If you found yourself on the terrace of the House of Commons in the first half of the 1980s, what dominated the view was not, as now, the London Eye. It was a huge banner unfurled across the front of County Hall, with the ever-growing number of London’s unemployed emblazoned upon it.
Before County Hall contained an aquarium, hotel and McDonalds, it contained the Greater London council led by Ken Livingstone. He was determined to spoil the Tory MPs enjoying their drinks on the terrace by not letting them forget the human cost of the economic policies they’d just been voting for. Legend has it that Margaret Thatcher was so annoyed by the banner, that she was persuaded to abolish the Greater London council in 1986. Thatcher’s memoir records her view that ‘the left-wing municipal socialists and their subsidised front organisations were astute campaigners’. Those were the days.
This week’s news that unemployment has risen to 2.38 million should be keeping Labour ministers awake at night. They can console themselves with the facts that the number of people claiming unemployment benefit up to May has not risen as fast as some feared, or that in Wales unemployment actually went down. We can all blame the Americans. But the harsh truth is that there are 726,000 young people out of work – a 16-year high – and overall unemployment is at its highest since the depths of the John Major recession.
And this on Labour’s watch.
Outrage at mass unemployment forms part of Labour’s folk-memory. The memory of the means test, soup kitchens, and men idling on street corners were strong reasons to vote Labour in 1945. One election poster read ‘No more dole queues so it’s Labour for security.’ In the 1980s, with three million on the dole, unemployment dominated popular culture and politics. It was the time of the Peoples’ March for Jobs, dole queues, and UB40 in the charts. Wham! even got the initials ‘DHSS’ into the top ten.
In the 1990s, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown promised ‘full employment’, and after 1997 delivered it with the New Deal and economic growth.
Before long we will see three million unemployed, this time not as the result of Tory government policy, but because of a global recession. The test for Labour is how to deal with it. Elsewhere on this blog the excellent Rachel Reeves argues for greater strategic intervention from the government to recreate full employment. She writes ‘we need to build a broader based economy, less reliant on consumer debt and more focused on investment and innovation.’ Few can argue with that, apart from possibly the Tories. She is right to highlight stronger regional development, greater innovation, more green jobs and more high-tech jobs as the routes to recovery.
The looming general election means that medium-term economic strategies must be matched by immediate action. The TUC and the Labour party should open drop-in centres for the unemployed. In the 1980s, in places with high levels of trade union membership, the unions created Unemployed Workers’ Centres. This time, instead of tea, sympathy and back issues of the Morning Star, we should offer free Wi-Fi, access to the internet, mentoring and counselling. Labour MPs should be eyeing up disused shops on the high street to turn into advice bureaus for the next year. It will give the chance to show that Labour MPs are on the side of the people.
We also need to be very careful that our rhetoric about ‘efficiency savings’ doesn’t translate into job losses in the public sector. Two-thirds of the new jobs created in the cities under New Labour were in education, health and other parts of the public sector: all those extra nurses, teachers, community support officers, and hospital staff. The Centre for Cities think-tank has warned that some cities are now dependent on public sector jobs, with Swansea, Hastings, Ipswich, Barnsley and Newcastle topping the list. Labour can’t fall into the trap of cutting jobs to reduce spending, but ending up picking up the tab for increased unemployment.
Cameron wants unemployment to be a major election issue. Don’t forget that Thatcher’s Tories had the chutzpah to produce the infamous ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ poster in 1979, when unemployment was one million. The poster featured the Hendon Young Conservatives pretending to be unemployed people queuing outside the dole office; it was denounced by Denis Healey in parliament who said the Tories were ‘selling politics like soap powder’. Today’s Tories rejoice in unemployment rising because they hope they can turn it to their advantage, just like Thatcher.
London’s city government has moved down the Thames, from County Hall to City Hall, and its political control has shifted from red to blue. I wouldn’t put it beyond Boris to be painting a banner bearing the unemployment figures just to annoy Gordon Brown.