In order to place the problems of social policies in a time of austerity in a wider context, this paper will explore the âhistory of the presentâ in post-2008 austerity Britain. The purpose is not just to list the unique characteristics of the current ârecoveryâ in terms of inequalities and employment conditions, but to establish their interactions and consequences for UK society and social policy. Above all, the retreat of the state from many forms of direct provision and the introduction of market systems into everything from health to education and refuse recycling, have changed the way that social policies can be implemented. The historically unique features of this recession or, perhaps, their unique combination in the present situation, set the framework for the impact on the areas of social policy in this collection. The comparisons with the experiences and policies of other countries are recognised but not dealt with in any detail (see Farnsworth and Irving 2012). Similarly, the analysis here cannot survey all the recessions of the twentieth century (which Christopher Dow has covered superbly) by way of comparison, yet some contrasts with recent experiences of the 1980s and 1990s are made to highlight the distinctive characteristics of the present situation. It is notable that the peculiarities of the twenty-first centuryâs first recession provoked the Bank of England to survey 300 years of economic data to establish its character (Dow 1998; Hills et al. 2010). The aim here is to characterise the present in such a way that the continuities with the recent past are revealed, along with how they are reinforced and reinvigorated through the government responses to the 2008 crisis. In addition, there are new elements introduced through austerity in the context of the unique political and economic circumstances of this recession. The focus here is on changing patterns of inequality and the reinforcement of older trends in new ways since 2008. The scope includes both economic, age and health, as well as a reflection on the underlying economic insecurity and the stress of the new developments in forms of employment, as they affect both private sector and public service workers.
A note is required on the kind of historically-aware social science being adopted here: the sophisticated application of complexity theory to this recent history, most notably by Sylvia Walby (2015), has attractions as both an analysis of the recessionâs origins and as a formal rethinking of social science. It highlights areas where actions by institutions and governments reinforced each other, or acted in negative ways to reproduce many kinds of inequalities. A critical awareness of opportunities missed, and decisions made, with a critical awareness of the âroad not takenâ (Frost 1920: 9), can also highlight where systematic failures were introduced in ways that had irreversible damaging side-effects. These are the feedbacks and loops of Walbyâs analysis, but they also resonate with conventional historical analysis: some directions taken cannot be reversed, and these actions shape the unique concatenation of events. Like Althusserâs famously ill-defined idea of historical contingency, or âconjunctionâ, this kind of analysis reflects on the unique processes producing historically unusual outcomes even if the recession itself has recognisable origins in the established structures of capitalism (Byrne and Callaghan 2014). Complexity at the level of individuals and groups allows a systematic framework for intersections and self-reproducing and mutually-reinforcing factors and processes of inequality , in a structural way (McCall 2005; Walby 2007). The most important aspect of these approaches is the way it allows analysis to integrate different forms of inequality combining in peopleâs lives, even if it is theoretically difficult to develop a convincing model of how they work together in the social system:
Social theory faces a challenge in theorizing the intersection of multiple complex inequalities. To do so adequately it must address the ontological depth of systems of social relations of inequality in the institutional domains of economy, polity, violence, and civil society rather than flatten this to a single dimension of culture or economics. (Walby 2007: 466)
In effect, this proposes a system approach without reductionism to a single dimension such as capitalist social relations or the economy, or their dominant actors (the âruling classâ or the 1%, of Seymour 2014; Dorling 2014), and above all, one which abandons the assumption that the system must enforce all forms of inequality in a uniform way. This is not far from the kinds of historical analysis adopted by politically aware economic historians (Dow 1998) and encourages an attempt to integrate both systems and action, in ways that allow for analysis of the intended and unintended consequences of actions by governments and powerful institutions. The approach acknowledges that there may be contradictory tendencies in society, such as the development of insecure forms of employment coinciding with legislative recognition and criminalisation of new forms of exploitation under the heading of âmodern slaveryâ (Modern Slavery Act, Eliz. II 2015 c.22). The latter is partly directed against exploitation in the overseas supply chains. In other words, it is possible for the economic and the political to work against one another in certain areas, even if the enforcement of the slavery law is uneven and leaves many victims unaided by police intervention (The Guardian 2017b; HMICFRS 2017).
Establishing the unique features and consequences of the fourth recession since World War II requires more than a checklist approach, though that is a start. In many ways, the events of 2007â2008 resemble much earlier slumps such as that of 1929, or the classic property-driven Florida speculation crash of the 1920s, rather than the oil-inflation driven recessions of 1973 or 1981 (Columbo 2012). International dealing in irresponsible bank loans played a far greater part than in any other post-war crisis. Most analysts agree that the Blair government reacted well to the dire situation of 2007â2008, devising policies aimed at recapitalisation of the banks accompanied by partial nationalisation, a speedy change in monetary policy, involving slashing interest rates, and the injection of funds into the system by âquantitative easingâ, all contributing to staving off the consequences of the âcredit crunchâ which shut off finance to the economy. Under the initial shock of the recession, many governments adopted uncharacteristic policies quite unlike those of the 1930s: as Boyer as noted, they expanded liquidity âeven to speculatorsâ, and were willing to cut taxes and increase public spending, as the interest rates fell towards zero. âSome analysts ⌠even announced the comeback of John Maynard Keynes and, thus, the defeat of new classical macroeconomicsâ (Boyer 2012: 284). At this point, orthodox economics and neoliberal ideology cut in, as public debts became an obsession: such debt was redefined as a problem of government spending rather than revenue collapse, and cutting the public sector and all welfare spending came to dominate, making 2010 onwards strongly resemble a return to the policies of the early 1930s. This is not the place to engage with critiques of this reversion, as clearly expressed by the likes of Paul Krugman (2008). It is obvious, however, that austerity is a very bad idea (Blyth 2013) and moreover has never been economically, let alone morally or politically, justified as a response to our societyâs problems (Schui 2014). It should be noted that a long term historical perspective on austerity economics is adopted by Blyth (2013) and Schui (2014). In addition, the more polemical literature reinforces this perspective (see Seymour 2014, among many others). With regard to public policy after 2008, the key shift in policy was under the Coalition government from 2010 to 2015 which abandoned the more Keynesian approach of the previous two years, in parallel with the orthodoxy being imposed by Germany inside the Eurozone, and introduced: massive cuts in government infrastructure investment and a public sector wage freeze at a time of 2â3% inflation, a general attack on all areas of public expe...