Comfortably off liberals are always bemused to discover that the working classes and poor do not share their love of the welfare state. Where impeccably middle-class students will bravely spend bitterly cold evenings defending NHS hospitals threatened with closure, and highly paid columnists will devote an entire afternoon to writing tear-drenched articles about the beggary the poor will be plunged into if they lose their benefits, the less well off themselves are decidedly sniffy about the welfare state. Some even seem to hate it. According to recent opinion polls, 64 per cent of Brits think the benefits system "doesn't work"; 78 per cent think that if an unemployed person turns down a job, his benefits should be trimmed; and 84 per cent believe there should be tougher work-capability tests for disabled people. Apparently such views are more entrenched among the poor than among the comfortable.
From these findings, we might deduce that many of the unmoneyed will have given an approving nod to the changes made to the welfare system by Iain Duncan Smith yesterday. And this drives pro-welfare writers and activists absolutely nuts. Why, they wail, are those on the breadline so down about glorious postwar welfarism? In yesterday's Guardian, a columnist did some very public handwringing over the weird fact that anti-welfare "noise" always gets louder "as you head into the most disadvantaged parts of society". This echoes a recent Guardian editorial which bemoaned the way ordinary Brits have become "more Scrooge-like" towards welfare claimants. Or behold the poor, bamboozled Joseph Rowntree researcher who was horrified to discover recently that the less well-off are not "pro-welfare".
Pity the poor, unthanked middle-class warrior for welfare rights! Why is it always his kind alone that must attend demos defending jobseekers' allowance while the fat, fickle jobseekers themselves stay at home, probably watching Jeremy Kyle? Why is it always left to the well-educated activist to adorn her Twitter page with banners saying "I heart the NHS" while the poorest beneficiaries of the NHS fill their Twitterfeeds with tripe about Kim Kardashian's baby bump? These unloved fighters for the right of poor folk to receive money and comfort from the state have come up with all sorts of theories to explain the poor's failure to get off their lardy derrières and defend welfarism. Their favourite is the idea that poor folk, being a bit dim and all, have been brainwashed by "scrounger"-hating tabloid newspapers. As a result of political-class diktat and media messaging, these dimwits have apparently "internalised a Thatcherite every-man-for-himself mentality".
In truth, the real dimwittery in this debate is among the confused and angry middle-class warriors for welfarism. They have simply failed, and failed miserably, to reckon with one of the iron laws of modern politics – which is that the more reliant you are on the welfare state, the more experience you have of it, the less you love it. And by extension, the further removed you are from the welfare state, the less experience you have of it, then the more you can fantasise about its virtues and grow to love it – or at least to love an imaginary version of it derived from watching Casualty and reading Polly Toynbee columns.
If the less well-off really are more hostile to welfarism than the bien-pensant classes, that's perfectly logical. It's because they know the soul-deadening and community-dividing impact that blanket welfarism can have (Editor's comment - Not Sure if this is true). It's because they know that being sustained by the state is a miserable existence compared with being busy, independent, self-reliant. It's because they know that NHS hospitals, especially in the poorer parts of Britain, are far from the greatest human creations since the pyramids, but rather are soulless institutions in which families are relentlessly hectored about their lifestyle choices and eating habits, and the old are treated like animals. It's because they know that the offering of "incapacity" benefits to the long-term unemployed encourages these people to see themselves as sick rather than as having been let down by society. It's because they know that workless communities propped up by ceaseless welfare-state intervention tend to become ghost towns, bereft of individual initiative and lacking in social solidarity. After all, if an individual's or family's every financial and therapeutic need is being met by faraway faceless bureaucrats, what earthly need is there for them to strike up relationships within their own communities, to get together with others in the pursuit of daily happiness or a better future? Welfarism, by coaxing the poor man into the all-encompassing bosom of the state, alienates him from his neighbour. Who could love such a system, save those cushioned sections of society that are lucky enough never to have been mangled by it?
So, all you well-to-do campaigners for the protection or expansion of the welfare state, there is no need to be bemused by the poor's indifference to your battle. For what you love about welfarism – that it insulates the so-called "vulnerable" from the chaotic, often unfair world of the market and struggle and work – is precisely what the poor hate about it (Editor's comment - Am not sure of this conclusion about the poor).
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