Where is Democracy Today?

The UK is a low-strike society and a low-pay #economy, in-work #poverty is at a record high in large part because working days lost to strikes are at record lows.?

When unions were smashed by a combination of #legislation, defeats and mass unemployment in the 1980s, the most effective means to ensure that workers got a fair slice of the pie was lost.

With a great number of advancements (not so much in a #ukgovernment sense in a number of respects… ), 40 years on and from one era of Tory ruling to another, here’s a “brief” overview of what was happening with the UK economy 40 years ago and how that looks today.?

The photograph in this article, comes from a series of photographs which depict life in working class communities within the UK, during the late 70’s/early #80s - taken by photographer Tish Murtha

Tish, (herself from a working class neighbourhood in Newcastle), through her photography, highlights the impact of a generation living through government austerity and unemployment from stark flat vistas of burnt out cars to derelict, destroyed and poverty ridden houses of a de-industrialisation era.

In May 1979, the Tory’s entered Downing Street.

Under Margaret Thatcher, Britain saw huge economic, #demographic and #cultural change (it must be said that not absolutely everything can be attributed to her).?

As Britain learnt to come to terms with the idea of "no such thing as society", #unemployment shot up to levels that hadn’t been seen since the Great Depression- even after the recession was over, many were unemployed.

Life Expectancy

This was a time when #lifeexpectancy was starting to rise, overall it went up from 70.3yrs for men and 76.4yrs for women in 1979 to an additional average of 3 years for both sexes by 1990.?However, in 1985 it went down briefly, as it did again in 1993, both were after the huge recessions.

The modal age at death has continued to rise in the UK, (from 2018 to 2020), it’s now 81.65 years, a 0.15% increase from 2021.

UK Population

In the 1970s, the UK was home to 56.2 million.

During the first years of #Thatcher's reign, fewer people came to live in the #uk - acceptances for settlement went down from 69,670 in 1979 to 53,200 by the time she resigned in 1990.?

Actually, the UK population had been pretty stagnant since 1970, going down for 4 years before 1979 as the economy faltered.?

Today, in 2022, the UK population is estimated to be 67,081,000.?

Marriages / Divorces?

Ironically, Thatcher was a prime minister who focused much on her family life, yet the 1980s saw an end to the “traditional family unit” for many people.?

Without too much statistical shock; marriage and divorce figures follow a similar graph to the UK economy’s rising and falling political discrepancies; wealth and war along with “population health.’

Divorce rates reached 13% per 1,000 married population in 1985, and peaked in 1994 after the recession.?

Figures in 2010, show 119,589 people got divorced with roughly half that number of people getting married the same year.

We clearly have a growing population (and an ever changing culture), however, there were 219,850 marriages in total in England and Wales in 2019, a decrease of 6.4% from 2018.

Notably, there are far less marriages these days overall (taking into consideration growing population numbers and people living for longer), still, to show the peak in 1979 of 368,853 marriages, just emphasises how much culture has changed - it remains the highest figure (in perspective), since the war brides of 1940.?

Poverty / Inequality?

In 1979 there was distinct #inequality, and poverty had risen sharply; (figures from Institute for Fiscal Studies) show 13.4% of the UK population lived below 60% median incomes (even before housing costs). In 1990, it went up to 22.2%, (12.2 million people).

Today poverty is increasing speedily and child poverty is growing.

25 years ago, a third of children lived in poverty. This fell to 28% by 2004/05 and reached its lowest level of 27% in 2010/11 to 2013/14.?

Since then, #childpoverty has been rising, reaching 31% in 2019/20.

It continues to grow.

UK Population: Diversity

Over time, the UK’s population has changed.?Since Thatcher, the economy had boomed when Eastern European countries joined the EU.?

During her government, the 1980s saw more people leaving the UK than coming here. Net #migration was at a record high before Brexit.

There are no accurate figures for the ethnic breakdown before the 1991 census, so I can't say what Britain's #ethnicity mix was.?

However, in the 2001 census, 4 years after the end of the Conservatives in power, the UK's population was 92.1% white.?

According to the Office for National Statistics (#ONS) based on population survey figures from 2019, people from #ethnicminority backgrounds made up 14.4% of the UK (nearly double 2001).

Where this stands today, I don’t know, but there’s now a steadfast stall on #migration and ethnic diversity within the #UKpopulation since Brexit.

Economic / GDP

Of course, 1980’s Britain was hammered by TWO major recessions, sandwiching the boom of the 80s era, although that boom never saw #GDP increase over a few %.?

By 2013, it turns out, George Osborne would kill for growth of 2.2%.

In 2022, UK GDP is estimated to have fallen by 0.1% in March and is now 1.2% above its pre-coronavirus pandemic level (February 2020)

Consumer Price Inflation?#CPI

In 1979, “consumer price inflation” was the obsession of the government; it’d rocketed into its’ twenties during the 70s.

Statistics show, although a struggle, inflation went down right at the beginning of Thatcher’s government - it rose again to 21% in the 1980s.?

I should add that, there are all sorts of economic impacts and changes, so to compare two dates 40 years apart is not a like for like comparison.?

However, in today’s market, The Consumer Prices Index (#CPI) rose by 9.0% in the 12 months to April 2022, up from 7.0% in March. On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 2.5% in April 2022, compared with a rise of 0.6% in April 2021.

House Prices / Interest Rates

The British Chambers of Commerce has downgraded its expectations for #ukgdpr #growth for 2022 to 3.5% (from 3.6%) against a deteriorating economic outlook.?

It now expects the UK inflation rate to reach 10% in Q4 2022, comfortably outpacing average earnings growth.?

The heightened #economic uncertainty and rising costs are also expected to significantly weaken #business #investment, with 1.8% growth predicted in 2022, down sharply from 3.5% in the previous forecast.

In the 80s we saw a rising “House Price Economy” it was a defining feature of the decade which coinciding with large sales of council houses being sold off to private owners.?

#Interestrates rose to a CRAZY 17%, and, hand in hand, repossessions rose to mirror the incline.

The aftermath was notable during its peak in 1991, when approx 75,500 #properties went on to be repossessed, with 186,649 cases reaching court.

From 1996, average house prices rose by an extraordinary 281% across the UK, while in London the figure was 501%, according to the Nationwide #housepriceindex.

In 2022, average UK house prices increased over the previous year, by 9.8% to March 2022, (down from 11.3% in February 2022).?

The average UK house price was ￡278,000 in March 2022, which is ￡24,000 higher than this time the year before.

UK Manufacturing?

Back in 1981, the #government was battling to control #inflation, the recession smashed the #UKmanufacturing industry to pieces, causing unemployment to rise to over 3 million.

From 20.57% of UK GDP in 1970, UK Manufacturing nose dived to 17.62% in 1979 (somewhat of a “hangover” from the rise of issues in the previous decade).?

The decline continued at a slightly slower pace, when Thatcher left office, down to 15.18% and in 2010, according to the ONS, it was just 9.68%.

In 1998 The UK Manufacturing industry was worth ￡29,489.4 million, on January 2022 it equated to a whopping estimate of ￡41,741.8 GDP million of the U.K economy.!!?

So, despite the decline since the 1970s, when manufacturing contributed over 20% of UK GDP, the UK is currently the 9th largest manufacturing nation in the world!!?

Industrial Action / Trade Unions

In the 1970s, 1 in 4 of the population in the UK were part of #tradeunions; they were a major force in 1970s Britain (and, collectively were made up of 13.2 million people).?

The number of working days lost to industrial disputes during the days the Tories occupied Downing Street in 1979 were in excess of 29,474 000 (without factoring other industry impacts, beyond the industry in question) in 2019 it was down to 234,000. In 2021, major strike activity increased but remained below pre-pandemic levels.?

Whilst I write this, under #BorisJohnson’s government, a National Rail Strike sees half of Britain’s rail lines shut completely, as pay talks failed, they’re announced for today, 23 and 25 June 2022 - 40,000 workers are striking over pay / #redundancies and conditions.?

NHS Professionals and #education unions are also looking to tackle disparages - the National Education Union (#NEU) has said it’s preparing to hold a ballot of its’ 450K members, which may lead to strikes in schools across the country.?

A 3% pay rise was put forward this year (2022); which will leave an 8% gap with inflation just this year alone; teachers are in dispute over workload and pay.?Some have done calculations and their hourly pay is already down 20% on 2010.

#Teachers Union NASUWT, warns that it will ballot members on #industrialaction from November 2022 in England, Scotland and Wales.

Thousands of people marched through central #London on 18th June 2022, demanding action over the #CostOfLivingCrisis, this included NHS workers.

Banners reading "Cut war not welfare" and "End #fuelpoverty, insulate homes now" were carried by demonstrators.

Tory Ministers now fear that a confrontation over pay increases with public and quasi public sector workers — who are suffering much bigger real terms #wagecuts than their private sector counterparts — could either tip a faltering #economy into recession or blow a hole in the government’s spending plans.

I don’t feel I need to put too much detail on the background of the current state of affairs which got us here today, however economically, growth is expected to grind to a halt this year in 2022, before dipping briefly into negative territory as global events continue to weigh heavily on our economy in the UK.

Austerity?

David Cameron's #Conservatives, were only just victorious in the 2010 election, they sold “#austerity” as a necessary response to the 2008 financial crash.

Only last year, leading think tanks were warning Britain could be headed for a new era of austerity, after analysis of Rishi Sunak’s budget revealed deep cuts in spending plans for Whitehall departments and #localgovernment.

The action of #pandemic lockdown and further pernicious impact of #inflation on resources for public services was a warning which came earlier in 2022; the services which the poorest in our society rely on most.

Hospitals and schools were also warned earlier this year to “brace themselves” for a reduction of their ambitions to catch up with treating sick people and correcting the schooling gaps caused by Covid-19.

To add insult to injury, we haven't yet seen the peak of the inflationary damage to #publicservices resources.

The government, in 2022, in refusing to offset the damage of inflation has (I guess some would still argue otherwise, not me though), has returned the UK to austerity.

UK Government Spending and Revenue as a Percentage of GDP, 1900-2015

The 2010-15 fiscal squeeze on government spending resembles all the other episodes since the 1980s in being ‘soft’ compared to the squeezes imposed earlier in the twentieth century.?

The rarest type of fiscal squeeze is ‘double hard’ when governments reduce #publicspending and also increase #taxrevenue both in real terms and as a proportion of GDP.?

This outcome is unusual both internationally and in the UK. It has only happened once in Britain in the last 100 years, just after World War II (between 1919 and 1921) when high wartime #taxrates were retained along with massive post-war demobilisation.

A long-term pattern in the historical evolution of #fiscal squeezes which hasn’t happened so far, since the mid-1970s is the episode of hard revenue squeeze in order to fund extra public spending; the most recent fiscal squeeze seems to fit a trend in which increases in tax revenue have played a smaller part in fiscal austerity packages in the UK over the last 30 years than in earlier periods.?

The Future

When considering economies / industries over any decent length of time, we see patterns - the London School of Economics (#LSE) mapped a 100 year pattern from 1900 to 2012 which looked at the future of austerity and fiscal squeezes, based on this, it was always likely to reappear in the UK again soon (it was roughly due around now).

UK’s Current Economic Climate??

The Bank of England has not “technically predicted” a recession. However, it expects a huge downturn towards the end of the year?

Technically we’ve hit a recession when the economy contracts over two consecutive quarters – six months.

A combination of successive lockdowns slowed down the economy and the UK’s changing relationship with the #EU has impacted along with the Russian invasion of #Ukraine which has damaged the international market price of gas and oil; it’s meant that the current volatile climate could be set to take another downward turn.?

Since April, there was a 54% jump in gas and electricity, and the Bank of England believes that costs will rise further in October by as much as 40%. This will take the average domestic bill to more than ￡2,800 a year.?

Meanwhile, interest rates are set to hit levels not seen in more than 30 years.?

Surprisingly, despite this weakening backdrop, #Deloitte forecast the UK economy to grow by around 3.5% in 2022 over twice the prepandemic trend rate.?

However, the message from central banks Deloitte says, is that inflation is rising faster than they expected – and that they are determined to bring it back to target.?

No wonder financial markets expect a barrage of interest rate rises in the next 6 months.?

Deloitte's predict that Markets will see UK rates rising from a current 1.25% to around 3.0% by the end of 2022 before peaking at about 3.5% in 2023.?

US rates are forecast to rise from the current 1.5%–1.75% to 3.5% by the end of 2022 with euro rates rising from -0.5% to almost 1.25%.?

If markets are right, 2022 will indeed witness the sharpest tightening of monetary policy since the 1980s.

Is True Democracy Broken?

Changing the voting system isn’t sexy. The campaign behind it could NEVER have the same money that Brexit’s “Take Back Control” had. The irony is… that’s the only way the people of Britain would ever actually take control.

In all but 3 elections since World War II, the majority of voters chose Labour, Lib Dems, SNP and the Greens, yet the Tories have been in power for two-thirds of that time.?

The interests of the majority of the UK haven’t been properly represented for most of the last 70 years.

It’s no surprise the UK still had so much #inequality - the pandemic helped expose it further. Some of the best A Level grades went to rich schools, depriving the north of furlough support, until London needed it, seeking to let poor kids go hungry... these aren’t things the majority wanted.

That’s why proportional representation is so crucial to people’s lives, so that the needs of the whole country can be heard.?

We mustn’t let ourselves be silenced by those who don’t want us to talk about what MUST be talked about and dealt with.?

Even with the blow to UK civil liberties, when a 'deeply-authoritarian' Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was passed on April 26 2021 by the UK House of Lords after a series of votes won by the government which meant large fines and prison sentences for what most of us would consider “peaceful protests”?

I think this political system remains broken.?

#democracy

(All above stats, unless otherwise mentioned, are from the Office for National Statistics)