Time to Change

Abstract

Economic dislocation is a catalyst of social change. In the second half of the 1980s the fabric of British society may seem sound enough, but unemployment has been over a million for most of the last fifteen years, and over two million for the best part of a decade. Such prolonged, mass unemployment can be expected to disturb the foundations of society and to require some restructuring later.

’sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.’—John Ruskin (1867)

‘Misery generates hate: these sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings.’—Charlotte Brontë (1849)