The British Council is defining institution within the global ELT industry. With a potential strike looming at the BC, we hear what it was like to work at the BC as well as an analysis of how the current state of the BC fits into a wider shift towards neo-liberal economics.
By a former British Council employee
Senior management at the British Council have long pushed the line that by replicating the business sector as much as possible they guarantee ‘value for the taxpayer’. This goes back to before Blairism but the language of ‘Third Way Social Democracy’ has become hegemonic throughout the organisation-the ‘common sense’ articulated around the globe. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Covid is the excuse if it is fire and rehire in the private sector or cutbacks in the state sector. Dominic Raab, when Foreign Secretary, dealt the BC a double whammy-very much in the spirit of the ‘Third Way’. There was no chance of a bail out to recoup losses suffered by, for example, BC teaching centres during the pandemic. These usually make a ‘surplus’ (BC speak for a profit) which is used to subsidise what the BC receives in Government grants. Dominic Raab was happy to go along with the ‘we are basically a business’ game and has given them a commercial loan. So, the organisation has managed to survive up till now. The terms of the loan are being kept secret! However, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce what some of them are about.
Charitable initiatives around culture and education and work with refugees are to be cut. Austerity has been demanded-the government is taking an IMF style approach to its own organisation This is somewhat ironic given the BC’s role in soft power and even hard power imperialism (we used to teach English to newly joined NATO troops at the BC Teaching Centre in Prague). I feel justified in using the chickens are coming home to roost cliché a second time.
It was teachers who first experienced the cold winds of the free market. Firstly, while I was working at the BC in Prague, ‘London contracts’ were abolished. We were no longer working ‘on her Majesty’s service’. Out went sterling supplements, accommodation allowances and two flights a year. More importantly, wages were cut to harmonise more closely with local labour costs-not with other local national cultural centres but with local language schools. This was the beginning of a process that has led tiresomely and predictably to an increasing reliance on zero-hour contracts, particularly in Europe.
Those that oversaw this and used Blairite jargon to justify it may well be kicking themselves now. Doing the bourgeoisie’s bidding doesn’t mean they’ll always have your back. Even in Europe I felt there was always a Raj ‘white mischief and decadence’ vibe to the organisation-grand pianos and hired for the night servants at social gatherings hosted by local senior management. Like my grandfather was forced to do in the RAF, they had to move every two to four years onto another posting. Material rewards, including private school fees paid for offspring were guaranteed for this commitment to ‘being globile’.
This section of BC staff are now being threatened with redundancy, local middle and senior management positions outsourced and local salaries being harmonised with local labour costs. Obviously, the Tories are always looking for ways to parasitize on the state. Privatisation can bring quick profits when operating in a moribund system marked by a declining rate of profit since the seventies. They did it on the deaths of thousands during the worst of the pandemic. But here they are undermining what one might assume to be an upper-middle layer of loyal cadre. The PCS response, however, demonstrates that things are not so simple.
Their General Secretary, Mark Serwotka, was part of the left leaning ‘awkward squad’ of new young trade union leaders that emerged in the early 2000s. The union also has a confident, well organised radical left presence. All this has influenced their current strategy of rejecting the government’s narrative. BC members have been a part of reaching this consensus-they have their own PCS branch and a dedicated full timer. It’s true that most members represented by this branch are employees and middle management based in the UK on relatively low wages. However, it seems very likely to me that some of those on considerably higher wages around the globe will have contributed to the 80% in favour of strike action in the recent consultative ballot.
Covid left the British Council with a drop in income of £10 million. Boris Johnson, in 2020, announced an increase in defense spending of £16 billion. It’s obvious that projects of benefit to local people in the Global South and beyond can be maintained. Also, the terms and conditions of London contracted staff can be maintained. The PCS are 100% right to reject the government narrative. We are talking something like the cost of one tank or one part of a fighter bomber. We can certainly go along with the logic of the PCS’s current slogan; ‘Hands Off the British Council!’ in the current context.
This might be contested, however, within the TEFL Workers’ Union given our consistent highlighting of the organisation’s negative role in the TEFL industry. The BC in theory regulates the industry. By receiving BC accreditation, a language school can indicate to its target market that it is legitimate in terms of teaching practice, safeguarding and administration. However, the BC as a matter of policy, will not implement standards of working conditions into the accreditation process. This facilitates the highly exploitative practices that exist within the industry globally. This is something the BC participates in itself as my experience at the Prague Teaching Centre confirms-us teachers went from very competitively paid jobs with benefits to zero hour contracts within about a decade.
Our solidarity is with BC workers struggling against the London based senior management who are a part of the FO and wider government milieu. But further, any beneficial projects in terms of health, culture and education should be prioritised over military spending or the creation of opportunities for capitalists.
During the 80s and 90s minority sections of the left refused to back the slogan ‘Defend the NHS!’ They made some reasonable arguments, pointing out that NHS workers were being asked to defend the entity they were selling their labour power to. NHS staff, however, saw this as a logical course of action as the NHS was of benefit to society as a whole.
The two situations are not directly comparable-far fewer people are even aware that the BC exists compared to those that support the NHS as a matter of principle let alone have an awareness of any social benefit the BC contributes to abroad. Nevertheless, I would argue for full solidarity and full endorsement of the slogan. We can always and will point out necessary qualifications and existing contradictions. We do this when engaging with the TEFL industry as a whole. We are not afraid to highlight the industry’s potential social benefits in contrast to its primary contemporary role as an educational and leisure time possibility for the largely better off sections of society. I’d be interested to hear what fellow workers think and their opinions on how we can best help the PCS if the strike ballot goes their way.