Anarchy 84/Notes on poverty 2: Child poverty, with a look at a Lancashire town

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Notes on poverty

2: Child poverty,
with a
look at a
Lancashire town

ALISTAIR RATTRAY and
ALEX SIMPSON

On Sunday she wore blue stockings, a yellow skirt and a bright red blouse;

On Monday she wore the same.

On Tuesday she wore a bright red blouse, blue stockings and a yellow skirt;

On Wednesday she dressed the same;

On Thursday again the red, the yellow and the blue;

On Friday again the same.

On Saturday she didn’t come out.

On Sunday she wore blue stockings, a yellow skirt and a bright red blouse.

Kathleen is 9 and is one of a, too large, minor­ity living in poverty. She lives in the old Lanca­shire town of Black­mills, with its population of 33,000. The decli­ning cotton indus­try of Black­mills has been supple­mented by a large nearby engin­eering indus­try and arms factory, to­gether with entry into tex­tiles. Unlike many of the surroun­ding towns, Black­mills cannot be des­cribed as a de­pressed area where unem­ploy­ment is dis­turbing­ly acute. The housing is pre­domi­nantly old and the red brick ter­raced rows of houses, 2 up, 2 down, built for the cotton workers towards the end of the 19th century, were not erected with an eye to

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design. The major­ity were built without bath­rooms and are still without them where no Local Author­ity grant has been ob­tained for instal­lation. Most still have the lava­tory outside in the back yard (no gardens). The main road, one of Lanca­shire’s main high­ways, is full of flashy, newly-built super­markets which compete with the two market places which open three times a week. A view of Black­mills from the hills on the edge of the Pen­nines is gener­ally un­plea­sant. Dozens of factory chim­neys inces­sant­ly belch out palls of black smoke which mingle with the smoke of the smaller coal fires which every­one burns through­out the year. The view is always hazy, summer and winter, and the houses, even the post-war council houses, are black­ened and dirty. Com­pared to many of the sur­roun­ding towns Black­mills is good and clean, as any of the older citi­zens will tell you.

  There are few faci­lities for the chil­dren and teen­agers in Black­mills. The chil­dren play in the small parks and on the streets, going up the hill on fine days. Only one primary school has its own foot­ball pitch at­tached to the school. There is one poorly-atten­ded youth centre. The most popular beat-club-coffee-bar recent­ly closed down when the lease expired and the rent went up. There are two cinemas strug­gling for sur­vival. For the adults there is Bingo, the cinema, and one pub per 150 head of popu­lation.

  Although there is no defini­tive slum area in Black­mills and one cannot walk through the streets seeing overt poverty, there is poverty here—hidden behind the skirts of the Welfare State—as indeed there is through­out the country.

  The work of Professors Townsend, Abel Smith and Titmuss have shown us that poverty exists on a vast scale in this country and hits hardest those who are most help­less—the children. Peter Townsend points out (letter, Guardian, 8.7.67) that the Minis­try of Social Secu­rity (MSS) drew a very severe poverty line when it arrived at its, already high, poverty figure. He accuses the Minis­try of not asking the right ques­tions and comments “… instead of 280,000 fami­lies (with 910,000 chil­dren) having been found in the summer of 1966 to have resour­ces less than re­quire­ments, there would pro­bably have been, judging from the report (MSS) and other sources, at least 450,000 (with over 1,400,000 chil­dren).” These reve­la­tions about the level of poverty become more alar­ming when one realises that in this age of afflu­ence where the stan­dard of living is rising (for some) and the cot of living rising (for all), the amount of real poverty has risen sharply, e.g. since 1954. Poverty can rise while stan­dards rise and now (not a new pheno­menon), many fami­lies, whose bread­winner is in full-time employ­ment, are living in poverty, well below the MSS basic sub­sist­ence level. Poverty cannot be seen solely as the result of unem­ploy­ment and sick­ness (phy­sical, mental or social) but also as a result of a hope­lessly inade­quate Welfare State and straight capi­talist profi­teer­ing and ex­ploita­tion. The major­ity of families

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living in poverty have at least one person in employ­ment which means that their poverty is hidden from the bureau­crats at the Labour Exchange and Social Security as they may never have re­course to draw bene­fits that the Welfare State has to offer.

  In Black­mills the wages for un­skilled workers are low. Un­skilled labour­ers in tex­tiles earn the same. Buil­ding labour­ers can earn up to £25 to £30 per week by breaking their backs seen days every week, weather permit­ting, but this is very uncer­tain money and all to fre­quent­ly they receive an insul­ting wage. There is very little con­struc­tion work in Black­mills and buil­ding workers go far afield to find well-paid jobs. Where these low paid workers are the “honest poor” always trying to make the best of it, budget­ing their money as wisely as pos­sible, never wasting a far­thing, and just managing week by week, they will rarely see the man at the Dole office and no one will offi­cial­ly hear of their plight. It is easy to dis­cover that unem­ploy­ment has risen in Black­mills from 318 to 479 in one year (how many chil­dren are depen­dent on these 479 bread­winners we are not told) and that about 125 of these unem­ployed are recei­ving supple­men­tary benefit, but it is almost impos­sible to dis­cover the fami­lies in need who are on very low incomes, often suppor­ting large fami­lies. These fami­lies would once have been called “the deser­ving poor” who are often too proud or igno­rant to admit their poverty.

  The proposals made by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) would help these fami­lies where they have numer­ous chil­dren (and poor fami­lies are usually large fami­lies). One of the ways CPAG propose to alle­viate family poverty is by greatly increa­sing family allow­ances and abo­lish­ing income tax relief for chil­dren. “This would leave the net income of well-to-do fami­lies un­changed, except for those in the surtax class; the whole of the in­creased expen­diture would be concen­tra­ted on the poorer families, without the need for a means test” (Poverty, No. 3, Summer ’67). There is no indica­tion that the Labour Govern­ment have any inten­tion of carry­ing out these propo­sals or any others which would make even their own alleged concept of the Welfare State a reality.