The poor are in the news again.
The Archbishop of course. Mr Cameron and Mr Cable and the subject of Arch-Episcopal dissatisfaction Mr Duncan Smith.
We cannot just leave people on the dole, claiming benefits and not working.
We all have to contribute to the big society, indeed if we didn't it would be a medium sized society or even heaven help us. a small society.
Clearly there are significant numbers of people, living on outer city estates and getting by on benefits, and, it is true, some of those people, play the system to their advantage to improve their income position. Just as some people fiddle their expenses and some people manage, with the aid of their accountants, to ensure that their income position is Tax Efficient.
But lets look at how this has arisen.
Sometime in 1984 before I went to America I wrote an article which was published in a magazine called The New Christian.
In the article I described a long queue snaking across history, it was the queue of the poorest in society.
Joining the queue were those recently unemployed, Miners, Steel Workers, Ship Yard Workers, Dockers all of whom had seen their industries closed or sold to foreign owners.
In the mid eighties a whole class and generation were made unemployed. It is the children and grand children of that class who now subsist on welfare. Labour intensive industries were closed down and the jobs exported and there are not enough call centres to employ the generation that Mr Duncan Smith wants to 'save' from itself by 'getting it back to work'.
The other great legacy of the Thatcher Government was debt. As a friend of mine wrote in a book he published in 2000, debt is the most efficient form of social control, students in debt are unlikely to man the barricades in a Paris '68 style protest. The more home owners, the more mortgages, the more mortgages the less likely people will be to protest, relocate, or risk their life styles debt makes you insecure.
Of course the Labour Governments that followed Mr Major's defeat didn't seriously address these issues and rising property prices (note I don't say values) and inflation proofed welfare payments continued to underpin public policies.
It's getting better all the time was the theme song of that era.
Of course it did for a while and then it stopped getting better and now it has got worse.
The narrative rehearsed by the Tory led coalition is that the financial melt down was in its entirety the responsibility of the Labour party, the bankers have been given their get out of gaol free cards, but the roots of the current crisis are deeper and can be traced back to previous occupants of number 10.
A radical rethink of public policy is called for.
As it says in the New Testament, the poor you will have with you always, and as R H Tawney says the acid test of a society is how it treats the poorest in its midst.
It is a test that, as the Archbishop has reminded us, we still face.
The Archbishop of course. Mr Cameron and Mr Cable and the subject of Arch-Episcopal dissatisfaction Mr Duncan Smith.
We cannot just leave people on the dole, claiming benefits and not working.
We all have to contribute to the big society, indeed if we didn't it would be a medium sized society or even heaven help us. a small society.
Clearly there are significant numbers of people, living on outer city estates and getting by on benefits, and, it is true, some of those people, play the system to their advantage to improve their income position. Just as some people fiddle their expenses and some people manage, with the aid of their accountants, to ensure that their income position is Tax Efficient.
But lets look at how this has arisen.
Sometime in 1984 before I went to America I wrote an article which was published in a magazine called The New Christian.
In the article I described a long queue snaking across history, it was the queue of the poorest in society.
Joining the queue were those recently unemployed, Miners, Steel Workers, Ship Yard Workers, Dockers all of whom had seen their industries closed or sold to foreign owners.
In the mid eighties a whole class and generation were made unemployed. It is the children and grand children of that class who now subsist on welfare. Labour intensive industries were closed down and the jobs exported and there are not enough call centres to employ the generation that Mr Duncan Smith wants to 'save' from itself by 'getting it back to work'.
The other great legacy of the Thatcher Government was debt. As a friend of mine wrote in a book he published in 2000, debt is the most efficient form of social control, students in debt are unlikely to man the barricades in a Paris '68 style protest. The more home owners, the more mortgages, the more mortgages the less likely people will be to protest, relocate, or risk their life styles debt makes you insecure.
Of course the Labour Governments that followed Mr Major's defeat didn't seriously address these issues and rising property prices (note I don't say values) and inflation proofed welfare payments continued to underpin public policies.
It's getting better all the time was the theme song of that era.
Of course it did for a while and then it stopped getting better and now it has got worse.
The narrative rehearsed by the Tory led coalition is that the financial melt down was in its entirety the responsibility of the Labour party, the bankers have been given their get out of gaol free cards, but the roots of the current crisis are deeper and can be traced back to previous occupants of number 10.
A radical rethink of public policy is called for.
As it says in the New Testament, the poor you will have with you always, and as R H Tawney says the acid test of a society is how it treats the poorest in its midst.
It is a test that, as the Archbishop has reminded us, we still face.
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