As the TUC fires the opening salvos of the conference season, dissatisfaction and anger at coalition policies are spreading beyond the ranks of the usual suspects
Does this government really grasp the shape and size of the trouble that lies ahead? Does it care? Several respectable studies have now given weight to the plain obvious – that it is the poor who will be hardest hit by the coming age of austerity. And this week, the Trades Union Congress voted to launch a wave of demonstrations and industrial action in the spring against the threat posed to public servants’ pay and conditions.
There will be trouble before then. In Birmingham, the ‘ConDem’ council is about to rip up workers’ contracts and impose less favourable ones; the country’s firefighters will have to resist a mass sacking later this autumn if they don’t accept new terms and conditions; and even the police have been making threatening noises about impending ‘disorder’, although no-one is quite clear if they mean to create their own.
Predictably, panicky parallels are now being drawn with the notorious ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1978/79, which preceded Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power. But of course there are big differences. The Conservatives are already in power, for a start. And the trades unions are very different beasts from 30 years ago; diminished in some ways, although strengthened in others.
But general secretary Brendan Barber’s speech to the congress will still have resonated with many. ‘Decent public services are the glue that holds a civilised society together,’ he told delegates.
‘Cut services, put jobs at peril, and increase inequality – that is the way to make Britain a darker, brutish, more frightening place.’
Coalition leaders, meanwhile, are playing it very low key and well mannered. Ironically, it was Cabinet Officer minister Frances Maude who rose to defend Brendan Barber and the role of the trades unions on Radio 4’s Today programme this week, after Barber was repeatedly prodded by an excessively irritable John Humphrys.
But beware diplomatic smooth-talking ministers. The real aim of this government is the long-term shrinking of the state, and it has no intention of restoring high levels of public spending even when the economy recovers.
And whether the cuts are for a short painful time or merely the opening salvo in a new settlement between state and citizen, how long will the public accept lectures on benefits as a ‘lifestyle choice’ while the bankers’ bonuses climb?
As Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband has argued, you don’t have to be Left-wing to think the gap between rich and poor is immoral and needs tackling.
Ministers can afford to ignore Labour’s criticisms for the moment. They still depend on a well stoked public worry that the deficit is dangerously high.
But PM David Cameron will have to devise a strategy to quell rising Liberal Democrat discontent. Earlier this week, former LibDem leader Charles Kennedy became the first high-profile party member to criticise the cuts.
The LibDem conference is going to be a very strange affair this year. It is said that leader Nick Clegg will get a conquering hero’s welcome in Liverpool, but that’s hardly the whole story.
Yes, Clegg has put his party at the heart of British politics for the first time in a century. But at what price? Some leading ‘Orange Book’ LibDems are happy to see the state cut back. But most rank-and-file members of the party passionately believe in the state’s power to do good. Electoral reform and the pupil premium apart, what great gains have the LibDems made in this unequal partnership?
Meanwhile, there will be calls for a boycott of free schools on the grounds that they are ‘socially divisive, likely to depress education outcomes and an inefficient use of resources in the age of austerity’. Similar resolutions opposing health and benefit reforms and, of course, the cuts can be expected.
Is this the healthy play of democracy or the first signs of impending trouble? Anyone who witnessed Business Secretary’s Vince Cable’s glazed and unhappy expression when recently announcing the full-scale privatisation of the Royal Mail could guess the answer to that one.
Melissa Benn is a writer and broadcaster
