Wanted for the British poor: redoing what’s been undone

Here’s an interesting story about a young conservative, early in the twentieth century, who like many in the middle class had taken to giving time to social work in the deprived areas of Britain. As he left work one evening at the centre where he was doing that work, in the tough, poor, crime-ridden London district of Limehouse, one of the young girls who’d been at the centre joined him.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m going home to tea,” he explained.

“I’m going home to see if there is any tea,” she replied.

Children in the poverty of London’s East End, around 1900

Now, the definition of poverty changes down the years, so we can’t exactly compare conditions today and then. All the same, whatever the technical definition of poverty, not having enough to eat has to be pretty much a constant element of being poor. A child who’s not sure whether there’ll be anything for tea, for the family evening meal, is unlikely to be getting enough to eat.

That’s poverty.

That conversation wasn’t the only event that changed the outlook of the young man back in Limehouse all that time ago. But among the many events that forced him to rethink his conservative views, it must have counted particularly, because he told the story in 1946, when he was in a position at last to help children like that little girl. He had become Prime Minister, leading the most radical government in twentieth-century Britain, the first Labour government with a parliamentary majority. 

His name was Clement Attlee. 

Pat Thane, professor of contemporary British history at King’s College London, tells us that while the government he led did not eliminate poverty in Britain, it set in train a series of progressive reforms that massively reduced it. The result was that by the 1970s, still according to Thane, income and wealth inequality were at their lowest levels since 1900.

I said that Attlee’s government had been the most radical of the century. I should perhaps have said it was the most radically progressive. Because in 1979, Britain elected another government almost as radical. But Margaret Thatcher was radically regressive, busily undoing as much as possible of the reforms made since the war.

At the start of her watch, Thane points out, people like the little girl of Attlee’s story, suffering childhood poverty, accounted for about 13% of all children. Eleven years later, in 1990, 22% of children were in poverty.

The Labour government that took over, under Tony Blair, in 1997 reversed about half of Thatcher’s increase in childhood poverty. Then, however, the Conservatives returned to power in 2010 and figures have steadily worsened ever since. It isn’t just children, as adults too have been increasingly plunged into poverty. Conditions have become so bad that they have even attracted the attention of the United Nations. A special rapporteur for the organisation, Professor Philip Alston, found that “fourteen million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50% below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.”

Destitute means that, like the little girl that Attlee knew, they’re not eating enough.

In 2019, Alston said of the cuts to British public services, that they have had “tragic consequences”. With the brightest jewel in the series of achievements of the Attlee government, the National Health Service, in a state of such crisis that it is to all intents moribund, I’d have to say that ‘tragic’ is about right.

That’s what made it such a bitter experience to read an article by Frances Ryan in the Guardian in which she argues that “Britons have become so mean that many of us think poor people don’t deserve leisure time”. 

Recent opinion polling suggests that about a quarter of the British people think that the poor have no right to expect to be able to pay their utility bills or to eat a balanced diet. 

The meanness becomes even more widespread when it comes to matters that are not these bare essentials of life. Apparently, only 60% of Britons believe that the poor should be able to join in seasonal celebrations such as Christmas or Easter, and only 55% feel they should own a television. When it comes to socialising, things are worse still: only 27% feel the poor should have the right to do anything so extravagant as to enjoy time with their friends. 

Leisure and pleasure are, it seems, to be reserved only for the well-off. 

That’s a splendidly Victorian view of life. The poor aren’t victims, they’re the perpetrators of their state. They’re the undeserving poor. At best, they warrant a little charitable help from their ‘betters’, those who have a reasonably comfortable standard of living. At worst, they deserve punishment, by being denied pleasures the wealthier regard as basic, for having been so feckless as to be poor. 

It took some four decades of campaigning for Labour views before Attlee got into power so he could start doing something about the shameful behaviour which denied the poor so much. But at least he eventually pulled it off. He convinced enough people that the misery that existed alongside the comfortable life of many was a problem worth trying to solve.

With poverty rampant again, we seem to be back with the conditions that first drove Attlee to abandon conservatism and dedicate himself to fighting the shame of poverty in prosperous Britain. And Frances Ryan’s study suggests the work of convincing people of the need to combat poverty also needs to be started again. Much has been undone and needs to be redone. 

Kids in poverty, England, around 2020

We need a new Attlee. A politician who can overcome the narrow-mindedness of the people we need to persuade to vote for progress, if a progressive government is ever to form. A politician who, having got that far, can then bring in the radical changes necessary if we are to redo what has been undone since the 1970s.

Is Keir Starmer, today’s leader of the Labour Party, the man for that job? When I see him keener on accommodating than challenging the regressive views of people whose votes he needs, I feel assailed by doubt. But he's almost certainly going to get the chance, in a year or two, to prove me wrong.

If he does, no one will be more delighted than I am.