UK Poverty Post

It’s not fair

It really isn’t. Just when you expected a minister to say something reassuring and profound about the government’s commitment to equality, he goes and lets you down.

John Denham, the communities secretary, has been putting the cat among the pigeons, or at least any pigeons of a liberal disposition. Which, it would appear, are fewer in number than we thought.

His pronouncements, in a speech to the Fabian Society today, were touted by the Guardian as a retreat from egalitarianism. In reality, it was rather more nuanced, but still significant.

Using recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation about public attitudes to equality, he argued that what people are really interested in is fairness. This ‘hard-nosed’ concept, to use his expression, relates to rewards for efforts – inequalities are fair if they relate to the amount of work people put in:

‘What the research shows is that popular sentiment supports a tough, hard headed, but at the end of the day, compassionate version of fairness. One that does not turn its back on those in great need, but one that also insists that effort should be rewarded, and that society should be fair to those who play by the rules.

This sense of fairness is based on the idea that there is a set of obligations and opportunities that should underpin British society. When people say ‘it’s not fair’ it is usually because they believe that the balance of duties and rewards, of right and responsibilities, has been upset.’

Instead of basing an ideal society on an assessment of needs, Mr Denham argued, it should be based on what is felt to be fair. But here we run into difficulties.

First, we should acknowledge that he’s dealing with an issue that arouses strong feelings of what is just and right, even if there’s rather less clarity on how what is just and right should be measured. The great social researcher Michael Young and his colleagues picked this up when he revisited his seminal study of family life in Bethnal Green, east London. His book, The new East End: kinship, race and conflict draws out the strong sense of injustice felt by white working-class families because of the perception that Bengali families were getting preferential treatment in the housing queue; this sense of injustice was aggravated when middle-class council officials casually dismissed it as racism.

However, perceptions of unfair treatment can rapidly turn into unchallenged urban myths. We saw in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in 2001 how such urban myths can take on a life of their own, and how much effort has been required to counter them. To suggest social policy should be based on popular views about who is or isn’t deserving is deeply flawed.

The nub of Mr Denham’s argument, though, is that this is the way to get elected: The number of people who sign up to a traditional egalitarian view of society (only 22% according to this research) is simply too small to construct a strong, viable and inclusive electoral coalition. And the extent that those who do are older and more traditionally working class, suggest that this task will get harder not easier…

The JRF research, based on a survey of 3,316 people and discussions with another 112 in focus groups, found that most people defined themselves as neither rich nor poor. However, while they thought wealth generally had been earned, the popular view was that those in poverty had only themselves to blame. As the researchers pointed out, ‘two important factors driving these attitudes were widespread beliefs that there are adequate opportunities to earn a reasonable income and beliefs that benefit recipients will not contribute back to society’.

John Denham’s view is this:

‘If you think you are in this middle group, policies and language aimed at ‘the poor’ by definition exclude you. They intensify the sense that someone else is getting a better deal than you and your family. And if you in the middle, you are more likely to be concerned about whether ‘the top’ is doing better than you, than you are about the situation of those at ‘the bottom’.’

So his answer is a concept of fairness that acknowledges these attitudes and ensures the poor only get what the majority consider they deserve. That isn’t nothing: the researchers found support for a ‘progressive’ tax and benefits system. But it does suggest that what the poor deserve should be determined by the better off.

This approach fails on three counts:

First, it puts perceptions before evidence. It places the voices that hold sway in the pub and the shopping queue above the evidence that shows, for instance, that increases in the cost of living hit the worst-off hardest (see this research, just published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation); or that the recession is disproportionately affecting areas that are already disadvantaged.

Second, it ignores and devalues the huge efforts made by many who are among the poorest in our society to improve life for their families and communities. I have met more individuals than I can count who survive on benefits or meagre incomes and have galvanised their communities into action, supporting regeneration projects, helping and advising their neighbours, tackling antisocial behaviour and standing up, often at huge personal risk, against gang and gun crime.

They include people like Linda Whitworth, whose ‘A team’ have restored local spirit in East Howden, Tyneside; Glenn Jenkins, who has chivvied and cajoled residents on Luton’s Marsh Farm estate into developing their own job opportunities, despite continual opposition; and Pam Stewart, who despite coping with her own and her family’s ill health has helped numerous voluntary organisations in Wigan. What marks these people out is not how little they have, but how much they’re ready to offer.

Compare that with John Denham’s assertion that people in ‘the middle’ feel excluded. If anything, it panders to the view that the worst-off are implicitly less deserving precisely because of their hardship.

The JRF researchers sounded a strong caveat about the attitudes they discovered, which John Denham glosses over:

‘Many participants exhibited strongly judgemental attitudes towards people on out-of-work benefits, motivated by beliefs about the ready availability of opportunity and beliefs that those claiming benefits now will not necessarily make a future contribution back to society. This suggests an important route for challenging judgemental attitudes here would be to raise awareness of the barriers to opportunity faced by many people and to highlight the contributions that many of those on low incomes currently make to society and will make in future.’

Third, the Denham approch subjects principles to utility. Here he diverges not only from his Labour forebears, but from the most significant social reformers across the political spectrum.

From Victorian philanthropists like Thomas Barnardo, whose slogan was ‘no destitute child ever refused admission’, to clerics like David Sheppard, former bishop of Liverpool, who argued for a ‘bias to the poor’, there was a burning sense of moral obligation to those who found themselves in need. John Denham’s version of fairness removes that: it changes the value of a human being from something that is innate into something determined by the popular mood. And the popular mood can easily decide that particular groups are of no value at all: you only have to look at the recent treatment of Roma families in Northern Ireland to see where that can lead.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oxfam GB.