Abstract
The election of the first Thatcher government in 1979 marked an abrupt change in British political and economic life. Her political philosophy involved an explicit rejection of the consensus approach of her postwar predecessors. Trade unions were to be put in their place; public expenditure was to be cut by rolling-back the ‘nanny’ welfare state; and the British economy was to be purged of feather-bedding by a ‘short, sharp shock’. Fundamentally, the introduction of monetarist fiscal policies provided the technical rationale for redefining the nature of social and economic priorities — away from maintaining levels of employment towards ‘shake outs’ of restrictive labour practices and control of the money supply.
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Notes
The most important objection to the CP was that it would provide only low-paid part-time work when for the same net cost 130,000 full-time jobs paying up to £89 a week could have been created. The second major objection was that the wages were so low that very few people would be better off than they would have been on supplementary benefit. The third objection was that CP contained no real provision for training. The Unemployment Unit argued (1982) that the scheme was designed to help ‘cut wage levels’, and that sponsors were ‘being used by the MSC to implement a scheme which exploits the long-term unemployed’.
Government-sponsored research, by the Institute of Manpower Studies, showed that of the first 163,000 successful applications for the Young Workers Subsidy, 90 per cent of the jobs would have been created by the employer without the subsidy. Of the 16,000 odd jobs created, the Institute estimated that about 6,500 would have been occupied by adult workers but for the subsidy. In other words, the scheme created about 10,000 low-wage jobs at a cost of £60 million or £6,000 a job.
During the summer of 1981, clear divisions emerged within the Conservative Party. Critics within the Cabinet became increasingly vocal about their opposition to monetarism and the consequences it was having on unemployment. They publicly acknowledged their commitment to a ‘one nation’ conservatism. They were swiftly dubbed the ‘wets’, and rather than securing any changes in policy were effectively marginalised by a Cabinet reshuffle in September 1981. Their most prominent leader, Jim Prior, who was threatening to resign if he was moved from the Department of Employment, capitulated and was moved to the more onerous task of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Gamble, 1981).
For a detailed analysis of MSC operational guidelines around substitution and displacement, and their actual application in WEEP schemes, see Markall, 1983, Chapter 1.
In Cleveland, in the North East, for example, a mere 16 per cent of ‘graduate’ trainees found proper employment in 1980–1. In Sheffield, in 1982, the Careers Service reported that only one in five YOP entrants could expect their schemes to lead to jobs (Roberts, 1984, p. 85).
In a Gateshead technical college, to take one example, of 400 eligible YOP trainees only 259 attended induction sessions and only nineteen completed the course (Gould, 1982).
An Unemployment Unit Briefing on ‘Youth Wages and Unemployment’ examined the available evidence and concluded that the argument that youth unemployment was the result of narrowing youth/adult earnings differentials was ‘substantially unfounded’, and ‘was at variance with the available statistical evidence’ (1983, p. 8). For an excellent critique of the economic arguments on which the ‘pricing into work’ thesis is based, see the Low Pay Unit discussion paper by Henry Neuburger (1984). Asked about these events on a TV programme, Sir Keith Joseph concluded: ‘If it be so, as it is, that selection between schools is largely out, then I emphasise that there must be differentiation within schools’. As Brian Simon concludes, this was ‘a clear statement of the tactic to negate the move towards the unification of secondary education — the main objective of the comprehensive reform’ (1984, p. 21). Press reports in 1986 suggested that the Conservatives would be going into the following election with the reintroduction of direct grant grammar schools as a central element of its manifesto.
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© 1987 Dan Finn
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Finn, D. (1987). Mrs Thatcher’s U-turn? From Youth Opportunities to Youth Training. In: Training Without Jobs: New Deals and Broken Promises. Youth Questions. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18631-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18631-0_6
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