We need to start fighting back against the rhetoric of ‘welfare scroungers’ and ‘work shirkers’ and start working for an increasingly demonised poor. As these crude caricatures rise, we need to gather evidence and convey the real statistical and human story.
Last week I spoke at the launch of the Greater Manchester poverty commission report. The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) was research partner for the report. In this work we drew together the data and evidence from a number of hearings, personal testimonies, written submissions, and worked with the commissioners to develop 16 focussed recommendations.
Being involved in this work was sobering. Whilst terrifying statistics tell us there are nearly 600,000 residents in Greater Manchester living in the country’s 10% most deprived areas, it is through the individual testimonies – where people talk about what poverty means to them – that you start to get angry. Testimonies, which reveal the lack of choice:
‘We are left out of society. We live hand to mouth; we have no outings, no holidays, nothing.’
Which tell us how poverty is all encompassing:
‘You know the Maslow hierarchy of needs? Poverty means having none of them.’
Which illuminate how poverty creates insecurity and lack of control:
‘You can’t think about the future. You think about survival from week to week.’
And how poverty creates fear, anxiety and uncertainty:
‘You have no self esteem, no self –confidence. You feel like a failure.’
The Greater Manchester poverty commissioners recognised from the outset that there were systemic national factors involved. However, they were also clear that they wanted to recommend local actions for the public, private, social, community and voluntary organisations across Greater Manchester.
The chair of the commission Nigel McCulloch – the outgoing bishop of Manchester – was pointed in his words when he said that he wanted this work to ‘irritate’ relevant organisations so the problems highlighted did not get forgotten.
Post launch, I have been thinking about the bigger picture in terms of profound economic and social changes which have taken place in our towns and cities and how we are now entering a worrying new phase. In 2008 the initial economic downturn was broadly met with fortitude and a dose of stiff upper lip – ‘more for less’, Big Society, efficiencies, innovation and behaviour change. Four years on, as we experience unprecedented austerity, cuts to welfare and this growing poverty, our lips are starting to quiver. Less has won the battle over a little more. Whilst innovation and the ‘new’ lacks scaleability and is all too often, detached from the hard realities of poverty and real social hardship.
At the beginning of the recession, we all expected some pain. We maybe even felt we could live with it. But even then, we needed to see where we were heading and when it would end. But now? Where are we going? There is no convincing economic and social narrative. We desperately need one.
The Greater Manchester poverty commission has unpicked the dimensions of poverty and its recommendations represent the beginnings of local action towards a new economic and social narrative.
However, nationally, it may well be time to get to just get angry. In this we must take the battle on. We must start arguing strongly against those who seem unconcerned about this social crisis and are all too ready to demonise the poor.
Good piece Neil, and well done on the Commission’s findings and recommendations.
We do need a counter-narrative that confronts and rejects the old tactic of demonising the poor. And I think that alternative account of the problems we face would be better received now than at other points in our recent past.
So many people at different income levels have been affected by recession, spending cuts, low wages, debt, redundancy, reduced hours and job insecurity that crude “them – v – us” / “workers – v – shirkers” divisions don’t resonate with the same force. Particularly when they come from politicians who have been basted from the day they were born in the grease of privilege and unearned preference, and are already regarded as elitist and out of touch.
We can all hear the dog whistle this time – and most people don’t like its shrill and nasty tone. It’s time to change the tune.
John
I do my fair share when it comes to getting angry about life’s injustices, but I think we need to take a step back on this ‘demonising the poor’ line.
I work in Wigan where life’s no bed of roses for a lot of people. I work in the community of Scholes where Orwell spent time writing his book, and in Wigan market which has been going for over 800 years.
The people I know and work with would be the first to call those that aren’t working lazy, scrounging so and so’s.
I’m not really qualified to assert my own view on the matter but all I would say is that the people I work with wouldn’t agree with your take on things.
If we see our communities as a whole, then there is a job for everyone without exception. Loneliness is the only disability – anything else doesn’t count. Everyone should contribute to the common good and those that choose not to should lose their entitlement.
The only trouble is that we don’t see our communities as a whole, which is why the narrative that John must inspire co-operative participation for the common good.
By everyone.
Well said Neil and a timely and provocative report. I too am getting increasingly angry that it seems neither the government nor the opposition is thinking much beyond securing electoral success in 2015 and I share your view that we need a new economic and social narrative. I hope that in the Northern Economic Futures Commission report – see our website – we have provided a realistic attempt at the former: a radical decentralisation of economic development powers to enable us to define the a new type of capitalism in the North. But it seems to me it is the new social narrative that is much harder to set out. Perhaps we should set up a joint seminar series on this?
I blogged on this subject in July 2012. In my language, it was about changing the terms of the debate on welfare reform, but I also hinted at the emergence of a new paradigm that ties together welfare, social protection, and economic development. I suggested we need to look to other countries – mostly in northern Europe – to get ideas on how to start building that paradigm here – or, to paraphrase Neil, to start constructing a new economic and social narrative.
However, there are some encouraging signs that the ‘scroungers vs strivers’ rhetoric is not only starting to be challenged, but can even be overcome. I’d like to draw attention to an excellent report on benefits stigmatisation commissioned by Elizabeth Finn Care (available on the Turn2us site (http://www.turn2us.org.uk). The report shows how negative media reporting on benefits claimants rises and falls with the overall volume of reporting on social security, but with a spike in negativity in 2008 – around the time of Labour’s third term welfare reforms and the start of the Conservatives’ ‘Broken Britain’ agenda. In some circles, the ‘scroungers’ rhetoric was thought of as a way of winning back support for the welfare state. If true, the tactic backfired – we face a situation nowadays where even people claiming social security benefits believe that people claiming social security benefits are undeserving ‘scroungers’. Further to a classic ‘divide and rule’ situation, the Elizabeth Finn report shows that people in the lowest levels of the social hierarchy are more likely to buy the ‘scroungers’ rhetoric – possibly as a means of distancing themselves from people of even lower perceived social status.
We needn’t start from scratch in devising a new narrative. For a start, we can try to rediscover the language of social solidarity and citizenship rights that accompanied the creation of Britain’s welfare state. We can critically examine the narrative that constructs social security a hindrance to economic development, as part of a more general critique of the version of unrestrained laissez faire capitalism that has allowed wealth to be syphoned away from the lower and middle classes and to the very rich over the past 30 years. The narrative could, and should, appeal to a wide coalition of interests.
The challenge to the dominant narrative of welfare reform is growing, along with an awareness of alternative models, and in parallel with the construction of local anti-poverty strategies. I shall be speaking on these topics at an LGiU seminar in London on 26 February.
We will probably need to go at it in a number of different ways. It is difficult to do this without seeking to revise the concerted effort to stigmatise PfB—People for Benefits. It needs people to work on its behalf. It needs a campaign. It also needs to identify and add to those groups who may already be sympathetic to any such campaigns, and it needs to have acceptable messages, which include various party political points of view. Tricky. But I have been party to a number of such campaigns, and the thing is to draw out the central beliefs of the concerned groups. Eg there will be political conservatives who don’t like to see people sleeping on their streets, and don’t want to see their local hospitals going under. Political Liberals can be rallied around “Freedom From” as well as “Freedom To”. Neo Liberalism espouses freedom to do as you will, but some liberals do get exercised about “Freedom From” as well. I have campaigned on privacy issues and against the late, unlamented National Identity database. But do these journos realise that UC is a massive attack on the privacy of the poor? And it will creep, oh trust me! I think we probably need a pro bono PR company to come up with a motif. That’s how it’s done now. This very publication will be attacked for employing such methods, so be prepared.
Well said Neil, Andrew and John. It is deeply worrying that people at all levels of the workforce, including those claiming benefits, are being fed rhetoric that causes us to turn-on each other. The message is still that the blame for the UK (and global?) economic issues sits with the benefits bill and those suffering the greatest hardship rather than failed financial regulation and economic policy. I seem to spend an awful lot of my time (outside work) challenging the view that removing benefits will bring about a miraculous and instant economic recovery. For goodness sake – pick away at this and ask your local politician how, in a market with almost zero demand, the labour market can suddenly absorb £3m+ extra people or what hardworking families struggling on low incomes are supposed to do if their “top-up” benefits are removed? There is a general failure to grasp the fact that many claimants are working people (often with more than one low-paid job) who have no disposable income – much of the benefits bill seems to subsidise very low private sector pay.