October has been an interesting month. It started with a trip up to Manchester for the Conservative party conference; with a strategically chosen location. Manchester has always had a working class history; in 1903 a group of women met there and founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, which became the suffragette movement, with the aim of recruiting more working class women into the struggle for the vote. Frederick Engels lived in Salford and regularly went drinking with Karl Marx to discuss the plight of the working class. In 1868 the Trades Union Congress was founded and its first congress was convened by the Manchester and Salford Trades Council. Manchester has always been characterised by a feeling of working class pride, and generosity of spirit. Nowadays Manchester is seen as a city of innovation and drive, a testing ground for new concepts of social mobility based on progression and inclusion. The Working Neighbourhood Team is a good example of this and we have been working with the council on how to incorporate the informal economy in this project to tackle worklessness.
Having lived and studied in Manchester, being there for a week for the conference proved to be a very different experience from the one I was familiar with. Occasionally I managed to pop out of the secure zone, slipping back into reality for a quick cup of coffee on the high street. Most notable was the absence on the high street of the optimism and excitement in the lobby of the Midland Hotel, where MPs and potential MPs, campaigners and the media conversed in corners, on sofas, and even sitting on the main stairway.
One morning I caught a glimpse of the front page headline of a local paper about a £150 champagne scandal; not good news for the Tories if they are to win the hearts of the working class people with a new progressive conservatism! The next day George Osborne announced plans for a public sector pay freeze aimed at the middle earners. The Unions weren’t persuaded by the argument that money needs to be generated from somewhere, and Derek Simpson from UNITE said
“George Osborne has made it clear the Tories are going to hit hard-working public sector workers on low pay while preparing to line the pockets of the wealthy through income tax cuts.”
By the end of the conference, I felt fairly optimistic that there may be potential with the Conservatives for some of the Need NOT Greed proposals on transforming welfare, with the promise of a role for Iain Duncan Smith, and strong support for his Dynamic Benefits proposals at fringe events. Although the official line was no comment, there seemed to be a clear recognition of the structural barriers present in the current welfare system that needed addressing. However the very large price tag is not an election-winning proposition; especially when the money will have to be found from somewhere…
Meanwhile, last week Reform launched their report The end of entitlement recommending a localisation of benefits (authorities determine benefit levels and conditionality, resulting in a potential postcode lottery) and cutting benefits (£31 billion) for the middle classes. The Spectator’s Peter Hoskins said
“Sure, it may not be as easy as it sounds at first. Ditching middle class benefits would mean an extension of means testing – which brings costs and complexities of its own. And there are questions about how you define “middle class”. But there’s little doubting that this approach could yield huge savings.”
It is evident from the comments that follow the Spectator article that current policy recommendations and electioneering activity may be creating greater divisions in what is supposedly already a broken society. The middle classes – the ’silent majority’ – may not remain silent if they are to be a target for government cuts. The money will have to be generated from somewhere…
On the other hand definitions of class are becoming increasingly blurry. The recession has brought a wave of the newly unemployed, which are facing the same dilemmas as the long-term unemployed. The middle class have been hit badly by this recession and are experiencing the benefit trap for the first time themselves. This has the potential to unify different classes or strengthen divisions; something both political parties should seriously consider when planning their election campaigns. Proposals on welfare reform and the language used could unintentionally create a split between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, forcing people to identify with a particular class in order to preserve their welfare entitlement; and attack another in order to shift the spotlight.
Last week we joined people experiencing poverty at the TUC annual poverty conference on Alternative Visions for the Welfare System. I attended a workshop on ‘dignity’, where we discussed the terms used to describe people on benefits at the Jobcentre. ‘Client’ was considered very formal; people felt ‘customer’ reminded them of a business taking advantage and making a profit; ‘claimant’ was considered more factual, accurate and not as patronising. When I asked somebody who was recently made redundant, she felt that she had paid her taxes all her life and welfare was a service she had bought into; a type of insurance. Furthermore a number of trade unionists discussed the title worker for the working class and how those who have never had a trade, particularly the younger generation, struggled to define themselves as that.
Public perceptions or misconceptions of people reliant on the welfare system present a huge barrier to reform. There is a lack of clarity for whom the welfare system is there to serve and who is entitled to benefit from it. Parties need to be clear about the consequences of their actions and language used in the lead up to an election and recognize that all classes are voting citizens. And people reliant on benefits need to ensure they speak up, identify themselves and get their voices heard. One senior Conservative politician asked me at the conference “do people on benefits vote?”
