Welfare farewell?

"Make no mistake, we will get to grips with the bulging benefits bill blighting our society." 

This was the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, talking tough to the Mail on Sunday today. Meanwhile, his Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Liz Kendall, was taking a more emollient line with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC1. I got the distinct impression the two politicians were playing nice cop, nasty cop.

Back on May Day, that international celebration of workers' rights, I wrote a piece entitled Welfare, workfare, warfare in which I explored the concept of the 'nobility of labour', often attributed to the 19th century Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle. I wondered then if Rishi Sunak had been reading him. Now I wonder if he left a copy on the desk in 10 Downing Street for his successor to browse.

In his book, Past and Present, first published in 1843, Carlyle wrote: "Labour is Life: from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his God-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, - to all knowledge, 'self-knowledge' and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins."

'Labour is Life' strikes a chill into our hearts today, evoking memories of the notorious motto Arbeit macht frei (work liberates) emblazoned over the gates of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, a phrase itself based on the title of a German novel of 1873 Die Wahrheit macht frei (the truth liberates) by Lorenz Diefenbach.

The sort of macho posturing indulged in this morning by Starmer in the Pail, including talking about a "crack-down on claimants gaming the system", is desperate stuff indeed. Liz Kendall may talk reassuringly about not wishing to alarm claimants with genuine mental health issues but maybe she should have a quiet word with her boss? Sunak talked about his "moral mission” to end “sick note culture” and get fit people back to work. Plus ça change?

I don't doubt good work is good for people but bad work is deeply damaging. Dragooning the unemployed en masse into Amazon or Sports Direct warehouses across the country is highly unlikely to be beneficial to them or the economy. We've seen too many examples of the catastrophic impact of such Gradgrind employment practices on workers' mental and physical wellbeing. The longterm impacts of such a 'dash to the bottom' could be devastating.

It's all very well for Liz Kendall (a decent and caring person no doubt) to extoll the virtues of Universal Credit work coaches but they still have the power to sanction claimants' benefits, plunging them into hardship, especially during what looks set to be a long, chill winter. Let's not pretend this is anything other than a coercive and punitive system, devised by the Tories and now being refined by Labour.

And set against the background of Labour's determination also to stick to the Tories' £3bn annual welfare cuts, Starmer's tough talk is reductive in the extreme. For her part, Ms Kendall is launching a White Paper, Get Britain Working, on Tuesday and has told The Guardian "we need to see change in our jobcentres from a one-size-fits-all benefit administration service to a genuine public employment service. It’s not fit for purpose and it has to change".

That change is unlikely, however, to encourage an urgent debate on revising our entire societal approach to work. I do not believe, and never have, in the inherent nobility or dignity of labour; in most cases it is a dreary necessity foisted on us by capitalism to keep us under the yoke. 

Now, in a post-industrial era, with mechanisation, computerisation, robotisation and the rapid emergence of AI, surely this is the perfect moment to revisit our outdated notions of work? Propping up the collapsing old model while possibly giving jobcentres a cosmetic lick of paint and a new name and logo, simply won't wash.

Of course labour (small l) will still be required by society, including the manual variety, but it could be organised on a very different model to the current capitalist one. Technology could remove much, if not all, of the drudgery. The emphasis then should not be on 'getting and spending' to sustain consumerism but instead on promoting personal development and self-fulfilment. Utopian idealism? Possibly, but what's wrong with that?

The alternative apparently envisaged by the government is too grim to contemplate.

Update 26/11/24: Employment Minister, Alison McGovern, has made an encouraging contribution to the debate. Asked if her position was that the government wanted to change work, not to change people, she replied: "Exactly. That’s the culture we need to change."

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