A cold Beveridge
Douglas Curtis
Tommy will be nine next week but his face is already old and his body is that of a stunted seven year old. His reading age is six but he has a fluent command of every verbal obscenity known to most adults. His slight limp is the result of a permanent injury sustained in one of a series of fights on'the Rec,' the Romsey Town Recreation Ground, and his favourite sport is fishing the lower reaches of the Cam. Sometimes he just sits and watches as the rowing crews go by in their smart, expensive boats. On such occasions only a short stretch of muddy water separates him from the college oarsmen in their neat kit and the coxswain in his shocking pink blazer but the gulf between his world and theirs is much greater.
In fact, the only link between Tommy and the opulent life of the Cambridge colleges is Jean White, a twenty-two year old Girton graduate who runs a play scheme in the Romsey Town area. Jean, whose father is a civil engineer, comes from Maidstope, in Kent, but she decided to stay on in Cambridge after her early experiences as a playgroup leader convinced her of the urgent need in those parts of the town the tourists never see. Jean first became aware of the problems during vacations from her exclusive women's college but she told me, "After graduating in English Literature, I decided that I didn't have any careerist ideas. I'd worked on a summer play scheme and I was appalled by the conditions in which these kids have to live out their existence."
Romsey Town has a long history of 'appalling conditions,' largely influenced by the stranglehold the University has over the town. It was the University's distaste for proximity to the working class that caused the railway sidings and the homes of railway workers to be sited away from the graceful surroundings of the colleges. They thus ensured that the working-class kids were born, quite literally, on the wrong side of the tracks.
The council estate wasn't a pretty sight, even when it was first built, but now the houses are falling down and suffering from the effects of multiple occupation. None of the houses have more than three bedrooms but it is not uncommon for three generations of a family, with up to eleven children, to occupy one house. In some cases, children have to sleep on mattresses placed on living-room floors. They can't get to sleep until the television programmes have finished for the night.
A common diet for Tommy, and most of his friends, consists of a packet of potato crisps for breakfast, a bar of chocolate for lunch and a 'chip buttie ' for tea. In pursuit of Mrs Thatcher's economy drive, free milk has been withdrawn from the two schools the children attend. "Surprisingly," according to Jean White, " many of the kids are quite beautiful, with fine features and clear skins, until they reach mid-adolescence. Then their past deprivations Catch up with them. They become seedy and their growth is stunted."
Poverty, and lack of proper nourishment, in Romsey Town is often a direct result of deliberate University policy. Domestic staff at the colleges are poorly paid and the influx of new industry is positively discouraged. The effect is to keep down rates of pay for everyone. Coupled with this is the fact that the colleges own most of the property and land in and around the town and University councillors often hold the balance of power at local authority meetings. Rents and rates are high for residential and business property and prices are forced up.
It is precisely the kind of economic deprivation arising from these factors that the Beveridge proposals were designed to cope with. The Welfare State was created to look after the welfare of the people ' from the cradle to the grave,' and the fact that the proposals have been only partially implemented is a sad reflection on the Government policies of both major parties. But even where they have been implemented they fall tragically short of their target.
In November 1970 there were 240,000 unemployed recipients of supplementary benefit. Of these 14,580 or 6.1 per cent lost part of their allowances through being ' voluntarily unemployed.' The percentage goes up every year and the Child Poverty Action Group, which often represents claimants on appeal, claims that in a good many cases the unemployment could in no way be described as voluntary.
Another device which pushes families below the officially defined poverty level is 'the wage stop.' This rule is designed to ensure that the net income of an unemployed person be no greater when receiving supplementary benefit than it would be if he were following his normal full-time occupation. The Government's 1970 Survey of Two-Parent Families showed that approximately 25,000 families were living in poverty as a result. In August 1971 the family income supplement was introduced to deal with the problem but in November of that year 21,000 families were still unaffected by the new payments. Further adjustments were made in April 1972 and it is too early to make an accurate assessment of their total effect but it is already clear that a great many families will still be forced into poverty by the operation of the wage stop.
In 1970, 4,388 female claimants had their allowances withdrawn or reduced 'after allegations of cohabitation had been made and there is growing concern that many allowances are lost unjustly. Again, in 1970, 31,750 had their allowances reduced by the operation of a rent stop, and over the last two and a half years 250,000 claimants have had allowances reduced on the grounds that they are workshy.
The largest group below the poverty line are wage-earners and their families. In 1970 there were 74,000 such families with a further 204,000 existing on incomes less than £2 above the supplementary benefits level and 735,000 less than e5 above it. In all, 1,113,000 families of industrious slaves are condemned to live in poverty.
Because deprivation tends to be cumulative, extending to education and culture and leading to ignorance and apathetic acceptance, deprived parents have the largest numbers of children. A whole generation is growing up with socioeconomic deprivation built into their culture.
The Beveridge proposals were designed to abolish want but almost three times as Many people are now dependent on supplementary benefit as when the National Assistance Board was first established in 1948. The Welfare State is twenty-four years old and one-tenth of the people still live in abject poverty. Almost three million of them are children, unable to affect their destinies and often unaware of the full extent of their deprivations.
But statistics may be meaningless. Tommy and his friends have never heard of Beveridge but they know about the reality of deprivation in the Welfare State. Perhaps things will get better — this year, next year, sometime, never. It will be a cold Christmas for Tommy and his three million friends. Muse we leave it to voluntary organisations like the Child Poverty Action Group and dedicated individuals like Jean White to bring a little warmth into their lives? If so, let us at least send them a donation!
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