Just Finished Reading: The People – The Rise and Fall of the Working Class by Selina Todd (FP: 2014)

After enjoying my previous read on the Working Class but being aware of its historical limits (being focused almost exclusively on the post-Thatcher era) it was good to be able to put that recent era into a proper historical context. Running from 1910 up to the present day – incorporating an additional chapter extending the narrative from 2010-2015 – the author shows how the workers moved from a predominantly servant based sector to an industrial one helped in no small part by the experiences of two World Wars. It was the period from 1945 until the early 1970’s where the Working Class really gained ground and dominated both British politics and the British economy. This was the era of (largely) full employment, strong unions and an all-encompassing cradle-to-grave Welfare State. This was the time (again by and large) when people really had never had it so good. This was all the more surprising, and poignant, when compared to the “hungry 30’s” famous for the Jarrow March and the infamous means test. Of course nothing good lasts forever. Just as people started getting used to the idea of full employment things fell apart – the Oil Crisis, the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and finally the Thatcher government all contributing the stopping the seemingly inexorable rise of the Workers in their tracks. With union power broken and the rights of business and the market in the ascendant it seemed that it really was every man (and occasionally woman) for him/her self as, so we are told, society melted into thin air to reveal in its place millions of self-actualising and highly individualistic agents.

Rather inevitably it’s expected that the winners at least try to write the histories of the age to reflect their own particular slant on things. So we have, in the main, the right-wing Tory version of events which is, generally, taken as objectively what happened. This author, who certainly seems to know exactly what she’s talking about, very effectively puts that ‘accepted’ record straight. She is most certainly biased and makes no effort to hide the fact that she continually speaks for the Working Class and from the Left politically. It certainly helped that I agreed with much of what she said and found it refreshing that I starting seeing British history through her eyes, or Left wing eyes, rather than in the way I had be ‘educated’ to see it. But the biggest surprise from her narrative was the regular attacks on, or at least criticism of, both Labour politicians and Union officials supposedly dedicated to supporting the lives of the Workers. Time and again, from the General Strike of 1926 to so-called New Labour both organisations have, at the very best, let the Working Class down or even effectively worked against them thus preventing the workers taking any appreciable control over their working lives or community existence. Each and every time, so it seems, where the choice was between increasing workers’ rights or participation on the one side and the right of capitalists to exploit their workforces for profit without responsibility then it was the capitalists who won. The myth of prosperity (actually for the few) won out over the prospect of power for the many. Likewise the unions, it would seem, clung to the outdated notions that their core members were skilled workers and that their welfare (and pay differentials) were paramount whilst practically ignoring the growth of the semi-skilled or unskilled worker as well as women or ethnic minorities – until they organised themselves and struck effectively for better conditions.

As with all of the best books this has shifted my appreciation of a whole period of history which I’m starting to see in a different (Left wing) light. It certainly highlights some areas I had previously been unaware of or that I had originally interpreted in quite a different way – education for example – that now needs digging into much more. This is a very interesting and important book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand the 20th century and how we got where we are today. It also very effectively shows you who the real enemy are. A must read for anyone who wants to be politically educated.