‘The Fifth Estate’ by Robert Taylor. Published in 1978. Recovered from a Tesco book exchange in Sowerby Bridge. Rating: Radula
There is something oddly pornographic about reading late-1970s economic treatises in 2020. In this lusty little tome, Taylor expresses a vision for Britain as an “industrial democracy”. This vision – which, in the time of Brexit, Johnson, blah blah blah, etc., seems almost like the Kingdom of Heaven – is helped rather than hindered by the statistics. Taylor’s juicy oeuvre was published when the proportion of the unionised workforce had increased from 44% to 52%. Not only this, the amount of people in the National Union of Bank Employees increased by 78%. ‘Union penetration’ in sectors like banking and administration was increasing sharply. Despite Taylor knowing full well that unions had often been used as a ‘scapegoat’, he was still somewhat optimistic that unions could continue to decentralise and to collective bargain.
Only 11.6% of people aged 20-24 are in a union. In the drug-haze of modern capitalism – which has penetrated us more deeply than any union ever could – perhaps our own relief is to be found in a wildly different set of economic assumptions. It is a matter of psychology. ‘The Fifth Estate’ is filled with union leaders of the past and curious snippets of their personal histories. These include Moss Evans, former Secretary of the now-defunct TGWU, who would drink three pints of real ale on a Sunday morning and who had not had a full cup of tea until far late into his adulthood. Let us devour these strange histories, as well as Taylor’s treatment of the TUC in almost-Gothic terms as a “mighty influence in the land”, now that unions have been mass (herd?) scape-goated to Oblivion.
Squidditas 