“The fact of the matter is that the binge-drinking problem is largely an underclass problem. Teen pregnancies are largely an underclass problem. Teenage crime is largely an underclass problem. Child neglect – we live in a country where a little girl allegedly starved to death in her own home last week – is largely an underclass problem. Our collective problems are largely underclass problems.”
Has caught the attention of Melanie Phillips who writes in her blog
“Absolutely untrue. All these problems, experienced disproportionately by those at the bottom of the heap, were foisted upon them by the over class of which India Knight is a member”
She then goes onto accuse the champagne socialist intelligentsia of destroying the traditional family, demonising men, incentivising mass fatherless ness and declaring never married motherhood an inalienable human right. In short it is left wing intellectuals, the permissive society and the swinging sixties in particular which are responsible for the destruction of society as we knew it.
Now I would not wish to be seen as a defender of left wing Guardian reading intellectuals, but as Unity at the Ministry of Truth points out in his evisceration of Melanie’s article entitled the “Mayor of Simpleton” it was the destruction of Britain’s manufacturing and industrial base in the 1980’s that was responsible for the replacing of Britain’s working class with today’s underclass and that it is this that is responsible for the rising rates of teenage pregnancies, youth crime and drug taking that we are now living with. Clinton it seems was right all along;
“It is the economy stupid”
But I would go further
It was not Thatcher who destroyed the manufacturing and industrial base in this country but the harsh economic realties of global capitalism. Thatcher was merely the first to wake up and read the writing on the wall. If Arthur Scargill had not led his union into the miners strike of 1984 but had instead accepted that much of the coal industry was uneconomic and overmanned some of those mines would now still be open and operating economically instead of which he decided to wage a political battle against the government which he lost.
Political parties of whatever stripe will always look to their own supporters, it is surely no coincidence that despite Thatcher’s antagonism to Europe she did not attack the CAP with the same zeal she directed towards destroying the power of the unions, but it was ultimately the unions of the 1970’s who are more to blame for the destruction of Britain’s manufacturing base and the creation of today’s underclass than the Thatcherite policies of the 80’s.
However, union leaders like Scargill may have been responsible for creating the underclass but it is the Welfare state that feeds, nourishes and encourages it. What this country needs is the equivalent of Roosevelt’s new deal to put those young men and women back to work and give them a sense of self worth and pride. Easier said than done I know.
9 comments
June 2, 2008 at 10:42 pm
a and e charge nurse
I remember India Knight.
She was tripping over herself to put the boot in on a radiographer whose daughter died in day care (after the child suffered anaphylaxis).
The gist of her poisonous article was something along the lines of todays women “wanting it all” (career/family, etc).
At the same time she had been making less than flattering remarks about the NHS following the treatment of her friend Ruth Picardie who died in mid 30’s from breast cancer (Picardies account of her illness is a very moving read by the way).
Of course, Knight wasn’t too worried about working mothers when they were required to provide radiology for her dying friend.
Slightly of topic I know , but Knights smug, self-satisfied demolition of a recently bereaved mother really upset me - in fact, I found her words far more unsavoury than some the bolshy characters encountered in A&E from time to time.
I will take a closer look at the items highlighted by E when my blood pressure has settled.
June 3, 2008 at 8:31 am
zarathustra
I currently live in one of the former coalmining areas that was gutted and shredded back in 1984. A lot of the older local residents still remember the coal industry.
I don’t want to romanticise coalmining - it was a dirty, terrible, dangerous job. Even so, people seemed to gain a sense of identity, pride and community from it that they don’t seem to get now from the call centres that have replaced them.
The local communities fell apart when the mines went, and a lot of today’s social problems in our area can be traced back to those closures.
That said, it seens unlikely to me that Britain could still be a major coal producer in 2008, or that the mines could ever be re-opened as a viable business. And if they did, from what little I know about coalmining I’m told that modern technology would mean they’d be far less labour-intensive than back in 1984, and employ only a fraction of the people.
June 3, 2008 at 8:34 am
beakie
I imagine that today’s problems stem from a mixture of both the mistakes of liberal leftism and the mistakes of Thatcherism. Mel picks on the sixties for the same reason as Unity picks on the eighties - it suits their ideological stance - and both of them ignore the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. Kids were getting plastered on gin and killing and robbing strangers and each other back in Georgian London.
June 3, 2008 at 11:19 am
E
I did not mean to imply that Scargill or the Welfare State was solely responsible for the creation of the underclass just that one may have been partly responsible for its rise as we now see it and the other was partly responsible for its continued growth and continuation. As others have said before we are responsible for creating second and now third generations who have known nothing else but a life of benefits and the Welfare state is at least partly to blame for that.
The poor have always and probably will always be with us but Unitiy’s point is, and I think it is a valid one, that the social ills that we see today cannot be attributed in any great measure to the destruction of family values that are supposed to have occurred in the sixties. As the statistics that he quotes show the rise in the numbers of children born out of wedlock (supposedly an indicator of moral decay) occurred some twenty years after the swinging sixties and occurred across all age groups simultaneously rather than progressively across the different cohorts and staggered in time. So I don’t agree that Unity is picking on the 80’s for ideological reasons.
However the reasons for the rise of the underclass and it’s associated social problems is likely to be down to a number of factors of which leftwing chardonnay swilling intellectuals are possibly one. But to suggest that they are a major reason for societies ills is as Unity suggests unlikely.
On a slightly different topic but still connected I notice that according to the Daily Mail today we are experiencing an “epidemic” of knife crime, what they would have said in the times of Genghis Khan I wonder? What do people think of the idea of removing the point from kitchen knives? Most knives used in assaults are kitchen knives and the point on a kitchen knife serves little culinary purpose, removing it would render it useless for attacking someone. Most kitchen knives are replaced every 10 years so it would take a while for this simple measure to have any effect
June 3, 2008 at 11:21 pm
oldschoolbaby
You`re right Beakie, I do agree with you more than I care to admit but sometimes you`re infuriating. I`ve read Lord of The Flies, I`ve been to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, I switch on BBC News 24 each morning, I`m well aware of how depraved humanity can be. So I don`t need to know what it was like in Georgian London. I don`t care. It`s not relevant ( I was going to do some research - I can`t be arsed - but I`m sure the Georgian period ended before Robert Peel commenced his good work ). The point is simple. I left school in 1979. It was a crap school but the headmaster was NOT considering hiring a police officer or security guards nor was he thinking of buying a metal detector. Drugs were not widely available and NO ONE carried a knife. The situation is deteriorating rapidly. 31 ( THIRTY ONE ) teenagers have been killed in knife attacks in this country this year. This needs stamping on, just saying hey ho it was a bag of shit in Georgian London too is pitiful and defeatist.
E, I generally admire your analysis but your knife suggestion is bovine, moronic and cretinous enough to have originated in the mind of the Home Secretary herself. I`m no DIY king but there`s a tack, claw and 2lb lump hammer in my garage, any number of screwdrivers and a chisel set. That`s before I start using my imagination. People carry offensive weapons as they don`t think they`ll be caught or they think the punishment will be weak if they are. The police need to get out there and start rattling cages and shaking people down. The criminal justice system needs a pair of bollocks.
Nothing will happen though. The police are terrified of accusations that a minority are the recipients of a disproportionately high number of searches. The criminal justice system is obsessed with the rights of individuals rather than rights of society. This is where Melanie Phillips is spot on. Weak minded liberal thinking is all pervasive in government bodies. It`s dragging us down the pan. The welfare state lubricates the process. Global economic realities have exacerbated the problems. But it`s liberal orthodoxies that are primarily to blame.
June 4, 2008 at 8:46 am
E
Before you write off the idea completely (incidentally the idea came from an A&E consultant being interviewed on R4 today program) remember that the simple measure of restricting the number of Paracetamol tablets in a packet to 16 and putting the tablets themselves in blister packs apparently resulted in a significant reduction in the suicide rate.
The legislation does not stop someone buying multiple packs or finding some other way of putting an end to their life but it does help to reduce the likely hood of a successful but impulsive suicide attempt. In the same way removing the points off kitchen knives might reduce the number of fatal stabbings that occur in the home following a domestic dispute where one party has grabbed a knife on an impulse. Sometimes it is the simplest measures that have the greatest effect.
June 4, 2008 at 10:11 am
oldschoolbaby
It is, by no means, the best comparison but our Armed Forces have lost just less than a hundred fine people in Afghanistan ( including an awful Nimrod crash ). It is the beginning of June and we have lost 31 teenagers to knife crime this year. That`s 6 a month for God`s sake. This needs gripping RIGHT FUCKIN` NOW never mind in ten years time. There is an obvious solution. We have a police force, there are plenty of them and searching people is inexpensive. Get them off their arses and onto the streets. This is exactly what`s wrong with this country, no stomach for grasping the nettle and sorting the primary problem.
With regard to your paracetamol argument I wrote a post called Suicide Prevention 2 some time ago. I guess it`s in the archives somewhere.
June 4, 2008 at 11:30 am
E
It would also stop some of those accidental woundings that occur from time to time. I know you are not supposed to run with a knife in your hand but if it did not have a point on the end it might not matter.
June 4, 2008 at 3:33 pm
oldschoolbaby
O.K, E, I don`t hesitate to dish it out so I have to take it graciously when I`m being wound up. The sad truth is, though, that it is bloody difficult to differentiate between government policy and a pisstake.