I can feed my family....and moreover my hat goes off to anyone else in 'less" worthy jobs..like "flipping burgers" etc......

[Hopeless Romantic]

6. Somehow I reckon that the 1945 definition of "useful work" would differ from some of todays

[miscsoc]

12. I suppose so, but today's would have some relation to the 1945 one

We have however, dispensed with the idea of a right to useful labour altogether.

[Ken Burch]

14. And Labour has dispensed with any interest in working people altogether.

Their next leader will almost certainly be the older Miliband, meaning there will be no deviation from the now-failed New Labour policies whatsoever at the next election.

Why so many Labourites want to stay with what can never work again is a bonafide mystery.

[Nihil]

15. Old habits die hard

> Why so many Labourites want to stay with what can never work again
> is a bonafide mystery.

There are so many people - especially the older generations - who will
simply vote for the same colour year in, year out, regardless of what
the candidates (or even the party as a whole) actually does in that time.

Guess it boils down to "thinking is hard work" ...?

:shrug:

[realcrookswearsuits]

7. Full employment was the key stone of all post war government policies

right upto 1979. Both Labour and Conservative governments of the 1950s and 1960s saw it as a moral as well as a political imperative. The idea that you could dump people on the scrap heap without any prospect of escape was seen as creating a breeding ground for fascism and totalitarianism which had to be avoided at all costs. Looks like those lessons will have to be learnt all over again.

[dipsydoodle]

8. And now apparently

12.5% of the working population were not born here.

What I don't know is what percentage of the unemployed that were born here matches that figure.

[tjwmason]

9. Depends what you mean by "matches that figure"

It rather implies that if an immigrant comes to Britain and gets a job, then that removes a non-immigrant from that job who is thus unemployed - which is pure nonsense as economic theory.

[dipsydoodle]

10. Means occupies

no removes.