{"id":10873,"date":"2015-05-25T16:19:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T15:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/?p=10873"},"modified":"2021-01-13T10:42:22","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T10:42:22","slug":"the-welfare-state-saved-me-to-need-it-isnt-a-moral-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/05\/25\/the-welfare-state-saved-me-to-need-it-isnt-a-moral-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"The welfare state saved me. To need it isn\u2019t a moral failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><!-- GUARDIAN WATERMARK --><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/may\/25\/welfare-state-moral-failure-tory-poverty-individial-state\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/image.guardian.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2010\/03\/01\/poweredbyguardianBLACK.png?resize=140%2C45\" alt=\"Powered by Guardian.co.uk\" width=\"140\" height=\"45\" \/>This article titled &#8220;The welfare state saved me. To need it isn\u2019t a moral failure&#8221; was written by Lola Okolosie, for theguardian.com on Monday 25th May 2015 13.22 UTC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last week, the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ons.gov.uk\/ons\/rel\/household-income\/persistent-poverty-in-the-uk-and-eu\/2008-2013\/persistent-poverty-in-the-uk-and-eu--2008-2013.html\" title=\"\"> Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures<\/a> showing that, between 2010 and 2013, a third of the UK population experienced income poverty. During this four-year period, 19.3 million people had a disposable income of below 60% of the national median at some point. These figures illustrate how millions of people are treading water, struggling to keep afloat and afford the very basics. Crisis loans and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2015\/may\/01\/food-banks-most-people-at-the-school-gates-have-used-them\" title=\"\">food banks<\/a> are real.<\/p>\n<p>In the wake of the election of a Tory majority government, it almost feels like the thing to do is to stop banging the same drum, to stop highlighting these issues. Yet here we are. Turning our heads away from people\u2019s current experience of poverty \u2013 and what lies ahead \u2013 just isn\u2019t an option.<\/p>\n<p>As a senior teacher and a writer for this publication, my income is such that I can afford life\u2019s luxuries. I own my own home and car. I can afford meals out and holidays that take me further than Europe\u2019s shores. I don\u2019t have to face the daily humiliation of wondering if I have sent my children out into the world in clothing that reveals reduced circumstances, and with not much in their bellies. Note the agency in these sentences; I am one of the privileged few. Yet the woman I am today wouldn\u2019t exist without the welfare state.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-pullquote\">\n<blockquote><p> If the state isn\u2019t concerned with the uplift of those on the lowest rungs of society, how does it view them?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p>It\u2019s become almost passe to write that the Tories are dismantling our society\u2019s safety net and pushing millions further into poverty. And although, for some, this is keenly felt as an awful new normal, it remains abstract for others \u2013 a reality several steps removed. Not so for me. I grew up knowing what it is to feel stomach cramps as a result of hunger; to have a packed lunch for school that was simply bread and butter; to be so ashamed of my ill-fitting clothes that I avoided going out altogether.<\/p>\n<p>As a young adult I have been homeless and only saved from experiencing life on the streets by women\u2019s refuges. I have moved from jobseeker\u2019s allowance to wages so low that living was only made possible through housing benefit and working tax credit. I have accessed legal aid and had a small insight into how the law can work for even the most vulnerable. And I could undertake my bachelor\u2019s degree because, as a poor independent student, I didn\u2019t have to pay more than \u00a31,000 in tuition fees.<\/p>\n<p>I am the product of a compassionate state, one that believes in the potential of all its citizens. For that I am supremely grateful and lucky. Yet even writing this seems brazen, as though admitting a failure on my part. Poverty is good at shaming you into silence.<\/p>\n<p>A surfeit of humiliation and guilt attaches itself to poverty. How dare I have used the state to realise a better life for myself and the children I would later go on to have? But if the state isn\u2019t concerned with the uplift of those on the lowest rungs of society, how does it view them? Are they simply the fodder needed to realise the 1%\u2019s wealth accumulation?<\/p>\n<p>In my mid-30s, I am no longer reliant on the welfare state \u2013 and haven\u2019t been for some time. The truth is that for the majority of those who claim benefits, it\u2019s a short-term measure, tiding them over in their time of need. Now I am comfortably middle-class, even with all the talk of the \u201csqueezed middle\u201d, I am buffered from the worst the government has in store. Yet it all feels like one unfortunate calamity away, its proximity unnervingly near, made real by the daily struggles of younger family members who are trying to recover from childhoods in care, who have few or no qualifications and work on zero-hour contracts. When Iain Duncan Smith talks of \u201cneighbourhoods blighted by worklessness\u201d he fails to mention the poverty of opportunity in such areas, which his government\u2019s policies will further entrench.<\/p>\n<p>No one needs to remind me of the absolute necessity of our welfare state and so I happily pay into it. My wider family in Nigeria \u2013 a country where benefits are non-existent and pretty much everything has been privatised \u2013 live in the type of poverty that takes seeing to believe. And despite knowing first-hand the difference between absolute and relative poverty, I don\u2019t believe the existence of the former cancels out the debilitating reality of the latter. Poverty in Nigeria or the UK isn\u2019t a choice. Framing it as such is a heartless red herring, waved about to make us believe that only when people are without clothes, food or shelter should we bother to give them a passing glance.<\/p>\n<p>Now more than ever, we need a chorus of voices mobilised against the draconian treatment of society\u2019s most vulnerable. We need the millions who have at one time or other in their life accessed the welfare state to believe that they aren\u2019t failures for doing or having done so. We need to continue the argument, which says it is decent, good and right that the state steps in when all else fails. Because to continue down the path the Tories have so gleefully outlined means society will only become more divided and unstable.<\/p>\n<p>Increasingly we aren\u2019t framing poverty as the result of political forces: the privatisation of state assets such as energy and transport; the weakening of unions; the steady erasure of the welfare state. Instead, we internalise all the guff telling us that poverty is the inevitable result of an individual\u2019s moral decrepitude. Though the wealthy have always spun being poor as a willing choice of the selfish, dumb and lazy, now, more than ever, society seems to be buying this message.<\/p>\n<p>With all Labour\u2019s chatter about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2015\/may\/09\/alan-johnson-labour-aspirational-voters-tony-blair\" title=\"\">failing to recognise the value of aspiration<\/a> \u2013 as if only those who want to pay less tax have it \u2013 the party is running scared and away from the most vulnerable. It is an unsightly manoeuvre, one that comes off as grasping and shortsighted. It is important that they do not become complicit in a lie that claims the poor can be shamed and punished out of poverty.<\/p>\n<p>My parents didn\u2019t receive benefits when living in England, yet our poverty was no less degrading as a result; it is not more dignified to offer oneself as cheap, easily exploitable labour. The Tories must not win an argument that is immoral to its core: that accessing the welfare state is a sign of individual failure.<\/p>\n<p>guardian.co.uk &#169; Guardian News &amp; Media Limited 2010<\/p>\n<p>Published via the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/open-platform\/news-feed-wordpress-plugin\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Guardian plugin page\" rel=\"noopener\">Guardian News Feed<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/the-guardian-news-feed\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Wordress plugin page\" rel=\"noopener\">plugin<\/a> for WordPress.<\/p>\n<p><!-- END GUARDIAN WATERMARK --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Society is buying the Tory message that poverty is all the fault of the individual. I know first-hand how vital state support can be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,85,48,54,236,281,45,110,109,66,176],"class_list":["post-10873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-article","tag-benefits","tag-comment","tag-conservatives","tag-lola-okolosie","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-poverty","tag-social-exclusion","tag-society","tag-welfare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NRDR-2Pn","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133277,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2018\/12\/13\/ken-livingstone-on-austerity-and-other-matters\/","url_meta":{"origin":10873,"position":0},"title":"Ken Livingstone on Austerity and other matters","author":"diana Stone","date":"December 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Tories are breaking Britain OVER the last five years more than 500,000 workers in Britain have fallen into working poverty, it was revealed this week in the UK Poverty 2018 report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It also showed that the number of people with a job but living\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Musings&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Musings","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/category\/musings\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6609,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/03\/16\/uk-must-spend-more-on-the-vulnerable\/","url_meta":{"origin":10873,"position":1},"title":"UK must spend more on the vulnerable","author":"diana Stone","date":"March 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Letters: Early help for families will save millions of children from suffering needless trauma and save money in the long run","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Musings&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Musings","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/category\/musings\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Powered by Guardian.co.uk","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/image.guardian.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2010\/03\/01\/poweredbyguardianBLACK.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9663,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/05\/08\/the-tories-12bn-of-welfare-cuts-could-come-back-to-haunt-them\/","url_meta":{"origin":10873,"position":2},"title":"The Tories\u2019 \u00a312bn of welfare cuts could come back to haunt them","author":"diana Stone","date":"May 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Such huge cutbacks won\u2019t just hit the mythical scroungers, but also people who may have voted the Conservatives in","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Musings&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Musings","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/category\/musings\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Powered by Guardian.co.uk","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/image.guardian.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2010\/03\/01\/poweredbyguardianBLACK.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":21579,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/10\/08\/this-is-as-good-as-its-going-to-get-for-cameron-and-he-knows-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":10873,"position":3},"title":"This is as good as it&#8217;s going to get for Cameron \u2013 and he knows it","author":"diana Stone","date":"October 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2018The NHS safe because of us\u2019 was just one boast unwinding as he spoke. Secretly he must wish he could quit right now","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Musings&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Musings","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/category\/musings\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Powered by Guardian.co.uk","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/image.guardian.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2010\/03\/01\/poweredbyguardianBLACK.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3408,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2014\/04\/13\/personal-independence-payments-are-a-punishment-of-the-poor-and-ill\/","url_meta":{"origin":10873,"position":4},"title":"Personal independence payments are a punishment of the poor and ill","author":"diana Stone","date":"April 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"PIP should be a national scandal: Iain Duncan Smith's new system already has a huge backlog and people are dying waiting","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Musings&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Musings","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/category\/musings\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Powered by Guardian.co.uk","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/image.guardian.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2010\/03\/01\/poweredbyguardianBLACK.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4285,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2014\/06\/22\/tens-of-thousands-march-in-london-against-coalitions-austerity-measures\/","url_meta":{"origin":10873,"position":5},"title":"Tens of thousands march in London against coalition&#8217;s austerity measures","author":"diana Stone","date":"June 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"An estimated 50,000 people in London addressed by speakers, including Russell Brand, after People's Assembly march","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Musings&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Musings","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/category\/musings\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Powered by Guardian.co.uk","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/image.guardian.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2010\/03\/01\/poweredbyguardianBLACK.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}