Junior doctors strike ballot exposes reality of human cost behind Tory laissez-faire

Junior Doctors at Castlefields Arena in October, taking part in the People's Assembly Take Back Manchester protest march that was held in parallel with the Conservative Party Conference.

Last week ended with news that ballots had been sent out a for vote on whether doctors should go on strike (The Guardian, 2015). The decision follows the latest developments in the dispute between junior doctors and Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (The Economist, 2015).

With Prime Minister's Questions as a back drop, Hunt attempted to see off possible strike action with an offer of higher pay to junior doctors (Campbell, 2015). Yet his offer of an 11% rise was heavily criticised for being massively offset by the redefining of working hours to run longer into the evening - cutting what could previously be defined as out-of-hours pay during anti-social hours.

A vote for industrial action will surely reignite the tense clashes between government and unionised public servants that have been so much a feature of the Cameron ministries. As with the tube strikes, fears over long shifts worked during anti-social hours have led to stand offs and tense meetings between public sector union leaders and Conservative government ministers (BBC, 2015; Cooper, 2015).

For the Conservatives, their response has been consistent. They have refused point blank to see the human impact of political and economic decisions. The approach of the Right over the last five years has been to simply dismiss or condemn public servant strikes as "irresponsible" and inappropriate (BBC, 2011; Wardrop, 2011; Evening Standard, 2015).

Yet Conservative decisions are having profound affects upon the lives of many people, not least public servants. There have been public sector and private sector job losses, a more frightening prospect for many as unemployment support has also been cut and restricted, and invasive pressures have been put upon public servants.

From doctors to tube workers, to low pay workers, the balance between work and life is being drastically tipped by a lurching grasping attempt by the market to snatch up the personal time of citizens (Jeffries, 2014; The Guardian, 2015). Hours are running longer and later, more temporary and more insecure. Refusal runs the risk of dismissal in favour of someone who will accept the conditions.

On the Conservative part, there is a denial of responsibility. As Conservatives shift the duties and burdens onto the individual, they stand by their laissez-faire position that it is not the place of the state to 'interfere' with how markets are shaping people's lives.

Yet the Conservative use of the laissez-faire approach does not seem to reflect its liberal origins. The difference between laissez-faire in the hands of the Liberals of old and the Conservatives of today, is that the Liberals saw work as a means to personal self-improvement and liberation.

In pursuit of those aims, of ensuring that "individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly", Liberals moved away from laissez-faire - towards a more interventionist approach - when the realities of exploitation and poverty where exposed. The ideological and economic ground they abandoned has been occupied by the Conservatives.

In Conservative hands the high aims of laissez-faire look more like propaganda. The economy, as they're managing it, is hugely unequal. Their 'apparent' prosperity is built around the statistical distortion caused by the concentrated wealth of the 1% - through property and other assets holding inflated value - and through "competitiveness" - where investors and employers can be guaranteed cheap labour, from workers who live increasingly fragile and temporary lives filled with stress and anxiety.

This is laissez-faire within a strictly hierarchical, deeply unequal, conservatism organisation of society. A society where free time is treated as the privileged reward of success in a system based around wealth, assets and property. That system locks out the poor and the unfortunate, who have no chance of owning property at grossly inflated prices and for whom social progress requires some combination of debt, nepotism and extreme good fortune (Mason, 2015).

What the junior doctors are campaigning for affects all citizens. Safely run services and respect for the rights of citizens to lives outside of work. It isn't unreasonable to put alongside to those demands the right to some sort of security & consistency, and a guarantee against poverty, as demands on workers become greater and the safety nets to protect them become thinner.

The market may have competition but it is not fair, particularly in a society suffering from massive inequality. For a government to choose to stand by as people are stretched thin, used up & exploited, or cast recklessly adrift by market forces is for it to neglect its duty to social welfare. Whether they like it or not, Conservatives have to face to fact that the state has a duty to interfere and that it can do so for the common good.

Intervention doesn't have to mean state ownership. There are decentralised alternatives like co-operatives and a citizen's income that could empower workers and make them more secure. But what it does mean, is that a government has to be prepared to act and to look beyond the appearance of prosperity, as reflected in short term profits, to find better alternatives.

References

'Junior doctors ballot over strikes as pay offer branded 'fatally flawed''; in The Guardian; 5 November 2015.

'Physician, heal thyself: Jeremy Hunt’s battle with junior doctors exposes an awkward truth - Britons do not love the NHS'; in The Economist; 24 October 2015.

Denis Campbell's 'Jeremy Hunt offers junior doctors pay rise in bid to end dispute'; in The Guardian; 3 November 2015.

'Tube and train strikes: Commuters face travel disruption'; on the BBC; 9 July 2015.

Charlie Cooper's 'Junior doctors strike: Jeremy Hunt calls in senior medical leaders for talks as industrial action looms'; in The Independent; 6 November 2015.

'Public sector strike irresponsible, says Theresa May'; on the BBC; 30 November 2011.

Murray Wardrop's 'Public sector strike is 'damp squib', says David Cameron'; in The Telegraph; 30 November 2011.

'Evening Standard Comment: An unnecessary and irresponsible strike'; in the Evening Standard; 4 August 2015.

Stuart Jeffries' 'Work and leisure used to be separate. Now it's just 24/7 anxiety'; in The Guardian; 7 November 2014.

'The Guardian view on free time: too valuable not to share fairly'; in The Guardian; 19 July 2015.

'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928. [Buy Now]

Paul Mason's 'Labour's postwar chancellor makes Corbynomics look Thatcherite – what can he teach us?'; in The Guardian; 8 November 2015.