LETTERS Proletarian degradation
Sir: Dr Anthony Daniels (`Too dependent on welfare?', 3 October) reports on filthy housing estates inhabited by people 'slat- ternly beyond belief, who seem to become more sullen and resentful the more they are helped, and suggests that this may be because of 'hypertrophy of the welfare state'. His observations, however, are those which have been made in Britain over decades and even centuries. About 150 years ago, Thomas Walker, a London magistrate, published very similar findings in the Original, a magazine later collected into book form. He also put it down to welfare — the then new Poor Law, which obliged those in work to contribute quite a sizable fraction of their income to support those out of work, which, as he said, made it beneficial to damage yourself, to sell your clothes for drink so as to be given more, to stop working and 'get your rights'.
But there must be a fallacy in this reasoning, because, were it true, more welfare would mean more degradation, sullenness, deliberate poverty etc. In a European context, Britain's welfare system suffers from the opposite of hypertrophy: may I refer Dr Daniels to the European Community's excellent annual Basic Statis- tics? This tabulates total welfare state spending as a percentage of the country's gross domestic product, i.e. national in- come. In one year, this recorded for the UK 23.5 per cent. In that year, the level for Germany was 29.4 per cent, which is 25 per cent more as a percentage of GDP — a GDP which was itself about 40 per cent above the UK level. Indeed, the UK welfare spending level was in that year (1981 — but the same general result is true of other years) the lowest as a fraction of GDP of any Community country apart from Ireland. Yet no one would say that the sort of degradation which Dr Daniels and many others describe is worse in those other countries — rather, it is far less evident.
I cannot say what the cause is of this British proletarian degradation. 'Chester- belloc' would put it down to a higher degree of plutocracy and landlessness here. But if Dr Daniels wishes to suggest that the degree of welfare is the cause, then all empirical observation must conclude that the cure is more welfare, not less.
George Stern 6 Eton Court, Shepherds Hill, London N6
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