We are all owners and all workers now

By Diana Smith / @MulberryBush

Last year I had a trip to a local museum, the Museum of Cannock Chase. This little unpretentious museum traces the social history of this mining area. In the downstairs room there was an evocative exhibition of black and white photos taken by a miner, during the miners’ strike. The photographer had virtually no money for film so these images were very carefully considered works of art – a powerful testament of a divided community.

The rest of the museum showed us how the mining industry had developed, changing the nature of this quiet and unassuming part of the country, creating huge wealth for the owners, and a whole new culture for the workers who were essential for bringing this source of wealth up from under the ground.

One of the things that the museum brought home to me is why it is that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party can talk about public services using the same language and meaning something quite different.

Th mine owners’ wealth depended on a workforce that was well enough and educated enough to do the work – so they had to provide schools, houses, sanitation and a rudimentary health service. They needed workers to be sober and well behaved, so they provided churches and chapels. I am sure that there were some “enlightened” owners who wanted their workers to lead happy and fulfilling lives – so some were keen to promote culture.

For the workers, many would have simply accepted the bounty of the owners and got on with their jobs and their lives as well as they could. Others went further. The single piece from that exhibition which stands out for me is the account of the bath house manager. He describes the way in which the bath house was managed: wet home clothes hung up to dry, the pit clothes at the other end of the building. This was all carefully thought out so that when the men emerged dirty and tired at the end of the day there was hot water, clean towels, and a choice of different soaps that the men choose to buy. Lavender was the favourite! The bath house manager had added touches of his own. He recognised the potential of the glass roofed bath house for growing things and the bath house was festooned with hanging baskets.

What I am seeing here is a clear distinction between a service that is provided to preserve our value as economic units, and a service that is by us and for us.

We have talked before about The Spirit Level, and the fact that an unequal society is damaging for us all. We are facing a future where our ageing population, and the other big challenges of climate change, energy and globalisation will mean that we cannot afford to waste people. To borrow a phrase from George Osbourne, we really are “all in this together”. We are all owners, we all have a stake in the economic prosperity of our communities, and that prosperity depends on making full use of the talents of all of our people, not just the few.

The legacy of “owner” and “worker” runs deep. I see it on the doorstep in the voting decisions that people are making. It is divisive. If we want strong communities I think we have to move beyond this. We need the energy and vision that can sometimes come from the sense of being an “owner”. We also need the compassion and understanding of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a service that comes from being a worker.

We have been through a couple of decades where individual prosperity has seemed the biggest “good”. I think this is now behind us. For the type of future that I would like to see, we have to begin to think in terms of the prosperity of our communities as a whole.