Hard times

Over the summer I went to visit the Ragged School Museum in Mile End, a short and pleasant canalside walk from where I live in the East End of London. 

The Museum had recently reopened after a prolonged closure for a much-needed refurbishment enabled by a £4.8m Heritage Lottery Fund grant. I was keen to see it and was not disappointed; the display boards were informative and moving, even disturbing, and the collections fascinating. Located on the evocatively Dickensian-sounding Copperfield Road, the Museum recreates the school for poor East End children set up in 1877 by Dr Thomas John Barnardo (he of the children's homes) in a former warehouse on the Regent's Canal. 

While there, I had the pleasure of talking to Museum Director, Erica Davies, about the project. During the course of our conversation she stressed the importance of understanding the concept of destitution as distinct from poverty. I understood it to refer to grinding poverty, of course, but hadn't really considered what that actually meant in lived reality. Ms Davies pointed to the story of a penniless and pregnant widow evicted by her landlord with nowhere to go but the streets and no recourse to support other than charity.

The dictionary definition of destitution is "poverty so extreme that one lacks the means to provide for oneself". Having been brought up in the post-war welfare state, that concept is almost unimaginable. What may be imaginable, however, is my dismay at today's publication of a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) entitled Destitution in the UK 2023. Its revelation that around 3.8 million people experienced destitution in Britain last year, including one million children, was beyond shocking.

What has this country come to when social conditions in the early 21st century are beginning to replicate those of the late 19th? It's almost as if all the welfare improvements of the intervening 20th century had never happened, and this in the sixth largest economy in the world! It's easy to blame the Tories, on whose watch this has happened, but we as electors also bear a collective responsibility for this appalling state of affairs. 

There have been four general elections in the UK since 2010 and on each occasion a Tory government has been returned to power. It's deeply unsettling to think that the British people have supported such a cruel and inhumane prospectus as the Tories set out in successive manifestos. Of course, the truth is that the majority of the electorate are not complicit. Under the UK's archaic and grossly unfair electoral system every government gets a minority of votes cast overall but wins power because it gains the largest electoral bloc.

Nevertheless, to consistently return a party with such a disgraceful record of contempt for the poor and disadvantaged - in fact anyone other than the rich and powerful in society - speaks either of stupidity, naked self-interest or utter disdain for the underprivileged (perhaps all of the above) on their part. Basically, shame on anyone who votes Tory.

The fact is that a majority of British voters polled on the subject of welfare provision supports a safety net in principle. However, when asked whether the existing system is too generous, 80% feel it is, with only 20% disagreeing. In reality, the welfare system in the UK falls midway in the table of OECD countries, having declined from its 1978 pre-Thatcher highpoint to its present woefully inadequate state. 

If we want this to change we must vote for the party that promises to do it.

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