WORKERS WORKING

Photographs of hard labour

If an artist decides to join the ranks of other artists capitulating to the marketplace of the status quo, they too will only produce entertainments and decorations for the rich and their media corporations. In this way they serve the on-going disinformation for the meaningless pleasures of the mass, leading them away from reality. If artists in despair turn away from trying to communicate in an honest way to that mass audience and would rather enter the peace of their own dreams, they isolate themselves from any shared reality. In some ways they begin to become what politicians become: providers of unimportant, trivial ideas and stories.
inspired by Albert Camus

In the 1970’s I derived and photographed 11 books, all co-written with Sarah Cox.
Through her and her husband’s contacts via the Socialist Worker’s Party through to local trade union officials and often with shop stewards, we were able to secure entrance to 10 different industries.

It was through that work and those connections I encountered and drank and laughed with many working class people*. They were alive with curiosity: what was this young American, informed about the history of English trade unionism, doing in my village? They showed me kindness and offered help. I interviewed many people
who would begin by saying that they really didn’t have much to say and then, with my prodding, they would speak non-stop for 40 minutes. One of the questions that encouraged them to speak was “what are your dreams for your kids?”

The wonderful underling humour was that as I progressed north and further north
and told the people I was with each time, that “yes, next I am going north to say Bradford”, always they would say, “oouu, don’t wanna go there, not as friendly as us.”

Every journey further north took me to people who were even kinder, more concerned and wonderful hosts. This led me to understand that the south of England was dominated by the attitudes and manners of the middle classes, while the north was dominated by working class consciousness.

I witnessed some racism in the north but very little. There was a lot of casual sexism but concerns over gayness didn’t exist as an issue in their world. They were not angels, but they were good mates to each other and good neighbours. They took the young workers under their wings and showed them how to be a man amongst men: comradeship, charity, loyalty, taking care of their own, opposition as one against the foremen and managers. And the women were very strong and seemed to hold communities together.

Men and women were by necessity class conscious but not bitter. That would take the coal miner’s strike in 1984** to change things, as Thatcher, like Reagan, made the working class their enemy. One of Reagan’s first acts as president was to fire over 11,000 air traffic control strikers and ban them from ever holding a government job again. Cruelty. Both leaders seemed to have little care for the plight of their citizens.

I photographed work, exhaustion, boredom, lack of health and safety standards, illegal things workers were forced to do in order to maintain schedules, and a kind of acceptance of their plight and fate. It was inspiring to see such stoicism and stiff-lipped courage. I would not have wanted their life but I had a lot of admiration for their courage and dignity. Further, they understood that I understood and that I was a friend.

Now it is a different world. Down in the southwest of England there are few traditional working class centres. Thatcher and her neoliberal marauders offshored heavy industry, closed down the pits with the excuse that they could import Polish coal for several pence cheaper per tonne. This asinine excuse financially rationalised their evisceration of villages, towns, whole communities and the unions. What we can see from this perspective is that in the end they wanted to crush the working class.

Now there is a butt of that class, with a lack of class identity, disillusioned, underpaid, undereducated, forced by poverty to feed their family really poor quality ultra-processed foods, and blocked from the benefits of a wealthy society by their poverty and by their lack of education. Government after government, at the behest of their neoliberal masters, have impoverished most of the working class and much of the middle class, creating homelessness, drug addiction, violence, mental illness and increases in suicides. Worse than that is their extinguishing hope, particularly amongst young people, where there is little hope for hope.

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As a continuation of showing a few of my images, this week is a celebration or perhaps a commemoration of the traditional working class at work. It follows on from the direct portraits of last week and includes one image from the present day.

Head Nurse on Children’s Ward takes nurses to task over a potential mistake.

In a car factory stamping body parts a worker is forced to be dangerously close to the furnace without proper protection.

On a Sussex farm, a worker hoists and carries a sack of grain.

In a Camden Town, London sweat shop, a woman using a large steam press works quicky to iron a piece of clothing.

In a midlands pottery a man pushes the clay ‘cakes’ to be used for stamping teacups and saucers.

A building worker climbs onto a tractor amid the dust to destroy and clear away homes to vertically rehouse the then broken worker’s communities. It seemed that part of the plan was to ensure that the sense of community solidarity was broken. It worked.

Miners guiding the huge cutting blade to tear the coal out of the seam, with unprotected eyes get caught in the dust spray.

Outside of a car plant paint spray room an unprotected worker gasps for air while managers appear to find out why he is not working.

Middle class editors and working class pressmen/printers come to a frenzied last minute meeting to settle the front page of the newspaper.

In Bridport, the centre of net making, a worker stitches together various parts of a fishing net.

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NOTES

*I came from a father whose father had been a multimillionaire as part of the Jewish Mafia in Detroit and New Jersey/New York. When my grandfather died of a heart attack in Madison Square Garden, a consequence of seeing his best boxer killed in the ring, my father, his brother, sister and mother lost most of the money to the Mafia. So I was brought up by a very diminished man in a lower middle class environment. But because of my desire to live the life of an artist, I have become declassee’, meaning, in my case that I have not fallen into a lower class, but like so many educated people, I have turned my back on the values of the merchant class from which I come and feel myself bound to the masses of poor struggling impoverished humanity.    

** There is presently on the BBC iPlayer a series of 3 documentary episode which expose the vicious assault by the Thatcher government and police on the miner’s communities.

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A REQUEST TO MY READERS: I have just finished a novella called
AFTER THE DEBACLE, a Novella of Love and Rage

In the past one could send a manuscript to a publisher and gain access,
but these days one needs an introduction to an agent or an editor. If any
of my readers thinks enough of my writing to pass my request on, it would
be thanked with a print of your choice from my website. Robert