Overton’s Window
Trade Unions and Chartism and Trade Unions and a People’s Assembly
The concept of Overton’s Window
Connotes some sort of casement on fashion:
A window of acceptability
And unquestioned validity:
A sort of Zeitgeist vista on the Zeitgeist.
And so, let’s open a historical Window,
Out upon the 19th century
Limning Trade Unions and Chartism,
Peering through the glass darkly,
Or, like Alice through the Looking Glass:
Chartism as a political movement
To empower the British working class,
Developed partially as a result
Of the failure of working-class economic action:
The attempts to form a general, total,
All-encompassing trade union,
With the consequent ability to win a general strike:
The General Consolidated Trade Union
And the National Association for the Protection of Labour,
Smashed with the trumped-up charges
Brought against the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834.
There were other reasons for the rise of Chartism, of course;
The new workhouses and criminalisation of poverty:
Conditions inside the workhouse were to
Be worse than the worst paid job outside;
The immiseration caused by the development
Of industrial and agrarian capitalism;
The growth of proto-Marxist definitions
Of capitalist profit as stolen wages –
And so came the Chartist Six Points,
And the notion of an alternative parliament,
A People’s Assembly, if need be,
And working-class political power.
The narrative of Chartism need not concern us here,
Suffice it say that a sort of Chartist palimpsest
Could be just about discernible
In the late decades of the 19th century –
But I get ahead of myself.
What about the mid-19th Century
After what my school teachers
Would call ‘The Defeat of Chartism in 1848’?
What about what my history teachers
Termed ‘The Age of Equipoise’? –
The 1850s and the rise of craft unions,
Skilled unions such as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
Unions, which to use a modern term,
Accepted trickle-down economics,
And rejected proto-Marxist analysis.
Following this new Overton’s Window,
The urban working class gained the vote in 1867,
Agricultural Labourers in 1884;
The secret ballot arrived in 1872,
The abolition of the property qualification
As a prerequisite to stand as an MP came in 1858,
Equal electoral districts in 1885:
A gradual incremental progress
Towards the Chartists’ Six Points …
But windows quickly opened and closed
Towards the end of the 19th century;
And what well-heeled commentators thought impossible,
Happened and happened in a rush:
The unskilled – and even women and girls – formed trade unions:
The Matchgirls strike of 1888,
The Gas workers strike
And the Dockers in 1889:
This was the so-called New Unionism:
More assertive than the craft unions.
The early twentieth-century opened up a new window,
And not just because another of the six points was realised –
Payment of MPs in 1911,
And not just because all adult males gained the vote in 1918
(Though not conscientious objectors),
And women over 21 in 1928,
But also because of the growth of the Labour Party,
And that tantalising Parliamentary Road to Socialism –
But trades unionism was still at the forefront too:
The Triple Industrial Alliance
Of miners, dockers and railway workers before the Great War,
The stuttering growth of Syndicalism,
‘Red Clydeside’ during the Great War,
Support for miners after the war,
The 1926 General Strike,
Not a nine-day wonder
But rather more a climacteric …
More of that next year when we celebrate
And commemorate the centenary of the General Strike,
But for now …
Trade Union power was restricted
After trade union defeat in the General Strike,
And the second Labour government of 1929-31
Collapsed over cuts to unemployment benefit
In the face of bankers’ demands:
Whither the parliamentary road?
And whither trade unions?
In the decade of ‘The Hungry Thirties’,
With mass unemployment in the old staple industries
And the hunger marches and the Jarrow Crusade?
Memories of the 1930s and the Great Depression,
The impact of the Second World War:
‘The People’s War’,
The Beveridge Report and its implications,
The Labour Government of 1945 and the Welfare State,
The seeming permanence of a two-party system,
The rise of consensus politics nicknamed ‘Butskellism’
The grudging acceptance of periodic trade union strikes
In the 1950s and 60s,
Seemed to open up a window that would never close …
But that window was to be smashed in 1979 –
It had already started to drip with condensation,
With the Labour Party’s ‘In Place of Strife’
And Ted Heath’s Who Governs Britain’s
Politicisation of trades unionism,
But Mrs Thatcher put a milk bottle through the window …
Attacks on unions, the miners in particular,
Attacks on the welfare state,
Privatisation, selling off of council and social houses,
Equation of a nation’s budget with a domestic one,
Monetarism,
De-industrialisation,
A sense of triumph for some and hopelessness for many,
And didn’t she call Tony Blair her greatest triumph?
And now, one whole quarter into a new century,
We are still living with the consequences
Of that window smashed in the late 20th century,
And then further smashed into shards
With the 2008 banking crisis,
Austerity, Brexit, culture wars,
Fiscal straitjackets …
The new window reveals a decline in optimism,
A dramatic fall in the turn-out at elections,
A break-up of the two-party system,
A loss of faith in liberal democracy,
An institutionalization of Culture Wars,
The divisive impact of social media,
Scapegoating echo chambers …
The gig economy, zero hours contracts,
The Precariat,
AI …
And so, we see how history repeats itself:
Just as our opening window in this piece
Looked out on the duality of economics and politics,
The duality of Chartism and trades unionism,
So, once more, in the 21st century,
We look at a People’s Assembly,
And we look, once more, to trade unions:
‘The People’s Assembly was set up in 2013 to create a mass movement against austerity. Our aim, then, as now, was to bring together the major unions and campaigning groups on an issue we all agreed on: to end the government’s cuts programme which punishes us whilst enriching the wealthy.
Since then, we’ve mobilised millions against austerity, for our NHS, for better jobs, housing and education and brought any people into the movement.
Over time, we’ve evolved into a movement against all cuts, privatisations, racist division, and any policies that harm ordinary people. That won’t change whoever is in government.
At the heart of the People’s Assembly are our local groups – members active in their communities, fighting to save public services, standing in solidarity with striking workers and in opposition to attempts to divide us.
When we come together, we can make a difference. Our strength lies in our numbers. If you want to be a part of that change, find your nearest People’s Assembly group today on our website or get in touch with the national office if you would like to start a new group.
THE PEOPLESASSEMBLY.ORG.UK
IT’S ONLY BY JOINING TOGETHER THAT WE CAN FIGHT AND WIN THE CHANGE THAT IS SO DESPERATELY NEEDED.
JOIN THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY TODAY THE POWER IS IN OUR HANDS
THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY
PEOPLE’S
CHARTER
OUR SIX DEMANDS
- AN ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR THE MAJORITY AND NOT THE RICH. Redistribution of wealth … closing loopholes on tax evasion. No more bank bailouts … An end to the financialisation of our economy … rebuilding our industries with a green revolution. A real living wage … An end to food poverty …
- BETTER PAY AND CONDITIONS IN THE WORKPLACE AND A GREEN REVOLUTION Put workers at the heart of a just transition to a carbon-free economy … A reduction in working hours … Repeal the anti-trade union laws … a radical new deal for working people which genuinely shifts the balance in favour of workers and their representative trade unions.
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Build a raft of affordable, publicly owned, good quality homes … enable young people to live in security. Regulation of the rental sector, with security of tenure … an end to repossessions, taking power away from landlords … End homelessness as a priority. Rent controls …
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Put an end to cuts … Invest in local government, the welfare state, public health services, education, and transport. A publicly funded social care system free at the point of need … Energy, mail, telecommunications, water, and transport to be taken into public hands … A fully funded NHS and public education system, stripped of the private system …
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