to what extent are we living under a workfare state?
...e social security bill. The ‘underclass’ of unemployed people that had strained the taxpayer in America had apparently also appeared on British shores. “Britain has a growing population of working-aged, healthy people who live in a different world from other Britons, who are raising their children to live in it, and whose values are now contaminating the life of entire neighbourhoods, which is one of the most insidious aspects of the phenomenon, for neighbours who don’t share those values cannot isolate themselves.” (Murray in Dwyer/2000/p65) The conservatives new found ideological position pragmatically translated into a wholesale squeeze on public spending. Such cuts bore the arrival of what became known as welfare to work schemes. The early forms of such schemes were in the mode of making family credit more generous; a ‘back to work’ bonus which gave the unemployed the opportunity to build up a credit if they worked part-time before finding a proper job. There were also measures that granted means-tested out of work payments to continue for the preliminary weeks of employment, in order to relieve the transition. The conservatives also announced a year’s national insurance holiday for employers that were willing to take on someone that had been out of work for two years, or more. The centrepiece to the conservative’s welfare to work schemes was job seeker’s allowance. “It halved the entitlement to non-means-tested unemployment benefit from twelve months to six and it merged it with income support for the unemployed {and} cut a major national insurance benefit to which people had at least notionally contributed.” (Timmins/1996/p558) The pejorative ‘newspeak’ that had begun to dominate discourse surrounding the future of welfare was heavily criticised by the left. Welfare was still seen as Labour’s domain and the apparent dismantling of traditional modes of welfare encouraged the national executive committee of the labour party to endorse ‘The charter against workfare.’ The charter was supported by a number of trade unions and local authorities; it laid out four principles for participation in schemes to reduce the amount of people who were unemployed. The most important was a commitment to ensure that all of such schemes remained operational on a voluntary basis. Labour’s rejection of workfare and the arrangements under which claimants must take work in exchange for social security benefits, was unequivocal. (Jordan/1996/p301) Robin Cook publicly criticised the ‘humiliating hoops’ through which conservatives wanted claimants to jump in making benefits conditional. Tony Lloyd a Labour frontbencher described such arrangements as socially unacceptable. The left perceived compulsion as a recipe for lowering standards, resentment and discrimination. (Timmins/1996/p533) The spectacular reassessment of Labour’s trajectory on workfare was publicly announced in the budget submission of November 1994. New Labour proposed eight new initiatives to tackle the problem of de-motivation. They aimed to reform the benefits system so that welfare payments are used to support work not unemployment and to reform childcare to allow more training opportunities for single parents. (Blair/1996/p93) The radical edge to such rhetoric was confirmed one year later by the chancellor Gordon Brown. On the 9th of November 1995 he announced New Labour’s welfare to work plan designed to tackle the problem of youth unemployment. This dramatic break from New Labour’s ‘unequivocal’ position included an element of compulsion. “Simply remaining unemployed and permanently on benefits will no longer be an option.” (Brown in Dwyer/200/p82) The New Deals were to be launched after Labour achieved office in 1997 and were to establish Britain’s commitment to ‘workfare.’ The schemes were being funded via the windfall tax of Brown’s first budget; the one-off amount totalled £5.2 billion. (Timmins/1996/p564) “We have launched new proposals to help a forgotten generation of 600,00 under 25’s, many of whom have never worked. We have also suggested over half a dozen new initiatives to help the long-term unemployed into work.” (Blair/1996/p117) The rhetoric based around schemes such as the new deal embodied both the intended direction of New Labour as well as their ideological influences. Blair’s New Labour stressed redistributing opportunities rather than just income; transforming the welfare state from a safety net in times of trouble to a springboard for economic opportunity; welfare should offer a hand up not a handout; an active, penetrative welfare state; paid work for a fair wage is the most secure and sustainable way out of poverty; and the balancing of rights and responsibilities. (Blair/1996) Influenced heavily by the new communitarians and in part by the new right New Labour came to embody what they saw as a ‘third way’ to politics. Blair asserted that New Labour’s approach balanced the economic successes of the USA with the social model of Europe. Previously antagonistic dimensions of policy were said to be reconciled such as efficiency and equity. It is important to identify the straightforward electoral imperative for the party to adopt a new line on welfare, one that broke its past commitments to paternalism and universal benefits, this helped to demonstrate that the Labour party no longer represented a threat to the ambitions of the ordinary middle-class voters of Britain. But for Blair and other influential figures such as Anthony Giddens ‘workfare’ and the ‘third way’ are new Labour’s contemporary, political response to the challenge of globalisation. “There really is a new world being built…and the ‘old world’ needs to look at its institutions, its economy and its education system to ensure that it keeps up.” (Blair/1996/p81) The ‘new’ world that we find ourselves in is said to have witnessed the decline in power of nation states, where global trade has become increasingly reflexive due to the international accommodation of “…information technology and telecommunications {that} has eroded national cultural and communicative boundaries, so that there is easier, faster and increased contact across national boundaries and cultural groups.” (Driver and Martell/2002/p110) In a straightforward economic sense Globalisation has lead to the increase in global trade and movement of global capital that is said to have undermined the stability of national economies, subjecting them to increasing degrees of fluctuation. The decrease in state economic control derives from the reflexivity of the market. Physical distance, historic trade relations and international currency are no longer factors that effect trade, this in turn leads to an increase in international competition. The new ultra-competitive global market is arguably more hostile to the principles of social democracy. “Companies become more resistant then they already were to social democratic impositions that hinder their competitiveness, such as corporate taxes and social regulations.” (Driver and Martell/2002/p111) Many here argue that the power of the new global economy allows the pre-requisites for efficient trade to dictate the political procedures of single nation states. “The state is reduced to one actor among many, both internationally and domestically, appearing as pathetically subservient to global economic forces, unwilling to generate policies through its bureaucracies because it no longer believes in the power of politics as a central force for change.” (Freeden/1999/p45) The process of globalisation restricts the scope for political autonomy that has arguably created a neo-liberal consensus throughout the politics of the developed, capitalist world “…leaders on the new orthodoxy on welfare face many constraints on their reforms. They cannot afford to make changes that will work to the disadvantage of mobile global actors. (Jordon/1998/p5) The arrival of the new consensus confirms that both leading parities in Britain have respective commitments to workfare as dated ‘welfarism’ deters international investment in Britain. In this sense the argument can be made that not only are we living under a workfare state, but also global economic forces and political consensus suggest that we will be for the foreseeable future. “The thoroughly successful instillation of a British Labour government has come to terms with the new hegemony, one based on the principles of neo-liberal market freedom.” (Crouch/1999/p33) In the ‘speak’ of the current Labour government the new welfare orthodoxy is aimed at not only the short-term financial future of Britain but also the long-term interests. In Tony Blair’s words the “…driving force of economic change today is globalisation” which has created a world order “…where capital and skills are mobile {and} people are our key resource.” (Blair/1996/p72) The perceived consequences of this are that states must compete with each other to drive down inflation, taxation and public spending levels in order to attract investment from internationally mobile capital. In this sense equipping people with skills to compete in the global market place is seen as the main task for national governments. This is the purpose of the active workfare approach, to raise the aggregate skill level of the nation through training and work experience, with welfare used as ‘the carrot.’ Each of the four options for members of the New Deal contains an education and training component with the aim of raising participant’s skill levels to NVQ2. (Peck/1999/p31 “The governments strategy is used to provide employment...