To wonder if life was better under a Labour government?

[Wasloafbetter]

Or are people looking back with rose tinted specs?

I started teaching in the Blair years and I found it pretty awful, although how much of that was down to my own lack of experience and how much was down to government policies is hard to say.

I’m wondering if people are looking back nostalgically (have seen this on a thread this morning where apparently the 80s were a great time for freedom of expression with no pressure to conform, which don’t tally with my memories at all) or whether life was better then.

I’m 42, by the way - was 17 when Blair was made PM.

Also there was local authority support for everything in education. Children with statements had specialist teachers who visited every few weeks and created a bespoke plan. There were specialists who came to support with behaviour needs, emotional needs, specific leaning needs etc, speech and language. Most schools that I worked in had a dedicated teacher for EAL support. The current government introduced the phrase "Quality first teaching", basically a euphemism for we aren't going to fund any support and we're going to put the onus on teachers to manage everything, including areas they have no training or expertise in, then criticise them if they don't do it well enough.

The curriculum also wasn't as packed, especially at primary school, and was more enjoyable. My DSS was at primary school during the Labour years and my own DC are now. My DC just seem to have to cram things in when they are younger but I wouldn't say my eldest DC had mastered any more by the end of year 6 than my DSS.

That’s interesting x2 - I found the same in schools. I wouldn’t have known if there was more money or not because my classroom never saw any of it (no fucking flu in 2002 and still ongoing as we go into 2022! )

I'm neither a Labour nor a Conservative voter and certainly 1997 until about 2006 were much better. There was funding for education, care and hospitals and life felt more optimistic.

I'm talking about domestic life in the UK

Is this one of those threads that will go on and on until people say “no, life wasn’t better under a Labour government” ?

The few years that I worked under a labour NHS I have to say it was significantly better than the absolute shit show I have experienced since 2010

@bizboz

Public services were much better. I am the same age as you and am also a teacher. The level of support for pupils with SEND was incomparable to today. I had daily LSA support for any children who were working significantly behind. Children with a statement of SEN had a full time 1:1 rather than a few hours here and there as is often the case today. Children with additional needs have disproportionately born the brunt of lack of funding.

This maybe the case ,however I have a child at a special school ,his EHCP will continue untill he his 25 thanks to the Send reforms in 2014 ,my understanding was that prior to the reforms once a person reached 19 that was pretty much it regarding education.

@bizboz

Also there was local authority support for everything in education. Children with statements had specialist teachers who visited every few weeks and created a bespoke plan. There were specialists who came to support with behaviour needs, emotional needs, specific leaning needs etc, speech and language. Most schools that I worked in had a dedicated teacher for EAL support. The current government introduced the phrase "Quality first teaching", basically a euphemism for we aren't going to fund any support and we're going to put the onus on teachers to manage everything, including areas they have no training or expertise in, then criticise them if they don't do it well enough.

The curriculum also wasn't as packed, especially at primary school, and was more enjoyable. My DSS was at primary school during the Labour years and my own DC are now. My DC just seem to have to cram things in when they are younger but I wouldn't say my eldest DC had mastered any more by the end of year 6 than my DSS.

My gosh, really? I have four children with SEN in my class, two of which are very challenging. I get no support with their behaviour and just 'advice' from the SENCO. Would I have had a different experience back then? It honestly makes me want to stop teaching, it's all too much to manage on top of teaching the rest of the class.

I think life under Blair was different from earlier Labour governments, I voted for Blair the first time but not after Iraq.
All I remember of 60s and 70s labour is constant strikes and high unemployment.

Life is always better under labour, until the chickens come home to roost. The last labour government did structural damage to the country’s economy. Low skills, low wages subsidized by high taxation and benefits. Insane public spending with no thought for budget balancing. Illegal wars and helping create one of the largest refuge crises in history. Things like these take generations to correct.

@SoniaFouler

Is this one of those threads that will go on and on until people say “no, life wasn’t better under a Labour government” ?

I’ve no idea because I don’t know what individual peoples perceptions are and were. I know what mine is, which tallies with what X2 has said, but I was a teacher then, not a parent. So it might well have been that if I’d had children then my perspective would be different again.

We certainly didn’t have an EAL advisor, or specialist teachers who visited, when I was teaching 2002-2010. I don’t know if anything was in place before that.

We had LEA advisors for the subjects but they weren’t very good.

I don’t think it was good for me, Blair came into power when I was at secondary school, under his policy I feel like a lot of people went to uni when really they would of been more suited getting a job or some sort of training. I was one of these people. I then had to pay tuition fees.

The job I ended up with I could of done without going to uni and it was low paid and I had to pay a lot of tax.

Conservative came into power as I was going part time and starting a family. I then didn’t have to pay tax or national insurance so I was then better off under the conservatives.

@Nonnymum

Yes things were much better pre 2010.. The Labour Government 1997 to 2010 was far from perfect but it tried very hard to make up for the lack of investment during the Thatcher Years. Among other things. They introduced child tax credits and tax credits to support low income families, New deal to support people into work Every child matters which brought together support for children , including Sure Start centres,which offered childcare as well as support and education for parents Education maintenance allowance for low income kids 16+ which led to the greatest increase in 16-18 year olds in education in a generation. The youth service to fund youth centres Care to Learn to support teenage mother's to stay in education They rebuilt and repaired schools Introduced maximum 30 children in primary schools There are many other examples but these are the ones that come to mind because I worked in Education. The difference was despite the short comings of the Labour Government. They believed fundamentally in public services.

Absolutely this. School funding was much higher which helped the introduction of teaching assistants. Before that only the reception class had one. Teenage pregnancy strategy, National Healthy Schools Programme, School Drug Advisors in every local authority. In health waiting lists were drastically cut . New hospitals were built, we didn't get ONE built during the Tory /Thatcher years. Obviously not everything was rosy but public services were much better and I believe as a country we were less divided. Cameron and George Osborne did a great job at convincing the population that Labour had caused the global financial crisis. The first thing they did was cut all of the above.

This maybe the case ,however I have a child at a special school ,his EHCP will continue untill he his 25 thanks to the Send reforms in 2014 ,my understanding was that prior to the reforms once a person reached 19 that was pretty much it regarding education.
No at 18 or 19 they would have a Learning Difficulty Assessment that lasted up until the age of 25. The LDA would name the appropriate FE provision

Facilities for babies and toddlers were much better

Street Homelessness wasn’t quite at the appalling situation it’s in now

My dad was unemployed (redundant) under a Blair government and the support was shockingly bad. I think they’re much of a muchness.

Labour - lovely ideas they can’t afford or implement
Conservative - good at implementing stuff but often not too the benefit of those struggling

Although, we’ve been most financially comfortable under a conservative government I don’t think poor people were better off under Labour and their keenness to get everyone to university misunderstood the needs of the country.

I grew up in a very deprived area under Thatcher in the 80s. Life was horrific. My dad had an ok job in local gov but some weekends my mum (v strict budgeter, absolutely no frivolity whatsoever) ran out of food and we were pretty hungry until we got our family allowance on Monday. I still remember my first new outfit that wasn’t a handmedown or made of curtains. I was 11-years-old. Things were bleak.

I was at secondary school when Blair took power. The lives of me and my family were infinitely better. Our school had more money, those less better off were given more aspiration to be whatever they wanted to be, there was good public transport and, crucially for us, public sector pay increased so my dad could afford to give us a bit more money. Clothes and shoes became a lot cheaper too, which may not mean much to some but when you have fuck all, having shitty clothes can really affect your confidence and have a knock-on effect on your ambition. You learn to stand in the background.

I genuinely don’t think me and my siblings would have gone on to uni if there hadn’t been that aspiration for us from our teachers and the means to get there through my dad’s improved pay. My younger siblings went all the way through school with a Labour Gov and have done much better than ‘poor’ kids would have done in the 80s.

Look at the state of public transport, of town centres, infrastructure, health care now. How anyone can objectively think that this government is an improvement on anything at all is a mystery to me (although I guess they’re doing well for rich people. Great.)

The Labour governments of the 1970s were pretty disastrous.

And New Labour was all fur coat and no knickers.

There was more money for public services but my abiding memory is them constantly tinkering with things that didn’t need changing. All loads of his nanny state legislation. I remember constantly rolling my eyes at breakfast TV in the latest bit of pointless legislation that was going through.

Tax credits and the introduction of tax on dividends for pension funds have had far-reaching and unintended consequences for salaries and pensions. Gordon Brown has one hell of a lot to answer for

It was actually under John Major that the gap between the rich and poor last narrowed.

I wonder what it would have been like had John Smith not died and we had old labour rather than new labour.

I remember on Gordon Brown’s last day a little girl whose mum got up at 3am to clean the Houses of Parliament every day asking him why life was so hard :-(

It was far, far better under Labour. But they came in after a period of long Tory rule - so they had to make huge investments in public services. Hospitals were falling apart under the Tories, though less than they war now.

As a young person working extremely long hours on low pay, just the bringing in of the minimum wage made a huge difference to my income. For the first time, I could take part in society more. I didn't have children at the start, but benefitted briefly before the Coalition got in and slashed all the funding. We had so many baby groups which all disappeared overnight.

Under the Tories, I'd had to wait for a minor operation (that was causing me enormous pain while waiting so I was on painkillers throughout) for months and months. Labour made a huge difference in hospital waiting times - brought in minimum standards.

They introduced employment rights - paternity pay, etc.

The biggest lie is that the parties are all the same. They are not.
Labour was built out of the unions, which protected workers' rights, which brought in the NHS, which basically has protected or given us a better quality of life.

Conservatives do not care about normal people. They never have.
Saying that, this government is not strictly conservative. It's far, far to the right of tories. It's opportunistic, it really doesn't care and in fact makes decisions which shorten or worsen people's lives.

If you think they're the same, please read up on the history of both parties, and what they have both brought/done to the UK.
There is a huge, huge difference, and until people take a really active interest in that, this country will keep being destroyed.

I remember the feeling that there was a lot more money around. My friends and family who had always been on a low income suddenly became able to afford things like foreign holidays thanks to tax credits. I think tax credits were far too generous personally and the system was very flawed, but at least we didn’t need food banks.

My children were at school during that time, one of them has SN, and they were able to meet his needs without it being issue, even when input was needed from specialists from outside school. Now I work in a school and can see the huge difference between the support that was available then and the severe lack of it for children nowadays. I also preferred the system of levels that children were assessed with at school, it was much more efficient and easier to understand than it is now.

I didn't have my children untill 2006 and 2010,so didn't really take much notice of tax credits etc ,but was there not something available to low income families prior to tax credits ,I vaguely remember supplementary benefit ,family income support?

I think people remember the Blair years with nostalgia and forget even in the mid 2000s 1 in 3 children were in poverty. It upsets me that successive governments have failed to address child poverty.