Britain's Fall Guy

...Whenever the economy looks sick--which, because of high-level incompetence in government and management, is more often than not--housing and school building are cut back, and the workers are required to tighten their belts...

...Except in wartime, there is little sense of national solidarity or even of nationhood, of belonging to anything bigger than employment category, club or union, street, district and class...

...For the majority who leave school at 15 or 16, there is little serious vocational training...

...Educated in overcrowded classes in all-too-often slummy schools, fewer than 5 per cent of working-class children reach university...

...But no member of the Establishment is ever seen wearing the national hair shirt...

...Can it be wondered, then, that the British worker occasionally blows his top...

...Food and health insurance cost the average Briton less than his counterpart in the European Economic Community and Scandinavia, but his pay and family allowances are lower, he has a much shorter summer vacation (only two weeks) and fewer extra holidays, he gets less severance pay when fired--and he is more likely to experience unemployment...

...Wealth based on class privilege, speculation and gambling is flaunted...

...the very poor got slightly poorer, the number of homeless families increased, and house-building was reduced from 436,000 housing starts in 1964 to 344,000 in 1969...

...The wealthy continue investing overseas and buying property in the Bahamas or beside the Mediterranean--if necessary, through intermediaries in other sterling countries...

...The average Briton is still too poor to buy or pay an economic rent for a modestly-equipped postwar house, or to heat more than one or two rooms of his home...

...Experience also has taught him that while the Labor party may sing The Red Flag and preach reform when in opposition, it is apt to be conservative in office...

...He is becoming unhealthily skeptical about Parliament...

...The short-term outlook is grim despite the announcement of a record balance-of-payments surplus for 1970, a surplus based essentially on stagnation and extravagantly high interest rates...

...but it is fashionable in all right-thinking quarters to blame the greed, irresponsibility and general bloodymindedness of the workers...

...Religion rarely amounts to more than just another divisive factor...

...He can be just as feckless as his rulers and bosses...

...Britain is in the grip of yet another crisis brought on by the fecklessness of its political and economic establishment...

...British jetsetters, company directors and politicians are still seen sunning themselves on the terraces of Mediterranean hotels they could not possibly afford if they observed the currency restrictions imposed on the mass of British tourists in time of crisis...

...But interunion rivalry, working-class irresponsibility, and the "them"-and-"us" feeling running through British society, are projections of the caste divisions and tensions fostered by the social system...

...Twenty-five years after the Establishment's last exercise in national unity--and in contradiction of 25 years of twaddle about Britain's Welfare State--approximately 20 per cent of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom live in slums, 15 per cent are afflicted with extreme poverty, and 9 per cent (5 million people) somehow exist at a level even officialdom recognizes to be at or below subsistence standard...

...acquisition and conspicuous consumption are glorified as the supreme goal of existence...

...Women in the lower half of Britain's social heap are more likely to smile with closed lips...

...Social discrimination is no less blatant in the National Health Service...

...So, almost from the outset of their working lives, they are condemned by ignorance and insecurity to be technological conservatives, as mistrustful of science and industrial progress as most of their bosses...

...The hundreds of apprenticeship and technical study centers that exist in France to train and educate young workers have very few equivalents in Britain, where apprentices "learn on the job"--in the intervals between fetching tea, buying cigarettes, delivering betting-slips, and performing other time-wasting and cretinizing chores...

...But it is beginning to dawn on him that he is the "mug," the fall guy, in every crisis...

...That ghastly toothpaste-ad smile Princess Ann has been taught to inflict on press-photographers is a characteristic, if unconscious, caste-mark...

...Better, by far, resort to intrigue, dishonesty or prostitution: There was always hope, and sometimes room near the top, for crooks and prostitutes, but (barring a Dickensian coincidence) if ever one sank to the level of the workers one was lost...

...He is not an instinctive egalitarian...

...Reading 19th- and much 20th-century English literature, one is bound to notice that, however badly off an unlucky hero, a distressed heroine or any other insecure or rebellious character might be, he or she would not normally contemplate working for a living (other than becoming a governess or Army officer...

...Most "non-U" people die in the caste into which they were born, not necessarily because they are poor but because they speak with the wrong accent (almost as damning as being black) and attended the wrong kind of school...

...If, like so many Scottish and Northern-English youths, they have the misfortune to be apprenticed to a dying craft or industry, their general education and technical knowledge are too slight for them to make an easy transition to other occupations...

...A few unions behave as if the workers have no stake in the well-being of the nation as a whole, and as if everyone outside their ranks is beneath consideration...

...Is it surprising that he, too, wants to acquire and consume--and, imitating his betters, acquire with a minimum of effort...

...To deal with the crisis the government appears to be relying mainly on antilabor measures: Unemployment, already at a postwar high (710,000 jobless), is to be allowed to rise by another 15 per cent...

...In addition, the unions' tactics (for example, their preference for unlimited strikes rather than the selective one- or two-day stoppages French unions find so effective) are often clumsy and counterproductive...

...Even today, social mobility is much less fluid than in most other Western European states...

...His diet and the dental care he receives are such that nearly half the population over 25 has no natural teeth--not one...

...Moreover, facilities and incentives for professional retraining are much scarcer and less generous here than in leading continental countries...

...Some British unions are open to criticism for the irresponsibility of their factory-floor representatives and their indulgence in interunion feuding and who-does-what disputes...

...Ray Alan's first article on Britain's current internal problems appeared in the March 8 issue...

...Legislation on industrial relations --to improve the status and security of workers and protect good employers against frivolous walkouts--has long been desirable in Britain...

...But to blame the workers and unions for the mess Britain is now in is like blaming Negroes for race riots or Jews for anti-Semitism...

...During Harold Wilson's premiership, pensions were increased, but so were medical charges...

...In this essentially working-class nation, the social ideal held up by the press, TV and radio is the titled idler...

...His schooling, the mass media and the whole social atmosphere have conditioned him to bow to privilege and believe that some sort of caste system is part of the natural order of things...

...And in material terms most British workers have little incentive to develop a sense of responsibility...

...and a bill to clip the wings of the trade unions is being pushed through Parliament...

...The worker has realized at last that his share of the national cake is scandalously small, and he wants a bigger slice...

...So, periodically, the British worker plunges into wildcat stoppages, anarchic factory-floor disputes and, as in the recent post office hassle, ill-planned major strikes that hurt himself, his industry and the whole economy...

...Working and middle-class patients are crammed into hospital wards that are like barrack-rooms, and kept waiting weeks or even months for major surgery, yet a minority is allowed to buy first-class accommodations, specialist attention and a place at the head of every queue...