The debate about the next election seems to be focussing on Europe, immigration, debt, deficit, cuts, welfare and the like.
They may be important. But they all miss the big issue - which is that there is only one question of importance at the next election and no ons is addressing it because none of the mainstream parties or UKIP have a clue how to deal with it.
That question is "how are you going to deliver full employment?"
Nothing else matters.
With full employment we would not have an immigration issue.
With full employment people could afford homes - which would be being built.
With full employment we would see the deficit disappear as people paid tax and did not claim ebewnfits.
With full employment we'd have fewer people using the NHS.
With full employment our children would have hope and education could really deliver.
With full employment anything is possible.
But right now no one is seeking to deliver full employment.
Why is that?
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First of all we’d need a banking system that is of real social value – similar to that of credit unions (that are still poorly developed in this country). The main political parties don’t want to ruffle the feathers of the elite, so implicitly accept structural unemployment. Many have fatalistically accepted the status quo as ultimate reality.
If I can just make a point or two about Europe which is both ‘pro-Europe’ & ‘pro-jobs’and therefore cost effective for Labour.
In a week when the FT said ” collective madness has descended over the Conservative Party” we would have hoped our opposition parties would have more vigorously challenged the diversion of the late middle aged, male, right wing Tories whose plan is to take us away from our other 26 trading European partners as well as put off foreign companies from basing their EU operations in the UK. Moreover as another FT reader wrote yesterday on leaving the UK we would lose benefits from dozens of EU trade treaties with other countries around the world. Indeed is it just the FT alone and its readers’ letters making the “no brainer” economic and therefore jobs case for Europe or have our other politicians gone into hiding.
Surely that implies that the government actually wants to create full employment? I’d say it was pretty likely that it doesn’t. A poor, divided and insecure workforce is a cheap one, and structural unemployment is a requirement to keep people insecure and divided.
For the Tories especially, the worst period in memory was the 1960s-70s when close to full employment made for a more confident workforce – and, not incidentally, less inequality than at any time before or since. Hearing some of the “memories” of the 70s that came out during the recent Thatcher Necrothon, you’d think people were talking about the plague years.
Indeed – in 1979 Britain was one of the most equal countries in Europe – things might have needed to change as they always do but not by means of the whirlwind of Neo-Liberalism that took place.
“We regard the maintenance of full employment as the first aim of a Conservative Government.”
You couldn’t imagine David Cameron saying it today, but this line appeared in the Tories’ manifesto in 1950. Just shows how far we’ve shifted from the post-war consensus.
Amazing
Do you have a web link?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=We+regard+the+maintenance+of+full+employment+as+the+first+aim+of+a+Conservative+Government&l=1
when was there ever full employment,WW2, and its a pipedream to suggest there will be.
1945 – 1973
Nothing to note then
It was, and is, possible except for those who callously do not want it
That may be because Full Employment, like Inflation, Savings and Work are Humpty Dumpty words.
No they’re not
Not to 2.5 million unemployed people
In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, full employment was pretty much the order of the day.
High borrowing and spending had created one of the greatest periods of prosperity ever seen in this country. People had higher wages than ever before and this was delivered with relatively low inflation. This period had often been referred to as “capitalism’s golden age”.
There is hardly any example anywhere of a low wage, low borrowing economy delivering prosperity for all except for the rich.
During this period, people were getting better educated, more confident and more politically aware; hence they started to ask awkward questions of their governments and became ever more demanding of them.
This wasn’t conducive to a low wage, high profit environment which meant, at the first available opportunity, this type of society had to go forthwith!
Good post Sarah; you pose the right question.
According to neoliberal theory it’s the job of the Invisible Hand – the market – to supply full employment and, by the same token, it presumably plays the same role in supplying needs like health and energy.
In order to maintain the myth – and to camouflage its role in ‘supplying’ growing inequality and food banks – the state’s role has not withered away, rather it has grown into one which manages the needs of ‘the market’, which, coincidently, is very helpful to the one per cent.
This may go some way to explaining ‘our’ Lloyds Bank’s role in tax evasion, as reported in yesterday’s Guardian.
Found it, good resources for info & research also, my journey went here:
labour-history.org.uk/support_files/full%20employment.pdf
then here:
http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk.htm
and finally:
The Conservative and Unionist Party’s Policy
http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/con50.htm