“I
waited in vain for [a politician] to make a coherent case for our moral
obligation to each other.” Suzanne Moore
In the outline of its Anti-Poverty
Strategy Programme, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation states: “We believe that
people of different political backgrounds and perspectives want to understand
and reduce poverty, and think there is potential to identify consensus on how
we do that”. One manifestation of this
was their request to 25 “thinkers across much of the political spectrum” to
write about “a compelling and positive vision of a low poverty future and – if
authors want to do so – the routes by which we might get there”.
As Julia Unwin said in her
Foreword to the collection
of 25 essays (published as a special supplement to Prospect magazine): “A fresh political consensus on how to
achieve a low-poverty UK is needed, and while we seek to build it through our
work, we also recognise the need to understand different political traditions
and current perspectives on poverty”.
I wrote one of these essays,
focusing on what a ‘low poverty future’ would mean for disabled people, and
when the essays were published I read them in the hope of finding Julia Unwin’s
“fresh political consensus”.
There are certainly some common
themes running through the essays. Most of us argue that poverty isn’t just about low income, with
economist Diane Coyle pointing out that it is hard for those who are not poor
to understand fully the experience of social exclusion. Insecurity, isolation, a lack of
participation and of autonomy, are all important aspects of being poor and, for
example, Harry Burns quotes Jimmy Reid’s speech about alienation: “The feelings
of despair and hopelessness that pervade people who feel with justification
that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies” –
words spoken in 1971 but which resonate today.
Yet as I read through the essays, I
realised that they reflect a fundamental divide which stands in the way of the
kind of consensus that JRF was hoping for.
Contributors
such as AC Grayling and Rowan Williams take an explicitly moral stand on poverty
but in fact assumptions about what is ‘good’ can be seen in all of the
contributions, some more obvious than others. However, there are differences in
whose morality is the focus of attention.
For example, AC Grayling focuses on the morality of those
who are not poor to do what is in their power to alleviate poverty. In contrast, for contributors such as Roger
Scruton the primary focus is on what ‘the poor’ should be doing, while for
Kieron O’Hara ‘our’ responsibility is limited to leaving “people alone to make their own
decisions about how to earn money and to provide an infrastructure to support
their decisions where necessary”.
This contrasting
emphasis is also reflected in different perspectives on what are the
possibilities for change. Rowan Williams
starts from the assumption that “there is no necessity about poverty” and that “what kind of society we inhabit and what provision we make around
disadvantage is our choice, not the outworking of some impersonal law, whether
of nature or of the market.”
On the other hand, Christopher Snowdon’s
statement that “A universal minimum
income of the size implied by the JRF research is quite unaffordable…” is a
contradiction of Rowan Williams’ starting point. Throughout the essays it is
clear there is a dividing line
between those who, like Snowdon, are concerned
with what ‘the economy’ (by which he means companies) can afford and what ‘our
society’ can afford in terms of the impact of poverty and inequality on social
cohesion.
Some contributors put
forward visions of a cohesive society, with assumptions
about common humanity and argue that too much inequality is bad for all of us. In contrast, others would follow Snowdon who sees “the war on inequality” as “a war on
capitalism and growth”, with Roger Scruton arguing that, in any case,
inequality isn’t a bad thing.
Many of the essays assume that human beings
have great potential to improve their lives, given the right circumstances and
opportunities. However, there is a dividing line between those who focus more
on individual agency than on socio-economic circumstances. For some, recognition of limits to which
individuals can protect themselves against poverty or pull themselves out of it
means that solutions have to be found at a societal level. Neal Lawson writes: “… we believe that those who suffer from sheer
brute bad luck, who, through no fault of their own, were born less healthy,
strong, fast or intelligent than others, need extra help to ensure their
equality alongside their fellow human beings.
When misfortune strikes – ill health, loss of work and so on – then
society needs to intervene to help people.
We really are all in it together”.
David Goodhart, on the other hand, believes
that ‘character’ – formed during childhood – is the ultimate protector from
poverty. His approach to poverty challenges JRF’s statement that poverty is “an
experience that virtually anyone can go through at some point in their lives”,
saying “I can confidently predict that my friend from the council estate [who
is now a “successful professional”] will never be poor again, thanks in part to
his mother providing sufficient ‘love and boundaries’ when he was young”.
For me this collection
of essays has therefore failed to reveal a political consensus. Instead it has reflected a profound division
that lies behind all the debates about what causes poverty and how (and
whether) to tackle it.
When I started writing
my own contribution, about what a ‘low poverty future’ would look like for
disabled people, I was increasingly reminded of my mother telling me as a child to “Do as you would be done by”, the golden
rule which lies at the heart of most of the world’s religions and ethical traditions.
The current political debates about
‘welfare’ divide us from each other: the widely used term (by both Coalition and
Labour politicians) of ‘hard working families’ inevitably creates an ‘us’ and
‘them’. ‘Welfare’ is something that others rely on. We can jettison the golden
rule of “Do as you would be done by” because we do not put ourselves in others’
shoes – unless of course they offer us inspiring stories of ‘overcoming all
odds’, ’pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps’ to become a ‘hard working
family’.
We are creating a society where injury, ill
health, frailty in old age or the birth of a disabled child means a lonely
struggle for survival; where the poverty which follows unemployment, family
break-up or other catastrophes is accompanied by the blame and stigma of
individual failure. As Suzanne Moore says,
the morality underpinning collective responsibility for each other has been
removed by the argument that this collective responsibility (i.e. the welfare
state) has created “moral disaster” by encouraging “individual weakness” and
that it is these individual failings which must therefore be the focus of
policy.
So instead of our starting point being what
would we want for ourselves, the starting point is about how can we get these
‘other people’ to behave differently.
Instead of challenging whether we can afford an economy which is
relentlessly driving down wages, where jobs lack security and decent working
conditions, we obsess about what levels of public expenditure ‘we’ can afford.
As a summary
of the JRF programme of research on the future UK labour market and poverty
concluded, for many people paid work is not a route out of poverty. Yet the debates waged by our politicians
assume that it is, instead of recognising that the problem is the economy, not
the individuals who struggle to survive.
Moreover, those debates have written out of existence people who are too
ill to work. Current policies treat as
completely invisible people with significant levels of physical/sensory/cognitive
impairment, and/or mental health difficulties, while family members who care
for them face £1bn
cuts in financial support by 2018.
People living in poverty, who are most
affected by social and economic policy, have no role in policy-making. An example of how this could change is the Leeds Poverty Truth initiative,
launched on 7th February which “will be led by people with
first-hand experience of poverty, working with the city’s civic and business
leaders to not just change what we do about poverty in the short term – but to
permanently change how we tackle poverty in our city”.
Morality and morals are words not often
heard in the context of politics.
But perhaps we should make clearer the morality of those who assume a
right to decide what is best for those ‘others’ with whom they are so reluctant
to identify.
