T6 Social Cultural Flashcards
1
Q
Blair’s Workers Policy (1997 - 2007)
A
- Historically, the Labour Party was founded and funded by the trade unions, to be the political party representing the interests and safeguarding the rights of the working class.
- So, when Labour was elected to government in 1997 many believed their long connections with trade unions would make them much more sympathetic to trade union concerns.
2
Q
Continued Trade Union Decline
A
- The decline of trade unions, however, which had begun under Thatcher in the 1980s continued.
- The percentage of the workforce with trade union members fell from 29% to 26% - though this rate of decline had been much smaller than before.
3
Q
Continued Anti-Trade Union Legislation
A
- Furthermore, despite the hopes of the trade unionists, New Labour refused to repeal the antitrade union legislation that had been passed by Thatcher’s and Major’s Conservative governments between 1979 and 1997.
- In fact, the New Labour government was often openly critical of strike action taken by trade unions. This is not really surprising.
- New Labour believed that the Labour Party’s links with the trade union movement and the ‘Winter of Discontent’ was one of the reasons it had not been electable in the 1980s.
- Instead the influences that the trade unions had on the Labour Party, for example through block vote, had already been limited in the reforms passed by Smith and Blair.
- New Labour preferred to emphasis its new pro-Business attitude and orientation.
4
Q
Continued Outsourcing & Public Finance Initiative (PFI)
A
- Some trade unions were also extremely critical of the New Labour governments for continuing to pursue policies such as outsourcing and Public Finance Initiative (PFI), which had been introduced by Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s.
- Although the New Labour government protected the employment rights of workers, whom moved from the public to the private sectors in this way, they allowed contracting out to continue.
5
Q
Continued Privatisation
A
- Similarly, the Labour government did not reverse the privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s, it extended them.
- The Air Traffic Control organisation was privatised; London Underground moved to public-private partnership; there were even discussions about selling of Royal Mail, which the Major government had not dare do so.
- Many trade unions were dismayed by this.
- In 2004, the RMT (the Rail and Maritime Transport) trade union, had been expelled from the Labour Party because some of its branches had decided to donate to other, more left-wing socialist, political parties.
6
Q
Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty
A
- The New Labour government, under Tony Blair, did opt back into the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty.
- This meant that Britain would now follow European policies regarding employment and social rights like Britain’s other EU partners.
- So, for example, all employees were now entitled to request up to three months unpaid paternal leave to care for a child who was under the age of eight years old.
- Nevertheless, the New Labour government also retained its ability to opt out of some legislation, such as, for example, maximum working hours.
7
Q
Globalisation (‘The Knowledge Economy’)
A
- The New Labour government also welcomed globalisation as an opportunity for economic growth.
- This seemed reminiscent of Harold Wilson’s faith in the ‘White Heat of Technology’.
- It argued that Britain had to better compete in the new globalised world economy by increasing the skills of its workers.
- This would allow Britain to develop a ‘knowledge economy’ that would add value with more efficient systems and processes, often utilising new technologies.
- This new efficiency would increase productivity.
8
Q
Supporting the unemployed ‘back-into-work’
A
- Although there was not an explicit commitment to full employment, by New Labour, there was an emphasis on supporting people back into work.
- Blair expressed it as ‘work for those who can, security for those who can’t.’
- The New Deal programme targeted particular groups of the unemployed – young people, older workers, the disabled, lone parents – and promised support to help them find work.
- This might be training or guidance, work in the voluntary sector to gain experience, or a subsidised job placement.
- Critics argued that the support was often limited or unpractical and the sanctions imposed if people did not take up the support were unfair and counter-productive.
9
Q
Making Work Pay (The National Minimum Wage & Tax Credits)
A
- There was also a great deal of emphasis on ‘making work pay’.
- In 1998 the New Labour government introduced the National Minimum Wage.
- A Low Pay Commission was set up to oversee and set the national minimum wage, though initially it was set at an extremely low rate.
- In addition, Gordon Brown introduced tax credits, which were mean-tested benefits [i.e. based on income] paid to people with low incomes, with specific elements targeted at, for example, those with children or a disability.
10
Q
New Labour & British Youth
A
- There was a great deal of focus on youth by the New Labour government.
- The Blair government itself was seen as a youthful alternative to the Conservatives in its early years.
- Tony Blair was the youngest Prime Minister to have been elected.
- He had three school-age children, and a fourth was born in 2000.
- This was an image which New Labour emphasised.
11
Q
Cool Britannia
A
- Not long after the 1997 General Election victory, Blair hosted a celebrity party at 10 Downing Street; attendees included Noel Gallagher from the band Oasis, the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, and the actress Helen Mirren.
- This was all part of identifying New Labour with Cool Britannia.
- This was an already existing journalistic terms appropriated by New Labour to describe how fashionable and in touch it was.
12
Q
Tackling Social Exclusion
A
- Social Exclusion was the terms used by New Labour to refer to a range of social problems like unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown that affected individuals or local deprived urban areas.
- A concentration of issues that affected young people also complemented New Labour priorities.
- A key objective was to end Social Exclusion and the Social Exclusion Unit was set up in 1997 to coordinate this effort.
- The aim to end Social Exclusion led to the establishment of Sure Start Centres.
- These Sure Start Centres aimed to help families with children by providing guidance and information and to ensure that preschool children were supported to be ready for school.
- In addition, in 1999, Blair pledged to end child poverty in 20 years, and through policies like Child Tax Credit had brought it down by 25% by 2005.
13
Q
Improving Youth Employment Prospects
A
- Similarly, the Connexions service was created to advice teenagers about the choices they had when they left school.
- New Labour also aimed for 50% of young people to go to university, believing that this would produce the highly skilled workforce needed to compete in a globalised world economy.
14
Q
Youth Delinquency & ASBOs
A
- Youth Delinquency, is also known as juvenile offending, and is the act of participating in unlawful behaviour as a minor or teenager.
- Despite the ‘New Deal for Young People’, the number of NEETs [16 – 24-year-olds Not in Education, Employment or Training], had increased to almost 20% by 2007.
- And it was partly fearing increased youth crime, which led to the introduction of the Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO).
- An ASBO was a court order which could put limits on what a young offender could do.
- It could, for example, impose a curfew or ban someone from going to a particular estate or shopping centre. Breaching an ASBO was a criminal offence.
- ASBOs aimed to prevent youthful antisocial behaviour such as graffiti, vandalism, or intimidation.
- These were not strictly just aimed at young people, although they became the main recipients of ASBOs issued. By 2005 46% of ASBOs when to under-17-year-olds.
15
Q
Blair’s Babes [Labour’s All-Women Shortlists]
A
- In 1997 the number of women elected as MPs rose to 120, which was double the previous number.
- Of the 120 women MPs, 101 were Labour women MPs.
- These women would be characterised by the popular press, somewhat patronisingly, as ‘Blair’s Babes’.
- Labour had introduced all-women shortlists to half of what it considered to be safe and easily winnable constituency seats, in a deliberate and conscious attempt, to try and increase the number of women represented in Parliament.
- Blair also appointed prominent women to his cabinet including Margaret Beckett as the Foreign Secretary (2006 - 2007), the first women to serve in this role.
16
Q
New Labour Women-Friendly Policies
A
- Women were often the main beneficiaries of New Labour’s policies.
- Childcare provision, for example, was extended enabling more women to return and stay in the workforce.
- By 2007 all 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds were entitled to 12.5 hours a week of free nursery education, which was to rise to 15 hours a week by 2010.
- Similarly, women were given pension credits when unable to work due to child caring responsibilities.
17
Q
Women’s Employment
A
- Women were also making progress, albeit slow, within the board room.
- Between 1999 and 2007, the percentage of FTSE 100 companies [A list of the top 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange] that had no women on the board fell from 36% to 24%.
- Critics, however, argued that there was limited progress on other issues such as the gender-paygap, with women still only earning 87% of what men did in 2007.
- They also argued that New Labour’s emphasis on women’s paid employment undervalued the unpaid work they did in the home and with the family.
- One report found that in 2007, when couples were compared, women still did three times the amount of housework as men.
18
Q
The impact of 9/11 on Race Relations
A
- The first impact on race relations was what became called the ‘War on Terror’ following the events of 9/11.
- Many especially following President George W Bush’s ill-advised, but well publicised gaffe [mistake] in his use of the phrase ‘Crusade’.
- There could hardly have been a more indelicate choice of word. President Bush vowed in remarks to the media to ‘rid the world of evil-doers’, then cautioned: ‘This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while’.
- Tony Blair immediately committed himself to that war. He announced that Britain, ‘stood shoulder to shoulder with our American friends’ in the struggle ‘between the free and democratic world and terrorism’.
- The attacks of 9/11 and their aftermath turned him into President George W. Bush’s closet and most dependable ally, a relationship that was to shape the remainder of Blair’s premiership.
- The events of the War on Terror, starting with the Afghan War and culminating in the 2003 Iraq War would have profound impact on race relations within the UK.
- It would lead to the questioning of Multiculturalism, Immigration and fuelled the rise of Islamophobia.
- Whereas previous generations since Enoch Powell used the language of ‘race’ to express unease of social change, the post-9/11 language of choice, especially but not exclusively amongst the right was the coded language of ‘culture’ or ‘values’.
19
Q
Multiculturalism
A
- The big question Britain faced in the early twentieth-first century was no longer about race.
- The argument for racial equality had won the day.
- None but racist bigots would seriously argue that one race was superior to another and that a person’s worth and rights were to be determined by the ethnic or racial group to which he or she belonged.
- The issue was not a racial one, but a cultural one. Were all cultures to be regarded as morally equivalent? Was there such an identifiable concept as British culture or values? If, there was, what were its main features?
- And if, for example, these included the values of fair play, freedom of speech, religious tolerance, and race and gender equality, how were other cultures to be treated that did not accept or practice these values?
20
Q
The 2001 Race Riots
A
- Riots in Bradford, Manchester and Oldham in 2001 in which white, black and Asian groups clashed was a disturbing sign that integration had not taken place in the more socially and economically deprived areas.
- Significantly, Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which was the successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, claimed that the multicultural policies which successive governments had followed had largely failed and that integration was
not taking place in a way that had been hoped for.
21
Q
The 2005 London Bombings
A
- On 7th July 2005 the reality of the war on terror was brought home to Britain in a particularly fearful way, when four coordinated bomb explosions in London killed 56 people and injured 700.
- This was the first suicide attack in Britain.
- The dead included the suicide bombers, all of them young British Islamists.
- Two weeks later, a similar bomb plot was foiled at the last minute when police arrested the terrorists who again were Islamists.
- All Muslim leaders were quick to condemn the terrorists and to distance their faith from the criminals.
- Some critics saw the 7/7 Bombings (July 2005) as a direct consequence of the 2003 Iraq War and the foreign policies of Bush and Blair.
22
Q
The 2005 Danish Cartoons Controversy
A
- Then there was the violent reaction to the publication of the satirical, but simultaneously Islamophobic Danish cartoons, insulting the Prophet Muhammed.
- In 2005 a satirical Danish magazine published a set of cartoons, which according to many Muslims, defamed and insulted the Prophet Muhammed.
- In London, in February 2006, a small fringe minority of 300 British Muslims demonstrated against the publication.
- Four of the demonstrators were subsequently arrested, tried and imprisoned for incitement to violence and murder.
- The most disturbing aspect, highlighted by the media, was that the four convicted demonstrators, like the London suicide bombers, were all brought up in average homes within the UK.
23
Q
The Phillips Report (2005)
A
- In 2005, Trevor Phillips expressed fears that multiculturalism could cause Britain to ‘sleepwalk towards segregation’ and argued that a key way of preventing segregation hardening was not to allow it in British education in the form of exclusive faith schools.
- He had in mind particularly the madrassas, exclusively Muslim schools.
- Phillips was widely criticised by Muslim faith organisation of pandering to Islamophobic tropes [racial stereotyping].
- They pointed out that Catholic and Jewish faith schools had long been established in Britain.
- The teaching of British values was wholly compatible to British values.
- In any event, surely freedom of religion, was supposedly a core Muslim value. Ken Livingstone, the Labour Mayor of London, attacked Phillips for giving currency to racist ideas by ‘pandering to the right’. Philips responded by saying it was essential ‘to ask hard questions about multicultural Britain’.
24
Q
The 2006 Religious Hatred Act
A
- In 2006 a religious hatred bill was introduced to protect people from being abused and attacked because of their religious beliefs.
- It was undoubtedly intended to give assurance to British Muslims who felt they were under suspicion and attack in the current atmosphere Post-911 that had led to a growth of Islamophobia within British society.
- The bill met stiff criticism and resistance within parliament by those who suggested that religious hatred was too imprecise an attitude to give definition to it in law and that existing laws against incitement [hatred] already gave adequate protection.
- There was no justification they argued for giving a privileged place in law to religious belief.
- In the end the bill went through in a very water-down form, adding little to existing laws on incitement [hatred].
