There are trade unionists and the rest of us. There are taxpayers and claimants. To put it another way, there are nurses, doctors, teachers, firefighters, refuse collectors, civil servants and many more who are not only the backbone of society doing jobs which uphold the standards of a civilised society but who happen also to be members of trade unions. They are society, not an alien enemy within. And, if David Cameron wanted to find volunteers for his Big Society, he would find, as did a recent survey, that trade union members as a group are more inclined than most others towards volunteering.
Similarly, the Tories and their Liberal Democrat partners like to portray the myth – and a spurious antonymic enmity – that there is a societal cordon sanitaire between taxpayers (good) and claimants (bad). In fact, every individual is a taxpayer – VAT allows no exemptions – and every individual a claimant, from birth – the majority in a National Health Service hospital – to state pensions.
To paraphrase George Osborne, we are all part of a joined-up society. But that patently does not mean we are all in it together. The artificial distinctions are pejorative, deliberate and selective. There are benefit scroungers and there are bankers’ bonuses – the size of which may be condemned but the venality of their claimants never categorised as pejoratively as scroungers.
What is left of the post-war consensus which has bound society together and which suffered its most damaging sustained attack under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership is once again under assault and it is the unions which are being forced into the front line. It is probably no overstatement to say that the current confrontation between the public sector and the Government could decide the future of trade unions more than any other since the miners’ strike a generation ago. Any weakening of the link with Labour – as some hope to see come of the review of the party’s policies and structures – would be a decisive and historic betrayal.
As Geoffrey Goodman outlines on pages 16-17, the atomisation of society, not least through changes in global trade and technology, has created unparalleled political confusion and uncertainty.The cement that was the post-war consensus has dissolved and in its place has come a collective impotence.
To take but one small measure, The Guardian’s John Harris observed at the recent Glastonbury festival that – apart from the indefatigable Billy Bragg – not a single musician or band had anything to say about the cuts, banks, tuition fees or Britain’s foreign policy. Yet, as Mr Goodman writes, behind this feeling of powerlessness “there is massive and widespread disillusion with the whole package of contemporary political life”. There has never been a greater need for the restatement of social democratic ideals. The unions, on behalf of society as a whole, have begun the task.
