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New Labour have blown it: things can only get better
Professor Mary Davis believes that the MPs’ expenses ‘scandal’ is just a convenient distraction from the limping economy, and tells Peter Gruner there’s no better time for a return to trade unionism
Comrade or Brother? A History of the British Labour Movement (Second edition).
By Mary Davis. Pluto Press £15.99
PROFESSOR Mary Davis was bemused by the fuss over MPs’ expenses. She suggests it is merely a “smoke screen” to distract from the main issues of the day – the collapse of the banks and its jolt on capitalism.
There has never been a better time for trade unionism, according to the professor. She points to rising unemployment, higher bills for food and a Conservative government waiting in the wings.
Professor Davis’s book, Comrade or Brother: A History of the British Labour Movement, has just been updated and re-printed.
She traces the history of the labour movement from its beginnings, at the onset of industrialisation, through its development within a capitalist society, up to the end of the 20th century.
Davis is Professor of Labour History at London Metropolitan University, where she heads the Centre for Trade Union Studies, and is deputy director of the Working Lives Research Institute.
This is threatened by the university’s plan to seek 500 redundancies following the withdrawal of government grants and over expenditure of £38million.
A lifelong socialist, Professor Davis dismisses New Labour as the end of an era. “This government has done things that perhaps even a Tory government couldn’t have got away with,” she says. “At the same time they have made it more and more difficult for themselves to get re-elected.”
Professor Davis suggests that the MPs’ expenses scandal is “media manipulation” to draw attention away from the real problems affecting the world.
She thought it was interesting that a Conservative newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, broke the story. She said: “The banking scandal is the biggest and most important event in recent years to rock the very foundations of capitalism.
“It struck hard at the heart of the capitalist system. It is being resolved, if that’s possible, by taking huge amounts of money away from the public purse and putting it back into the banks.
“They call it nationalising the banks. But the structure is untouched and actually the only thing being nationalised is the bank’s debts.”
She warns that things can only get worse in Britain and predicts the rise of militant trade union activity after almost 20 years of relative inactivity.
“The collapse of the banks will mean that public services are going to be decimated and many of the much vaunted New Labour private finance initiative schemes will come to nought,” she says.
“All the New Labour boasts of more hospitals and schools will come to nothing. There’s no room for manoeuvre because there are no new industries that can take up the slack.
“And once the public sector goes, where are people going to work?”
The book contains a significant chapter on the rise of the Chartist movement for people’s rights from 1837.
Professor Davis compares that movement with the recent People’s Charter for Change, signed in March this year by 25 MPs and 16 trade unionists including leading figures like Billy Bragg and Mike Mansfield QC.
Throughout the 200 years of trade union history, she says, there were always those who thought the movement was finished.
But she added: “There are always issues that bring trade unionism back into the spotlight”.
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