The Song of Experience, the March of Industry : History and Industry in the Formulation of British Social Policy
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Over the last quarter of the twentieth century international shifts in production had devastating effects on the labor market in Great Britain. The social consequences have been severe. Values and aspirations, particularly in the young, are greatly altered as a result of economic strain on community, family and school, long regarded as the pillars of consensus in industrial society. Economic policy is derived from experience, and change and response in a nation can only be fully understood through its cultural history. In Britain, three critical factors have a bearing on current issues. The first is attitudes to poverty and the stigmatization of idleness, relevant as the spectre of mass unemployment returns : the hegemony of industrial interests in social security and education policy is the second and the third is the narrowly utilitarian, class divided nature of English education, and its record of failure. Combined, they shape the context in which a new generation confronts the labor market, no longer with the past spirit of deference and cooperation, sometimes with apathy or hostility. Recent studies show British youth is not convinced by the government's rediscovery of vocational education nor by its malfunctioning training schemes, formulated on an anachronistic notion of industrial needs and reaffirming damaging social divisions. Meanwhile, the return to selectivism in social security benefit legislation is ethically unsound and offers negligible financial saving. The assumptions underlying policy on education and the transition to the workplace require serious reexamination before the difficulties of integrating a new generation into the economy become insurmountable. The historian should refrain from calling the history he does not know 'traditional society' - Gareth Stedman Jones. We are not concerned with the poor. They are unthinkable, only to be approached by the statistician or poet - E. M. Forster, Howard's End. The changing forces determining world production in recent decades have by now created traumatic dislocation in industrialized nations. Shared certainties and common goals have been lost and we are witnessing what Eric Hobsbawm calls 'the fraying and snapping of the old social textures and value systems' (Hobsbawm 1994 : 343). Analysts and policy makers of the advanced economies, in their consternation, have sensed the need to move beyond the empirical in exploring the implications. Japan's Institute of Statistical Mathematics carries out extensive quinquennial surveys on value shifts in the population emphasizing the place and nature of materialism (Sawa : 2000) while Britain's National Institute of Economic and Social Research, in its Foreword to 'The Goal of Full Employment' stresses the need to 'trespass a little on the territory of other social sciences' (Britton 1993 : 3). However, bolder steps must be taken in that direction. The significance of change is clearer when the power of historical experience to govern a society's response to social crisis is understood. This is true both in examining one's own economy and in drawing comparisons with those of other nations. In doing so, cultural history, contemporary literature and interactive cultural sociology offer a wealth of information that can inform decision making. The first aim of this short essay is to point out the enduring strength of the oppositional binaries directing current thinking on poverty and labour as the spectre of mass unemployment returns. Questions are then raised on certain priorities in social policy, tracing the origins of the long established hegemony of industrial interests in education and social security provision that has left the majority of Britain's young poorly educated and less supported by their social services than their counterparts in other north European nations. Thirdly, it emphasizes the past limitations of vocational strategies in British schooling, shifting the focus to youth as a key point of economic, political and social anxiety. Reference is made to recent British studies in interactive cultural sociology portraying a new, divided generation on the threshold of employment, bringing markedly different attitudes to the world of labour.
- 2001-02-25
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