They have a case when it comes to “levels of inequality that disfigure our society” cited by the Institute of Employment Rights at the launch of a consultation on a Charter of Workers’ Rights for Scotland at the Scottish Trades Union Congress in April.
This launch was followed hotly by the Institute for Fiscal Studies revealing Britain has higher levels of inequality than most other developed countries. Significantly, it identified the long-term decline in trade union membership as a factor in wages not increasing.
House prices and mortgages, often quoted as the burden that reduced workers’ willingness to strike, are now outwith the grasp of the same groups of younger people who could afford them in the past.
Equality Trust figures show that the share of income going to the top 10 per cent of the population fell by over a third from 1938 to 1979. Not spectacular, but contrast it with the huge rise in inequality in the subsequent Thatcher years.
You only have to look at the current Sunday Times rich list to see just how polarised that inequality has become. Wouldn’t it be good to publish a tax list to celebrate those paying most into the common good?
So, with all this evidence that my younger comrades (and offspring) are right, how do you respond and what can we do about it?
Well, I remind them that in 1977 we had one million trade union members in Scotland and now that has almost halved. While there have been welcome increases recently, the 1979 Britain-wide figure of 13 million members has also halved. Maybe the reduction in trade union membership and the increase in inequality is no coincidence.
Of course, it is more complex than just that. But not much. What did people see in 1977 that they don’t see now? Where did the confidence to stand together as a class go?
Some of it is the long-term drip feed of the mass media telling us that it’s bad to be interested in politics. That suits the oligarchy and works against any real progressive change. It also, sadly, leads to the populist demagoguery that plagues our politics today.
When I hear people saying: “What’s the point in voting? Politicians are all the same,” I try to point out the fundamental differences between policies which have become even more different in recent years.
And when I hear the old adage that socialism is a “great idea but could never work in practice”, I ask if they mean policies like regulating the financial sector, breaking up private monopolies, cutting inequality through progressive taxation, and building trade union rights?
I rejoice in revealing these were the policies employed in the US after the Great Depression to successfully build the economy and shift at least some of the balance of power to working people.
I remind them of the vision of the post-war Labour government that brought the NHS, a decent welfare state, huge housing programmes and industries owned by us rather than fleecing us to line the pockets of the super-rich. All at a time when the economy was under more stress than now.
So why can’t we do all that again?
In Scotland, we have levers at our disposal to at least mitigate the worst effects of inequality. We have legislative powers, investment powers and redistributive tax powers. We have the power to manage some benefits more fairly and humanely. But having got all those powers, supported by the trade unions, the SNP government doesn’t seem enthusiastic about using them radically.
Just as Brexit dominates the political debate in the rest of Britain, Scotland is in the grip of debates about leaving Britain but staying in Europe (or vice versa) which may seem to some like a political cognitive dissonance.
I am not suggesting these are not important debates. However, the polarisation drowns out the fundamental problems faced by our societies. A failure to address inequality will remain a failure no matter what transpires. The need for governments that will radically address inequality is the debate that should underpin all the rest.
Having just come away from UNISON Scotland learning events, I can testify that unions have a key role in promoting and facilitating that debate. They have a key role in educating and informing, taking that into the workplaces and getting people thinking about how political decisions dictate their daily lives — and what they can do about that.
I have no doubt that the Glasgow Equal Pay strikers and the Dundee home carers will have been politicised by their great campaigns, and experience suggests that some will take that forward into the wider political context having realised how easy it could be to tackle inequality if there is a political will.
So maybe it isn’t more complex than there being a link between the strength of trade union membership and the reduction of inequality.
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