Occasionally an article just makes me sad for the state of humankind. This one in the Guardian did this morning:
Labour party supporters increasingly believe that welfare recipients are undeserving and that the welfare state encourages dependence, with a noticeable share saying that poverty is caused by a personal failing rather than a problem with society, a landmark study reveals.
A report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation examined the links between public attitudes to poverty, welfare and the state of the economy using data collected as part of the British Social Attitudes survey.
As they note:
It found that the traditional view that the poor were seen sympathetically during recessions has disappeared, with support for welfare "largely confined (to) recipients of unemployment benefits". The report says there is a "general trend" where the public accepts that individual characteristics rather than societal issues cause poverty.
I agree with Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation who said:
The stark findings of this report highlight the increasingly tough stance people are taking against people in poverty. We appear to be tough on those experiencing poverty, but not tough on its causes.
That is what is happening. A diet of abuse of the poor, and of praise for the rewards of materialism has diminished us as people, undermined our empathy, destroyed our compassion and left us not caring for our neighbours.
We don't ask why there are no jobs. We blame those who do not have them.
We don't even seem to care about those who really cannot work. That apparently is their own fault.
I could say that this is the result of the decline of faith in our society. But I'm not even sure it is that. The logic of these attitudes has been embraced by some of faith, at least in the US but no doubt it's creeping here too. Prosperity is seen as a reward for virtuousness and poverty as the wages of sin, to use language not all will feel comfortable with.
And that's just wrong. Poverty exists because we permit it. Because we tolerate it. Because we ignore it. Because we pretend it could never happen to us or anyone we know. Because we'd rather watch the television. Because we want whatever next is advertised. Because we're told having is what matters and those that do not have do not matter as a result.
And yes, that makes me sad.
And angry.
And the fact that IPPR said yesterday that Labour could no longer tackle child poverty, and in effect suggested it throw in the towel on redistribution just makes me angrier still.
If Labour gives up such issues, what is it for? I'm not sure I know.
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Sorry Richard but what on earth has a belief in magic, for that is what faith is, got to do with whether people vilify the poor or not? It doesn’t say a lot for decent people who just happen to reject the supernatural does it and you’d be better off finding real explanations rather than making them up and insulting me and the reality based majority. You’re welcome to your faith but don’t judge the rest of us on our lack of it.
I suggest the reason people blame the poor for their own predicament is like with most things there is a grain of truth in it. People look around and see a minority taking the mickey and extrapolate that across the board. Frankly that minority needs to be vilified to some degree but mostly it needs help and support.
If you didn’t notice, I was criticising faith – and saying the lack of it was not an explanation
I think you have the wrong end of the stick
You also ignore the fact that economics and all political belief are also faith systems
That’s reality
I didn’t read it like that, but anyway apologies if that’s what you meant. What troubles me even more though is the ‘fact’ that political beliefs and economics are also faith systems. No wonder we’re in the mess we’re in when evidence and reason do not drive both disciplines.
It’s pretty much self -evident where politicians are concerned because they cherry-pick evidence to fit their policies rather than make policies to fit the evidence, wherever that may lead. But economics, really? I know the neoliberals manipulate the evidence to fit their aims in the way politicians do, but you spend your entire time marshalling evidence to make the arguments against them. This evidence-based approach is the reason why you are now making real headway at long last. Where does faith come into it?
Economics is based on the assumptions you make
And that’s down to what you believe about humanity and how it does and should behave
that’s a faith system all right
The root of the word ‘faith’ is ‘trust’ and it is this that is sorely lacking in our society. If you think that reality is what people happen to do is a grotesque lack of faith in what could be better and beneficial to our society
When we have a Tax Gap of £95 billion, and an estimated £13 trillion of largely dirty money in secrecy jurisdictions, to say we can’t eradicate poverty is frankly cowardice deserving of the moral and political equivalent of being shot at dawn.
After all, if £3 trillion of that total should be taxed here in the UK, a mere 1% tax would raise £30 billion – enough to stop Gideon’s mad and counter-productive austerity massacre in its tracks, perhaps even reverse it.
These Rowntree findings are a clarion call, a tocsin, to Labour to rediscover its roots and original purpose, and to argue for the rights and needs of the vulnerable and dispossessed. If it doesn’t the dustbin of history is where it should be.
The fact is that since 1997 immigration has ballooned in the UK (and in Jersey). This has caused 2 sorts of resentment: firstly at the immigrants, who are perceived as “not paying their way” and taking a disproportionate share of social services, but secondly, at the unemployed, who do not seem either willing or able to take on the jobs that immigrants do. Probably both sorts of resentment are unjustified (and indeed incompatible, as you cannot fairly criticise immigrants for being both scroungers and hard workers at the same time), but they are what happen when a society loses cohesion, and people regard whole sections of society as made up of people who are “not like us”.
But isn’t the problem that welfare actually reinforces those divisions? Wouldn’t it be much better if a large chunk of welfare funding was diverted to educating those in poverty so that they have a chance of breaking the cycle? That’s what works in the US: extra summer classes for the underpriviledged. But it would take a generation to show real benefits, and our governments have given up on long term thinking.
Perhaps I’ve misread you Roger but this sounds like Nosferatu, sorry IDS, speak.
You may well have a good point about education, but, given what benefit (I refuse to join in with the use of “welfare”) cuts have meant to those that depend on them, your proposal implies a choice between shelter and food and education on individual shortcomings. I can’t see how making the underprivileged even more impoverished so that they have an even bigger mountain to climb will help them.
If you’d have said education AND benefits, your argument would make more sense to me. But OR makes you sound like Liam Byrne, ie a Labour politician who sound more like Nosferatu, sorry IDS, every day.
As someone on benefits (having worked as a teacher for many years) I am feeling the impact of this societal pathology. What is so ghastly is that the terrible ghost of 1930’s American eugenics (R. Nixon carver and his notion of sterilizing anyone earning under $8000 a year so as to eliminate the gene pool of the under-ambitious)hovering over all of this. There is no debate about the moral pathology of the mechanism of wealth creation amongst an unbelievably callous elite that only circulates amongst them. It is saddening because the evidence shows more and more that the public are becoming small and petty minded and indifferent.
I think some of it can be ascribed to the rise of evolutionary psychology (it got up its head of steam in the late 70’s) with the concomitant absence of faith, the worship of celebrity and those with wealth with money as the only form of meaning. That a person could have value unconditionally as a human seems to have gone out of the window. I’ve never known such a state of supine narcolepsy as now! During the Thatcher years one felt resistance was there. Now, one feels a tired and grim-face populace with its nose to the grindstone of Sky TV,BBC propaganda, gutter press – I’m afraid the neo-liberal agenda has achieved its aims here. One has to work hard to keep ones spirits up. Sites like this help.
Richard – we must accept now that the Labour Party we grew up with is utterly finished.
Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists? Attitudes to more wretched groups than ones own have not changed one bit.
I read it too, Richard, and found it deeply depressing. It brought back to me the title of a book we noted on this blog some while ago now: ‘Ill fares the land’ by Tony Judt (sadly now deceased) published in 2010. I’ll quote the opening paragraph as it says it all:
‘Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.’
One things seems certain (particularly in the context of other blogs from you over the last few days, which I’d missed as Virgin Media had been unable to repair a broadband fault that hit the area I live in), the modern day Labour Party has absolutely no interest in posing those questions. As I started to suspect some months ago, the ‘One Nation’ that Labour seeks is not a social democratic one.
What’s becoming increasingly clear is One Nation Labour is Blue Labour
That’s not good news for anyone
I too was saddened by this article – it surely is a reflection of the Thatcherite “me, me, me” society. If Labour ditches any commitment to ending child poverty and to promote social justice, then frankly it does not deserve to win an election. Today’s politicians have been reared on the ‘soundbite’, that reveal no passion about the issues. This partly explains the appeal of Farage, he seems animated about policy (albeit the wrong ones as far as I am concerned). Most politicians drone on about the issues and people are bored by this. Politics has been reduced to a technocratic exercise and as I have commented previously the technocratic competence of some of the politicians is sadly lacking.
We, who are still members of the Labour Party have a real fight on our hands now. If, as you say, Tessa, Labour cannot win with current ‘apparent’ philosophy, what hope is there – another coalition like the present one or – horror – a tory/UKIP alliance?
Cameron was right, they really are all Thatcherites now. Anyway, cheer up, after reading Judt’s book read The Fourth Turning, which reveals that the saying ‘it’s always darkest before dawn’ is perhaps more than just a saying. We seem to be enteering the dark period now and dawn is as yet some time away, 2025 if I’ve understood the theory correctly. But it will come, there will be a backlash against what’s happening just as there always has been against all oppression once it’s been identified and understood. Perhaps we should take a leaf from the disableds and be saying to ourselves, we’re all Spartacus now…
I feel sad that this ‘darkness’ has blighted my whole adult life – I hope I live long enough to witness the ‘dawn.’
Just as many in the ‘squeezed middle’ seem to be against the rich as are against the poor. Is that because they’re only ‘for’ themselves? If one really is to believe that there is a finite amount of money in any economy, then those who are unemployed or underemployed are making the real sacrifice, rather than workers who feel their money is supporting others. In an economic and social depression such as this, if a company or organisation takes on workers yet there is no increase in the amount of money and working hours offered to the workforce, the existing workforce must take a smaller share of those hours and money. Similarly, whenever redundancies take place in an organisation to ‘reduce costs’ those whose posts are made redundant are making a sacrifice so that those in work can remain in work.
Your comments about the failure of the Labour party in their traditional role as champions of the disadvantaged reminded me of an excellent essay by Charles Stross.
Stross called the failure of modern representative democracy “The Beige Dictatorship”, a gradual but inexorable slide into consensus between parties that have, until recently, promoted very different points of view.
“Overall, the nature of the problem seems to be that our representative democratic institutions have been captured by meta-institutions that implement the iron law of oligarchy by systematically reducing the risk of change. They have done so by converging on a common set of policies that do not serve the public interest, but minimize the risk of the parties losing the corporate funding they require in order to achieve re-election.”
It’s a brilliant bit of writing. Highly recommended.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/02/political-failure-modes-and-th.html
This article reminded me of the book – “The Spirit Level” where it was argued that as levels of inequality grow in a society and people feel increasingly competitive and defensive about their position , that lack of trust also grows and a tendency to think ill of others below you along with an unwillingness to help in co-operative ventures.
It would be interesting to know if negative perceptions of welfare recipients across different countries is also correlated with inequality. A general hardening of the heart as we grow apart from each other.
Interesting point
Interesting – seems as if people go into pecking order mode.
Very good piece that gets to the heart of the matter with simplicity and clarity. Sad, therefore, to see in Jedgardee’s comment immediately below the line, another example of the all too common tendency of the humourless Leftie in such a hurry to get the wrong end of the stick and take a self-righteous stance. Given the rest of the piece, and in the context of the case you make, for you to then assert lack of faith was the problem would be a non sequitur to most readers but no, the very first comment BTL is somebody bringing you to task for just what you didn’t say. I’ve been struck by how often this is the case when the argument under attack is a particularly nuanced one! I don’t know if it’s the pressure of these times, or the emotiveness of the issues, but so many of these comments end up a spam of indignation, rebuttal, clarification and qualified apology proving once more the capacity of the Left to enjoy turning on each other. Anyway I want to thank you for a heartfelt clear sighted piece of writing in these sad times which I have shared on twitter and is getting a fair few retweets already.