For many younger people watching the riots that have unfolded around England in recent days, it must feel as if they're witnessing an unprecedented level of destruction. Buildings burning, looting, vehicles hijacked, increasing violence against non-participants - it's a scary business. So it's really important that we keep these incidents in perspective. Shocking though they are, they not unfamiliar; and more to the point, neither is recovery from them. We have been here before and at some point we will be here again. But the underlying trend, over time, is toward a decrease in violence.
"What is the world coming to?" is a question repeated so often that we give it more credence than we should. Similarly, we take altogether too seriously the suggestion that young people today are more savage and uncontrollable than they have ever been. People have been claiming that, generation after generation, since at least the sixteenth century, so think about it - if it were true, we would all have evolved into some kind of gore-fixated mutant killing machines by now. In fact, violence is the preserve of a minority and most people never do more than get into a couple of half-hearted punch-ups in their adolescent years.
What we need understand is that violence and chaos do not represent a state human civilisation is coming to, but rather one it is coming from. Let's start by looking at some of the principles that underlie our concerns. At the most basic level, we are horrified by violence because we fear people may be killed. Yet life has not always been accorded any civil value. It was only around 4,000 years ago - an eyeblink in the history of our species - that civil codes began to incorporate the idea that killing was wrong. Of course people objected to killing before that, and took revenge, but by and large states didn't care. And when life did begin to be valued, it was only male life, and the lives of male citizens at that, which counted. There was no assumption that the lives of women, slaves, visiting foreigners etc. should be protected by the state.
We have moved on from this. We have lapsed, sometimes, and there are still places where the lives of some are not protected (the recent Ghanaian purges against gay people provide a pertinent example), but by and large we have moved in a consistent direction, toward placing greater value on all human life. This is at the heart of what civilisation means. As it's Ramadan, let's take the example of how Islam, at its point of origin, advanced women's rights. Islam is often criticised in relation to a phrase in the Qur'an that describes woman as "the animal that speaks". In a modern context it is easy to understand why - we are horrified by the comparison of a woman and an animal - but in its time, when women were generally considered to be worth no more than camels or goats, the emphasis was different: the animal that speaks. In this way the Prophet Muhammed emphasised the personhood of women and their separateness from the animals traded by their masters. As Islam advanced, the trade in women decreased rapidly and women gained a civil influence which, in that part of the world, they had never had before.
History is full of these examples of progress. It is also full of cruelty, of course, and these cruelties can have such emotional impact that they seem to undermine everything else. Overall, in proportion to our numbers, we have killed each other far less often over the past century than at any time in our known history. How can this be true, people ask, when the twentieth century brought us the Holocaust? It's hard for us to imagine worse horrors; and yet the fact is that they did exist. In the century before the Holocaust came the vast European expansions into Africa and the Americas that led to the wholesale slaughter of millions of native peoples. The ancestors of today's Britons not only killed the natives but, in some cases, were responsible for flogging off their skins; for sticking their heads on spikes or using them to decorate flowerbeds; for driving them into the desert and watching as they died of dehydration, shooting those who tried to return. This is the ugly truth about what we are, about the potential that still remains within us, but we are moving onward. Although such horrors do still happen, they do so now on a much smaller scale. Back in the nineteenth century, the average European hearing about such things would have considered it a reasonable and natural part of the extinguishing of an inferior species. Today, for the most part, we recognise each other as human beings, and even where we feel unable to intervene as atrocities are committed, we care. Just caring may seem impotent, but it is a step forward - it is one of the building blocks of a better future.
After the Holocaust Europe collectively reassured itself that this would never happen again. Of course it has done - within Europe's borders as well as elsewhere. We don't yet have the power, or the collective will, to make it stop. But we are at least motivated to try. What doesn't tend to get taught to schoolchildren learning about the Second World War is that most of those who fought on the side of the Allies did so without knowing about the Jews in the concentration camps until the very end, and that many of them held deeply anti-Semitic views themselves - that was the prevailing culture of the time. There were those among Britain's leaders who would not have disagreed with Hitler's Final Solution. Of course there are still racist pundits today, but we don't give that kind of hatred the same easy public reception as once we did.
And so to riots. It is very important to distinguish riot from revolution. Revolutions can happen with or without them, but are ultimately dependent on a shift in ideas which many riots have nothing to do with. Looting and burning things down, in isolation, cannot bring about political change. Riots at their outset often incorporate crowd of idealistic young people who really believe they can use the violence to change society for the better, but in cases like the recent one it doesn't take long for them to become disillusioned (one hopes they won't give up on working toward peaceful change as a result). Once they're gone, there is no solidarity, no real social organisation, so thrill-seekers and criminals come to the fore. This pattern has varied very little over the centuries. What has changed - improved - is the capacity of civil forces to contain the rioting, and the capacity of civil organisations (whether part of the state or formed by parallel social movements) to rebuild. So although police numbers have been too low to contain much of the violence in the recent uprisings, and although a great deal of suffering is taking place, these are far from the ugliest riots in the history of these cities. In London, we don't have to look back very far - just three hundred years or so - to the Gordon Riots, when half the city burned, many died, and a huge number of people permanently lost their livelihoods. Not only was there the same restricted police control, but there were no insurance companies to pick up the bill, there was no civil movement to identify the perpetrators, there was no system of communication to help identify those in need of urgent help (yes modern communications can also aid the rioters, but we must not overlook the good they enable).
In the Gordon Riots, as it many others that took place in the run-up to the twentieth century, there was also the problem of prisons being emptied and dangerous criminals of all types spilling out onto the streets, often continuing to cause havoc for several years after the riots had been quelled. That is something against which we have much better defences this time around. And these defences did not come from nowhere - they are a result of our collective effort. They are what we pay our taxes for. We have all these facilities to minimise the impact of violence because we have worked together to build a society that values life.
When you go our into the streets and see the glow of flames on the horizon, or when you turn on your television set and see gangs running loose in the streets, remember that they do not represent all that we are. They certainly do not represent our future. The people out there in the mornings with their brooms and their cups of tea for strangers - they are our future. We know this because when we look at history we can see how our civil structures have grown. Tempting though it may be to some, selfish aggression is not a winning strategy. It is, at best, a means to short term gain. Working together is what we are good at as a species and it's where our real advantages lie. Violence isn't the end of what we have worked for, it's just a stumbling block along the way. It gets better.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
Monday, 25 July 2011
Know Your Right
You have the right not to be killed. Most people agree on that. Who doesn't? Those who value other things more highly than individual lives – personal aggrandisement, or political ideology. Often the two go together, and nowhere are they more comfortable bedfellows than on the far right.
When the attacks in Norway took place, many politicians and media contributors immediately leapt to the conclusion that they must be the work of Islamic terrorists. So did many ordinary people, with the result that there was an immediate rise in the number of Islamophobic threats reported across Europe. Individuals were threatened or told to “go home” (despite the fact many were born in Europe), whilst mosques and madrassas came under attack.
The horror of this is pretty obvious. What may be less obvious is just how ridiculous it is. When you look at the statistics you'll see that the percentage of terror attacks in Europe committed by Islamist groups is very small. The reason they seem more commonplace is entirely down to the way they are treated by politicians and the media. In other words, there is an agenda here. That agenda has two aspects.
For politicians, encouraging a fear of Islamic terrorism is useful. Scapegoats and distractions are always handy in tough economic times. It also helps to justify wars in countries with large Muslim populations when local populations are unwilling to accept other reasons. For newspapers, it's even simpler: fear sells. The papers have always played this game. From anarchists threatening terror to black men endangering white women and gay men endangering children, it's the same thing recycled, generation by generation, finding a convenient monster. The important thing is that the monster has to be demonstrably Other. It can't come from the bedrock of readers or voters. It has to be excluded from the assumed Us.
All this makes it rather embarrassing that the Norwegian attacker turned out to be white, educated, middle class – in all respects the sort of person we Europeans are supposed to think of as one of us. A lot of desperate flailing has followed, from unsubstantiated claims he was inspired by Islamist violence to the bizarre ramblings of Glenn Beck, who, with his usual political incoherence, compared the Utøya victims to the Hitler Youth. A strange apologism for the far right has since developed in parts (thankfully not all) of the press. Perhaps it's fitting. After all, the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, quoted extensively from certainly popular press pundits – most notably Melanie Phillipps – in the manifesto in which he endeavoured to justify his violence. He recognised the right wing press as his allies, and they have been notably slow to disavow his agenda.
Is it fair to blame the wider right for actions like this? Of course the vast majority of them would never condone violence (and many, of course, are economically right wing without sharing this sort of social agenda at all). Any hesitation in so doing must, however, be weighed against that same old eagerness to let all Muslims take the blame for Islamist terrorist attacks.
Perhaps most telling has been the reaction of the English Defence League, which Breivik cited as one of his inspirations. Of course they wouldn't condone the attacker's actions, they insist, but they share his agenda. They have taken advantage of this raising of their profile to argue, as he did, that this centres on the need to remove all Muslims from Europe in order to protect its indigenous people (whoever they are). Breivik felt that sending a message about this made the killings even he called 'atrocious' worthwhile. His logic in this regard is somewhat unclear. Even if one wee to accept his ill-justified contention that Muslims are a threat, how exactly is he protecting people by, um, killing them?
You have the right to free speech, argue the EDL. If we shut down their democratic right to express their objection to our Muslim citizens' presence here, something not unlike the Norwegian attacks could take place in the UK. Worryingly, there are already hints of support for this kind of thinking coming from the mainstream. These Islamophobes are unpleasant, it's said, but we must placate them a little – make immigration laws a bit tougher, allow fewer new mosques to be built – or there could be trouble. This is nothing short of capitulation to blackmail. Why should ordinary Muslims suffer when they are not the ones making threats?
The rhetoric we hear in this situation asserts that it is liberalism that has allowed these problems to develop. Liberals, it is said, are so busy standing up for people's rights that they don't realise Muslims wouldn't grant them the same courtesy.
This is not only a misunderstanding of Islam – it is missing the point. Human rights are just that – part of being human – and they do not depend on one's affiliations or behaviour. What's more, this isn't about liberals versus the rest of the world. It's about everybody who wants to live in a peaceful civilisation versus the right wing extremists who don't.
Ultimately, those extremists vary very little in their aims, no matter which ideological tokens they cling to. Those advocating violence on the far right and those doing so in the name of Islam are much the same. They are all attacking the diversity, equality, and respect for human life that are the cornerstones of our civilisation. They are attacking the true Us. We are the ones who stand together, as the diverse peoples of Norway stood together in their grief, and say that we will not be bullied and threatened into giving up the civilisation we have worked so hard to build. We will not be turned against one another by those who can offer only destruction.
The far right has no place in our society and we must be neither bullied nor embarrassed into giving it one. It is time for right wingers who do not share that agenda to clearly differentiate themselves. That means an end to the use of Islamophobic articles to sell newspapers. It means an end to moronic statements about the 'failure' of multiculturalism from political leaders who should know better. It is time to stop feeding hate and to assert clearly that those who wish to label themselves European must show respect for all of the rest of us, no matter our religion, if they wish to be respected in return.
When the attacks in Norway took place, many politicians and media contributors immediately leapt to the conclusion that they must be the work of Islamic terrorists. So did many ordinary people, with the result that there was an immediate rise in the number of Islamophobic threats reported across Europe. Individuals were threatened or told to “go home” (despite the fact many were born in Europe), whilst mosques and madrassas came under attack.
The horror of this is pretty obvious. What may be less obvious is just how ridiculous it is. When you look at the statistics you'll see that the percentage of terror attacks in Europe committed by Islamist groups is very small. The reason they seem more commonplace is entirely down to the way they are treated by politicians and the media. In other words, there is an agenda here. That agenda has two aspects.
For politicians, encouraging a fear of Islamic terrorism is useful. Scapegoats and distractions are always handy in tough economic times. It also helps to justify wars in countries with large Muslim populations when local populations are unwilling to accept other reasons. For newspapers, it's even simpler: fear sells. The papers have always played this game. From anarchists threatening terror to black men endangering white women and gay men endangering children, it's the same thing recycled, generation by generation, finding a convenient monster. The important thing is that the monster has to be demonstrably Other. It can't come from the bedrock of readers or voters. It has to be excluded from the assumed Us.
All this makes it rather embarrassing that the Norwegian attacker turned out to be white, educated, middle class – in all respects the sort of person we Europeans are supposed to think of as one of us. A lot of desperate flailing has followed, from unsubstantiated claims he was inspired by Islamist violence to the bizarre ramblings of Glenn Beck, who, with his usual political incoherence, compared the Utøya victims to the Hitler Youth. A strange apologism for the far right has since developed in parts (thankfully not all) of the press. Perhaps it's fitting. After all, the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, quoted extensively from certainly popular press pundits – most notably Melanie Phillipps – in the manifesto in which he endeavoured to justify his violence. He recognised the right wing press as his allies, and they have been notably slow to disavow his agenda.
Is it fair to blame the wider right for actions like this? Of course the vast majority of them would never condone violence (and many, of course, are economically right wing without sharing this sort of social agenda at all). Any hesitation in so doing must, however, be weighed against that same old eagerness to let all Muslims take the blame for Islamist terrorist attacks.
Perhaps most telling has been the reaction of the English Defence League, which Breivik cited as one of his inspirations. Of course they wouldn't condone the attacker's actions, they insist, but they share his agenda. They have taken advantage of this raising of their profile to argue, as he did, that this centres on the need to remove all Muslims from Europe in order to protect its indigenous people (whoever they are). Breivik felt that sending a message about this made the killings even he called 'atrocious' worthwhile. His logic in this regard is somewhat unclear. Even if one wee to accept his ill-justified contention that Muslims are a threat, how exactly is he protecting people by, um, killing them?
You have the right to free speech, argue the EDL. If we shut down their democratic right to express their objection to our Muslim citizens' presence here, something not unlike the Norwegian attacks could take place in the UK. Worryingly, there are already hints of support for this kind of thinking coming from the mainstream. These Islamophobes are unpleasant, it's said, but we must placate them a little – make immigration laws a bit tougher, allow fewer new mosques to be built – or there could be trouble. This is nothing short of capitulation to blackmail. Why should ordinary Muslims suffer when they are not the ones making threats?
The rhetoric we hear in this situation asserts that it is liberalism that has allowed these problems to develop. Liberals, it is said, are so busy standing up for people's rights that they don't realise Muslims wouldn't grant them the same courtesy.
This is not only a misunderstanding of Islam – it is missing the point. Human rights are just that – part of being human – and they do not depend on one's affiliations or behaviour. What's more, this isn't about liberals versus the rest of the world. It's about everybody who wants to live in a peaceful civilisation versus the right wing extremists who don't.
Ultimately, those extremists vary very little in their aims, no matter which ideological tokens they cling to. Those advocating violence on the far right and those doing so in the name of Islam are much the same. They are all attacking the diversity, equality, and respect for human life that are the cornerstones of our civilisation. They are attacking the true Us. We are the ones who stand together, as the diverse peoples of Norway stood together in their grief, and say that we will not be bullied and threatened into giving up the civilisation we have worked so hard to build. We will not be turned against one another by those who can offer only destruction.
The far right has no place in our society and we must be neither bullied nor embarrassed into giving it one. It is time for right wingers who do not share that agenda to clearly differentiate themselves. That means an end to the use of Islamophobic articles to sell newspapers. It means an end to moronic statements about the 'failure' of multiculturalism from political leaders who should know better. It is time to stop feeding hate and to assert clearly that those who wish to label themselves European must show respect for all of the rest of us, no matter our religion, if they wish to be respected in return.
Saturday, 16 July 2011
Education, Education, Education
Should Rupert Murdoch be in command of multiple media outlets? Despite public passivity on this matter that has lasted for decades, most people would now say no. The scandal that began at The News Of The World has changed the game. Now it is beginning to expand to other titles, with tabloid newspapers unconnected to Murdoch also the subject of suspicion. But there's another issue here that isn't getting nearly enough coverage, and that relates to Murdoch's wider interests – most significantly, his interest in education.
Aside from the media, education is Murdoch's great passion. He is a man who has always understood that power resides in control of information, and education is as important in this regard as newspapers and Fox News. Specifically, his interest over recent years has been in the Free School movement, whose development in the United States he provided with crucial support. That interest has extended to the UK, and the revelation that Michael Gove was paid £1,250 a week for one hour's work for News International, whilst serving as Shadow Education Secretary, is rightly raising eyebrows. [Update: he is still being paid this amount for a Times column.]
The Free Schools movement provides a vital opportunity for entrepreneurs of Murdoch's type. Because of the freedom it offers from the usual restrictions of the National Curriculum it makes controlling the information children receive – and don't receive – much easier. As such it has natural appeal to any number of fringe political movements and ambitious individuals. There's a financial interest for Murdoch too. He is committed to the notion that learning through computers is the way of the future, and just happens to own ninety percent of educational technology business Wireless Generation, which is already snapping up lucrative contracts in the 'States.
In the UK, Free Schools have got off to a less successful start, with the number of initial applications dramatically lower than Gove, as Minister of Education, predicted, and with considerable opposition from the public and teachers' groups. The government's health, justice and now even welfare policies have been compromised in face of difficulties like this, so why has it pressed ahead so hard with its educational strategy despite them? Is this simply about sticking to principle or is it about pleasing a third party whose influence when it comes to winning elections could be more important than policies themselves?
It's worth remembering that Gove started out as a journalist, working for The Times (as his wife still does) – which may itself place him in a vulnerable position as the News Corp scandal unravels further. He has enjoyed a close personal friendship with Rebekah Brooks and it is difficult to imagine that, even in the absence of direct pressure, his approach to policy has not been influenced by his social circle. Further to this, he has among his advisers former New York Chancellor for Education Joel Klein, who closely supported Murdoch's projects. For a man who has been described as a potential future Prime Minister, he would be well advised to tread carefully over the next few weeks. The News Corp contagion could well spread beyond the media.
If this sounds paranoid, consider what Murdoch himself has said on the subject of education in a series of speeches and articles that represent teachers and school governors as conspiring the benefit financially from the current system at the expense of their pupils. We would be better off, he told the New York Times, if schools were more like American Idol. But win or lose, all children grow up to be potential voters. This is why it is vital that we keep our educational system as politically neutral as possible, and to do so we must ensure that it is managed in accordance with choices made at the ballot box, not influence purchased by those who stand to gain.
Aside from the media, education is Murdoch's great passion. He is a man who has always understood that power resides in control of information, and education is as important in this regard as newspapers and Fox News. Specifically, his interest over recent years has been in the Free School movement, whose development in the United States he provided with crucial support. That interest has extended to the UK, and the revelation that Michael Gove was paid £1,250 a week for one hour's work for News International, whilst serving as Shadow Education Secretary, is rightly raising eyebrows. [Update: he is still being paid this amount for a Times column.]
The Free Schools movement provides a vital opportunity for entrepreneurs of Murdoch's type. Because of the freedom it offers from the usual restrictions of the National Curriculum it makes controlling the information children receive – and don't receive – much easier. As such it has natural appeal to any number of fringe political movements and ambitious individuals. There's a financial interest for Murdoch too. He is committed to the notion that learning through computers is the way of the future, and just happens to own ninety percent of educational technology business Wireless Generation, which is already snapping up lucrative contracts in the 'States.
In the UK, Free Schools have got off to a less successful start, with the number of initial applications dramatically lower than Gove, as Minister of Education, predicted, and with considerable opposition from the public and teachers' groups. The government's health, justice and now even welfare policies have been compromised in face of difficulties like this, so why has it pressed ahead so hard with its educational strategy despite them? Is this simply about sticking to principle or is it about pleasing a third party whose influence when it comes to winning elections could be more important than policies themselves?
It's worth remembering that Gove started out as a journalist, working for The Times (as his wife still does) – which may itself place him in a vulnerable position as the News Corp scandal unravels further. He has enjoyed a close personal friendship with Rebekah Brooks and it is difficult to imagine that, even in the absence of direct pressure, his approach to policy has not been influenced by his social circle. Further to this, he has among his advisers former New York Chancellor for Education Joel Klein, who closely supported Murdoch's projects. For a man who has been described as a potential future Prime Minister, he would be well advised to tread carefully over the next few weeks. The News Corp contagion could well spread beyond the media.
If this sounds paranoid, consider what Murdoch himself has said on the subject of education in a series of speeches and articles that represent teachers and school governors as conspiring the benefit financially from the current system at the expense of their pupils. We would be better off, he told the New York Times, if schools were more like American Idol. But win or lose, all children grow up to be potential voters. This is why it is vital that we keep our educational system as politically neutral as possible, and to do so we must ensure that it is managed in accordance with choices made at the ballot box, not influence purchased by those who stand to gain.
Sunday, 10 July 2011
The Damage Done
As a journalist, I'm as sorry as anyone to see good people lose their jobs as a result of the closure of the News of the World. But I'm not sorry to see the paper itself go. I hope to see Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs properly taken to task for what they've done. I hope to see a future which has more room for decent publications that respect their staff and readers alike.
In the meantime, having written about the political implications of the scandal, I feel it's important to address an area that has received too little attention in all of this: the human cost of tabloid journalism.
By 'tabloid journalism' I don't mean everything ever written for a tabloid newspaper. There are good people at most of them, many trying to please their readers whilst pursuing a socially responsible agenda. But we all know that there's another sort of journalist - and editor, and owner - involved in the business too. These are the ones I encounter day to day through my work at Trans Media Watch. They are the ones whose victims come looking for help, with nowhere else to turn. Rarely celebrities. Generally just ordinary people whose private lives have been splashed across the pages in lurid detail, along with photos (often their own, used without permission) to identify them to the neighbours. Often they are subject to outright slander but they lack the financial means to challenge it. Their stories are heartbreaking. Some lose jobs. Some lose their families. Some are assaulted in the street. They are the ones paying the price for the "much loved family newspaper".
I'm lucky. I've never been the victim of a direct attack by a tabloid myself. But then again, I find myself thinking, hasn't their presence indirectly affected my life to a considerable degree?
Let me explain.
I've been passionate about politics from a very early age. At fifteen I was a member of the Labour Party; by seventeen I was on its local housing committee, working to ensure social provision for those facing a financial squeeze under Thatcherism. There wasn't much new blood in the party at that time and I was treated as something of a rising star. I was asked if I would consider getting involved at conference, perhaps addressing the whole party. A promising career beckoned.
I walked away from it for two reasons. The first was the Kinnock purges, which, though I didn't altogether disagree with his intent to reshape the party, created an internal atmosphere in which neighbour spied on neighbour; it was deeply unpleasant to be around. But the second, more pertinent today, was that I'm queer.
I realised that, at that time, it would simply be impossible for me to take on any senior political role without being torn to pieces the moment a tabloid found it convenient to attack my sexuality or gender. This was the 1980s, and I inhabited a landscape full of screaming headlines whipping up panic about how homosexuals might harm our children. They were the same reason I daren't hold a girlfriend's hand in public; the reason I would walk around the block twice to be sure no-one was following me before I entered my favourite bar. The thing was, even if I hadn't been afraid of such an attack on a personal level it would still have ruined me politically; it made the whole thing seem pointless. It was broadly agreed that, for all the gradual legal progress that might be made by gay rights campaigners, nobody would ever accept a queer in office.
I'm not so vain as to expect you to reel in horror at the thought of my lost opportunity (I'm not unhappy with the way things worked out for me in the longer term anyway). What I do want to make clear is the far reaching effect that kind of tabloid intimidation had. It curtailed the ambitions of individuals who weren't even on the papers' radar. How much talent did our country lose access to as a result? How many brilliant people - potential sports stars and entertainers as well as politicians - gave up and chose to live quiet lives underneath the radar, wasting their talent, because of what they very reasonably feared would happen to them otherwise?
That's all in the past, you might say. It's better now. But if you spend as much time watching the tabloids as I do you'll soon see that it's not. The campaigns against gay people are less overtly vicious now and are couched in different terms, but they're still there. Attacks on transsexual people are frequent and often try to paint them as paedophiles or other kinds of sex attacker. There may no longer be ugly headlines about black people but we see plenty about Muslims, Poles and Roma people, often followed by stories which rely heavily on fabrication. Disabled people are frequently portrayed as workshy scroungers regardless of whether they're really incapable of working or, in some cases, they actually are in work. And the attacks on people who simply have the misfortune to grow up poor are horrific. This is an industry built on hate.
Sometimes the tabloids get it wrong, misjudging how much hate their readers will tolerate. Attacking the victims of the Hillsborough Football Stadium disaster went too far and cost The Sun the support of a whole city. Jan Moir's Daily Mail piece about Stephen Gately provoked outrage that went far beyond the gay community. Yet day to day, the attacks continue. A Monday afternoon's titillating scandal can ruin the life of a hapless individual who happened to draw the wrong kind of attention. And those who have already been the victims of crimes know that tabloid attention can make it worse, whether they're the targets of phone hacking or rape victims whose experiences have been salaciously detailed opposite page three.
For anybody who has failed to sit up and take notice of this, the way in which the News of the World was willing to treat the families of Milly Dowler, Jessica Chapman and so forth must make a difference now. It must show the contempt in which these newspapers hold those whom they claim to serve. It must, because as a society we simply cannot go on like this. Former News of the World journalists seeking redemption have already discussed several suicides which they believe their stories contributed to. The human cost of this kind of journalism is too high. It is time to stand up, all together, and say that we will not tolerate it any more.
In the meantime, having written about the political implications of the scandal, I feel it's important to address an area that has received too little attention in all of this: the human cost of tabloid journalism.
By 'tabloid journalism' I don't mean everything ever written for a tabloid newspaper. There are good people at most of them, many trying to please their readers whilst pursuing a socially responsible agenda. But we all know that there's another sort of journalist - and editor, and owner - involved in the business too. These are the ones I encounter day to day through my work at Trans Media Watch. They are the ones whose victims come looking for help, with nowhere else to turn. Rarely celebrities. Generally just ordinary people whose private lives have been splashed across the pages in lurid detail, along with photos (often their own, used without permission) to identify them to the neighbours. Often they are subject to outright slander but they lack the financial means to challenge it. Their stories are heartbreaking. Some lose jobs. Some lose their families. Some are assaulted in the street. They are the ones paying the price for the "much loved family newspaper".
I'm lucky. I've never been the victim of a direct attack by a tabloid myself. But then again, I find myself thinking, hasn't their presence indirectly affected my life to a considerable degree?
Let me explain.
I've been passionate about politics from a very early age. At fifteen I was a member of the Labour Party; by seventeen I was on its local housing committee, working to ensure social provision for those facing a financial squeeze under Thatcherism. There wasn't much new blood in the party at that time and I was treated as something of a rising star. I was asked if I would consider getting involved at conference, perhaps addressing the whole party. A promising career beckoned.
I walked away from it for two reasons. The first was the Kinnock purges, which, though I didn't altogether disagree with his intent to reshape the party, created an internal atmosphere in which neighbour spied on neighbour; it was deeply unpleasant to be around. But the second, more pertinent today, was that I'm queer.
I realised that, at that time, it would simply be impossible for me to take on any senior political role without being torn to pieces the moment a tabloid found it convenient to attack my sexuality or gender. This was the 1980s, and I inhabited a landscape full of screaming headlines whipping up panic about how homosexuals might harm our children. They were the same reason I daren't hold a girlfriend's hand in public; the reason I would walk around the block twice to be sure no-one was following me before I entered my favourite bar. The thing was, even if I hadn't been afraid of such an attack on a personal level it would still have ruined me politically; it made the whole thing seem pointless. It was broadly agreed that, for all the gradual legal progress that might be made by gay rights campaigners, nobody would ever accept a queer in office.
I'm not so vain as to expect you to reel in horror at the thought of my lost opportunity (I'm not unhappy with the way things worked out for me in the longer term anyway). What I do want to make clear is the far reaching effect that kind of tabloid intimidation had. It curtailed the ambitions of individuals who weren't even on the papers' radar. How much talent did our country lose access to as a result? How many brilliant people - potential sports stars and entertainers as well as politicians - gave up and chose to live quiet lives underneath the radar, wasting their talent, because of what they very reasonably feared would happen to them otherwise?
That's all in the past, you might say. It's better now. But if you spend as much time watching the tabloids as I do you'll soon see that it's not. The campaigns against gay people are less overtly vicious now and are couched in different terms, but they're still there. Attacks on transsexual people are frequent and often try to paint them as paedophiles or other kinds of sex attacker. There may no longer be ugly headlines about black people but we see plenty about Muslims, Poles and Roma people, often followed by stories which rely heavily on fabrication. Disabled people are frequently portrayed as workshy scroungers regardless of whether they're really incapable of working or, in some cases, they actually are in work. And the attacks on people who simply have the misfortune to grow up poor are horrific. This is an industry built on hate.
Sometimes the tabloids get it wrong, misjudging how much hate their readers will tolerate. Attacking the victims of the Hillsborough Football Stadium disaster went too far and cost The Sun the support of a whole city. Jan Moir's Daily Mail piece about Stephen Gately provoked outrage that went far beyond the gay community. Yet day to day, the attacks continue. A Monday afternoon's titillating scandal can ruin the life of a hapless individual who happened to draw the wrong kind of attention. And those who have already been the victims of crimes know that tabloid attention can make it worse, whether they're the targets of phone hacking or rape victims whose experiences have been salaciously detailed opposite page three.
For anybody who has failed to sit up and take notice of this, the way in which the News of the World was willing to treat the families of Milly Dowler, Jessica Chapman and so forth must make a difference now. It must show the contempt in which these newspapers hold those whom they claim to serve. It must, because as a society we simply cannot go on like this. Former News of the World journalists seeking redemption have already discussed several suicides which they believe their stories contributed to. The human cost of this kind of journalism is too high. It is time to stand up, all together, and say that we will not tolerate it any more.
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Why Press?
Every now and again a news story breaks whose connotations are so obvious to those working in the media that we forget our duty to explain them to other people. The News International scandal, which today saw the demise of 168 year old newspaper The News Of The World, is such a story. It has flooded television news and slowed down the internet, bewildering those who think of it, ultimately, as just an unfortunate tale of privacy intrusion.
I have talked with a number of people who have been upset that this story is getting so much coverage when other important matters aren't. I quite agree with them that issues such as the mass rapes and murders in Sudan, the catastrophic violence against women in Nicaragua and the pogroms against LGBT people in Iraq are more shocking, more disturbing. I agree that such matters deserve extensive coverage. But that is precisely why I consider it vital that the News International story stay in the headlines now.
As this scandal has encouraged opportunistic politicians to talk about state regulation of the press (as if regulation by a neutral independent body were not even a possibility), it has set up the false dichotomy of a state controlled press (certainly an unpleasant prospect) versus a 'free press'. The truth is that there can be no such thing as a free press if our major newspapers and broadcasting companies are owned by a tiny handful of people. Corporate influence is no more bound to be politically neutral than government influence. The vast majority of journalists (assuming they want to be paid) don't get to write about what they want. Even section editors have limited control where powerful editors-in-chief and owners are involved. They are told what to cover. They are told what constitutes the news.
This situation no longer represents the fait accompli that it once did. The internet means that people now have access to many more sources of news. Yet the fact is that only a small proportion of them actually take advantage of this. Many millions more still depend on red top newspapers as one of their principal sources of news. Research suggests that they are increasingly cynical about this news , yet it still shapes their world view - and, perhaps most importantly of all, it delineates what they are unaware of.
Without a balanced picture of what is going on around the world, it is difficult for people to understand major political issues like how we get involved in wars, why terrorist threats occur (and how seriously we should take them), and why people seek asylum here. But it's not only in their filtering of world news that the red tops routinely distort the political landscape. Heavily biased social and sometimes party political agendas distort their coverage of what goes on in the UK. They can bring down governments - witness their unrelenting attacks on Gordon Brown - or they can connive with governments they like to keep challenging ideas off the agenda.
Why would they do this? There are two reasons. First, perhaps most importantly, they have a self-perpetuating agenda. In order to get away with behaviour like that we have seen from the news of the World, they have to minimise government interference. In order to maximise profits, they have to keep their tax situations comfortable. And so forth. When a political party depends on you to stay in power, this is relatively easy to arrange. Secondly, there is power for its own sake. Many people crave it. When they have it, they want to use it, to shape society as they see fit. See, for example, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, who has a moral agenda that includes the denigration of LGBT people. This is the reason why we saw yesterday's peculiar attack on soap operas by Brian Sewell, clearly out of step with how the majority of the paper's readers actually feel.
Of course, we all like to feel that we are not influenced by this sort of thing. If we are good liberal types we may like to believe that other people are more sophisticated that we give them credit for, too. That's fair enough, but there are complicating factors. Most people outside media related professions don't really have much time to consult a variety of news sources, nor even to research particular stories they distrust. Furthermore, people are influenced in all sorts of subtle ways by the views of those around them, and if those views have been shaped by politically biased newspapers, those papers will still be able to advance their agenda.
If you ask people who actually work in journalism, you'll find that most - including those who work for red tops - agree that there are really important stories that don't get the coverage they deserve. Many will also agree that those stories can be written so as to interest the public, even if they are about places that are far away or with which those readers have no personal connection. Part of the art of writing news, after all, is to make readers feel they have a personal connection. So it would be perfectly possible to run a news organisation that carried stories like this. The reason it doesn't happen is that it simply doesn't interest those with established financial and political power bases.
To change the media is to change society. There is no more profound cultural influence, and cultural change lies at the base of every major political and economic change. The media, more than anything else, is where power lies in the modern world. This is why we cannot tolerate corruption and abuse within it; why we cannot risk letting monopolies form; why we must promote the representation of a diverse range of viewpoints. This is why the battle for justice at News International must go on. If we fail, most of us will never hear about the other things that matter in the first place.
I have talked with a number of people who have been upset that this story is getting so much coverage when other important matters aren't. I quite agree with them that issues such as the mass rapes and murders in Sudan, the catastrophic violence against women in Nicaragua and the pogroms against LGBT people in Iraq are more shocking, more disturbing. I agree that such matters deserve extensive coverage. But that is precisely why I consider it vital that the News International story stay in the headlines now.
As this scandal has encouraged opportunistic politicians to talk about state regulation of the press (as if regulation by a neutral independent body were not even a possibility), it has set up the false dichotomy of a state controlled press (certainly an unpleasant prospect) versus a 'free press'. The truth is that there can be no such thing as a free press if our major newspapers and broadcasting companies are owned by a tiny handful of people. Corporate influence is no more bound to be politically neutral than government influence. The vast majority of journalists (assuming they want to be paid) don't get to write about what they want. Even section editors have limited control where powerful editors-in-chief and owners are involved. They are told what to cover. They are told what constitutes the news.
This situation no longer represents the fait accompli that it once did. The internet means that people now have access to many more sources of news. Yet the fact is that only a small proportion of them actually take advantage of this. Many millions more still depend on red top newspapers as one of their principal sources of news. Research suggests that they are increasingly cynical about this news , yet it still shapes their world view - and, perhaps most importantly of all, it delineates what they are unaware of.
Without a balanced picture of what is going on around the world, it is difficult for people to understand major political issues like how we get involved in wars, why terrorist threats occur (and how seriously we should take them), and why people seek asylum here. But it's not only in their filtering of world news that the red tops routinely distort the political landscape. Heavily biased social and sometimes party political agendas distort their coverage of what goes on in the UK. They can bring down governments - witness their unrelenting attacks on Gordon Brown - or they can connive with governments they like to keep challenging ideas off the agenda.
Why would they do this? There are two reasons. First, perhaps most importantly, they have a self-perpetuating agenda. In order to get away with behaviour like that we have seen from the news of the World, they have to minimise government interference. In order to maximise profits, they have to keep their tax situations comfortable. And so forth. When a political party depends on you to stay in power, this is relatively easy to arrange. Secondly, there is power for its own sake. Many people crave it. When they have it, they want to use it, to shape society as they see fit. See, for example, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, who has a moral agenda that includes the denigration of LGBT people. This is the reason why we saw yesterday's peculiar attack on soap operas by Brian Sewell, clearly out of step with how the majority of the paper's readers actually feel.
Of course, we all like to feel that we are not influenced by this sort of thing. If we are good liberal types we may like to believe that other people are more sophisticated that we give them credit for, too. That's fair enough, but there are complicating factors. Most people outside media related professions don't really have much time to consult a variety of news sources, nor even to research particular stories they distrust. Furthermore, people are influenced in all sorts of subtle ways by the views of those around them, and if those views have been shaped by politically biased newspapers, those papers will still be able to advance their agenda.
If you ask people who actually work in journalism, you'll find that most - including those who work for red tops - agree that there are really important stories that don't get the coverage they deserve. Many will also agree that those stories can be written so as to interest the public, even if they are about places that are far away or with which those readers have no personal connection. Part of the art of writing news, after all, is to make readers feel they have a personal connection. So it would be perfectly possible to run a news organisation that carried stories like this. The reason it doesn't happen is that it simply doesn't interest those with established financial and political power bases.
To change the media is to change society. There is no more profound cultural influence, and cultural change lies at the base of every major political and economic change. The media, more than anything else, is where power lies in the modern world. This is why we cannot tolerate corruption and abuse within it; why we cannot risk letting monopolies form; why we must promote the representation of a diverse range of viewpoints. This is why the battle for justice at News International must go on. If we fail, most of us will never hear about the other things that matter in the first place.
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Entitlement
After the shredding of Andrew Lansley by the Royal College of Nursing and David Willetts by the Congregation of Oxford, the next major government policy plank looking likely to run into trouble is Social Security. Meanwhile, the first volleys are being heard in a battle to determine whether or not Scotland will take control of its own Social Security matters after independence or a further devolution settlement. The demonisation of working class people and those with disabilities which commentators like Polly Toynbee and Owen Jones have recently remarked on ought to have made these issues politically straightforward, but this is a context in which the political ground can shift very quickly. What does this mean for the Westminster coalition, for Holyrood, and for those who depend on the welfare state?
Let's start with a simple question. Why change the Welfare State at all? The answer the Westminster government will give you (and one which was earlier espoused, to an extent, by its Labour predecessors) is that it is all a matter of money. The system costs too much (at £152 billion a year) and loses too much in fraud (approximately £1 billion). The danger of buying into this theory is that it's too easy to see those figures in isolation. As with every other public service, we should be asking what we get in return for this investment, what we would stand to lose if we cut the money, and how it fits into the context of comparable services.
First of all, let's set aside the issue of fraud. Fraud is, of course, a serious problem and needs to be tackled, but it should not be a major consideration in policy making for two very good reasons: firstly, that £1 billion is a small amount when compared, proportionally, with losses made by major financial organisations operating in the private sector; and secondly, it is a small amount in comparison with the amount of benefit that goes unclaimed by British citizens who are entitled to it. The value of unclaimed benefits amounted to around £15 billion last year. Some people choose not to claim, of course, but others are not aware of their full entitlement because the system is so complicated.
How did it get this way? This is a natural consequence of Social Security having been a political football for several decades now, kicked around by politicians of all stripes. Many have tried to reform it, for varying reasons, and the end result is that it has become a collection of poorly connected systems assembled around half-complete strategies that are at odds with one another. This is a problem for governments, staff and claimants alike. It's one of the reasons why the system is riddled with poverty traps whereby claimants can end up being poorer if they work. It contributes to claims taking months to process whilst claimants struggle to feed themselves and stay in their homes. It has also resulted in a bloated bureaucracy that costs the taxpayer a fortune. If we want to make Social Security cheaper we should be looking not simply at how much claimants receive, but at how much it costs to deliver it to them.
Simplifying this is a noble aim and there is a lot to be said for Iain Duncan Smith's early ambitions. Unfortunately, like many ministers before him, he has found that this isn't so easy to do in reality – especially within the lifetime of a Parliament. The measures now travelling through Parliament are consequently just another half-baked plan that doesn't really tackle the underlying problems with the system and will end up adding to the existing mess. That the government knows this too is evident in its cautious climbdown over hasty suggestions like the cap on benefits at £26,000 per year. Now that we are told this “was never intended to apply” to households which include disabled people and that it is unlikely to be applied to households with children, it is difficult to see who it will apply to. Despite the shocking figures which the Department of Social Security has now admitted it took, without verification, from the Daily Mail, there is no real evidence that people on benefits are bringing in over £100,000 a year. Most live on very little.
So let's take a look at some of the central problems in the system, how they manifest, and what could realistically be done about them.
First up is the issues of long term recipients of Incapacity Benefit. When Iain Duncan Smith and Ed Miliband express their shock at how some people have been 'left' on these benefits for over a decade it may sound shocking, but what does that really mean? In some cases there is reason to be sceptical about long term claimants. In the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher's government was worried about the consequences of spiralling unemployment figures, many claimants with relatively minor health problems were moved onto Incapacity Benefit as a convenient way of massaging the statistics. This was a particular issue in depressed areas of the country where little employment was available (it's one of the reasons, for instance, why the number of claimants in Glasgow is so high, when you consider that unemployment reached 85% on some Glasgow housing estates during that period). Some (not all) of these people could now go back to work, though they would of course need extra support to update their skills and to find jobs when they are unlikely to be considered very employable. But this does not apply to all Incapacity Benefit claimants.
It is estimated that approximately a third of current Incapacity Benefit claimants could work, a third will never be able to work, and another third can do some types of work with a lot of support. Though I have never claimed this benefit, I might consider myself in the latter camp – my serious illness means that I am limited to working from home, which in turn effectively limits my earnings. It's not so very bad for me because I have skills that enable me to do this, but many people with long term illnesses and disabilities don't. Any government serious about having them work – and keep working – must provide the necessary training, create suitable job opportunities (by more effectively tackling employers' unwillingness to take on disabled staff, by encouraging the development of more telecommuting opportunities, etc.), and acknowledge that many of these people will be unable to cope with full time hours. The upshot of this is that it may well cost more to help such people into employment than it does to keep them in receipt of Social Security. This is one of the reasons why we have a welfare state – sometimes it's the most practical option.
This brings us to another intrinsic problem with the system – it is built around a model that assumes people will be in full time work or not working at all. Again, Iain Duncan Smith has the right idea with his pledge to support those in 'micro jobs', but at a policy level he has failed to follow through on this. Part time working is heavily penalised at many levels. People working more than one part time job because that's the only way they can earn enough to support themselves are penalised by the tax system, hardly an encouragement to work. Benefit claimants working over sixteen hours a week can have their benefits docked even if they are not earning enough to compensate for their losses – not a problem if they are above the minimum wage but a serious impediment to people who are self employed, for instance. As an individual earns more, they become ineligible for specific benefits such as free dental care, so that they may easily end up being poorer as a consequence of working. They should do it anyway, you may well say (and, indeed, I have long done it anyway), but when one is on the breadline and has a family to support, that's not such an easy call.
Part time working is the best model for many people with long term illnesses and disabilities, for single parents and others with care responsibilities; and it's also very often the only choice people have when full time jobs are scarce. We might prefer that people not claim benefits at all, but it's better people contribute what they can than not contribute at all. Working also tends to result in better health outcomes for individuals and reduced pressure on families, both of which reduce later costs for the state. So these barriers to work need to be removed. How do we find them all? By using the only research tactic that has been consistently ignored throughout these decades of poorly thought-out changes: sitting down the long-term claimants and asking them what has made it difficult for them to work.
One point raised again and again in these situations is the particular difficulty experienced by families. Because partners (whether married, in civil partnership, or not) are expected to support each other financially there is a disincentive for one partner to work when the other is not working (because if their earnings are relatively low they will receive very little financial reward for it) and there is an incentive for families to split up, which then costs the state more because it is more expensive to provide Housing Benefit for two properties and there may be additional bureaucratic costs in relation to child support. It would be one thing to penalise partners like this if their responsibility for one another as dependants were acknowledged in the tax system, but it is not, so they lose out at both ends. The system also loses out because this means that people can be paying taxes at the same time as they are receiving benefits, so the state is taking with one hand and giving with the other and inevitably losing money in administration during each process. Iain Duncan Smith's early proposals included the suggestion that this obligation of support be broken, so that people were responsible simply for themselves and their children; he also proposed ensuring that people would not pay tax until they were above the threshold at which they received benefits; but again, these potentially effective measures were lost in subsequent redrafting as political concerns interfered with his attempt to bring a straightforward management approach to the system.
The danger of allowing political rhetoric to contaminate approaches to Social Security is twofold. First of all, it can create lead to real suffering and a lack of help for the most vulnerable people in our society, something all politicians decry but few seem willing to take action on. Secondly, it encourages short term solutions that fob off the worried taxpayer whilst doing nothing to reduce costs in the long term. Taking away people's benefits if they're fit to work but don't accept jobs might sound like a good idea, but the reality of it is much more complicated. What if they have children – do we leave the children to starve, or take them into care (costing the state a lot more)? What if they start stealing in order to provide for themselves? What if they have been wrongly assessed as fit and their health declines rapidly in the working environment (at least one man has already died of a heart attack after finding himself in this situation)? As so often, this cost saving measure could easily become more expensive than simply leaving things as they were.
There is a real problem with a small minority of benefit claimants who simple can't be bothered to work, but to focus policy around them is economically naïve and risks seriously harming those in genuine need. It makes for good soundbites but it doesn't make for good government. Simply put, we need to take the same approach to the benefits system as the banks – fraudsters must feel the full force of the law and we must aim to clarify the rules to make things more difficult for those who simply avoid doing their duty. Meanwhile, we must make take care that the problem minority are not allowed to tarnish the whole system.
Just as we all depend on having access to banks, we all depend on Social Security. It's a safety net for society and it's insurance for us as individuals – that portion of our taxes that goes toward supporting it is not just there to provide for other people, it's there to ensure that we, too, will receive support if we should ever fall on hard times. In a recession, this is something people should be acutely aware of. Politicians and tabloid journalists frequently complain about benefit claimants having a sense of entitlement, but they should feel entitled to draw upon a system that their taxes have contributed to. Why do bankers have a sense of entitlement to large bonuses when their companies are making losses? Why do some of Mr Cameron's front bench colleagues have a sense of entitlement to inherited wealth and, well, titles? If we are to question the entitlement of the poor it should cut both ways.
There are real problems with the Welfare State and there are fictitious ones. It's time our leaders stopped play-fighting with the latter and took responsible measures to introduce genuine reform and make Social Security a better system for everyone.
Let's start with a simple question. Why change the Welfare State at all? The answer the Westminster government will give you (and one which was earlier espoused, to an extent, by its Labour predecessors) is that it is all a matter of money. The system costs too much (at £152 billion a year) and loses too much in fraud (approximately £1 billion). The danger of buying into this theory is that it's too easy to see those figures in isolation. As with every other public service, we should be asking what we get in return for this investment, what we would stand to lose if we cut the money, and how it fits into the context of comparable services.
First of all, let's set aside the issue of fraud. Fraud is, of course, a serious problem and needs to be tackled, but it should not be a major consideration in policy making for two very good reasons: firstly, that £1 billion is a small amount when compared, proportionally, with losses made by major financial organisations operating in the private sector; and secondly, it is a small amount in comparison with the amount of benefit that goes unclaimed by British citizens who are entitled to it. The value of unclaimed benefits amounted to around £15 billion last year. Some people choose not to claim, of course, but others are not aware of their full entitlement because the system is so complicated.
How did it get this way? This is a natural consequence of Social Security having been a political football for several decades now, kicked around by politicians of all stripes. Many have tried to reform it, for varying reasons, and the end result is that it has become a collection of poorly connected systems assembled around half-complete strategies that are at odds with one another. This is a problem for governments, staff and claimants alike. It's one of the reasons why the system is riddled with poverty traps whereby claimants can end up being poorer if they work. It contributes to claims taking months to process whilst claimants struggle to feed themselves and stay in their homes. It has also resulted in a bloated bureaucracy that costs the taxpayer a fortune. If we want to make Social Security cheaper we should be looking not simply at how much claimants receive, but at how much it costs to deliver it to them.
Simplifying this is a noble aim and there is a lot to be said for Iain Duncan Smith's early ambitions. Unfortunately, like many ministers before him, he has found that this isn't so easy to do in reality – especially within the lifetime of a Parliament. The measures now travelling through Parliament are consequently just another half-baked plan that doesn't really tackle the underlying problems with the system and will end up adding to the existing mess. That the government knows this too is evident in its cautious climbdown over hasty suggestions like the cap on benefits at £26,000 per year. Now that we are told this “was never intended to apply” to households which include disabled people and that it is unlikely to be applied to households with children, it is difficult to see who it will apply to. Despite the shocking figures which the Department of Social Security has now admitted it took, without verification, from the Daily Mail, there is no real evidence that people on benefits are bringing in over £100,000 a year. Most live on very little.
So let's take a look at some of the central problems in the system, how they manifest, and what could realistically be done about them.
First up is the issues of long term recipients of Incapacity Benefit. When Iain Duncan Smith and Ed Miliband express their shock at how some people have been 'left' on these benefits for over a decade it may sound shocking, but what does that really mean? In some cases there is reason to be sceptical about long term claimants. In the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher's government was worried about the consequences of spiralling unemployment figures, many claimants with relatively minor health problems were moved onto Incapacity Benefit as a convenient way of massaging the statistics. This was a particular issue in depressed areas of the country where little employment was available (it's one of the reasons, for instance, why the number of claimants in Glasgow is so high, when you consider that unemployment reached 85% on some Glasgow housing estates during that period). Some (not all) of these people could now go back to work, though they would of course need extra support to update their skills and to find jobs when they are unlikely to be considered very employable. But this does not apply to all Incapacity Benefit claimants.
It is estimated that approximately a third of current Incapacity Benefit claimants could work, a third will never be able to work, and another third can do some types of work with a lot of support. Though I have never claimed this benefit, I might consider myself in the latter camp – my serious illness means that I am limited to working from home, which in turn effectively limits my earnings. It's not so very bad for me because I have skills that enable me to do this, but many people with long term illnesses and disabilities don't. Any government serious about having them work – and keep working – must provide the necessary training, create suitable job opportunities (by more effectively tackling employers' unwillingness to take on disabled staff, by encouraging the development of more telecommuting opportunities, etc.), and acknowledge that many of these people will be unable to cope with full time hours. The upshot of this is that it may well cost more to help such people into employment than it does to keep them in receipt of Social Security. This is one of the reasons why we have a welfare state – sometimes it's the most practical option.
This brings us to another intrinsic problem with the system – it is built around a model that assumes people will be in full time work or not working at all. Again, Iain Duncan Smith has the right idea with his pledge to support those in 'micro jobs', but at a policy level he has failed to follow through on this. Part time working is heavily penalised at many levels. People working more than one part time job because that's the only way they can earn enough to support themselves are penalised by the tax system, hardly an encouragement to work. Benefit claimants working over sixteen hours a week can have their benefits docked even if they are not earning enough to compensate for their losses – not a problem if they are above the minimum wage but a serious impediment to people who are self employed, for instance. As an individual earns more, they become ineligible for specific benefits such as free dental care, so that they may easily end up being poorer as a consequence of working. They should do it anyway, you may well say (and, indeed, I have long done it anyway), but when one is on the breadline and has a family to support, that's not such an easy call.
Part time working is the best model for many people with long term illnesses and disabilities, for single parents and others with care responsibilities; and it's also very often the only choice people have when full time jobs are scarce. We might prefer that people not claim benefits at all, but it's better people contribute what they can than not contribute at all. Working also tends to result in better health outcomes for individuals and reduced pressure on families, both of which reduce later costs for the state. So these barriers to work need to be removed. How do we find them all? By using the only research tactic that has been consistently ignored throughout these decades of poorly thought-out changes: sitting down the long-term claimants and asking them what has made it difficult for them to work.
One point raised again and again in these situations is the particular difficulty experienced by families. Because partners (whether married, in civil partnership, or not) are expected to support each other financially there is a disincentive for one partner to work when the other is not working (because if their earnings are relatively low they will receive very little financial reward for it) and there is an incentive for families to split up, which then costs the state more because it is more expensive to provide Housing Benefit for two properties and there may be additional bureaucratic costs in relation to child support. It would be one thing to penalise partners like this if their responsibility for one another as dependants were acknowledged in the tax system, but it is not, so they lose out at both ends. The system also loses out because this means that people can be paying taxes at the same time as they are receiving benefits, so the state is taking with one hand and giving with the other and inevitably losing money in administration during each process. Iain Duncan Smith's early proposals included the suggestion that this obligation of support be broken, so that people were responsible simply for themselves and their children; he also proposed ensuring that people would not pay tax until they were above the threshold at which they received benefits; but again, these potentially effective measures were lost in subsequent redrafting as political concerns interfered with his attempt to bring a straightforward management approach to the system.
The danger of allowing political rhetoric to contaminate approaches to Social Security is twofold. First of all, it can create lead to real suffering and a lack of help for the most vulnerable people in our society, something all politicians decry but few seem willing to take action on. Secondly, it encourages short term solutions that fob off the worried taxpayer whilst doing nothing to reduce costs in the long term. Taking away people's benefits if they're fit to work but don't accept jobs might sound like a good idea, but the reality of it is much more complicated. What if they have children – do we leave the children to starve, or take them into care (costing the state a lot more)? What if they start stealing in order to provide for themselves? What if they have been wrongly assessed as fit and their health declines rapidly in the working environment (at least one man has already died of a heart attack after finding himself in this situation)? As so often, this cost saving measure could easily become more expensive than simply leaving things as they were.
There is a real problem with a small minority of benefit claimants who simple can't be bothered to work, but to focus policy around them is economically naïve and risks seriously harming those in genuine need. It makes for good soundbites but it doesn't make for good government. Simply put, we need to take the same approach to the benefits system as the banks – fraudsters must feel the full force of the law and we must aim to clarify the rules to make things more difficult for those who simply avoid doing their duty. Meanwhile, we must make take care that the problem minority are not allowed to tarnish the whole system.
Just as we all depend on having access to banks, we all depend on Social Security. It's a safety net for society and it's insurance for us as individuals – that portion of our taxes that goes toward supporting it is not just there to provide for other people, it's there to ensure that we, too, will receive support if we should ever fall on hard times. In a recession, this is something people should be acutely aware of. Politicians and tabloid journalists frequently complain about benefit claimants having a sense of entitlement, but they should feel entitled to draw upon a system that their taxes have contributed to. Why do bankers have a sense of entitlement to large bonuses when their companies are making losses? Why do some of Mr Cameron's front bench colleagues have a sense of entitlement to inherited wealth and, well, titles? If we are to question the entitlement of the poor it should cut both ways.
There are real problems with the Welfare State and there are fictitious ones. It's time our leaders stopped play-fighting with the latter and took responsible measures to introduce genuine reform and make Social Security a better system for everyone.
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
A Friend of the Family
The recently released Bailey Review into the commercialisation and sexualisation of children places a lot of emphasis on the need to make society 'more family friendly'. Every government likes to proclaim that it has family friendly policies – it is, after all, a pretty easy way to sound like the good guys – but what does it actually mean? Just what kind of family are they talking about?
Of the UK's approximately seventeen million families, just twelve million are headed by married couples. Around two and a half million are headed by couples who are cohabiting without marriage or civil partnership, and this figure is steadily growing as a proportion of the whole. There are just over two million single mother families and a mere hundred thousand single father families; neither of these groups has grown or declined much in recent years, although if you read the tabloids you may well have been under the impression that they're an epidemic. The evidence suggests that most single parents are in relationships at the point when their children are born. Only around ten percent of them are under twenty five, so the irresponsible teenager stereotype is misleading too. Oh, and over half of single parents work, though they are significantly more likely than those in two parent families to be living below the poverty line.
Of course, this only gives us a rough idea of what Britain's families really look like, because families aren't limited to the nuclear group. There are certainly quite a few polyamorous families out there, with more than two adults providing for children, but we don't have any firm details on this because the people running the National Census decided to disregard all data concerning multiple partner groups and instead assign each individual thus described a single partner, on the basis that they probably made an error when describing themselves (how they can arrive at this conclusion in the absence of other quantitative data on polyamorous households is unclear). There are also many families which have fractured and reformed so that children frequently travel between their birth parents' homes and are also looked after by step parents. And then there's co-parenting, where two unrelated adults who are not romantically involved share a home in order to raise their children together – many women find this a practical way to work around problems they would otherwise face in finding childcare to enable them to work.
Add to this the extended family. Modern UK society is unusual in its notional adherence to the parents-and-children-only model. In most societies today and throughout history, grandparents, aunts and uncles and often close friends of the family have played important roles in raising children – not just providing childcare, but helping more generally with education and socialisation. In fact there are still a great many families in the UK that function like this, they just tend to be under the political radar. There are also many complex care situations in which families may include elderly, ill or disabled adult dependants, some of whom also help to look after children.
Given this complex picture, it should be pretty clear that one-size-fits-all approaches to family friendliness are not going to work. The UK has a sad history of prioritising some family types at the expense of others and of using crude financial levers to try and force people into that 'standard' model (though David Cameron's much-vaunted plan to create a new tax allowance for married couples seems to have been consigned to the back burner). Single mothers are made scapegoats for everything from male violence to the struggling economy, generally with no substantiating evidence, whilst relatively little attention is paid to the men whose desertion has left many of them in that situation in the first place, even where non-payment of parental contributions is commonplace. Single fathers, meanwhile, tend to lose out because they are 'invisible' when policy is being developed.
To complicate things further, families include people who face different kinds of social exclusion. There are three and a half million children in the UK living below the poverty line – a statistic which becomes more worrying when one realises how many of them were born to parents who grew up in the same circumstances. To families like this, the notion that their primary concerns should include the appearance of the kids' underwear must seem ludicrous to say the least. One in six kids in this situation considers suicide. Shouldn't we be more concerned about that? Or about the kids who feel suicidal because they experience racist, homophobic or transphobic bullying whilst Cameron's government increasingly deregulates the schools that ought to be protecting them?
Moral panics have a nasty way of making things harder for kids like these. Public fear of paedophiles has made it harder for many kids to access sport, hobby groups or outdoor play. This is despite the fact that most child molestation occurs within the family unit or its immediate social circle. Denying kids contact with other adults makes it harder for them to find people they can confide in when things are wrong at home. It also means that a kid who is worried about developing homosexual feelings, for instance, will find it harder to ask a neutral adult for advice. Responsible advice is hard to find online if parents have installed content-blocking software. So such young people are often left more vulnerable, not less so, like those prevented by the same software from accessing safer sex advice. If Nadine Dorries and her allies succeed in placing the focus of school sex education on abstinence we can expect rates of sexually transmitted infections to soar as they have where similar approaches have been taken in the US. Protecting children is not always as obvious a process as it might first seem.
It's also an emotive business. The phrase 'family friendly' is designed to appeal to the emotions, but often it does so at the expense of good sense. People who care passionately about protecting children often believe that qualifies them to act on instinct. It doesn't. To make good policy which has the effects intended, it is necessary to consider the evidence. Fortunately there is a good quantity of this, though little in the Bailey Review, which amounts to little more than a collection of opinions.
There is one other important question to ask here, and that's whether it is appropriate to place so much extra emphasis on parental input when it comes to developing policies that affect children. Parents generally do know their own children better than anyone else does, but that doesn't make them experts on children in general. And the welfare of children is not solely their concern. It's not just that non-parents may also want to see children do well, it's that the whole of society depends on how children are raised. Everybody has to live with problems like youth violence and everybody will ultimately depend on the skills and hard word of those who are now children to sustain the economy when they grow too old to work themselves. Children are a social investment, not just a familial one.
The hard truth of the matter is, most genuine ways to improve the lives of families and children across the board require money – more money than successive governments have been willing to invest. Until they are ready to put that money where their mouths are, they should be wary of announcing that they're family friendly. Baby-kissing is out of fashion on the campaign trail (I am still uncertain as to why, in the internet age, we don't see more politicians posing with kittens). It is time we also put its rhetorical cousin to bed.
Of the UK's approximately seventeen million families, just twelve million are headed by married couples. Around two and a half million are headed by couples who are cohabiting without marriage or civil partnership, and this figure is steadily growing as a proportion of the whole. There are just over two million single mother families and a mere hundred thousand single father families; neither of these groups has grown or declined much in recent years, although if you read the tabloids you may well have been under the impression that they're an epidemic. The evidence suggests that most single parents are in relationships at the point when their children are born. Only around ten percent of them are under twenty five, so the irresponsible teenager stereotype is misleading too. Oh, and over half of single parents work, though they are significantly more likely than those in two parent families to be living below the poverty line.
Of course, this only gives us a rough idea of what Britain's families really look like, because families aren't limited to the nuclear group. There are certainly quite a few polyamorous families out there, with more than two adults providing for children, but we don't have any firm details on this because the people running the National Census decided to disregard all data concerning multiple partner groups and instead assign each individual thus described a single partner, on the basis that they probably made an error when describing themselves (how they can arrive at this conclusion in the absence of other quantitative data on polyamorous households is unclear). There are also many families which have fractured and reformed so that children frequently travel between their birth parents' homes and are also looked after by step parents. And then there's co-parenting, where two unrelated adults who are not romantically involved share a home in order to raise their children together – many women find this a practical way to work around problems they would otherwise face in finding childcare to enable them to work.
Add to this the extended family. Modern UK society is unusual in its notional adherence to the parents-and-children-only model. In most societies today and throughout history, grandparents, aunts and uncles and often close friends of the family have played important roles in raising children – not just providing childcare, but helping more generally with education and socialisation. In fact there are still a great many families in the UK that function like this, they just tend to be under the political radar. There are also many complex care situations in which families may include elderly, ill or disabled adult dependants, some of whom also help to look after children.
Given this complex picture, it should be pretty clear that one-size-fits-all approaches to family friendliness are not going to work. The UK has a sad history of prioritising some family types at the expense of others and of using crude financial levers to try and force people into that 'standard' model (though David Cameron's much-vaunted plan to create a new tax allowance for married couples seems to have been consigned to the back burner). Single mothers are made scapegoats for everything from male violence to the struggling economy, generally with no substantiating evidence, whilst relatively little attention is paid to the men whose desertion has left many of them in that situation in the first place, even where non-payment of parental contributions is commonplace. Single fathers, meanwhile, tend to lose out because they are 'invisible' when policy is being developed.
To complicate things further, families include people who face different kinds of social exclusion. There are three and a half million children in the UK living below the poverty line – a statistic which becomes more worrying when one realises how many of them were born to parents who grew up in the same circumstances. To families like this, the notion that their primary concerns should include the appearance of the kids' underwear must seem ludicrous to say the least. One in six kids in this situation considers suicide. Shouldn't we be more concerned about that? Or about the kids who feel suicidal because they experience racist, homophobic or transphobic bullying whilst Cameron's government increasingly deregulates the schools that ought to be protecting them?
Moral panics have a nasty way of making things harder for kids like these. Public fear of paedophiles has made it harder for many kids to access sport, hobby groups or outdoor play. This is despite the fact that most child molestation occurs within the family unit or its immediate social circle. Denying kids contact with other adults makes it harder for them to find people they can confide in when things are wrong at home. It also means that a kid who is worried about developing homosexual feelings, for instance, will find it harder to ask a neutral adult for advice. Responsible advice is hard to find online if parents have installed content-blocking software. So such young people are often left more vulnerable, not less so, like those prevented by the same software from accessing safer sex advice. If Nadine Dorries and her allies succeed in placing the focus of school sex education on abstinence we can expect rates of sexually transmitted infections to soar as they have where similar approaches have been taken in the US. Protecting children is not always as obvious a process as it might first seem.
It's also an emotive business. The phrase 'family friendly' is designed to appeal to the emotions, but often it does so at the expense of good sense. People who care passionately about protecting children often believe that qualifies them to act on instinct. It doesn't. To make good policy which has the effects intended, it is necessary to consider the evidence. Fortunately there is a good quantity of this, though little in the Bailey Review, which amounts to little more than a collection of opinions.
There is one other important question to ask here, and that's whether it is appropriate to place so much extra emphasis on parental input when it comes to developing policies that affect children. Parents generally do know their own children better than anyone else does, but that doesn't make them experts on children in general. And the welfare of children is not solely their concern. It's not just that non-parents may also want to see children do well, it's that the whole of society depends on how children are raised. Everybody has to live with problems like youth violence and everybody will ultimately depend on the skills and hard word of those who are now children to sustain the economy when they grow too old to work themselves. Children are a social investment, not just a familial one.
The hard truth of the matter is, most genuine ways to improve the lives of families and children across the board require money – more money than successive governments have been willing to invest. Until they are ready to put that money where their mouths are, they should be wary of announcing that they're family friendly. Baby-kissing is out of fashion on the campaign trail (I am still uncertain as to why, in the internet age, we don't see more politicians posing with kittens). It is time we also put its rhetorical cousin to bed.
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