Poverty: A cut price bacchanalia

Poverty: The Forgotten Englishman 
by Ken Coates and Richard Silburn

One good thing about Goodreads is the serendipity which turns up unexpected delights by chance associations. So for example, when I typed in “The Forgotten Englishman” and searched, I was introduced to La Biblia en España by George Borrow which looks an interesting read. Goodreads did not, however, turn up one of the classics of social commentary, namely Poverty: The Forgotten Englishman by Ken Coates and Richard Silburn, first published as a Penguin Special in 1970, with a classic edition in the distinctive Pelican format in 1973. Only when I carefully typed up all the correct details did this branch of the capitalist giant Amazon confess to holding three different failed attempts at this Marxist title, none correct, while rejecting my effort to put the right information into its record. 

There is an appropriate irony in the book’s title and joint authorship being forgotten, which reflects the reality that its lessons have also been forgotten in British politics and must now be learned all over again. The book is a combination of social research and social commentary but its major contribution was to investigate the experience of poverty in a slum community of Nottingham city, thus exposing the complex web of different factors that work together to produce the reality of life for the poor. It arose in response to the tiresome myths about poverty which prevailed at the time. The same myths persist today but have become the government policy under a Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition that has no interest in evidence. 

The book opens by asking the basic question - What is poverty? Most research into poverty in Britain has been based on the misunderstanding that there is an easily discovered, basic and universal line below which there is poverty and above which there is not. [p34] In each of Rowntree’s three classic studies of poverty in York (1901, 1941 and 1951), he calculated a fixed weekly sum of money which, in his opinion, was ‘necessary to enable families … to secure the necessities of a healthy life,’ and he emphasised that ‘the standards adopted … are on the side of stringency… the lowest levels which responsible experts can justify.” A diet sheet was compiled with the help of the British Medical Association and presumably the British housewife was expected to adhere to this strictly every week or risk either malnutrition or over spending. Peter Townsend later criticised this approach in stinging terms for being wholly unrealistic. He demonstrated that what is deemed ‘necessary’ is a matter of social convention and the classical economists had the same opinion. 

Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations: “By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without.” Marx, in Wage-Labour and Capital:“Our needs and enjoyments spring from society: we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects of their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” 

Even so, for practical purposes, any study of poverty is forced to adopt some arbitrary measure. In Britain, one solution has been to rely on the level at which the state will normally step in to provide benefit payments. In the Fifties, that level would have been lower than the frugal measure adopted by Rowntree in 1936. 

By contrast, there is general agreement in the different studies of poverty about the causes of poverty. These are listed by Abel-Smith and Townsend in 1965 as death of the chief wage earner, incapacity of the chief wage earner, unemployment of the chief wage earner, chronic irregularity of work, size of the family, lowness of wage. Rowntree found the so called “work shy “ to be so small in number as to be insignificant. He also proposed the concept of a “cycle of poverty,” by which people might experience poverty at specific stages of their lives - their own childhood, the period of having young children, old age - with relative comfort in other life stages. 

Although not in this order, the book also reviews related academic and official studies into educational disadvantage and poor housing conditions and he discusses the politics of the welfare state in various contexts. The thing making this book distinctive however, is that it is based on a study of poverty in all of its aspects within the limited geographical space of the St Anne’s District of Nottingham city, an area of slum housing awaiting redevelopment. 

By carrying out detailed interviews, the authors and their researchers confirmed all of the expected findings from other studies of poverty. 

Their work gathering evidence often brought them into conflict with officials. “We rapidly came to feel that it would be easier to coax officialdom to give us the recipe for a hydrogen bomb than to persuade them to tell us anything we wanted to know about the conditions in the schools they control or to get anything more from them than the most pious generalizations.” (p57) In their examination of local schools for example, the local authority accused them of lying without being able to justify that with any counter evidence. 

They found that the more dependent children there were in a family, the more likely the family would be in poverty. But this became evident at an earlier stage in a family’s growth than many people seem to realize. A fifth of one child families, a third of two child families, and approaching half of three child families were in poverty. Poverty became more aggravated as family size increased, but of 214 families interviewed, only 24 had five or more children and of these 24, 8 were not in poverty.“In brief, the important discussion about family poverty is not about ‘problem families’ of feckless breeders; consequently, remedies in terms of birth control, sterilization or other zanier and less humane eugenic recommendations are not of great relevance. This will probably not impede those who noisily canvas them. There is, it seems, a large body of well-wishers of the poor which begrudges them not only the legendary pleasures of Bingo and television, but also even the rudimentary distractions which they have been offered by the Almighty.” [p62]

“At this point it suffices to say quite baldly that the most important single cause of poverty is not indolence, nor fecundity, nor sickness nor even unemployment, nor villainies of any kind, but is, quite simply, low wages.” [p.62]

“In most cities there are areas of relatively cheap housing, usually rented; in these live the families of semi-skilled and unskilled workers, people who have never enjoyed great wealth, but who live from one wage packet to the next with, at most, only a slender margin of savings. The shortest interruption of earning, through sickness or redundancy, means, for these people, sudden and considerable hardship. Slight fluctuations in the economy, a reduction in overtime of two or three hours a week, mean, for them, inexorably, a substantial lowering of living standards. . .. here is a population that is economically vulnerable, less able than others to protect itself against the shifts of fate which can precipitate a family into poverty.” [p.67]

“... the poor do not necessarily see themselves as a group at all and are not necessarily aware that their own immediate and personal difficulties are elements of a public problem. They live ordinary lives in a normal social environment; they are expected to live in the same manner as their neighbours, and they will expect this themselves; they share in all the attitudes, assumptions and expectations of the community in which they live and, of course, they contribute as much as their neighbours to the formation of these attitudes and assumptions. Lacking sufficient money to mesh comfortably into the fabric of this community’s standards, the poor must be seen not simply as isolated individuals, abstracted from society, but as human beings formed in the very society from which they are to a greater or lesser extent excluded.” [p.68/9]

Rowntree, in his first study of poverty in York, divided the poor into two categories. People were in Primary Poverty when their total income was judged insufficient to obtain the minimum necessities for physical efficiency. They were in Secondary Poverty if they had an income above that minimum, but some portion of this was pre-empted for other expenditure, which might be useful or wasteful. The critics of this research in Nottingham argue that Primary Poverty no longer exists and that people are only poor through their own fault, for example through drinking, gambling, or other foolish and wasteful expenditure. However, on the contrary, this Nottingham study restricts its definition of poverty strictly to the first category - Primary Poverty - and does not incorporate families whose income is greater than the agreed benchmark, even though doubtless some would fit the criteria for Secondary Poverty. If the poor did engage in frivolous spending, this would certainly aggravate their hardship considerably, but the evidence of the study was that no such frivolity was found, quite the opposite (for example, the poor made extensive use of cheap second hand goods to stretch their resources further) and if it had been found, that would even so not account for the poverty which existed in any case due to low income. In short, the study found that the attempt to blame poverty on the behaviour of the poor was not supported by evidence. Anecdotal arguments were also refuted by careful scrutiny of the reality. For example, a pensioner who nursed a single drink for a few hours in the pub to enjoy the warmth and some company might actually spend less than they would otherwise spend attempting to heat their own home. “To those who wish to view slum life as a cut price bacchanalia, the pubs tell an equally dull story.” 

“Reachmedown. The word helps to form a whole personality… The poor pale scavengers who root through piles of cast-off underwear in order to scrape up a livelihood perform some sort of service. They help to maintain the decencies where they would otherwise collapse, they assist in cutting the corners on the meanest little budgets, they relieve what would otherwise be open and crying distress. But what is the power of the wearer of old clothes? How often does he see himself as a free man? Naked, he is the equal of any; clad, his dependence is reinforced every time he fastens his shoes. … It is these emotional and moral consequences of being poor that are hardest to grasp for those who have never experienced such deprivations themselves… That is why it is worth while to describe in some detail what life is like in an impoverished community.” [p.75]

“Wherever one can detect and quantify a social problem area, there is always a disproportionately large number of children involved. The gravity of this finding is self evident: wherever personal or social harm is caused by physical or material deprivation, much harm is being disproportionately inflicted upon the young, the vulnerable and impressionable.” [p89]

Everyone find household maintenance and repairs an unwelcome burden, but for the poor they are a nightmare. It is often neglected or carried out in a piecemeal and temporary manner that is more expensive in the long run. To neglect maintenance, moreover, is only to shift the burden from one part of the household budget to another, for example by increasing heating bills, allowing damp which causes harm to clothing, obtaining hot water by boiling many kettles instead of a more economical boiler, etc. “The less you have the more you need to spend.” “To be poor is to pay more and to pay more often.” [p.95]

Wilmott and Young’s classic study “Family and Kinship in East London” 1962 explored the importance of extended family support systems to working class life in Bethnal Green. This study of St Anne’s found that family ties were far weaker, and suggested that the adult children of long term residents moved away to better themselves to a greater extent than even a nearby estate of council housing. [pp.117-119] Community ties were generally weak and social tensions went alongside the lack of physical amenities. Social amenities were also poor. Few recreational groups operated for St Anne’s. Of the churches, the established churches had little following locally, while there was some support for the “fundamentalist chapels,” where the authors suggest the faithful can “sing their hearts out.” [p.125]

“Anyone who seeks, seriously, to understand how a deprived community lives, will quickly come to appreciate that the different threads and strands of life down-town are ravelled together to form a knot of great complexity.” In the case of St. Anne’s, a substantial proportion of people lived below the poverty line; there was gross environmental deprivation - poor housing, density of population, lack of privacy, dirt - and there was social deprivation reflected in the poverty of public facilities, the gaunt Victorian school buildings, and the absence of parks and open spaces.[p.148]

Durkheim said: “What is needed if social order is to reign is that the mass of people be content with their lot. But what is needed for them to be content, is not that they have more or less but that they be convinced they have no right to more.” [p.150]

Is there a culture of poverty? “If middle class values means simply certain conventions of family life, or Calvinist attitudes to work and thrift, or standards of sexual morality, then it is possible to find evidence for the existence of certain subcultural groupings; however, they are not coterminous with the whole community we studied.”[p.153]

"[Runciman] explores the acceptance of different or even divergent standards in what is ostensibly an open society by making use of the concept of ‘reference groups’. People protect themselves from the effects of recognizing the extent of inequality by restricting their own identification, narrowing the social range through which they are prepared to make comparisons with their own position." [p.155]

An old witticism is current in the hosiery industry in Nottingham: “Our dog don’t like pork chops,” they will say to you. Surprised, you ask “Why?” and are triumphantly told: “Because he’s never had any.” There are a lot of things that people living near the social-security level don’t need, because they’ve never had them. [p.160]

"Aneurin Bevan, who is frequently quoted by our present political leaders and who, it may be added, cannot from his present habitation readily comment on the purposes for which his words are sometimes used, had a clear view of this matter…."[p.173]

"But the picture which is now emerging is one in which not only the sick, the unemployed or the bereaved sink below acceptable standards; there is also a staggering number of working people who put in a full week’s work to earn less than they might, in other circumstances, be able to draw as a dole. Perhaps all this does seem obvious. But when one is constantly met by angry citizens who claim that modern poverty , unlike poverty in the old days, is a just reward for indolence, vice and general lassitude, it becomes important to say the obvious and, if necessary, say it loud." [p.209]

Nearly every chapter of this book arrives at the conclusion that, in order for the poor to have their needs addressed, it is essential that they actively agitate for their own demands. Such activism can take many forms but one that is identified as important is the role of the Labour Party and it is interesting how completely the authors feel that the Labour Party of Harold Wilson had turned away from the interests of the poor and was actively aggravating rather than reducing inequality. The book reviews quite a range of policies but concludes in terms that are not less relevant today: 

"Of course, historically, the vehicle which could have linked the separate efforts of community groups, trade unions, local councillors and other bodies to provide both local servicing and communications and a framework for the elaboration of national policy and demands, has been the Labour Party. The present crisis for the poor is aggravated in the extreme by the fact that it is no longer able to play any of its major traditional roles. Possibly it can never be recaptured for its own original purposes. It remains true, however, to put the matter at its worst, that before such a vast organization can disappear from the scene, to make way for something more effective, all the issues it is now avoiding must be seriously faced within it. Sooner or later this is bound to begin to happen, and then will be the time to judge whether the attempt must fail. In the meanwhile, while agitation must be renewed on all other possible fronts, it must also be brought to bear on this one."[p.247] 

This book seems to have been unjustly forgotten. I see no particular need to update it for a current audience. It remains as devastating a response to the neo-liberal blather of today's coalition government in Britain as it was in its day for the Labour government of Harold Wilson. Poverty in Britain is not a natural disaster and not a necessary product of progress or modernity or even economics. It is a political choice. 

Post Script: When Ken Coates died in 2010, one comment in the Guardian was from Hugh Kerr: Ken and I were expelled together from the Labour party in January 1998. Our crime was to oppose Tony Blair for his rightwing policies and his attempt to cleanse the Labour party of socialism and democracy; we were, as Ken said later, "a little ahead of our time". In June that year, as president of the EU, Mr Blair was making his final report to the European parliament. He was somewhat discomfited to find that the two final speakers in the debate were Ken and I.

Ken caused much amusement among the press when he began his speech: "I think the outgoing presidency should be called the Blair presidency in honour of a great Englishman. I refer of course to Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, who described how the Europe of 1984 was governed by a Ministry of Truth in which spin doctors explained how the war being organised by the Ministry of Peace was always going well. The language of this world was called Newspeak. New Labour speaks this language to perfection."

Note also a comment from Giles Oakley: "Ken Coates's poverty campaigning should not be forgotten. In 1967 he and a fellow Nottingham academic, Richard "Bill" Silburn, worked with a study group to produce the hard-hitting but compassionate report St Ann's: Poverty, Deprivation and Morale in a Nottingham Community.   That was followed up with a Penguin special, Poverty: The Forgotten Englishman, in 1970, which for years one would find on the bookshelves of anyone with radical pretensions."
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardia...

For a recent follow up about St. Ann's Estate, see this article:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/20...