Conor Kenny
Staff Writer
It’s somewhat unsurprising that the issue of social benefits reared its ugly head again this week, what with the proposed introduction of welfare caps by Mr. Cameron’s government in Britain. What is somewhat startling though, disturbing even, is the level of wickedness that some self-styled social commentators and even regular citizens will stoop to in their attempts to disparage the working class. It is a nauseating thing indeed to hear people making jokes about young mothers who need money to buy prams, but this kind of humour seems to be fair game, as open season on poor people reaches its peak. Worse, those of us who attempt to speak up for many disadvantaged people we know personally are often meant with a biting retort. In a recent conversation with a friend, I was informed that I had no right to an opinion that I held on this matter, on the grounds that I myself have never lived on a council estate or had to take handouts from the dole office. Well I’m sorry, but that just won’t do. The idea that someone is not entitled to an opinion on a subject unless they have had extensive personal experience in that area seems to me a little perverse. If I may borrow a phrase from Ha-Joon Chang, “we don’t need to be expert epidemiologists in order to know that there should be hygiene standards in food factories”.
There are few more unappealing spectacles than the people suffering most from the economic crisis being labeled as part of its cause, but that is exactly what several political commentators and columnists seem to be implying. What is perhaps most worrying is that these arguments are so reductive that they call into question the level of independent journalistic thought amongst the British press. In order to dissect these fallacies and render them obsolete, it’s necessary to separate them out from the coagulation in which they now fester. There is no greater polemic crime than conflating distinct ideas and decreeing them to be one and the same issue. This is the mistake made by Rebecca Camber, a writer for a paper that needs neither an introduction nor any further publicity in this country, when she insinuated in an article last year that a case of benefit fraud she was reporting on was somehow linked to the whole concept of social welfare itself. This is as reductive an argument as claiming that the mere instance of robbing a supermarket is somehow to the detriment of all shops. For the record, if you happen to know anyone committing benefit fraud, and you have adequate proof that they are doing so, all you need to do is report them to the appropriate authorities. Otherwise I’d remain silent, lest you be branded what is known in this day and age as a “shit stirrer”.
There is a rather insidious belief which holds that poor people in Britain are choosing benefits “as a lifestyle choice”. This vile brand of guttersnipe abuse would be bearable if we knew that it was only coming from redtop tabloids, but when the Prime Minister gets involved in this cheap rhetoric, one really must despair. The vapid Mr. Cameron claimed in 2010, “for far too long in this country (Britain), (there are) people who can work, people who are able to work, and people who choose not to work”. This triadic speech pattern is a trick as old as Methusela; it sounds both profound and poetic, but is nearly always used by politicians as a ploy to make them sound authoritative on matters of which they know nothing. Incidentally, Mr. Cameron’s first two claims are entirely correct, but the third addition is a point that is as reactionary as it is obscurantist. What the good leader fails, or, if I may, ‘chooses’ not to understand, is that these professional ‘dole-ites’, for which he has no time, actually want to get off benefits and find a job. A choice to live in poverty is a bizarre choice indeed, and I doubt if the working class population of Britain harbor such sadomasochistic tendencies. Unless benefit fraud is being committed, make no mistake; these people are living in squalor.
This simplistic school of thought seems to be dominated by two incredibly distinct types of people. The first, and most obvious, are the loud Boris Johnson types, quaffing champagne in the Bullingdon Club as they tell jokes about projectile vomiting onto a friend’s peafowl during the previous night’s larks. The second, and most unsettling, are a gang of prolier-than-thou mobocrats, convinced that a Guardian-reading liberal elite is in empirical control of both the media and the government. This particular collection of thugs are especially perturbing, specifically when one makes a mental note of the social class from which they have sprung. The sight of victim turning on victim is a rich man’s paradise.
It would be somewhat conspiratorial of me to suggest that the British government would like to use the issue of social welfare as a smokescreen for the mess that their capitalist predecessors have allowed corporate cronyism to inflict, so I shan’t subject you to such nonsense. Those arguments only cause articulate and intelligent chaps to look rather delusional. There can be little doubt, however, that this issue is a convenient stick with which to beat the downtrodden, and aside from chinos, there are few things more in vogue at the moment.
