Christmas: the season of joy, peace, laughter, lights and trees, thankfulness, sharing, charitable giving, presents, carols, drinking and eating too much. Yes, for most of us. But out there are women, men and kids who can only stand out in the cold, their faces pressed against thick glass windows, despondent, envious, perhaps angry, that none of this is for them. Like mice on dark Tube train tracks, they’ve become subterranean creatures, barely noticed.
But notice them we must, especially (but not only) during this year’s festivities. This affecting Action for Children appeal says it all: “The magic of Christmas begins in childhood. Hanging stockings. Sharing festive food. Presents under the tree… But for vulnerable children across the UK, Christmas is anything but magical… you could give a vulnerable child the essentials of warm clothes, a hot meal, or a special present just for them. You could help them feel the magic of Christmas.”
Not the latest whizzo Lego set, just warm clothes, a hot meal and a little pressie.
I know I bang on about this, but the UK is the sixth largest economy in the world after US, China, Japan, Germany, and India. Fanatic free-marketeers contend that when fat cats make more, the trickle-down effect benefits everybody. Not so, not at all. The cost of living crisis has driven up revenues for suppliers of essential services and goods, and driven down the least well off to almost subsistence existence.
Supermarkets conspicuously put out boxes for food donations to show they are socially virtuous. They could instead send out daily vanloads of stuff to charities feeding the needy. They don’t because profits come before people.
In September, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned that around six million Britons – 1.5 million more than 20 years ago – are now locked in “very deep poverty“. They include couples with children, lone parents, social and private housing renters, carers and disabled people.
Their fortunes are not fixed. They can and do move out of this pitiful level if a family member gets a sustainable job or wages go up. That release comes infrequently. Having an additional child leads to rapid descent into penury. So too mental-health emergencies.
This is not happenstance, but a designed waste of humans in super-capitalist UK. They mean nothing to right-wingers. Unsurprisingly, the deep poor have now become utterly, gravely, cut off from politics.
A young mum of three I will call A recognised me in a supermarket last week, from a daytime show I appear on.
The kids were unnaturally quiet. I took them to a café in the shop, bought them cakes and hot drinks. Her life was one, long, interminable struggle. Her mum, who used to take care of the kids, has cancer. “A” was a shop assistant. Now she can’t work. She gets benefits for two children, not the third. Moneybags George Osborne and David Cameron brought in the two-child benefit cap. She has completely lost faith in our skewed system: “I used to vote. Not now. It’s not for people like us. The forgotten ones. The ones no one cares about”.
A new study by The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a centre-left think tank, warns that the next election will be the most unequal in 60 years. Those like “A” who see no prospect of life improving are highly unlikely to turn out, while the majority of Britons who are homeowners, graduates, and relatively high earners will cast their votes.
In the 60s most people from all social classes voted. By 2010 there was a gap of 18 percentage points between the top set of earners – the most likely to vote – and the bottom set. That gap has widened. And inequality has risen. Connect the dots.
Dr Parth Patel, a senior research fellow at the IPPR, is seriously concerned about the “real differences in who gets their way in our democracy. Policy is more responsive to preferences of the well-heeled than of the worse off… our democratic machine needs rewiring. If people are once again to be authors of their own lives, and to feel secure, they must sense their influence in the collective decision-making endeavour that is democracy.”
Good democracies include and develop their poorest and most wretched citizens. Ours excludes and neglects them.
The starkest poverty for 60 years is hurting democracy
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13.12.2023
Christmas: the season of joy, peace, laughter, lights and trees, thankfulness, sharing, charitable giving, presents, carols, drinking and eating too much. Yes, for most of us. But out there are women, men and kids who can only stand out in the cold, their faces pressed against thick glass windows, despondent, envious, perhaps angry, that none of this is for them. Like mice on dark Tube train tracks, they’ve become subterranean creatures, barely noticed.
But notice them we must, especially (but not only) during this year’s festivities. This affecting Action for Children appeal says it all: “The magic of Christmas begins in childhood. Hanging stockings. Sharing festive food. Presents under the tree… But for vulnerable children across the UK, Christmas is anything but magical… you could give a vulnerable child the essentials of warm clothes, a hot meal, or a special present just for them. You could help them feel the magic of Christmas.”
Not the latest whizzo Lego set, just warm clothes, a hot meal and a little pressie.
I know I........
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