FORTY years ago, I was fortunate enough to become an apprentice with the National Coal Board. It was then seen as a good, high-quality apprenticeship. In April 1969, I earned the grand sum of £7 and 6 shillings a week and thought myself well paid.
The apprenticeship was not just practical – learning how to repair and install machinery – but also an academic qualification. We studied mathematics and engineering part-time on day-release, as well as mining legislation.
Most rules governing mining are, thankfully, not just rules of conduct, but were laid down by Parliament in response to serious incidents over many years, when people were killed in coalmines in a multitude of ways. Parliament took its responsibilities seriously and craftsmen in the mining industry had the responsibility to learn the legislation and implement it.
When I became a craftsman, the mines were much more mechanised, but sometimes that just meant there were different ways of killing people. If someone did not do their job properly, they not only lost production, but could also ruin other people’s lives.
I was 19 years old when I had served my time. The apprenticeship was a badge of honour. It brought status, and part of this was that when we became older and had more experience, we passed our knowledge on to the next person in line. The young kids coming through were aware that the knowledge was handed down from generation to generation. It was an important part of the culture for people to serve apprenticeships.
Two years ago, I was asked to be a parliamentary private secretary in the Department for Education and Skills, which subsequently became the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. I asked: “What’s the agenda? What’s the main idea that you’re pushing?” It was the skills agenda.
During the two years in which I worked with the minister, Bill Rammell, the general view was that the department was trying to do the right thing by improving skills and addressing the issues that the country faces in a global economy.
It was frustrating for me, as a PPS, to listen to the criticism of the apprenticeship schemes then in place, because the Tories just harked back to the apprenticeships of the kind I had experienced.
The Conservatives’ approach wholly ignored the fact that we are now in a very different world. I will be very honest. I wish we were in a world where we still had the same level of manufacturing and the genuine, serious, heavy industry which produced work of that nature.
However, the fact is we are no longer in that world, because 20 years ago, the Conservative Government had a deliberate policy of de-industrialisation, de-skilling and mass unemployment. It wanted to develop a low-skill, low-wage economy – and it did so very successfully.
The Conservatives devalued the status of work done by people in the public service, such as ancillary workers and cleaners, who were taken out of the public sector workforce. People who had been devoted to the National Health Service did not feel the same empathy and passion when they belonged to the Joe Bloggs cleaning company. Now we see the results of that strategy.
One of the criticisms rightly made today is that public sector apprenticeships are not being created. It is an absolute disgrace that the public sector has not filled the gap left by the demise of heavy industry.
Why? For 20 years, the public sector, including local government, higher education and the NHS were starved of resources. Hundreds of thousands of people were outsourced; jobs were sub-contracted to companies that aimed for the lowest common denominator and did not want to know about training, skills or the long-term agenda. Workforce numbers, budgets and terms and conditions were cut in order to make things leaner and more efficient. As a result, public sector bodies could not fill the gap.
But we now need to do much more – and do it much better.
I was made redundant in 1989 and received a £20,000 redundancy payment. The global redundancy bill for miners made redundant from the early 1980s to the early 1990s is £5 billion, without taking into account unemployment or sickness benefits. If that money had been invested in keeping some mines open, or in skills, this country would now be in a very different position
We were cast aside, told to go away and left to our own devices. Thankfully, the TUC and the National Union of Mineworkers got people access to Durham University, which gave people a chance to acquire skills and go back into education, if they had missed out earlier in life. That helped me and some others.
I was one of the lucky ones – I was in the know. We cannot rely on that in this day and age. We need to go far beyond that, but we cannot have a government which relies on laissez-faire – “Stand or fall”, “Only the strong will survive” and “If you don’t like it, get on your bike.”
We must not go back to those days. We need an active state to protect and enable working people, rather than abandoning another generation to its fate. We may argue about whether we are doing enough, but I hope my account of recent history warns us never to be complacent about the Conservative threat.
Dave Anderson is Labour MP for Blaydon
