While big bonuses are back on the agenda for bankers, Gordon Comstock wonders how he can afford some new shoes
My shoes are falling apart. Since I have just one pair, they get heavy use. I walk a good deal. The problem will be buying a new pair.
Someone once said it is possible to tell a lot about a person from the state of their shoes.
Mine are a pair of Clarks bought for a reduced price that are now splitting apart, uppers from sole – very much as I am myself.
To be on the dole is to be in a state of constant anxiety. You have plenty of time, but it is spent in a condition of paralysis brought on by the fear of spending money you don’t have.
Your activities are extremely limited. Your confidence is undermined. And your sense of exclusion emphasised. You are constantly aware that you cannot afford anything. Every phone call or letter is dreaded, as it will almost always be a demand for payment. This is a form of social suppression and control by economic means. The current level of benefit in this country is derisory. It does not meet the terms of the European Union’s Joint Report on Social Exclusion 2002, to which the British Government is a signatory. This is supposed to “guarantee an adequate income and resources to live in human dignity… and participate in society as full members”.
If I am to buy a new pair of shoes, I will have to sell some items from my record collection. Fortunately, a few of these have become “collectable”, although they are finite in number. But is it right that they have to be sold to keep shoes on my feet?
The national minimum wage was eventually enacted, despite howls of protest from various “captains of industry” and the opposition of the Conservative Party. Now there is a powerful case for a basic minimum income below which no British citizen should have to live.
In France, where the benefits system is considerably more generous, there have been riots as a consequence of social exclusion and poverty. A manifesto of sorts has been published recently by something called “The Invisible Committee”. Entitled The Coming Insurrection, this challenges the widely-accepted notion that going to work is the only way to participate in society.
There never has been enough paid work for all and there never will be. Further, the term is no longer meaningful. What, precisely, is work? The highest-paid jobs are the preserve of those who manipulate elaborate financial schemes and who do not make anything useful. Yet there is a continual assumption that “real jobs” are created by the machinations of these people. What they do is accorded pseudo-religious reverence. Listen to the solemn way stock exchange figures are enunciated in financial bulletins.
But where are the real jobs supposedly created by a company such as Goldman Sachs, which continues to reward its employees obscenely for whatever it is they do? Since Goldman Sachs’ extravagant British headquarters was established in the Daily Telegraph’s old offices in the late 1980s, what jobs has the firm created – other than keeping the local coffee shops in business? The main role of Goldman Sachs and others like it seems to involve appropriating vast amounts of money for themselves.
What, exactly, is “the City”? And what does it do? It is not a single entity, although it is invariably referred to as such. No one elects it. Why is it given such importance?
Even the more tangible organisation that provides the services for the financial “City” is a strange animal. No more than a couple of thousand people live in the “Square Mile”. Its streets are the cleanest in London and it generates in a huge amount in business rates. But what is it for?
There has always seemed to be a vacuum at the heart of the City of London. It has no discernable purpose and no guiding principle, other than its own preservation and the maintenance of its power. The obsessive care taken of its buildings, boundaries and pavements – recently, all chewing gum was meticulously removed – is symptomatic of a deep commitment to utilitarianism and the disregard it has for the society and people it is supposed to serve.
Interestingly, in Italy, cities have “communales” at the heart their local government. In Britain, we have authorities. In the particular case of the City, we have a corporation – a term for a business.
And in this country, the benefits system is as complex, obtuse and unfair as the workings of the City of London. If I do earn some money, only the first £5 is disregarded. Anything over that is deducted from the basic benefit. So, if I were paid £25 for something, I would only be £5 better off. This is how a means tested system operates. It is absurd and encourages non-compliance.
Yet there is an incentive deal available for employers, with the unlikely title of a “self-marketing voucher”. Under this scheme, an employer gets £500 if they give someone a trial for a job and a further £500 if that person is still there after six months. What is effectively a bribe goes directly to the employer if they “create” a job for someone who has to continue to try to survive on £64.50 a week while working full time. This is crazy. Why can’t that £500 be given to the person who needs it the most: the claimant? Five hundred pounds seems like a fortune when you are on the dole. If £1,000 can be found for an employer who does not have to pay you anything and does not have to offer a paid position after six months, why can’t such a sum be found for claimants?
I have been unemployed before, in the early 1980s and the early ’90s – two other periods of deep recession. Then it was just about possible to manage on the level of benefits. It is impossible now.
The assumptions and accusations that are continually made about those claiming legitimate benefits disturb me greatly. There are millions of unemployed people in this country. The percentage of them who defraud the system is tiny. The vast majority are trying to exist on £60.40 or less a week. It is remarkable how little complaint about this is heard in the mainstream media.
It is badly misguided and dangerous for this Government or a future one – and sadly the parties seem to be of one mind on this – to tinker with the basic entitlement and make it conditional. It is already set at a scandalously low level. To introduce some form of work for this already inadequate provision and perhaps remove that provision from those not prepared to submit to coercion would be a further step away from the principle of some form of social security. For my part, I will refuse to work for a benefit that does not come anywhere near the minimum wage.
This undermining of the principle of social security and the greater social exclusion that results can only increase the stress on our already fragmented society and add to the sense of injustice many feel. That may to lead to civil unrest and political extremism.
This has to be the time for Labour’s radical traditions to be revived. Labour should stop doing the Conservatives’ work for them and instead introduce a simple, universal minimum income entitlement. That would be a vital move towards making our country fairer, more equal and more civilised.
