Keir Starmer has mentioned his father was a toolmaker again and took umbrage because a TV debate audience laughed. The laughter was surely at Starmer making it his catch phrase. He refers to it again in a lengthy Guardian interview on 22nd June again given the impression that a toolmaker was not a well regarded occupation.
Rodney Starmer ran a toolshop in Oxted, Surrey for many years. He was a self employed skilled craftsman or artisan. His son often says that his father felt looked down upon. Perhaps this was just Surrey because generally such skilled workers were seen as being in the vanguard of the working class.
They have a long history going back to the industrial revolution. In the Making of the English Working Class E P Thompson has a chapter on artisans and he notes ‘the skilled and apprenticed man,who owned his own tools, and worked for a lifetime in one trade was in a minority’ Rodney Starmer fitted the pattern over 175 years on.
Thompson notes that the skilled craftsman had a battle to avoid being deskilled and ending up in a factory and that battle often promoted political radicalism. Rodney was a Guardian reader and staunch Labour supporter.
Not all skills could be mechanised and hence even now the Rodney Starmers of the world continue
Leave a Reply