for most of my working life i was a social worker,or in broadly social work related activity.
i always knew that it was at best"tinkering at the edge"of social change or providing"sticking plasters"over individual and family experience of social problems or private distress,but at least i worked in "the welfare state"or in related activity that sought to improve that"state" and condition.i felt that whilst it was nearly always the case that THIS person,over THAT person got some attention,and perhaps their needs met,that it was better than nothing and that i could not stand by and"wait for the revolution"that i still work and yearn for.
always i hope circumspect about it,and not boastful-aware that many people experience social work negatively,i nevertheless took some modest pride in"getting my hands dirty"in the mess of not just human misery but in the contradictions of seeking to give that help in acontext in which the primary directives of the economic,political and social system are directed elsewhere.if nothing else i hope iwas the human and humane face of "the system",who if nothing else could explain and tell the truth,and who would stand with those people even if i could not help them change very much of anything.i could also help point out to others that there is mostly a very thin line between the life experience of someone in trouble or distress,and"us",the rest of us,and that some of what the rest of "us"do,provides "us"with some illusory distancing that is NOT the reality.
it was not just a matter of my christian duty,and my social responsibility as a revolutionary socialist,but that i seemed to be living out my destiny.there is little if anything that is extraordinary or unusual abot me.i don't think im special or talented-but that if i had to work,i wanted to do something that migt have some meaning,some value and most of all might make a difference,however small to someone.at one point the choice seemed to be to train to be a social worker or to be a priest,and i guess in the end i chose or felt"called"to act,to do.....
that"career"is now over,having been medically retired for something just over a year,following about a year earlier of being long term sick.i hope i continue to"act"and to do in the world.perhaps now less able than before i can reflect and turn experience into some kind of value.
but i do notice more some negatives.one of course is the burgeoning austerity,crisis and cuts.without meaning to sound like i am feeling sorry for myself-i cannot help sometimes,indeed increasingly frequently finding myself thinking"i was not a social worker,for 40+years to see this.....happenning!".yet it confirms my thought,to reverse a common probation saying,that i am now a"gamekeeper turned poacher"-not that i have turned to criminality,but that i now challenge more openly and fully the ideaological hegemony of the state and the law,which"it"thinks it has,and demanding that we live by a different,better set of values that is genuine,as well as being genuinely even handed.i want to see law replaced by lore and then better still by love,for to quote a cathar/gnostic saying"a society that does not have love,has law".
today i heard one more detail that makes things a little bleaker and sharper,but still not insurmountable by any means.senior management in a certain probation trust(they used to be called services)has banned tarde union posters from the walls,concerned about the negative impresion this might give the ministry of justice,and despite claims that this same management supported the robust campaign to defend probation as a public service.the union is now advising its members to represent themselves as trade union members rather than as employees of that trust.at the same time it will consider what part it now plays in promoting the new projects of that trust to the public and others.at one level this is"small beer"but at another it is significant,especially amongst a staff group who are so committed to notions of public service and others welfare,which is not reucible to a simplistic notion of"false consciousness"-socialism after all starts with the word social.i would add that whilst it is freezing cold outside as i write,it is also"heating up"out there.whilst not perhaps traditionally the toughest or bluntest of trades unions,it is to this(my)unions credit that in every battle over the last 3 years,to my knowledge over jobs,it has won,at least in retaining posts.the employer and the state is however unrelenting in its efforts to dismantle public service,which makes this a war of attrition in which to couner the tricks and lies of the employer it will eventually need to become more inventive,more militant,more colectively conscious in away that goes beyond the obvious and not somobvious limits of professionalism and trades union consciousness.
but i admit some of my humble pride is now replaced with alienation and rage,as i watch and rage and act as the safety net is dismantled not just of its material resources but of its humanistic values.there used i feel to be an acceptance that we all need a "safety net".now we are back to dscussion about whether recipients of anything are worthy,or deserving.indeed it is worse than than because it is apparent that those judegments now mean that virtually no-one is deserving,we are all stereotyped and cast out,guilty of nothing more than being the persons behind the labour that make virtually everything in our societies,and transform nearly everything else in our environments through our various activities(our understanding of our world transforms it from its pristine state.
i have also realised sinec my retirement that whist i had some inkling,i did not fully appreciate quite how transformed and oppressive to myself and others the work i did had become.i do not mean that it is a"lost cause"though we may be approaching that state more closely,but that it has certainly become harder.i have to hope and to work for new generations of younger workers to continue to carry the torch for human need,at least in this aspect,whilst recognising that after 40 years,in which the last few had become more banalised and driven by other values,ncreasingly alien to and in contradiction to my own,were bound to take their toll.
in my case,apart from physical ill health i developed chronic clinical depression.whilst i was never in the"anti-psychiatry"school of approach to mental illness,one of its powerful insights is that "madness"can be the only rational response to an increasingly irrational context-even where that "state"claims itself to be rational.those anti-psychiatrists pointed out that the number of soldiers and pilots "going mad"during the vietnam war was more a reflection on the society,which could be seen as mad,than on those people who became mad.whilst this is a beautiful insight,it is for me inadequate as theory,better explained by"mental illness IS illness",but to stick with the point-it seems to me that the insight still has validity in itself,and that in a culture which has moved from some kind of centreing on human need to performance targets etc. which place the public image of the agency itself and its functionality centre stage,then madness should not in its various forms be a surprising outcome.and i have,over recent years heard another insight that i believe also has great value.the insight that"depression is anger turned inwards"makes sense to me-that i now think over recent years as i personally felt more pinned down and constrained in what i could either think or do,then there was i think a senses in which my rage that"something is seriously wrong"leaked into myself,assisted i believe by the way in which employment/labour now is increasingly managed,particularly in more people than product centred activities,and in which those"human resources"are increasingly problematised in efforts to reduce us,human beings to machine parts and units of labour.
the hope is and remains,even in difficult times that we human beings also remain animate and self conscious.despiet teh pressures on us that alienate,individuate,atomise and isolate we are social beings created and confirmed by each other.we can share our reflections and collectively from the diversity of our experience and who we are put together a view and understanding of the world that enable s us to change it.for after all although apologists for the current order present it as immutable,unchallengeable and unchangeable it is indeed subject to change.just as it was built like this,whilst it might have logic,and laws of its own,once made y human beings can be changed by human beingsusing effort,will and understanding.what we next make will of course not be made in circumstances of our choice but those in which we find ourselves.this places limits on our ability to"blueprint"although our ability to create,plan and imagine are powerful tools.whilst what we get might not be perfect,it can hardly be worse than things as they are for most people most of the time,amongst the 7 billion of us.there is no guarantee of success but we can try to ensure that what we do in our efforts to build something has value in itself.so that if we stumble and fall,we have learned a valued shared experience for the next time.
i hope we will try to build a society,a world we we share and which we make through our colective self activity.that does not just make the future important it makes everything we do together in getting there,or trying to get there rich with meaning,significance and potential!
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