Introduction

In the aftermath of the Conservative general election victory of 1979, a group of ‘state workers’ published In and against the state. First a pamphlet and then a book, it outlined the contradictory positions they were often forced to take during their work in order to make government welfare policies meet the needs of the people they were working with. Although it is over 35 years since its publication, In and against the state undoubtedly retains its relevance.

It describes the struggle of people – who identified themselves as socialists – working within the state at a time when they felt that the state was not really theirs, if indeed it ever was. The authors noted that cuts to (and rhetoric surrounding) public sector spending were leading to their jobs becoming increasingly disciplined and tightly controlled, forcing them to be more ‘accountable’, in a way more akin to private sector work (London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group,1980: 3). They also discussed at length the ways in which citizens’ engagements with different parts of the state can be unsatisfactory and inadequate for both the service user and service provider: