Revaluing Labour: Reflections on the St Helens Workers' Memorial
I would like to write in praise of The Workers Memorial here in St Helens and, in the process, pay tribute to the men and women whose past efforts, too little recognised and too often rewarded by ill-health and early graves, have earned us a degree of affluence and freedom, giving us a scope to direct our futures in healthier and happier ways that they did not have. I wish to underscore the values of labourism in the process. I write this article as a tribute to all those working class men and women whose lives were impaired or cut short because of hard, backbreaking labour. I wish also to pay tribute to the skill and effort of workers of all kinds. As I write, I shall be thinking of my father and both grandfathers, all of whom were to suffer chronic lung conditions grace of their years of working in building and coal mining. Work is to be valued and revalued. Work is worthy, it can also be bad for the health. But there are values here that are healthy and which are well worth revaluing, recovering, and nurturing at the heart of a vital and functioning society.
Labourism is often denigrated or dismissed as a labour metaphysic that privileges working class voices over other voices. I challenge that view in a couple of related posts and shall provide links at the bottom for those who wish to read further. Suffice to state simply at this point that there is a health and vitality in a productive orientation to the world, and that labour and production need to be re-established at the heart of a viable social order.
My thoughts here were provoked by the raising of the Workers' Memorial here in my home town of St Helens. I fully support the Memorial and will write my little tribute below. I wish, however, to set some context so as to establish why paying tribute to working people in past and revaluing work in the present is important. As a little exercise, I decided to go through a copy of the local newspaper, The St Helens Star. It doesn’t make for good reading. Newspapers know sex and violence sell. This is our equivalent of a soap opera. Is it endemic? Are there more incidents than there used to be? Or just greater, and more sensationalist, coverage? My brother works as a journalist at the paper, so I asked him a few questions. He simply said 'it is worse next week.'
Society is in trouble. I did write a fairly extensive and very hard-hitting piece on the more depressing features of modern society, before coming to a hopeful story at the end. I was depressed reading the horror stories, and other people would be too. They are debilitating, sap the spirit, and foster the view that things really are hopeless. They are not. Nostalgia is false, it traps us in the present and denies us a future through an idealised image of a past that never was. The past was not that good, just as the present is never that bad. This article is about a memorial to workers who were unsung, unrewarded, and who went to early graves by way of ill-health, accident, or injury. The past we now celebrate was not too good to them. But we do have the example of their good qualities to do better ourselves, and we will do better when we ally these qualities with our own good qualities in the present.
My concern in this tribute is to remind people of the qualities we need foster in order to turn a society that is very ill-at-ease with itself around. There is a dis-ease and a disorder in this society. But rather than provide a long list of criminal activities, encouraging attitudes of outrage, revenge and retribution in response, I have decided to focus on the good story and set an example by leading with the best of humanity, not the worst.
The first thing that struck me in the local paper was a vicious assault that took place in broad daylight in Vera Page Park. In 2015 I was part of the “Your Name Here” citizen project. The good people of St Helens were granted the opportunity to nominate someone whom they felt was deserving of the honour of having a park in St Helens named after them. I was cheered to have been among the qualifying nominations. I was hailed as the 'Socrates of St Helens,' no less! (And we all know what the locals did to him! Philosophers can tend to be unpopular. But here I still am). Indeed, I was honoured to have been placed alongside such local luminaries as world racing bike champion Geoff Duke, the formidable Sister Duffy from Providence Hospital, whom everyone feared/respected/loved, and the artist Graham Smith, the egg and sausage man, who lived down the road from my home, a local eccentric who was known to give away his paintings in return for a kiss. (I never had one of his paintings. Then again, I never gave him a kiss, either). Good company, I would say. There were forgotten figures, too. Looking back now I wish that I had taken the opportunity to nominate Herbert Mundin, a man who was born at the top of the road where I live in the late nineteenth century, and who went on to star in Hollywood films alongside Errol Flynn and Clark Gable. He was Much the Miller’s son in one of my all-time favourite films, The Adventures of Robin Hood. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor, the romantics say. In which case times really have changed. The wretches I read about preying on the local community steal from the poor and leave the rich untouched. As indeed do our governments, it seems. It's easier than socialism and social transformation. We are ruled by the imperatives of an economic system that is nothing less than an organised and deliberate exploitation and parasitism. As for the government policies of ‘trickle down,’ the only thing that has trickled down is ruling class immorality. If we are intent on waging any war on crime, I’d recommend that we start at the very top before coming to the low-life, because that is where the corruption starts.
But back to the healthy and the uplifting.
Here are the details of the Your Name Here project, when I very nearly had a park named in my honour.
I had a lot of plans for the park. In particular, I thought of something showcasing St Helens’ industrial heritage, as well as something pointing to the future, with a view to integrating industry into nature. The park is a former industrial site, so this would have been most appropriate, keying into local history and the things that made St Helens what it is (a struggling deindustrialised town, I know, but with superb walking country and good connections to Liverpool and Manchester, and bags of potential).
Following up the regenerative ideas I had for the park, I’d like to quote from something I wrote when engaged in doctoral research in Manchester. Manchester is a city I know and love. Its past is also my past as a northerner, and it was also my present. I wrote a book called Recovering the Meta-Narrative of the Good City: Manchester as a Post-Industrial City: Life In A Northern Town, 2003
Critchley, P. 2003., Recovering the Meta-Narrative of the Good City: Manchester as a Post-Industrial City [e-book] Available through: Academia website <http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley/Books
The themes of that book are pertinent here:
In Coal, Capital and Culture, an analysis of changing conditions in former mining areas, Warwick and Littlejohn define a concept of ‘local cultural capital’ in terms of the strength that the community draws from social networks ‘based in kinship, friendship and neighbourliness in household and community settings’. These networks held the community together in a ‘period of change’ which saw the destruction of the local economy. They were the social cement and moral backbone of towns and villages across the land (Turner 2000:2).
Conceived on the basis of local cultural capital, pertaining to the behavioural norms specific to a local community, social capital is a solidaristic notion indicating the collective resources that a community generates through developing its capacities for self-organisation and self-activity in order to compensate for the lack of material power and resources. Whilst urban degeneration is expressed most obviously in the deterioration of the physical environment, this is merely the external manifestation of a moral, spiritual and cultural degeneration within the community. It follows from this that strategies which concentrate upon the regeneration of the physical environment only have merely one aspect of the problem in view. It may be possible, with sufficient time and with sufficient resources, to regenerate urban areas. But regenerating the spirit of community takes much longer and requires the active and continuous participation of the community members themselves (Turner 2000: 280).
Margaret Thatcher’s dream of fostering an ‘enterprise culture’ was never going to be easily embedded in the communities of the old industrial towns and cities of the North of England. These towns and cities upheld solidaristic conceptions of community and class. The members of these towns and cities constitute a counter-public. Excluded from the centres of power, they tend to develop ‘a sense of solidarity and reciprocity rooted in the experience of marginalisation or expropriation’ (Hansen 1993:xxxvi).
The conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke made the ‘little platoons’ the bedrock of the social order, the intermediary associations which gave individuals a meaningful identity and role between everyday society and the state. It was these centres of solidaristic strength that the neo-liberal agenda deliberately targeted in an attempt to atomise society into nothing more than individuals to be flogged on the market. The neo-liberal agenda played fast and loose with civil ties, undermined the functional constants of the social order. By identifying all forms of common purpose and practice as ‘socialism’, the neo-liberal agenda uprooted the old certainties and constants of conservatism. The solidarity that is embedded in the communities of the North of England is not easily penetrated by the values of an enterprise culture and may, indeed, be highly resistant. Similarly, the imperatives of an enterprise ‘culture’ have proved to be highly destructive of precious cultural resources which have taken generations to nurture and which cannot be easily replaced. Quantitative economics can destroy the spirit of a community, but it cannot create it.
I don't think I am guilty of a nostalgic labourism here. To value and commemorate the men and women who engaged in hard work of a kind that damages the health and shortens life-spans is not the same thing as romanticising such work. It is a recognition and a tribute, and a call to the present to learn to do better as it pays its respects. And I do think that doing better means not turning away from work and denigrating labour, but revaluing the work ethic as a loving and skilful engagement with the world. I would be inclined to agree with critics who accuse me of romanticising here had I not seen my father at work on the building sites, laying bricks with care and attention. It was hard graft, working in all weathers. But working with him brought some of the most rewarding moments and warmest memories of my life. I do think that there has been a denigration of working class culture and experience, and especially of manual labour and physical skill, and a concomitant devaluation of labourism in politics, that conforms to a shift from a producer to a consumer ethic. And I don't think it is healthy for society. At risk of being accused of nostalgia, let me quote Eric Hobsbawm:
'When the last men who have driven and cared for steam locomotives retire - it will not be long now — and when engine-drivers will be little different from tram-drivers, and sometimes quite superfluous, what will happen? What will our society be like without that large body of men who, in one way or another, had a sense of the dignity and self-respect of difficult, good, and socially useful manual work, which is also a sense of a society not governed by market-pricing and money: a society other than ours and potentially better? What will a country be like without the road to self-respect which skill with hand, eye and brain provide for men - and, one might add, women — who happen not to be good at passing examinations?'
E. J. Hobsbawm, Worlds of Labour, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984, pp. 271-2
I am a writer and educator, a builder with words and ideas, but my origins are building with bricks. I am proud of the time I spent working with my dad on the building sites. I wasn't particularly skilled at the job, but I can certainly vouch for Hobsbawm's recognition of the dignity and self-respect of difficult, good, and socially useful manual work. In that work, it is possible to discern the potential for a society beyond market-pricing and monetary considerations, a truly social society of co-operative labour and one that is better than ours. I know that potential, because I have lived it. My dad never cut-corners, never stinted, and took pride in his work. I swear I am not romanticising, I saw him become absorbed in his world of bricks. I have further reason to remember having been on the end of frequent tongue-lashings from my mother, complaining about her slaving over ruined teas as she awaited our return. Good work comes in many forms, all of which needs to be appreciated.
My dad loved to build, to create, and to leave a little monument to his skill and endeavour. Or big. He worked on Fiddlers Ferry. In fact, he swears that it was the Fiddlers Ferry job that brought about the chronic lung condition that ails him now. He has been living with emphysema and myriad other health problems since 2000. I have been looking after my dad since 2006. He continues to get out and about. I have set him up with an account to shop online, but he insists on shopping in person. The basic tasks leave him breathless. When he returns he collapses in the nearest chair for five minutes. He knows, however, that he has to keep moving, keep making the effort. Never once have I heard him complain. I'll complain for him - he worked hard all his life and now has to work harder still in his retirement. He deserves better. The workers of the world deserve better.
I have seen such views dismissed on account of their expressing a slavish mentality. I am decidedly not making a virtue of all work and I am decidedly not arguing for workers to put their noses to the grindstone without complaint. The very opposite. There is no virtue in work as such, only in virtuous work. There is, however, virtue in necessary labour, not all of which is glamourous and well-paid, and most usually isn't. Not all of that work can be automated. Here's tribute to the working class men and women who do it.
And on that theme, I shall return to Vera Page Park.
A stunning statue that pays tribute to the town’s workers who lost their lives through the decades "will make future generations aware of our proud and industrial heritage", a ceremony was told.
Now this is very much the kind of thing I had in mind should I have won the nomination for the local park.
The 1.8m structure depicting an industrial worker holding a child was officially revealed at Vera Page Park, near to the Steve Prescott Bridge, at a ceremony. Having a statue as a memorial was the idea of the St Helens Workers’ Memorial charity. It is situated at the former Lyons Yard, which is an area of regenerated former industrial land that was the centre of a range of heavy industries. The structure is constructed from donated tools and was created by Dorset-based Slovakian artist and blacksmith Martin Gilbavy.
The words of John Riley at the unveiling are worth quoting, and pondering, at length:
“Social support can reduce the effect of such a loss and having a public memorial shows such support to affected families.
“This monument is about inclusion, it’s to the forgotten, the unsung, those people who have lost their lives because of their job. Those by their toil have made our lives better.”
“Many of the tools are generated from this area, some just from father to son, tradesman to apprentice giving the statue its industrial pedigree.”
“This is a public memorial, this is your memorial. The statue forms part of an international network, it puts St Helens on the global map.
“It demonstrates a forward looking community that takes pride in its industrial heritage and looking positively to the future.
“The creation of a new cultural icon will help create civic pride in the town and help us to respect and understand people of a different era and how their contributions over a hundred years gave us our lives as we know them now.
“The memorial will make future generations aware of our proud and industrial heritage and the dangers in the workplace and the need for safety.
“We will provide education and help us learn from our mistakes and not to repeat them.
“We are where we are today because of yesterday.”
This memorial brings back to life certain things that modern society stands in danger of losing. It evokes social support and solidarity and it looks to resolidify society around practices and character traits forged in hard work, responsibility, and the regard and care of others. It celebrates the extraordinary capacities of supposedly ‘ordinary’ people. It recognises the contributions of the forgotten and the overlooked, the people whose activities were unsung but without which there would have been no society worthy of the name – it celebrates people who saw themselves as just doing their job, and thought nothing of further recognition, reward, and fame. They thought nothing of being ‘liked’ and being ‘popular,' things that have been inflated out of all sense of proportion in this age of convulsive self-importance. Many lost their lives or had their lives impaired or curtailed because of the jobs they did. I lost both my grandfathers at an early age to industrial disease, one a coal miner, the other a bricklayer. My father now has a chronic lung condition, grace of breathing in the rubbish in old houses he was renovating, knocking down, and rebuilding. These are the true heroes of society, the people whose hard labour day in day out made the lives of those who followed better. There are others, too (both my grannies and my mother shouldered a whole lot of work and responsibility - work comes in many forms).
Many of the tools that have gone into the making of this structure have been made in this area, passed on from father to son, tradesman to apprentice, to give the statue its industrial pedigree. This is a public memorial, a memorial to all that has made the people of St Helens good and resilient, all those qualities that those succumbing to the corruptions of a selfish, individualistic, idiotic (privatistic) ‘culture’ lack. The memorial is not simply a remembrance of times and people past, a recognition of those things that are irrevocable, but is something that looks forward to a future we earn for ourselves by way of reclaiming the virtues of work and community in a new setting, reconfiguring that proud industrial heritage for the new world we need, a world we shall shape by our own skill and imagination.
With respect to the park, my idea was to link this heritage to the idea of a Green industrial revolution, creating an interest in renewables, seeking to recover our manufacturing and engineering skills as part of a local industrial strategy that is in tune with the Age of Ecology. With respect to philosophy, I also saw the idea of a Green Enlightenment as the soft culture counterpart to the hard culture of technology, industry, and engineering. I still think it is a super idea which inspires us hope for the future and encourages a proactive approach on the part of people towards their local place. The creation of a new cultural icon integrating the industrial technology of both past and future also serves to foster civic pride and identity, helping us to identify with and draw upon all those who have gone before us, those whose effort, skill, and hard work not only gave us, in material terms, what we have now, but who most of all gave in their lives examples for us to follow in our own lives. The memorial not only generates pride with respect to the past, it inspires effort on our part to recover that industrial heritage for a new age. That’s the challenge before us.
I like the accent on learning, and on improvement, and the sense of humanity as a familial pact between past, present, and future. Here’s your binding ethic causing people to act and make sacrifices in the present so that others may get the benefit in the future.
“We will provide education and help us learn from our mistakes and not to repeat them.
“We are where we are today because of yesterday.”
If things go well, then we will have a new industrialisation, one that is in tune with the patterns of nature, and in tune with human health and happiness at the same time.
The statue is a memorial to the work ethic, to social solidarity, and to community resilience. These can be reclaimed at any time and applied in new contexts to rebuild society anew. The town I born and bred in, like every strong and vibrant town, was built on qualities of grit and determination, hard graft and solidarity, skill and application, it had ambition and a work ethic to back it up, too (I live in a small terraced house, parallel roads the same, where I had two best friends from school – one became the youngest person to reach consultancy status, the other an optician – all three of us doctors, not privileged backgrounds, the local state comprehensive school, but aspirational and hard working). And, for emphasis … hard work. Like Bob Paisley, the old manager of my beloved Liverpool football club once said, all the talent in the world counts for nothing if there’s no sweat on your shirt. I like for people to sweat, because there’s no substitute for hard work. And I want to see this hard work rewarded by something more than poverty, ill-health, and an early grave. I want the end of a something for nothing society. I have heard rich people say that very thing in their determination to end the Welfare State. They have things the wrong way round. I want the hard workers to be rewarded, and the expropriators, exploiters, and parasites going without. Or encouraged to co-operate rather than free-ride.
We can do all of this again, only this time with proper reward and recognition. These are the character traits that any viable civilization needs to develop in its members. In St Helens, these were forged in mining, glass, rail and cable manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. Work was hard, often long, underpaid, and dangerous. I don’t underestimate that work often still is. I am certainly going to avoid the snare which pits older workers against newer workers, as though people have it easy now. That’s rot, usually spoken by the kind of people whose counterparts in the past loathed the older workers whose work ethic they extol now they are dead and safely buried. There was a reason why past workers were so ill-rewarded. I strongly affirm working class solidarity in the present, and also between all workers past, present and future. I come from a building background. It’s flipping hard graft, I can tell you, and my dad’s poor broken body survives to this day to tell the tale. I didn’t do too much and got out early. I went from the building sites to university. I had it easy in reading, writing, and research, right? Wrong. Sat in front of a computer hours a day for years has also earned me a chronic illness. I also had the misfortune to work in offices, on databases and phone systems, and my nervous system broke down. Work can be seriously bad for your health. Which makes the point that there is no virtue in hard work as such. Work has to be good work and not mere useless toil to make money for others; it has to be work that is good for body and soul. And we need to ensure that we produce goods that are truly good and services that truly serve. Any work ethic we value has to be one that is appropriate to some such end.
We can celebrate a memorial that remembers the sacrifices past workers made to their families and communities, having their lives cut short by disaster or accident, or by the effects of illness or chronic injury as a result of working down the mines or in manufacturing sites. I’ll certainly join in celebrating these grafters, not least because both my grandfathers are counted in their ranks. But if they made St Helens an industrial powerhouse, let’s remember that the workers were not truly rewarded in this expansion of power – they were brutally and ruthlessly exploited. Both my grandfathers had incomes and a standard of living far less than what we have today. When reclaiming these virtues from the past, we need to ensure that we reclaim them on the basis of social and environmental justice – ensuring just rewards, and ensuring that in mind, body and soul, people are at one with themselves, with their community, and with nature, including their own nature.
It is on those terms that I celebrate the unveiling of this special statue in Vera Page Park, St Helens, on International Workers’ Memorial Day. In remembrance, I sincerely hope people will come to revalue the virtues and character traits that made this town, and other towns, great, and seek to reclaim them so as to embrace the future with hope: there are chains still to be shed and a world still to win.
Links to posts which continue on this theme of labour, work, and production: