Thank you, Eddie: Howe, Keegan & understanding your own power

Some of the qualities we’ve been talking about all week, when thinking about Kevin Keegan, could be said about Eddie Howe too.

He shares that unbelievable empathy & care that he took over his players – phoning them regularly, even while on loan.

He’s similar in the time he took to develop each player, which transformed the careers of almost every player from that initial squad when he first took over. Joelinton is just one example amongst many.

And that he had that same magic that Keegan had when building confidence in players who might not be world beaters, but could still be incredible cogs in the Howe system.

He also understood Newcastle United at a deep level. He had a real rapport with the fans, especially those who came to St James’ & travelled to away games. He might not have had the sheer charisma of King Kev, but he did have the respect of everyone, from the chefs, to the cleaners, to the kit man.

Another thing he had in common with Keegan was his faith in his core players. He would never, ever deflect blame & pressure onto his team & would always defend them.

In some ways, this might also give a clue to both Howe’s & Keegan’s shortcomings – which were never about man management, but always about adaptability in tactics. I think some of that became apparent over the last year, when he had to deal with a lot of bad hands, but often didn’t seem to have the solutions – similar to Keegan in his pressure points at Newcastle.

Both had a system that they believed in – totally different in styles, but were unwavering in their adherence to it.

I personally think Eddie had the intelligence & awareness to adapt, but he would have needed time & we know that in the commercialised, superficial football world we now inhabit, time doesn’t exist any more.

One difference between Howe & Keegan, however, that might have been crucial, is in his understanding of his own power and leverage. Maybe Eddie was too nice? Keegan wasn’t above using everything in his toolbox to get his way, including threatening to walk. I’m not sure Eddie Howe had that same steeliness.

An example, fairly well known to those who were around at the time: when Keegan first became manager at Newcastle, in 1992, we was told that the funds couldn’t be found for the players he wanted. He packed his bags, saying, “it’s not like it said in the brochure.” Keegan agreed to return after tense discussions with then Newcastle chairman Sir John Hall. Man mountain Brian Kilcline was his first signing – at £250,000, but the point was, Keegan understood his power (which was greater than Hall’s) and used it to get his way. Nothing was ever the same again.

I don’t think Eddie Howe ever did that, and it ended up with him being shoved around, being dictated to by a series of ‘Sporting Directors’ & executives who really didn’t know their arse from their elbow. I wish he’d known his own power & done a Keegan. But maybe (a) that’s not in his character & (b) that’s no longer the way football works.

In any case, I have the greatest admiration for Eddie Howe as a manager & as a person. He deserves the respect he has in the football world & I wish him all the best whatever he does next (I think he would be an excellent England manager, as it happens). Thank you, Eddie.

Special K

So many words will be written & said about Kevin Keegan, and rightly so. It’s hard to explain what he meant to the fans who adored him, both as a player & a manager. 

They called him Special K, King Kev, but he wasn’t like some of the world class footballers we often talk about being touched by genius – Puskas, Pele, Cruyff, Best, Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo etc. Keegan wasn’t built like that. Although brilliant, he wasn’t excessively gifted in that sense. He admitted himself, he had to work at it – and he worked harder than anyone else to get to the point where he was one of the best players in the world. That’s incredible in itself. He once said of himself:

“I was the mongrel who made it to Crufts, and that was fine by me.”

A couple of things flowed from that: one was that he always believed that players could be improved by giving them confidence & trusting them to do the hard work. He did that with Rob Lee, for example – told him he was one of the best midfielders in the country & he should be playing for England. And he did. 

The other thing was that he always understood what it was to be a fan. Not in a ‘saying the right thing’ kind of way. No, he understood it at much deeper level than that. He understood the role football played in their daily lives, and above all, the drama that people went through & needed from their team. 

That’s why he was such a perfect match for Newcastle United – because he understood the unique place that the club has in the culture of the city & beyond. He always respected that & tailored his football & management around that. A perfect example was the helicopter that landed on the turf at St James’ to take him away on what was his last game for the club. He knew, instinctively, that’s what the moment required. It wasn’t ego. He knew that’s what the fans needed. The theatre of it was incredible. 

For me, many of the Special K moments were in that initial spell, as a player. I loved him as a manager, and he brought so much joy to us with the Entertainers, but as a player he was my absolute hero. 

I was 10 when he signed for Newcastle in the summer of 1982. Imagine it. Here was an England superstar, albeit at the latter stages of his career, signing for Newcastle – who were a pretty average Second Division side at the time. I had a newspaper round at the time, delivering the Chronicle, and I literally found out by reading the back page of the paper. I immediately felt faint & nearly blacked out. I remember having to finish the round in a stupor. 

Then, just a few days later, on a scorching August day, I queued up from 12 noon for a precious ticket for Keegan’s debut – against QPR. I eventually made it into the Gallowgate in time for kick off at 3, feeling exhausted but elated at being able to see my new hero play for the Toon. 

In a packed stand, I got lifted off my feet a few times & once again, felt faint – and nervous – until Keegan scored the only goal and the winner. After the game, Wor Kev said it felt like the Gallowgate had sucked the ball in the net. I felt proud of the role I’d played. That was Keegan all over – even his debut goal could be credited to the fans. And again, the drama. 

I got back home, after surviving the match special back to Morpeth. I burst through the door, into the kitchen & my mum asked me what the football had been like. Before I got the chance to answer, I puked all over the floor. A different kind of drama. 

Farewell, Kevin Keegan & RIP.

Remission

About 16 years ago, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). I had a recurring knee injury I’d picked up playing football, and it just wouldn’t clear up, despite key-hole surgery. I started to feel achey & breathless & was struggling getting up stairs etc, so I went back to the doctors again & again until I saw a sports specialist who recommended a MRI scan. That began a whole process of tests which eventually confirmed the RA diagnosis.

Obviously, I read up about Rheumatoid Arthritis & what was in store for me. It was a really worrying time. I was immediately put on disease modifying drugs, which target the immune system malfunction. I accepted my fate & expected much worse in the future.

In the intervening 16 years, it hasn’t quite been what I expected. Although I had to give up football, the medication gave me back some of my old mobility, and although I had occasional flares which lasted anything from a week to 3 or 4, I generally felt ok & never developed any real outward signs that I had RA. The biggest effect for me was the extreme tiredness I felt for 24 hours after taking the medication (methotrexate). I would just be knocked out.

However, I had regular check ups with my rheumatologist about the progression of the disease, and I felt relatively lucky. When asked for scores on my pain, I was giving 3 or 4’s out of ten. Eventually, we started having discussions about reducing or changing my medication, and over the last six months, about the possibility that I was in remission.

Remission was not something that I’d contemplated. Looking over the literature I was given back then, I can see that it was always a possibility. When treated early and aggressively, remission rates are actually quite high.

A few weeks ago, at my latest rheumatology appointment, I was told that it was very likely that I was in remission & they recommended gradually coming off the drugs, and cautiously monitor how it felt & whether any inflammation returned.

I can’t say I’m ‘cured’ – RA doesn’t work like that, but it does feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I am now drug-free & so far, have felt no negative effects. I’m even feeling like I have a bit more energy. Of course, I will have to continue to be monitored with regular blood tests, to make sure that I stay in remission & the flares don’t start up.

A note of caution. I think this is one RA story, and I think I have been lucky. I can’t guarantee that this is it for me, but if it is, it is probably because they caught it five / ten years before they might have done, and because of the aggressive treatment I was given, which gave me a chance of remission I wasn’t at all expecting. I think the story for others with Rheumatoid Arthritis is very different, so this is absolutely not me saying there is some formula, some miracle cure. Far from it.

I am, however, in awe of the medical profession & the NHS, both for the treatment, and for the support I’ve had along the way.

The past we inherit, the future we build?

Ever since I first got involved in my twenties, I have argued against a narrow definition of trade unionism – whether that is the ‘centrist’, servicing model (where unions are simply seen as insurance in case anything goes wrong at work), or a kind of left, ‘syndicalist’ cousin, which pretty much ignores politics altogether (be that nationally or at a community level). The first I think limits the possibilities of working class power & the second I think is naive about the way change happens.

Everything is political, including the way that trade unions organise.

I want my trade union, and the labour movement as a whole, to actively care about the future quality of life for my children, grandchildren & their children etc, as well as my quality of life right here, right now.

After all, isn’t trade unionism, at its most ambitious & therefore best, also about something bigger than pay, terms & conditions & the workplace?

I understand the need to protect jobs today, but isn’t there a responsibility to create a world without the scourge of war & environmental collapse? Isn’t it also about what kind of planet we live on, the future we’re building & what we leave to future generations?

I want us to live in the 21st century, be ambitious, collectively. I want us to ideologically fight narrow, rightwing ideologies, collectively. I want to see unions that are militant in defending workers & their communities, but also understand the realities of where we are as a society & as a planet. Win arguments, not be led by them.

Of course, this is also the reason why it’s important for education unions to be actively campaigning against the academy model (not just conditions in individual academy schools or chains); why it’s important for transport unions to be campaigning for the full public ownership of our railways (including rolling stock); why it’s important that health unions are campaigning visibly & strongly against the privatisation of our NHS; why it’s important for all unions to take on issues like rent controls & campaigning for council house building, public ownership of our water & energy, the version of the Employment Rights Act before it was watered down into a series of limited, individual rights etc etc.

At a time when Reform & the far right is winning the argument in many communities across the country, it’s disastrous to cede the political space & the chance to demonstrate what an alternative could look like. We cannot operate in silos.

What’s wrong with academisation?

Everyone seems to agree that our schools are full of brilliant teachers, support staff & heads, undermined by a lack of funding & a system that breeds inequality, between schools & pupils. There are reasons for that. The focus for trade unions & many educators is funding. I can understand that, but I feel we don’t talk enough about the structural dimensions of that inequality & how we got here.

The story doesn’t start with academisation, it starts with Local Management of Schools (LMS), introduced in 1990. That sped a process by which an imperfect, but previously comprehensive model was undermined by a drive toward school autonomy, free from the so-called constraints of local authority control.

The first steps towards actual academisation were taken by a New Labour government in 2000 (initially intended to replace poorly performing secondary schools). It was of a piece with Blair’s NHS reforms & based on a mantra that the market knew best. Spearheaded by Andrew Adonis, the idea was that through private sponsorship and increased autonomy, inner city schools in particular would see drastic improvements.

Academisation then took on a more radical direction under Michael Gove, in the Coalition Government elected in 2010 – with a huge expansion of the project, alongside the development of ‘free schools’.
These leaps, in tandem with the gradual creep of the model, have ultimately led to a less equal, more marketised, more competitive education system, which has been at a tipping point for some time.

Academisation wasn’t the start of the story, but it is the major vehicle for the privatisation of our children’s education as we stand. It often doesn’t look like that from the outside, and many educators do not use the language of privatisation, but since the introduction of LMS over 35 years ago, that has been the trajectory. The Academy model is the bridge for an anti-democratic project that has been in process for many, many decades. Specifically, academisation has:

Allowed private organisations to take control over large parts of our education system.

➡️ Entrenched a marketised version of education provision, based on competition between schools for pupils, and therefore funding.

➡️ Given huge incentives for schools to exclude children with behavioural problems or disadvantages that affect their educational attainment. 

➡️ Developed very strict & punitive behaviour rules, that staff are expected to enforce, but which have led to the exclusion of a large number of children with special educational needs.

➡️ Created a huge inequality between schools, with ‘sinker’ schools emerging to take excluded children not wanted by higher ranked schools in a geographical area.

➡️ Given more weight & power to Ofsted & the league table ranking of schools, driven by a competition for more pupil numbers & higher achieving students.

➡️ Created a centralised, top down education environment, with power & control held by central government.

➡️ All but extinguished any democratic oversight over school policies, curriculum & entrance criteria.

➡️ Radically reduced the voice of local communities in their schools.

➡️ Top sliced large parts of school budgets for higher management, often straddled between different schools within a Multi Academy Trust (MAT).

➡️ Encouraged a culture of high pay amongst senior management, and a bureaucracy headed by CEOs & other executives, whilst front line pay has been suppressed.

➡️ Encouraged a whole architecture of associated services around MATs, including cleaning services, school uniforms, food services & maintenance companies that are privatised & extract more & more profits from schools & parents, whilst employing staff on low pay.

➡️ Undermined collective bargaining for unions concerned with the pay & conditions of their members.

➡️ Undermined teacher professionalism, as academy trusts are able to employ unqualified teachers.

➡️ Not delivered better results. Whilst there was some evidence of improvement amongst early conversions to academy status, as more & more conversions have taken place, that has levelled off, and some evidence of an increasing gap between the higher achieving pupils & those on the lower end.

Very important point: this is by no means to say that every academy trust displays all of these elements. There are clearly loads of academies that do great work, provide fantastic educational environments & do superb work with parents & the community, not least because they are full of educators who are absolutely committed to the children’s interests & welfare. This isn’t about that, it is about the system – the trajectory of education policy & where we are heading. 

What do we need to do:

➡️ Talk more about academies, and education in general, explaining to parents & communities what is happening to our education system & what is coming down the road.

➡️ Campaign, not just against ‘bad’ MATs, or for improvements within the academy system, but against the model itself – including Labour’s latest rebranding & expansion. That campaign must have a strong educational aspect, because many of these arguments have not been heard for a long time.

➡️ Talk about how marketisation works in education, producing inequality not just between schools, but between communities & children. There is ample evidence that it further disadvantages working class communities & their children.

➡️ Explain how an education system, which has democratic oversight, close engagement with its communities, based on co-operation rather than competition & which respects its professionals is both achievable & desirable for everyone (except the profiteers).

➡️ Link academisation to other forms of privatisation – e.g in the NHS, care services, public transport, water & energy & explain that the market is insatiable. In public services, once the market logic takes hold, it keeps going, it doesn’t stop.

➡️ Link academisation to broader campaigns about austerity, poverty, inequality, anti-racism & exclusion. It’s not hard to understand how privatisation & entrenched educational inequality fuels the rise of the far right, for instance – in creating very different opportunities for different localities & classes.

Is the battle against academisation really over?

I’ve written a series of posts on academisation & the fight to reverse it on Substack over the last few weeks. You can read them here:

1. We have to challenge the academy model, not just academies.https://open.substack.com/pub/mrbensellers/p/we-have-to-challenge-the-academy?r=pug9i&utm_medium=ios
2. Erase & rewind – end academisation: https://open.substack.com/pub/mrbensellers/p/erase-and-rewind-end-academisation?r=pug9i&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
3. Unopposed, academisation will exacerbate inequality & poverty: https://open.substack.com/pub/mrbensellers/p/untrammelled-academisation-will-exacerbate?r=pug9i&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

As a result, I’ve been contacted by various people who tell me the perception amongst senior people in the sector & in the labour movement is that the battle over academisation has been lost, that it is here to stay. Therefore, the terrain moves to winning battles for better terms & conditions within academy chains.

As someone who has been involved in the trade unions for over two decades & was trained as a trade union organiser, of course I understand the priority to defend & win battles for your members wherever they are, but I question this logic, in the medium-to-long term.

The fight against academisation is about the gradual privatisation of our children’s education. It’s similar to the fight against privatisation in the NHS, which was introduced via the internal market, outsourcing, PFI & eventually the hiving off of the most profitable parts of our health service to private companies.

Privatisation always starts with the introduction of competition, then the profit motive, via continued marketisation, then the centralisation of services, and so on. The market doesn’t ever stop, unless you have a strong counterweight to privatisation.

Clearly, in education, this creep of privatisation is affecting & will continue to affect the whole education system. Sometimes, it will appear benign, and will try to win over parents & communities, whilst simultaneously corroding the comprehensive model & principle (of which there is less & less awareness).

Marketisation in education particularly affects working class kids & those from deprived communities, because the competitive model rewards “high performance” and punishes those with greater needs (both individually & structurally). This has never been a good model for our children. It is why we got rid of grammar schools & introduced comprehensive schools, overseen by LEAs, in the first place.

It has never been a good model for workers either. Privatisation, alongside outsourcing & marketisation, brings with it the gradual erosion of pay, terms & conditions, as well as various sophisticated union-busting techniques. A privatised education system, even in its early forms, is predicated on a weakening of union power & worker voice.

To save education, we need to understand – as I’m sure many teachers do – that the vultures are circling again, only this time, in order to see what profits they can squeeze out of the education system. It can be harder for parents & communities to see this big picture, but that is a key component of any campaign to defeat privatisation.

Just like the NHS, this isn’t something that is on the horizon, in the distant future, but is happening now. And just like the NHS, we have to raise awareness & talk about the reversal of privatisation, not just funding & what we can do to mitigate the worst effects.

Of course, that is a longer, more difficult road, but unless we want to pass onto the next generation & the generation after that, a cannibalised education system which fails all but a privileged layer of kids & treats them as commodities, I don’t think we can ignore these battles.

Unopposed, academisation will exacerbate inequality & poverty, so why are we so quiet about this privatisation-by-stealth?

There is a lot of talk about campaigns to reduce child poverty & of course, that is a laudable aim. Who can argue with it? But, if we are to be realistic & focused on addressing the structural causes of generational poverty & inequality, we need to more than that.

In the realm of education, and particularly for working class kids, that means making sure that in ten, fifteen, twenty years time, they are not faced with an even more marketised & privatised system, where schools, town, cities & regions battle it out for scarce resources, while Multi Academy Trusts sweep up the profits that can me squeezed out of education to funnel into excessive executive pay, associated service companies (and eventually, shareholders).

Collaboration, not competition, should be the basis for our children’s education, as it was envisaged by those who challenged the grammar school model & introduced comprehensive education in this country. It’s also the basis of the most successful education models on Europe & the world.

The truth is, aside from declining funding, we’ve been living through a disaster in educational policy & practice for decades, starting with Local Management of Schools (LMS) in 1990, sped up by academisation (originated by Blairite Andrew Adonis in 2000), through forced academisation & growing Multi Academy Trusts.

If we really care about child poverty, working class pupils & their communities, we can’t sit back & allow privatisation-by-stealth via academisation – for the profit motive to become the key driver in education. This isn’t a prospect, it is happening now.

Labour have just announced that they want all schools to become academies, or part of academy trusts. Yet it is remarkably quiet, on the left, in our campaigns & in our trade union movement. I’m not sure why.

The Academy model replicates & models the market. So, we’ve seen the closure of so-called ‘financially unviable’ local schools, the creation of ‘sinker schools’, centralisation & ‘specialisation’ that excludes pupils & forces them to travel large distances, mass exclusions, excessive discipline, the targeting of cohorts of high performing students at the expense of local communities, increasing costs associated with anything from uniforms to extra curricular activities & the massaging of results. The list goes on & it’s all at the cost of a genuinely comprehensive, inclusive system.

Of course, Labour’s policy is dressed up in localism & oversight from local authorities, but it’s another clear step in the marketisation & privatisation of our education. I’m hearing the echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘There is No Alternative’. But nothing could be more disastrous for our children & our society as a whole than allowing this experiment to continue.

It’s time to stand up & be counted & advocate & campaign for a new, comprehensive model, based on democratic, local participation & an accountable, co-operative model of education, instead of burying our heads & letting this catastrophe unfold.

We have to challenge the academy model, not just academies

Since my kids left school (relatively unscathed – and somehow miraculously avoiding any academies), I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the future of education. I recognise that I need to do more reading, but there are some more instinctive principles that have hardened. And some fundamental issues that have bothered me – academisation being right at the top of that list.

I’m also concerned that we don’t seem to talk about it enough on the left, or in the labour movement – even within the teaching unions. When I say that, I don’t mean talking about about the effects of academisation (e.g low pay, school closures, top down, authoritarian management), which are important to highlight, clearly, but instead a systematic critique of the model, how academisation operates & what it is doing to our children’s education.

Many years ago, there was a vibrant campaign – an ‘Anti-Academies Alliance’ – which did some of this job. It was part of the ecosystem of the left and had labour movement backing, but in recent years, it has faded as the structural issue has taken a back seat to child poverty, austerity in the classroom, stagnating pay, workload etc (again, all important issues, but not the structural one that is dictating where education is going).

The comprehensive education system, developed by the Labour Party over many decades, but introduced in the mid 1960’s, was designed to overcome the hierarchical grammar school model & give every working class kid an equality of education – and opportunity.

Controlled & organised by Local Education Authorities (LEAs), it didn’t always work out like that, partly because socio-economic factors got in the way & a lot of the hierarchy remained (Ken Loach’s film ‘Kes’ is brilliant on this). But it was, in principle, a good thing & something to be proud of. The problem wasn’t the aspiration to create a comprehensive system, but the way it was administered – and how the LEA model dealt with inequality. It could & should have been developed & democratised, and schools should have been integrated into their communities etc, but it ended up being managed top down, like many public services.

We could have chosen to reform that system, to adapt it for a different sort of world, with equality as the motivator. But we didn’t. Instead, like the NHS, housing, public utilities & public services, the market was gradually introduced to our schools. Just like any free market ideology, in education, the idea was that the ‘cream would rise to the top’ – and working class kids could be prepared to do the new service industry jobs (a mirror of the grammar school system).

The first time I recognised that move was with the introduction of ‘local management of schools’ in the dying days of the Thatcher administration (I was at Sixth Form), but it was clearly part of the Tories agenda for education throughout the 1980s. The ‘genius’ of LMS was that no one could really argue with more autonomy & many heads, of course, welcomed it. What wasn’t recognised enough was where it would lead.

It was actually the second New Labour government that introduced full blown academisation (as ‘city academies in the early 2000s). It was the brainchild of Andrew Adonis, advisor to Blair (now a Lord, of course). Just like PFI, New Labour saw it as a way of plugging the funding gap & introducing an ‘internal market’ as in the NHS. That was meant to put a downward pressure on costs.

Over the last 3-4 decades, both Tory & Labour governments have bought into the idea that competition is good in education, by which they mean it outsources services & creates a market, the success of which is judged by an inspection regime & league tables, with hardly any acknowledgment of socio-economic factors. In fact, what happens is the schools in the more economically advantaged areas benefit & those with tougher, more challenging catchments sink.

Academisation is not about the quality of education, although the PR around it may tell you so. It’s about typical Thatcherite dogma – that underachievement must be punished to encourage better performance. Yet Blair’s Labour offered no alternative. This isn’t even a social democratic principle. In many other countries, including Scandinavian countries which are acknowledged to have the most equal & successful education systems, schools aren’t punished for underperforming, but resourced & supported better to deal with demographic & geographical disadvantage. Imagine that.

Academisation is privatisation by stealth. It destroys the comprehensive ideal which, as I explained above, was flawed under LEAs – but was at least one way of aiming for some kind of equality in provision. Now – under academisation, forced or voluntary – we have the dominance of the market, ‘sink or swim’ competition, centralisation & the development of huge Multi Academy Trusts (MATs), sinker schools, mass exclusions, the closure of smaller, local schools, the erasure of less ‘popular’ subjects, union busting, casualisation, rip off uniforms, PFI buildings, maintenance & food contracts that go to companies linked to MATs, so-called superheads & executives on ridiculous pay packets & super-rich (often religious) benefactors with far too much power. So, a disaster for school education in itself & working class kids & their communities.

But the fact that Labour introduced it, defended it & expanded it has led to parts of the labour movement turning a blind eye. If we really care about working class communities & working class kid’s education, that has to end & we need to start campaigning against the whole model, not just highlight bad practice & it’s negative ‘effects’.

I worry that on the left & within the labour movement, the battle over academisation is seen as lost. We cannot afford to think like that. One of the reasons I get so animated about academisation is that it’s exactly the sort of emblematic, fundamental issue that goes under the radar, because the work isn’t being done. It’s also exactly the sort of issue that is an opportunity to win over working class communities, with a bit of bravery.

I’m afraid that it’s symbolic of large parts of the left that we are not talking enough about academisation. It’s easier to say that schools, hospitals, public services are in crisis & need more funding, rather than looking at the root, systemic causes of the cancer that is eating away at them. That is: privatisation, marketisation, outsourcing, commercialisation, and a lack of accountability & democracy.

We need to do the work, the painstaking, detailed, explanatory work. We need to get parents & communities on board (not always easy, when they are often being bought off). We have that opportunity, but only if we start looking at the structures & how we build support for alternatives. And only if we are brave in our politics.

What has the Employment Rights Bill got to do with Reform & the rise of the far right?

Something that I don’t think a lot of people get – and it’s why the row over the Employment Rights Bill matters:

There’s a lot of head-scratching about the support for Reform in working class communities & even within the trade union movement.

We all know that one of the key grievances in those communities is low pay, poor terms & conditions & insecure work. Now, a lot of those people blame migrants for that, which is both illogical & ironic. Because those same issues affect both poorly paid workers in ‘left behind’ communities (villages & towns in the North, North West & the Midlands for example) and migrants who come to this country & end up in insecure, casualised work.

The issue is not migration, the issue is a bastard form of Thatcherite capitalism that has long ago abandoned any pretence of looking after the workers of this country. So, many of the people enticed by Reform’s racist agenda are working two or three jobs, or are being forced into bogus self-employment, contract / agency work, zero hours contracts & casualised employment.

These jobs are ballooning, and what’s most worrying, they are chiefly non-unionised & unregulated. There has been a lot of talk about tackling this crisis over the years & ‘organising the unorganised’ but it is hard, precisely because bosses in these sectors will employ union busting and other aggressive tactics to scare off any union presence, or anyone who talks about workers rights. Often, these are workplaces are ruled by fear.

So when the business lobby is chipping away at the Employment Rights Bill – to take out a single status for workers, or water down the zero hours ban, or challenge comprehensive protections against unfair dismissal, they are doing it for a very specific purpose: to keep a large proportion of the working population insecure, vulnerable and afraid. It is that brutal.

So, the watering down on all of those aspects (which has happened by stealth, over the last 5 years), has a direct effect on the most insecure, the lowest paid & the least powerful. Migrants, yep, but also those traditional working class communities that Reform & the far right are targeting. It plays directly into their hands, as they encourage people to look back, with nostalgia, at the days when a job was secure, even if not well paid, and there seemed to be some order in their working lives.

To allow this ruthless business lobby to extract concessions so easily plays directly into this crisis & deepens it. The Employment Rights Bill was one piece of legislation that, alongside a load of community work & organising within the trade union movement, could have started to turn the tanker. But this Labour government, without principles or guts, has chucked those people – the cleaners, home helps, Amazon workers, care workers, hospitality staff etc – under the bus, alongside all the Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers, takeaway workers & all the rest. It’s a massive own goal, borne of awful, sub-Blairite politics.

Let’s be honest about the Employment Rights Bill

In its journey from Labour’s 2019 Manifesto to its current iteration, the Employment Rights Bill has been watered down in many ways, including:

1. Employment Rights lost its seat at the Cabinet table & became absorbed into the Business & Trade Department, meaning that no-one with the requisite power is driving the agenda or even opposing dilution.
2. The comprehensive plan for a roll out of sectoral collective bargaining became a pilot in one sector (social care), subject to consultations, with no guarantees. Consequently, there has been little progress.
3. The proposed single status for workers, which would have brought millions of workers into more regularised rights & brought to an end scams such as bogus self-employment has been kicked into the long grass, leaving gig workers beyond the scope of the legislation.
4. Caveats have been introduced to ‘fire and rehire’ legislation, giving rogue businesses potential opt outs & councils exemptions if they are facing “financial difficulties.”
5. Similar caveats have been added to previously watertight legislation on zero hours contracts (e.g for agency, seasonal & temporary workers).
6. Day one rights have been weakened, especially the right not to be “unfairly dismissed”, with the cut off now being six months. Where the abandonment of single status will affect most gig workers, this will catch many more casualised & insecure workers.
7. As well as the above, there are a range of issues that have dropped off the agenda, such as the wider repeal of anti-trade union legislation, including right to strike legislation & bans on solidarity action, genuine rights to access for trade unions & a powerful enforcement & sanctions regime.

So, when we talk about ‘delivering’ on the Employment Rights Bill, we shouldn’t pretend that it is the package of rights that was envisaged by its authors or the movement that backed it. That pretence is hugely damaging, precisely because it glosses over what we’ve already lost & ill prepares the movement for battles ahead.

The truth is, it’s already a hugely weakened piece of legislation, and the business lobby aren’t done yet.