Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care

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Similarly, behind the grand theatre of Westminster, there are political centres that can feel dreary and mundane, like the constituency office. Even Theresa May has a small office like this one, somewhere in Maidenhead. These places are nothing like the corridors of power. So it’s refreshing to watch a play about politics that is not set in the Westminster village.

Also, I can’t bear to see yet another depiction of that Labour period – after the transformations of the 1980s – that says nothing about the change in women’s lives. Once again, I had to sit there watching as the only women depicted are the MP’s wife, or the woman who works for him. Actually, a huge part of New Labour getting into power was because women changed their votes. Once again, this was looked at through traditional male eyes and I’ve lost patience with that. In Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care, Madeleine Bunting is revealed as an astute observer of the often invisible world of care and its attendant imprecisions, deficits and exploitations. The book draws on Bunting’s personal experience of care – mainly as a giver, it seems – but also rests on accounts of care given and received in a variety of settings by professionals and others. Midwives, district nurses, ward sisters, GPs and chaplains, together with those caring for relatives, are all given a voice. Stories of discrete sacrifices and kindnesses appear throughout the book. The main chapters of the book are separated by rich etymological investigations into words we use freely but which are morally and sociologically conflicted: care, empathy, kindness, compassion, pity, dependence, suffering.Contained within the book is a critique of feminism. Bunting argues that ‘Women’s Liberation’ defined itself against care. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) appeared just as the servant class disappeared. As middle-class women were called upon to fill the gap, they demanded work outside the home. Women moved into the workforce, but men failed to assume an equal share of domestic tasks. Some feminists abandoned motherhood; socialists called for ‘wages for housework’. But women continue to care, and this is feminism’s blind spot, according to Bunting. We’re facing a crisis in care likely to affect every one of us over the course of our lives. Care-work is underpaid; its values disregarded. Britain’s society lauds economic growth, productivity and profit over compassion, kindness and empathy. For centuries the caring labours of women have been taken for granted, but with more women now in work, with increasing numbers of elderly and with austerity dismantling the welfare state, care is under pressure as never before. New Zealand album certifications – UB40 – Labour of Love". Recorded Music NZ . Retrieved 10 June 2019. The play is a love story between two individuals but also looks at each character’s relationship with the party. I fell out with Labour most recently when it took a very different position to me on Brexit – I felt like a stranger in my own party. Like any sort of marriage, there are ups and downs, moments when you can feel quite estranged. And to govern, you do need a broad church. All political parties are a coalition of interests, especially in a two-party system. During the good times, it all comes together, but during the tough times you can be at war among yourselves.

The wife was a two-dimensional character who was so unpleasant it was misogynistic. At the end, the male MP gives his female agent papers to be the candidate and says she can step forward. But the way women have become MPs in Labour over the years is by struggling for it. They haven’t been gifted it by men who fancy them. David Lyons, Martin Freeman’s character, is parachuted into a safe seat in 1990, his old Nottinghamshire patch. I’ve only been in office for a year – I succeeded Jo Cox as MP for Batley and Spen, an area I’ve known my whole life. I’ve got no idea how anybody could represent a place they either didn’t grow up in or don’t know very well. These essential, existential questions are at the heart of Labours of Love. Madeleine Bunting’s book could easily have become either a furious polemic or a vale of tears. It is neither, though it is angry and very moving. She meant it as a warning in the face of “a crisis of unprecedented proportions” in the provision of health and social care across the UK. With the advent of the coronavirus, its eloquent plea for change has become even more urgent.

The play was sophisticated enough to recognise that it is not the case that there is one group of people in the Labour party who have principles and one group who want power. It showed that every Labour person has a bit of both. It was interesting that the leader of the council couldn’t do anything without Labour being in government because the council was being starved of funds – and of course we’re seeing that happen again. After filming ended, Katzmann dated the winner, Kyle Klinger, for a few months, but the couple broke up and Katzmann chose to pursue in vitro fertilization on her own. [5] Bunting argues that ‘care is the feminist issue’ (3) because its burdens fall unevenly on (some) women. She identifies the particular fate of the middle-aged woman still caring for her children and, at the same time, for elderly relatives. Care, traditionally, was the work of women because ‘caring is engrained in the definition of what it is to be a woman, a wife, a mother, sister and daughter’ (16).

Politics is based on relationships. They’re behind the theory, policy and ambition. We hear a lot about spin doctors, special advisers and mandarins, but at the centre of Labour of Love there is an MP and his agent. That partnership is central to our political system. Women’s work in the care economy is governed, according to Bunting, not by Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ but by the ‘invisible heart’. Historically, at least, the vast care economy was confined to the home and overlooked and unmeasured by economics, despite its centrality to the reproduction of capitalist enterprise. Today, the ‘care sector’ is a fast-growing part of the economy and increasingly in the hands of the private sector: ‘Care has become a thing, subject to consumers’ desires, and available as part of a monetary transaction’ (25). Care is for sale. It is a business opportunity. Consumerism rules. A nurse tells Bunting this breeds a ‘culture of entitlement’. There’s some beautiful broad humour in Labour of Love, and a moving Much Ado-style relationship, but the play is really a celebration of the party’s achievements – from SureStart centres to peace in Northern Ireland. People forget that what we achieved in power was extraordinary.

Tracklist

Short sections between chapters on the history of individual keywords – care, empathy, kindness, compassion, pity, dependence, suffering – offer food for thought. As Labours of Love progresses, we learn to listen. Bunting draws on an impressive range of quotation and argument, from Rilke to Paula Rego; from Walt Whitman (who worked in the crowded military hospitals during the American civil war) to Martha Nussbaum and feminist philosophers of care. Young, Graham (3 February 2016). "See UB40 stars return to the Red Red Wine Eagle & Tun pub". Birmingham Mail . Retrieved 12 October 2017. What is equally striking is Graham’s fair-mindedness. He gives David every chance to restate Labour’s achievements under Blair, while admitting the excess caution of the first term: he also shows Jean, married to the seat’s previous working-class member, asserting traditional Labour values with Corbynesque fervour. Between the marketplace and rigid bureaucracy, where is the space for new models of care? Bunting notes that William Beveridge, original architect of the British welfare state, envisioned a role for ‘friendly societies’ – non-governmental providers – for the provision of healthcare. But this was a road not taken. Instead, a highly centralised national health service prevailed, which adopted a medicalised approach to care, valuing technical expertise over human values. Where this approach has resulted in poor care, such as in the notorious case of Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, health managers respond with programmes and associated performance indicators to promote compassion, as if this can be legislated and quantified.