Unite are delight­ed to accede to a request to pub­lish this paper for infor­ma­tion and dis­cus­sion. While the paper itself is not a Unite paper it is a very nec­es­sary con­tri­bu­tion to a vital debate on the ide­o­log­i­cal changes in how our com­mu­ni­ties are sup­port­ed and devel­oped in the neolib­er­al era.  Please click here to down­load The Sys­tem­at­ic Destruc­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment, Anti-Pover­ty and Equal­i­ty Move­ment (2002–2015) by Patri­cia Kelle­her and Cath­leen O’Neill.

The with­draw­al of state sup­port and fund­ing for com­mu­ni­ty empow­er­ment and capac­i­ty build­ing, which began in the 1990s, reached its peak with mas­sive cuts to the sec­tor fol­low­ing the 2008 crash. The words ‘nev­er waste a good cri­sis’ could well be applied to Fian­na Fail, Fine Gael and Labour in Gov­ern­ment impos­ing the sav­age cuts to com­mu­ni­ty groups, activists and sup­ports on the back of the fis­cal emer­gency they cre­at­ed and embed­ded. In our com­mu­ni­ties that emer­gency con­tin­ues today.

Unite applauds the work of Authors Patri­cia Kelle­her PhD and Cath­leen O’Neill MA in research­ing and pro­duc­ing this report and analy­sis.

Alienation

Bren­dan Ogle: The out­ra­geous com­ments by Peter Casey in recent weeks tar­get­ing trav­ellers and those on wel­fare need a con­sid­ered response.

With the rise of neo-fas­cism from Wash­ing­ton to Rio, from the AfD in Ger­many to the far right in Britain, we in Ire­land can­not be com­pla­cent. The instinct of some to tar­get their anger at the impact of neolib­er­al­ism on their lives at those suf­fer­ing dis­ad­van­tage – that instinct to cast blame down­wards instead of upwards – is dan­ger­ous and needs to be chal­lenged.

As part of this nec­es­sary dis­cus­sion, Unite are pleased to repro­duce this sem­i­nal speech by Glas­gow Ship Yard work­er Jim­my Reid.  Jim­my Reid was a mem­ber of one of Unite’s pre­de­ces­sor unions, and his 1972 speech to stu­dents in Glas­gow Uni­ver­si­ty was sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished in full in the New York Times.

It is a salu­tary reminder that thought and enlight­en­ment are nec­es­sary to over­pow­er intol­er­ance and greed, and that we will all suf­fer alien­ation if we are not very care­ful.

Enjoy the read:

ALIENATION

Alien­ation is the pre­cise and cor­rect­ly applied word for describ­ing the major social prob­lem in Britain today. Peo­ple feel alien­at­ed by soci­ety.  In some intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles it is treat­ed almost as a new phe­nom­e­non. It has, how­ev­er, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more wide­spread, more per­va­sive than ever before. Let me right at the out­set define what I mean by alien­ation. It is the cry of men who feel them­selves the vic­tims of blind eco­nom­ic forces beyond their con­trol. It’s the frus­tra­tion of ordi­nary peo­ple exclud­ed from the process of deci­sion-mak­ing. The feel­ing of despair and hope­less­ness that per­vades peo­ple who feel with jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that they have no real say in shap­ing or deter­min­ing their own des­tinies.

Many may not have ratio­nalised it. May not even under­stand, may not be able to artic­u­late it. But they feel it. It there­fore con­di­tions and colours their social atti­tudes. Alien­ation express­es itself in dif­fer­ent ways in dif­fer­ent peo­ple. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the crim­i­nal anti­so­cial behav­iour of a sec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty. It is exposed by those young peo­ple who want to opt out of soci­ety, by ‘drop-outs, the so called mal­ad­just­ed, those who seek to escape per­ma­nent­ly from the real­i­ty of soci­ety through intox­i­cants and nar­cotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say is was the sole rea­son for these things. But it is a much greater fac­tor in all of them than is gen­er­al­ly recog­nised.

Soci­ety and its pre­vail­ing sense of val­ues leads to anoth­er form of alien­ation. It alien­ates some from human­i­ty. It par­tial­ly dehu­man­is­es some peo­ple, makes them insen­si­tive, ruth­less in their han­dling of fel­low human beings, self-cen­tred and grasp­ing. The irony is, they are often con­sid­ered nor­mal and well-adjust­ed. It is my sin­cere con­tention that any­one who can be total­ly adjust­ed to our soci­ety is in greater need of psy­chi­atric analy­sis and treat­ment than any­one else. They remind me of the char­ac­ter in the nov­el ‘Catch 22’, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the Amer­i­can Mid-West. He hat­ed sug­ges­tions for things like ‑medi-care, social ser­vices, unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits or human rights. He was, how­ev­er, an enthu­si­ast for the agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies that paid farm­ers for not bring­ing their fields under cul­ti­va­tion. From the mon­ey he got from not grow­ing alfal­fa he bought more land in order to not grow alfal­fa. He became rich. Pil­grims came from all over the state to sit and learn how to be a suc­cess­ful non-grow­er of alfal­fa. His phi­los­o­phy was sim­ple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for him­self. He is a com­ic fig­ure (ibid – not any more). But think – have you not met his ilk? I have.

It is easy and tempt­ing to hate such peo­ple. How­ev­er, it is wrong. They are as much prod­ucts of soci­ety, and of a con­se­quence of that soci­ety, human alien­ation, as the poor drop out. They are losers. They have lost the essen­tial ele­ments of our com­mon human­i­ty. Man is a social being. Real ful­fil­ment for any per­son lies in ser­vice to his fel­low men and women. The big chal­lenge to our civil­i­sa­tion is not Oz, a mag­a­zine I haven’t seen let alone read. Nor it is per­mis­sive­ness, although I agree our soci­ety is too per­mis­sive. Any soci­ety which, for exam­ple, per­mits over one mil­lion peo­ple to be unem­ployed is far too per­mis­sive for my lik­ing. Nor is it moral lax­i­ty in the nar­row sense that this word is gen­er­al­ly employed – although in a sense here we come near­er to the prob­lem. It does involve moral­i­ty, ethics, and our con­cept of human val­ues. The chal­lenge we face it that of root­ing out any­thing and every­thing that dis­torts and deval­ues human rela­tions.

Let me give two exam­ples from con­tem­po­rary expe­ri­ence to illus­trate the point.

Recent­ly on tele­vi­sion I saw an advert. The scene is a ban­quet. A gen­tle­man is on his feet propos­ing a toast. His speech is full of phras­es like ‘this full-bod­ied spec­i­men’. Sit­ting beside him is a young, bux­om woman. The image she projects is not pompous but fool­ish. She is vis­i­bly preen­ing her­self, believ­ing that she is the objects of the bloke’s eulo­gy. Then he con­cludes – ‘and not I give….’ Then a brand name of what used to be described as Empire Sher­ry. Then the laugh­ter. Deri­sive and cru­el laugh­ter. The real point, of course, is this. In this cha­rade, the view­ers were obvi­ous­ly expect­ed to iden­ti­fy not with the vic­tim but with her tor­men­tors.

The oth­er illus­tra­tion is the wide­spread, implic­it accep­tance of the con­cept and term ‘the rat race’. The pic­ture it con­jures up is one where we are scur­ry­ing around scram­bling for posi­tion, tram­pling on oth­ers, back stab­bing, all in pur­suit of per­son­al suc­cess. Even gen­uine­ly intend­ed, friend­ly advice can some­times take the form of some­one say­ing to you: ‘lis­ten, you look after num­ber one.’ Or as they say in Lon­don, ‘Bang the bell Jack, I’m on the bus.’

To the stu­dents (of Glas­gow Uni­ver­si­ty) I address this appeal. Reject these atti­tudes. Reject the val­ues and false moral­i­ty that under­line these atti­tudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insid­i­ous pres­sures in soci­ety that would blunt your crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties to all that is hap­pen­ing around you, that would cau­tion silence in the face of injus­tice lest you jeop­ar­dise your chances of pro­mo­tion and self-advance­ment. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are you’re a ful­ly paid up mem­ber of the rat pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dig­ni­ty and human spir­it. Or as Christ put it, ‘What doth it prof­it a man if he gain the whole world and suf­fer the loss of his soul?’

Prof­it is the sole cri­te­ri­on used by the estab­lish­ment to eval­u­ate eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty. From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocab­u­lary in vogue is a give-away. Its more rem­i­nis­cent of a human menagerie than a human soci­ety. The pow­er struc­tures that have inevitable emerged from this approach threat­en and under­mine our hard one demo­c­ra­t­ic rights. The whole process is towards the cen­tral­i­sa­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er in few­er and few­er hands. The facts are there for all who want to see. Giant monop­oly com­pa­nies and con­sor­tia dom­i­nate almost every branch of our econ­o­my. The men who wield effec­tive con­trol with­in these giants exer­cise a pow­er over their fel­low men which is fright­en­ing and is a nega­tion of democ­ra­cy.

Gov­ern­ment by the peo­ple for the peo­ple becomes mean­ing­less unless it includes major eco­nom­ic deci­sion-mak­ing by the peo­ple for the peo­ple. This is not sim­ply and eco­nom­ic mat­ter. In essence it is an eth­i­cal and moral ques­tion, for who­ev­er takes the impor­tant eco­nom­ic deci­sions in soci­ety ipso fac­to deter­mines the social pri­or­i­ties of that soci­ety.

From the Olympian heights of an exec­u­tive suite, in an atmos­phere where your suc­cess is judged by the extent to which you can max­imise prof­its, the over­whelm­ing ten­den­cy must be to see peo­ple as units of pro­duc­tion, as indices in your accountant’s books. To appre­ci­ate ful­ly the inhu­man­i­ty of this sit­u­a­tion, you have to see the hurt and despair in the eyes of the man sud­den­ly told he is redun­dant, with­out pro­vi­sions made for suit­able alter­na­tive employ­ment, with the prospect that if he is in his lat­er for­ties or fifties, of spend­ing the rest of his life in the Labour Exchange. Some­one, some­where has decid­ed that he is unwant­ed, unneed­ed, and is to be thrown of the indus­try scrap heap. From the very depth of my being, I chal­lenge the right of any man or any group of men, in busi­ness or in gov­ern­ment, to tell a fel­low human being that he or she is expend­able.

The con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er in the eco­nom­ic field is matched by the cen­tral­i­sa­tion of deci­sion – mak­ing in the polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions of soci­ety. The pow­er of Par­lia­ment has undoubt­ed­ly been erod­ed over past decades, with more and more author­i­ty being invest­ed in the Exec­u­tive. The pow­er of local author­i­ties has been and is being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly under­mined. The only jus­ti­fi­ca­tion I can see for local gov­ern­ment is as a counter-bal­ance to the cen­tralised char­ac­ter on nation­al gov­ern­ment.

Local gov­ern­ment is to be restruc­tured. What an oppor­tu­ni­ty, one would think, for decen­tral­is­ing as much pow­er as pos­si­ble back to the local com­mu­ni­ties. Instead. The pro­pos­als are for cen­tral­is­ing local gov­ern­ment. It’s once again a blue­print for bureau­cra­cy, not democ­ra­cy. If these pro­pos­als are imple­ment­ed, in a few years when asked, ‘where do you come from?’ I can reply: ‘the West­ern Region’. It even sounds like a hos­pi­tal board. It stretch­es from Oban to Gir­van and east­wards to include most of the Glas­gow conur­ba­tion. As in oth­er mat­ters, I must ask the politi­cians who favour these pro­pos­als – where and how in your cal­cu­la­tions did you quan­ti­fy the val­ue of a com­mu­ni­ty? Of com­mu­ni­ty life? Of a sense of belong­ing? Of the feel­ings of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion? These are rhetor­i­cal ques­tions. I know the answer. Such human con­sid­er­a­tions do not fea­ture in their thought process­es.

Every­thing that is pro­posed from the estab­lish­ment seems almost cal­cu­lat­ed to min­imise the role of the peo­ple, to minia­turise man. I can under­stand how attrac­tive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their pow­er game can be picked up by their bureau­crat­ic tweez­ers and dropped in a fil­ing cab­i­net under ‘M’ for mal­con­tent or mal­ad­just­ed. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hard­ly be an acci­dent that they are as near as one could get to an archi­tec­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a fil­ing cab­i­net.

If mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy requires greater and larg­er pro­duc­tive units, let’s make our wealth-pro­duc­ing resources and poten­tial sub­ject to pub­lic con­trol and to social account­abil­i­ty. Let’s gear our soci­ety to social need, not per­son­al greed. Giv­en such cre­ative re-ori­en­ta­tion of soci­ety, there is no doubt in my mind that a few years will erad­i­cate in our coun­try the scourge of pover­ty, the under­priv­i­leged, slums and inse­cu­ri­ty.

Even this is not enough. To mea­sure social progress pure­ly by mate­r­i­al advance is not enough. Our aim must be the enrich­ment of the whole qual­i­ty of life. It requires a social and cul­tur­al, or if you wish, a spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion of our coun­try. A nec­es­sary part of this must be a re-struc­tur­ing of the insti­tu­tions of gov­ern­ment and, where nec­es­sary, the evo­lu­tion of addi­tion struc­tures so as to involve the peo­ple in the deci­sion-mak­ing process­es of our soci­ety. The so-called experts will experts will tell you that this would be cum­ber­some or mar­gin­al­ly inef­fi­cient. I am pre­pared to sac­ri­fice a mar­gin of effi­cien­cy for the val­ue of peo­ples par­tic­i­pa­tion. Any­way, in the longer term, I reject this argu­ment.

To unleash the latent poten­tial of our peo­ple requires that we give them respon­si­bil­i­ty. The untapped resources of the North Sea are as noth­ing com­pared to the untapped resources of our peo­ple.  I am con­vinced that the great mass of our peo­ple go through life with­out even a glim­mer of what they could have con­tributed to their fel­low human beings. This is a per­son­al tragedy. It’s a social crime. The flow­er­ing of each individual’s per­son­al­i­ty and tal­ents is the pre-con­di­tion for everyone’s devel­op­ment.

In this con­text edu­ca­tion has a vital role to play. If automa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy is accom­pa­nied as it must be with full employ­ment, then the leisure time avail­able to man will be enor­mous­ly increased. If that is so, then our whole con­cept of edu­ca­tion must change. The whole object must be to equip and edu­cate peo­ple for life, not sole­ly for work or a pro­fes­sion. The cre­ative use of leisure, in com­mu­nion with and in ser­vice to our fel­low human beings, can and must become an impor­tant ele­ment in self-ful­fil­ment.

Uni­ver­si­ties must be in the fore­front of devel­op­ment, must meet social needs and not lag behind them. It is my earnest desire that this great Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow should be in the van­guard, ini­ti­at­ing changes and set­ting the exam­ple for oth­ers to fol­low. Part of our edu­ca­tion process must be the involve­ment of all sec­tions of the uni­ver­si­ty on the gov­ern­ing bod­ies. The case for stri­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tion is unan­swer­able. It is inevitable.

My con­clu­sion is to re-affirm what I hope and cer­tain­ly intend to be the spir­it per­me­at­ing this address. It’s an affir­ma­tion of faith in human­i­ty. All that is good in man’s her­itage involves recog­ni­tion of our com­mon human­i­ty, an unashamed acknowl­edge­ment that man is good by nature. Burns expressed it in a poem that tech­ni­cal­ly was not his best, yet cap­tured the spir­it. In ‘Why should we idly waste our prime…’:

The gold­en age, we’ll then revive, each man shall be a broth­er,

In har­mo­ny we all shall live and till the earth togeth­er,

In virtue trained, enlight­ened youth shall move each fel­low crea­ture,

And time shall sure­ly prove the truth that man is good by nature.

It is my belief that all the fac­tors to make a prac­ti­cal real­i­ty of such a world are matur­ing now. I would like to think that our gen­er­a­tion took mankind some way along the road towards this goal. It’s a goal worth fight­ing for.

Jim­my Reid

Glas­gow Ship­yard Work­er to Glas­gow Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dents

1972