The quest to identify those impoverished people who are not to blame for their poverty from the other poor people - who by inference are receiving the poverty they deserve- is as old as the hills. Rowan Williams wrote last week of “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving” poor’” within the political debate. He was right to do so.
The phrase “deserving and undeserving” is no longer used but there are many codes in its place. The new acceptable discriminator is to talk of “people who do the right thing”. The phrase crosses the political divide, David Cameron used the phrase 7 times in one pre-election debate; Ed Milliband used it last week when suggesting some deserving people should have preference in going up housing waiting lists. It is an obvious phrase, which tests well in focus groups, but its implications are, in my view, both socially damaging and profoundly contrary to Christian teaching.
The Government has now begun to haphazardly convert the rhetoric of the “those who do the right thing” into policy. Initially Benefit Caps – limiting the total amount of benefit which could be received - were to apply to all. As time has passed those “doing the right thing” have been exempted - the old, the disabled, the war widow(er)s, and other special cases. Every Housing Benefit claim will be reduced by mathematical formula but now a discretionary £200m will go to those considered to be unjustly affected, to be determined by individual local authorities – these will be the old, the sick.... The welfare cuts are gaining similar grossly underfunded exemptions on a daily basis.
The problem is that it is easy for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to supply examples of the feckless poor to be derided in the pages of the Sunday Telegraph – but it is much harder to define a group as undeserving with any degree of justice or accuracy. Whole categories are labelled so that the majority of the public believe them undeserving (alcoholics for instance) but talk to your minister or others who work with addicts and very quickly it becomes much harder to use words like “undeserving”.
The hunt for the undeserving poor, despite many attempts, has never found large enough numbers of people to save significant amounts of money. This enthusiastically publicised scrounger hunt has served to stigmatise people who least deserve it and have little opportunity to fight back. The unjust sigma is also used to penalise those who clearly have “done the right thing”. The reason being if you just take money from the “undeserving” it doesn’t save much and don’t be fooled into thinking it does. But even if making moral judgements on past behaviour was a fruitful exercise I would argue for a benefit system focussed on meeting needs rather than judging behaviour.
Some of the most compelling Gospel stories are of Jesus’ encounters with people as he went about his ministry. My reading of these encounters show Jesus to be profoundly disinterested in someone’s past commitment to “doing the right thing”. Jesus was unimpressed by the Pharisees - who made a fetish out of “doing the right thing” – yet those who society judged harshly - those who hadn’t “done the right thing” eg - Zacheaus or the Woman at the Well – seem to emerge from their encounters with Jesus much better. Jesus seemed much more concerned with meeting the needs of the person he met than judging them on past behaviour.
Our liturgy says we have “all sinned and fallen short”. In past times Christians would describe themselves as “wretched” or “sinners” or other colourful words to acknowledge the fact that even the best of us have not always “done the right thing”. The very heart of the Christian faith is the acknowledgement that although we do not always “do the right thing” we are still loved, still valuable and still acknowledged as made in the image of God. A Christian who wishes others the full consequences of “doing the wrong thing” should really ask themselves if this is a rule they would be happy to see applied to themselves.
My view is that Christians should not set themselves up as the uninvited judges of others behaviour, nor ask the DWP to judge others’ behaviour. Christians instead should be focused on ensuring that people’s needs are met – irrespective of how they came to be in need.
Much of what is good in British politics, both on the Left and Right wings, was originally inspired by Christianity. But following the New Labour project of 1997-2010, the old definitions of Left and Right have become confused: is there any fundamental difference between political parties apart from the financial incentives they offer varying voter groups? And does that matter?
One way of analysing the Coalition victory is that Labour lost the election, but neither the Lib Dems nor the Conservatives quite won it. Now may be the time for the Church to speak to those who feel that political parties don’t speak to them or for them; who regret the lack of idealism in a political reality often characterised by sterile adversarial stances and lobbying for special interests; or who feel the political class are a breed apart, out of touch purveyors of ideology.
As the saying goes “without vision, the people perish” – and no quantity of Government strategies, targets or mission statements can remedy a lack of true vision.
Why Church? Politics is bound up with concern for others in our own and other communities, but political and economic systems on their own can never generate community and compassionate concern. At best, they can attempt to prevent discrimination and injustice by legal definitions and enforcement, or engineer social change, but that is the negative side of progress. Churches have an opportunity to speak of and contribute to the positive that has still not been tried – a social ethos truly grounded in love and kindness.
Tony Blair had an unprecedented mandate from the British public in 1997; many had high hopes for the fusion of progressive leftist values of inclusion and fairness with a traditionally right wing approach to economics. In implementing this ‘Third Way’, New Labour combined typical process elements of Right and Left: hard-nosed internationalist capitalism friendly to banks and big businesses, alongside statism, a love of centralised bureaucracy, mass legislation and moral authoritarianism. Like it or loathe it, this was an effective formula for power, the logical successor to the Thatcherite revolution of the 1980s.
In this new, quasi-European Centrism, which the Coalition hasn’t fundamentally changed, politics risks being reduced to a machine for distributing and redistributing wealth according to different people’s lists of the deserving and undeserving. This may be a good world for career politicians, banks, international businesses and lawyers. But is it the best that Britain can do for itself and other nations? Has what was good in the traditional Right and Left evaporated into a vapid Centrism that combines the worst of each?
As we ponder last week’s Spending Review some of us are probably wondering whether the heralded Big Society marks a return to an empowered grassroots social engagement, or simply Government abandoning the poorest to the consequences of a recession they are suffering from the most and have done least to cause or deserve. The current economic troubles give us a unique opportunity to rediscover the politics of idealism and every single member of our society has an opportunity to revive and demonstrate the Christian call to unselfishness whether or not they have a religious commitment.
Individual Christians may or may not want to engineer a society of centrally-enforced ‘equality’. But whatever our view of the appropriate economic process, I hope we can stop thinking in as social scientists with rulers – whether Left or Right-wing rulers - who calculate in our offices who has too much and who has too little. Instead, is it time to downplay personal and political opinions and fill our hearts with compassion for the poor and needy, the homeless and destitute.
Poverty is not a party political issue; it is a Christian and moral outrage. I have suggested that politics based on economic self-interest can never ground true community: this opinion may speak to our conscience, but can it be backed up by rigorous thought? Can religion develop workable schemes where materialistic politics fails?
This post is the first of a series in which I will explore the possibilities for Churches to work increasingly with local communities and Government to engage British people more richly in issues – such as poverty and inequality - that affect us all. Let’s roll up our sleeves and, collectively, do some hard economic and theological work!
The quest to identify those impoverished people who are not to blame for their poverty from the other poor people - who by inference are receiving the poverty they deserve- is as old as the hills. Rowan Williams wrote last week of “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving” poor’” within the political debate. He was right to do so. 