LOVE ON THE DOLE

[Stanley]

LOVE ON THE DOLE?

I don’t know about you, but I have reached the stage where listening to the news about the financial crisis is deeply depressing. At my stage in life I suppose I am well off compared to most people. I have no responsibilities, no children to support and no debts because I learned my lesson about that a long time ago. Another generation is going through the same learning curve that we did and hopefully they will learn some lessons. The first thing to get hold of is that every cloud has a silver lining, it may be hard to recognise at the moment but I’m sure that in five years a lot of people will recognise this.
The first thing they will learn will be to have a healthy mistrust of the experts, particularly the ones who eighteen months ago were talking about ‘The New Economy’. They told us that we had seen the last of boom and bust and that the future was bright. You may remember that at the same time I was telling you that there was a storm coming and the best thing to do was to batten down the hatches, cut back on expenditure, ditch the second car and ignore the blandishments of the advertisers. Nobody likes a party-pooper and I don’t blame anyone who ignored me. I think by now the message may have sunk in, things are serious, the storm has arrived and in my opinion it’s a big one and we won’t see any brightening of the horizon for a long time, far longer than the experts would have us believe because they think it is their job to ‘talk up confidence’.
I want to do the same thing but not from any political or economic point of view, that’s a lost cause and the sooner our masters realise that we can’t be fooled any longer, the sooner we will start to see some relief. So what’s different about my approach? Simple, what I’m going to tell you isn’t based on political or economic theory, it’s based on common sense and experience. I’m not going to tell you how to make your money go further, I want to tell you about some of the things I learned by experiencing hard times and reading the history of the inter-war depression.
I’m sure you will have noticed that unemployment is estimated to be about two million at the moment and most forecasters expect it to be at about three million in twelve months. I think they are right. Losing your job is a disaster under any circumstances but if you have responsibilities like a mortgage and children it is even worse. I don’t know what the official attitude is going to be towards this, all I will say is that instead of throwing billions to the bankers who got us into this mess and even paying bonuses for the past year to Northern Rock employees out of the public purse they would do more good by protecting those worst hit by the recession. How about making it automatic that anyone unemployed who has a mortgage should have it frozen until they get back into the economy? Think of the load that would take off many people. However, there are things that we can do for ourselves where a bit of official help would be nice.
What about my title? Is Stanley suggesting that the best thing to do is go to bed for the duration? Not quite, although going to bed to keep warm isn’t a bad strategy if the gas bill is too high, what you do once you get in there is entirely up to you. No, I’m thinking about the book written by Walter Greenwood, published in June 1933 and later made into a very successful play. The subject was the trials and tribulations of people living in ‘Hanky Park’ during the depression. It was first brought to my notice by Steve Constantine at Lancaster who tried to turn me into an historian. Walter Greenwood was born in 1903 and brought up in the Hankinson Street district of Salford. He saw the effects of poverty caused by the depression and wrote the book to bring them to the notice of the better-off in society. When the play opened in 1935 in London it was an immediate success and ran for 391 performances at the Garrick Theatre. My point is that the depression triggered one of the best loved and most successful books of the period. A little chink of light in the dark cloud. However, suggesting that all the unemployed should write a novel isn’t going to do a lot of good.
Take a simpler case, imagine that you are a pit pony and spend the greater part of your life in the dark thousands of feet below the ground. One day the pit goes quiet and you are loaded in the cage and lifted to the surface where you are turned out into a field and left there to graze. This was what happened in the inter war years to some lucky animals. Is the pit pony better or worse off? How about the miners who suddenly had leisure and could walk the hills instead of slaving in a narrow seam hewing coal in terrible conditions? They were worse off financially but in terms of their health and ability to live a normal life they were certainly better off.
Being thrown out of work can also force you into a re-assessment of your life. Back to personal experience. In 1978 I was made redundant when Bancroft closed and there weren’t many steam-engine tenting jobs going! Funnily enough there was one at Abbey Mills at Whalley and I was offered it but refused, good job too, they went out a few months later. No, I had already decided that if society didn’t want me to work I would stop being a wage-slave and go to university. I’d already done eighteen months Open College at Nelson and Colne College and had qualified for Lancaster before the mill closed. I missed the 1978 intake because Bancroft didn’t close till December but started in September 1979 and did my three years degree course, a decision I have never regretted.
I’m not suggesting that everyone thrown out of work should do what I did, apart from anything else it was not the gateway to untold wealth! What I am flagging up is that being ripped out of a nine to five job and having plenty of me-time does open up some interesting possibilities. Suppose you used the time to improve your qualifications, investigate a completely new career or even think of starting your own business. I know a woman in the same position as me who started a little business making cushions and selling them on a market stall, she was successful and now owns her own company. All things are possible.
There is one fly in the ointment as regards further education. In 1978 there was a good support structure of grants for the ‘mature student’. This doesn’t exist now, it vanished with the ‘new economy’. Perhaps it is time for the government to invest some of the money it is printing in imaginative schemes to finance and encourage the unemployed to improve their qualifications and expand their minds. I commend the concept to our masters in Whitehall, rescuing the banking sector is not the only route to recovery and future prosperity.
Some things are certain, there are people reading this that will find themselves out of work. I know what that feels like. Once the anger starts to abate think about what I have said and get your head into pit pony mentality. Things could be worse, start looking at what you can do for yourselves. Another certainly is that if you do nothing there will be no improvement. Get out there and make things happen. I promise you that if you do you will never regret taking hold of your life and doing what you really want to do. You might not write a successful play but who knows? There is something better out there and one thing the crooked bankers did was give you the space to go out and look for it. There is a silver lining, all you have to do is find it. Best of luck!
I want to say more but I’ve run out of space. I’ll bang on at you again next week but on a different aspect of the problem.
SCG/25 January 2009

[Stanley]

Bumped.

[Stanley]

Retreaded. Written 13 years ago but still true today.

[Stanley]

I bumped it again yesterday as reinforcement of the views of David on the unexpected benefits of forced redundancy but posted it in Politics Corner so many may not have picked it up. It can't harm to bump it again! (You can't have too much of a good thing!)

[Tripps]

I bumped it again yesterday as reinforcement of the views of David on the unexpected benefits of forced redundancy

Nice to see someone reads what I post.

I bought the book Love on the Dole" (of course) after the original post. I put it next to Robert's 'Classic Slum'' on the shelf. which is the non fiction version.

I still smile when I recall one of the Poet's very clever friends was telling me about the book, which she was currently reading.

"Had I heard of it" ? she asked with just a hint of a slightly superior look -

"Yes indeed" said I - straight faced - "I've read it - and in fact my parents lived in it".

[Stanley]

Nice one.....