So the Tories are warning that a new underclass exist in this country. I agree with them, there is, but I disagree with them about whose fault it is. read the story HERE.
The simple fact is it takes many, many years to create a new "underclass", not just nine years. The Tories, under Thatcher in particular told people that you didn't matter if you lost your job, they said you didn't matter if you were not contributing to society and indeed, there was no such thing as society !
The mass cull of industrial manual jobs under the Conservatives means that scars still exist, people in some communities still find it hard to find work unless they are highly qualified (not always possible for some people in some areas), whilst the selling off of council houses taught a generation under the Tories that the only way to get to the front of the housing queue was to have children and have them as young as possible.
So I welcome the fact that the Tories recognise the problem, I would just aregue that they were the ones who planted the seed of the problem in the first place.
1 comment:
I think you'll find historically, it was the Tories, under Thatcher who first dismissed the notion of an 'underclass'.
Today, the Tories under Polly Toynbee, are now embracing the concept they rubbished not so long ago.
I think it's quite instructive to see a lib-dem uncritically falling for this sociologically undefined notion - because you can't blame the 'mass cull of industrial manual jobs under the Conservatives' for the moral failings of an immoral 'underclass', can you?
How would you define the 'new underclass'? Who are they? In the past, the unemployed were still seen as a part of the working class. Now, if you are a long-term unemployed, who sniffs glue all day long, and a single parent, this seems to be enough to qualify you as a section of the 'new underclass'.
Such a perpective would say a lot more about your reactionary state of mind than it would about the urban poor or the long-term unemployed.
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