28.01.2010

Who broke it, Cameron?

David Douglass points the finger at Thatcherism and New Labour

The people of Doncaster, and those around Edlington colliery in particular, have been outraged by the media circus which has descended on the town since the horrific attack on two lads from 'Edlo'. In particular, David Cameron climbing on the bandwagon and talking about 'broken Britain' outrages them. We ask, who broke it?

Prior to Margaret Thatcher's war on the miners Edlington was one of 13 large coal communities in Doncaster. It was prosperous, with men earning high wages, working short hours and enjoying good holidays - all advances won through the concerted efforts of miners organised in the National Union of Mineworkers and before that the Miners Federation of Great Britain. People cared for their gardens, their allotments and their streets. Not so many took their holidays abroad, but the whole village would decamp for Cleethorpes or Scarborough. Many miners had caravans and the local coast was a home from home many months of the year. Kids had freedom to roam, for adventure, to form independent friendships and grow as part of the community.

The miners' welfare offered every sort of sporting facility, musical instruction and enjoyment with bands and choirs, and educational opportunities based on the industry or the union. The union and the clubs provided grants for kids and former miners going to college or university. Old folks' treats were organised in every village, every pensioner given an annual party and trips to the coast or the countryside. Children's parties and bus trips were regular features of the whole coalfield.

When we say we went out and left the doors unlocked, it's not just a cliché: we did. People went back and forth into each other's houses and lives the whole time. Kids having problems at home would often decamp to a house further down the street or in with any of their extended families or even friends of the extended family. Our not so academically inclined young adults knew there was a good job in mining, or any of the associated industries and services, which rested upon them.

That was then - before Thatcher, followed by her successor as prime minister, John Major, launched a war of extermination against the coal industry and in the process destroyed a working class culture, a way of life and alternative society to that of 'dog eat dog' and 'every man for himself'.

The betrayal of New Labour and the utter failure of the 'left' killed any vision of resurgence, killed all hope and belief in turning all this around. Despair spread with poverty, child deprivation, high infant mortality, ill health, low life expectancy, benefit dependency, low academic achievement, long-term unemployment, deterioration of social welfare and housing. With that lot came drug addiction, anti-social crime, violence and a breakdown of everything the miners for generations had fought to create. Those who could do so moved out, houses fell into decay, anti-social families and criminal individuals moved in, the bowling greens and cricket pitches wrecked, while scramble bikes ploughed up the once pristine fields. Streets became dangerous.

The two little lads were from a dog-rough area of Intake, one of the most depressed areas of Doncaster, which is rotten with drug addiction and people on the edge. Born into a dysfunctional violent family on mean streets, the kids lost any empathy and any humane response. Their path through increasing levels of violence and anti-social crime has been well charted. When in the end it was decided to 'take them into care', actually there was nowhere for them to go. They were given to an older pair of emergency foster carers in Edlington, whom local social services relied on to take teenage lads in need of a temporary bed. These lads were well past that sort of 'care' and were at once let loose on the village. In three weeks, they unleashed a mini-war of aggression against it - and against kids of their own age. The two they finally collared are lucky to have escaped with their lives.

If we live in a broken society, it's because the Tories were determined to wage a scorched-earth policy against the miners and in turn our communities. New Labour has left us to stew. Doncaster, like most of the coal metropolitan councils, is starved of funding and has been wracked with corruption - and then political dictatorship - by self-interested mayors (or in the current case a member of the English Democrats), who have no time for such niceties as social welfare.

Social services have been cut to the point were only a handful (actually less than half a dozen) social workers are in full-time employment: the rest are agency or stand-in staff. The local workers who come from these streets and have been brought up on them, who understand the difference between social deprivation and abuse, are utterly ignored. This is likely to get worse, as armies of middle class moralists with their outside agendas and moral reformism now descend on the area on the back of the media hype and outrage.

As we did following the case of 'baby P', we are likely to see children all over the area being whisked away from their families for the most ill-informed, ignorant and meagre excuses. Rather than offer action and support for families in their communities, we will see children confiscated and traumatised in a back-covering exercise aimed at protecting the department rather than helping the kids. Sixty thousand children are now in care in Britain, most of them against their expressed wishes, and for no good reason other than the motto, 'If in doubt take them away'. A kind of institutionalised child abuse in the name of preventing child abuse.

Yes, our society is broken. The Tories and their New Labour allies broke it and left it broken.

But how are we to rebuild it? How do we regenerate that culture and tradition of socialism, solidarity and community? Certainly not from under a slagheap of poverty, unemployment and hopelessness. It is not helped - at a time when we see a glimmer of hope with the building of the clean coal power station at the nearby Hatfield Main colliery - to have middle class greens and the environmentalists attacking coal trains and chanting, "Leave it in the ground", because that means leaving us on the scrapheap. A programme for the regeneration of coal mining, industry and manufacture, under workers' and consumers' control, is what is actually needed.

The heart of these communities is still sound, and there are brave souls fighting within them to retain our traditions and our social solidarity, but nobody is expecting the left cavalry to come riding over the hills to bring about a social transformation of society any time soon. Truth is, we haven't even rounded up the horses yet.