The Poverty Trap

 

According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, around 14 million people in the U.K. live in poverty, many of them children. The Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford wrote in October as part of his campaign to secure free school meals during holidays:  “These children matter. These children are the future of this country. They are not just another statistic.”

Discussions around poverty tend to be dominated by the technical aspects of poverty. How many people are affected, how much (or little) they have to live on, how poverty impacts on health and crime. These things are not unimportant but poverty is also a moral issue. It concerns the type of society we want to live in and, typically, it is a debate conducted by those who are not in poverty - politicians, academics, professional footballers, journalists. If the voices of the victims of poverty are heard it is as “case studies”.

I was hopeful that in this article I could provide a voice for those living on low incomes. I made two appeals on Twitter for people to contact me, but only one person came forward - Erica from North England (a pseudonym). She told me that she had been in poverty “pretty much all my life, to varying degrees. Had some pretty desperate times and some easier times.” I know that she had tried desperately to get work, but in a pandemic that is not easy. The problem is that once you are in poverty it is easier to stay poor than it is to get out of it.

It makes you question your self-worth

Here I should perhaps say something about my own background. First the disclaimer. I am not impoverished. I’m not wealthy either, but through a series of fortuitous events I managed to land on my feet. But, landing on my feet only happened following a period out of work and falling into greater and greater debt. I can well remember sitting in my council flat, worried that the next knock on the door would be debt collectors. On one memorable Saturday morning two fairly aggressive men came in to repossess my television. I could not afford to pay the interest on my debts, let alone pay off what I owed. It was a period in which my self-esteem suffered immensely. I felt second class because, to all intents and purposes I was second class.

As Erica told me: “It makes you question your self worth, hurts your pride and dignity, affects your emotional well-being.” This becomes a push and pull effect. In order to get out of poverty you need the confidence (as well as the resources) to turn your life around. But poverty, especially long-term poverty, drains your belief in yourself. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are in poverty because of your failures, not failures of the system.

The belief that we are the result of our own errors is pernicious and surrounds us. When I was unemployed I was constantly seeing stories in the press about scroungers who did not want to work. I met literally hundreds of unemployed people during my three years on the dole, and not one of them wanted to be unemployed. As Chair of a local Union for the Unemployed I would visit people’s homes and would find myself offering moral support to people who were often in tears because they could not provide for their families. The longer they had been out of work the less possessions they had in their houses. I vividly remember one house in which there was not a scrap of furniture and we were sitting on fruit boxes.

Essentials aren't exclusively food

Charlotte Hughes documents the condition of the poor in her hometown of Ashton-Under-Lyne some forty years after I managed to escape the dole. Her blog ‘The Poor Side of Life’ is a weekly horror story of life for those who have fallen between the cracks. In a recent post she says: “The fact is that essentials aren’t exclusively food. Essentials also mean gas, electric, clothing for children and ourselves.” Indeed. People forget that food allows you to subsist, but it does not allow you to live. Benefits, now Universal Credit for most people, barely provide a subsistence amount. For far too many people it is still a choice between eating and paying a bill. And, the idea that people on benefits should have any sort of social life remains anathema, demonised by the press, media and politicians.

In the recent parliamentary debates about child poverty, prompted by Marcus Rashford, the usual stereotypes were trotted out. The Conservative Neil Parish who in addition to his £85k MP’s salary also has rent income of over £10k a year and “employs” his wife as a Secretary does not believe poor people can be trusted to feed their children “..there is no doubt that it is hugely challenging for the poorest in society to get food at the moment. .. some of these families are very challenged, .. if we give them money, it does not necessarily get to food for children..” 

Brendan Clark-Smith another Tory landlord took the opportunity to remind the house that: “When did it suddenly become controversial to suggest that the primary responsibility for a child’s welfare should lie with their parents, or to suggest that people do not always spend vouchers in the way they are intended?” Whilst Kieran Mullan whose additional donations in the past year amounted to £29,500 argued: “..to pretend that further increasing the role of the state directly in feeding children is a solution is mistaken. Yet again, it sends out the signal that our communities do not have to look after each other.” Whilst Dean Russell, who pocketed over £10k in consultancies last year claimed: “The facts are that the Government have been ensuring targeted support for vulnerable children, both now and into the future, ensuring that the right support reaches the right children at the right time.” Kevin Hollinrake who receives an additional £50k from his second job as a director in addition to his over £70k of shareholding’s was very keen to deny: “..that it is the Government’s job to make sure children do not go hungry. I differ there, and I think lots of my constituents differ there too, because they would be appalled by the prospect of the Government interfering in their daily lives to make sure their children did not go hungry.” Jo Gideon, who is also in receipt of excess of £10k of rental income to top up her wages, made the following point: “..one child hungry is one too many. Any suggestion that an hon. Member would think otherwise is deeply offensive.” She then voted against the motion to prevent children being hungry.

It is interesting that whilst the Tories inevitably rail against so-called benefit cheats they had little to say about their four former colleagues named in the Panama Papers which detailed how wealthy individuals were using offshore accounts to avoid paying tax. They were Michael Ashcroft, Tony Baldry, Michael Mates and Pamela Sharples. Also ‘embarrassed’ by those revelations was former Prime Minister David Cameron. Tories it seems have an aversion to people impoverished by their policies but see cheating the tax office as a legitimate way of maximising income for their rich friends.

For the Conservatives, the vast majority of whom came from stable, relatively wealthy (in some cases extremely wealthy) backgrounds, who attended private schools and have never stood in front of a cash machine worrying that there would be no money in their account, it is easy to see poverty as the fault of individuals. It is easy to believe that if only the poor tried a little harder they could pull themselves up. Erica told me that in some ways she felt her poverty was her own fault: “I'm a smart girl but I was bored at school and didn't pay attention, didn't do well in my GCSEs and that has shut a few doors throughout adulthood.” This is not an unusual reaction from people who have fallen foul of a social system that needs poor people. Does Erica think that Boris Johnson tried hard at school and that he, Rees-Mogg and others are in their positions through their hard work and talent? I know she doesn’t. But, if you have wealthy parents who can buy you a place at Eton and ensure you go to Oxbridge, then your indolence and lack of any discernible talent are rewarded in ways that Erica could only dream of. Charlotte Hughes summed this up well in a recent blog: “The fact is that the Tory party has always been cruel and judgemental. They believe that the working class person is responsible for their own poverty, and they fail to acknowledge that they are the ones responsible for this.”

Poverty affects workers too

The problem is that it is not just rich Tories who believe that poverty is a moral failing on behalf of the impoverished. Ordinary people, who are themselves struggling to make ends meet tend to see poverty as some failing on the part of others. When I spoke to unemployed workers on a regular basis they would often tell me that unlike others they really wanted to work, and that their unemployment was not their fault. Even those living in the most desperate conditions can end up blaming others in similar conditions for their poverty, whilst seeing themselves as “innocent victims”.

Great Britain is rated as one of the top thirty wealthiest nations in the World according to Global Finance Magazine. But, as the Equality Trust has pointed out the distribution of wealth is very uneven with the richest 10% of households owning 44% of all wealth, whilst the poorest 50%, by contrast, own just 9%. Poverty is not simply confined to those without work.  In 2018 Consultancy U.K. reported that in research carried out by Vitreous World 78% of people in work had to use payday loans, credit cards and unplanned overdrafts to make ends meet each month. That figure has certainly got worse since the pandemic hit. The Monster Jobs Index showed in 2018 that 49% of workers had little or no confidence that their jobs were secure in the following six months. Again, the pandemic will have made that worse. Poverty is not just a consequence of unemployment. A job is not the guarantee of the better life we might once have believed.

These are the statistics that hide the personal anguish of not being able to buy shoes for your child or being denied a night out with your friends or sitting in the cold and the dark because you have no money for the electric meter. Reducing people to statistics means that we can discuss poverty without naming the estimated 81,000 deaths attributed to welfare refusals. The website Calum’s List provides details of some of them. I have previously listed some of the details. But here I want to just give some names: Stephanie Bottrill, 34 year old Philip Herron, Jodey Whiting, Elaine Morrall. These are real names of real people who died as a result of their poverty and the DWP’s refusal to do anything about it. These are not names from a Dickensian novel or report from the 1930’s but deaths attributed to poverty in the U.K. in the 21st century.

You might think, especially if you glance at Hansard, that there is cross party support for ending poverty. That the sentiment of Danny Kruger MP, a Trustee of Catch 22, "a charity that works at every stage of the social welfare cycle to build resilience and aspiration in people and communities", and the recipient of over £30k in donations last year, that “no child should go hungry in this country. That is something that we all agree with in this House” would be so uncontroversial that ending poverty would be, if not the number one priority of government, at least in its top three. It is as if poverty is a mystery that our elected representatives cannot quite work out how to solve. But, poverty is no mystery at all. It is hardwired into the capitalist system. 

Most people do not have family wealth that they will inherit or any wealth other than a small amount of savings they might accumulate in their lifetime. According to CNBC the average inheritance in the U.K. is £48k whilst the median (what most people can expect) is £11k. To pay inheritance tax you have to have an estate (all your assets) worth over £325,000. In 2017-18 only 24,200 people were liable for that tax. In other words, the transmission of wealth, real wealth, between generations is limited to a very small number of individuals, whilst most people might get a cash bonus of up to £11k on their parents death, many more will receive next to nothing. The result of this is not only to cement the social position of the very wealthy but to ensure that those born into poverty are denied a route out of it that the rich can take for granted. And, this is not an accident.

Liberalism provides cover for poverty

Ruling classes in all social systems have always guarded their positions jealously. They protect their power, their wealth and their status and preserve it for the next generation. In our system this tendency to protect their interests has trickled down from the ruling capitalist class to the middle class who do so much to maintain the status quo. John Rawls, the American philosopher who developed a theory of justice and was interested in inter-generational justice could not bring himself to admit that the class system was the result of systemic acts of injustice rather than the result of everybody pursuing what he described as their “individual good”. Liberalism thus provides the intellectual cover for endemic poverty by presenting “the poor” as a talentless mass to be acted upon.

Poverty has a role to play in a class system. It reminds workers that whatever crumbs they might get given can be taken away. The majority of workers are one bad decision away from being plunged into poverty. And, contrary to popular myth, it is rarely them that are making that decision. When petrochemical group Petroineos announced it was axing 200 jobs at its Grangemouth refinery last week, do you think it’s primary concern was the welfare of the 200 families whose incomes are set to plummet? Petroineos is a private company with an estimated net worth of £15 billion, captains of industry, and yet that has not stopped them requesting millions of pounds from the Scottish government. It was founded by Sir James Ratcliffe whose net worth is, according to Forbes, $18.2 billion. He was knighted in 2018 after supporting Brexit whilst relocating to Monaco to ensure his own European citizenship.

Capitalism exists to make money for capitalists. Some of their wealth is allowed to trickle down to their functionaries. But, and this point bears repeating, individual capitals have no intrinsic interest in society beyond its role as a market for their products. Capital will always seek to reduce their costs (including taxation) whilst increasing their profits. This means that despite their claims to be pious or altruistic capitalism is not a system with morality at its heart. Erica, in thinking about the future said: “they need to look at a proper living wage, or even Universal Basic Income. Tax credits only prop up poverty wages from unscrupulous employers. ” This is undoubtedly true, but that investment can only be made by government and it can only do that through progressive taxation which most governments are unwilling to do.

Charlotte Hughes details exactly why relying on government intervention does not work. “They (people new to benefits) didn’t realise how cruel and callous the system can be. The DWP certainly aren’t there to help anymore..I’m certain that many of these people that have been refused help thought that they could find a job. I’ve heard this thousands of times when talking to people outside the Jobcentre. In the first few weeks people have hope for a better future but that soon wears off. The reality that there are no jobs kicks in pretty soon. People sell or pawn their possessions and many lose their homes because they can’t afford to pay their rent or mortgage.” 

One problem we face is that, as has always been the case, poverty is treated as a private tragedy rather than a public outrage. As socialists we have to realise that poverty is an endemic feature of the capitalist system, not an oversight. Of course, we have to help impoverished people if we can, but charity is not the answer. The only answer is to see poverty and under-employment as the disease and socialism as the cure.

Whilst you’re here. If you like what you’ve read please subscribe by using the widget at the top right.

You could also do worse than subscribe to Charlotte Hughes blog: https://thepoorsideof.life

If you are still hanging in the Labour Party, don’t forget to sign the petition to have the whip restored to Jeremy Corbyn. It’s here: https://www.change.org/p/restore-the-whip-to-jeremy-corbyn