A guest post by Panda Paws
Channel 4 recently broadcast “The Mill” a drama based on the true stories of mill workers in Cheshire in the 19th century. It covered the Chartists fighting for universal suffrage and the Mill owners objections to the Factories Acts. Apparently outlawing children under 9 from working at all and limiting those over 9 to only ten hours a day would hinder their competitiveness. I saw it as a reminder of how brutal life used to be for the working classes. IDS and Gideon apparently saw it as “blue sky” thinking for their next manifesto!
The political centre is a movable feast. When Thatcher was PM many regarded her as an extreme right wing zealot. Today, she’s practically to the left of Blue Labour. In Scotland Tories are toxic so if you are a right winger with ambition the party to join is Labour as Jim Murphy and Tom Harris demonstrate. So why has this happened; why have people and the main political parties apparently moved rightwards?
Scotland has plenty of Tories/right wingers. I live in East Renfrewshire among a good number of them. Are they all callous swines? Some are but others use cognitive biases to help justify their views and depict the poor as “other”. These biases often overlap and thus cement apparently hard hearted views.
Firstly the “Just World Fallacy”
Basically this boils down to you get what you deserve. Therefore if you are poor it is your fault, you are lazy, stupid or not hard working enough. Hard work is rewarded and they are well off because of merit. Therefore most of the poor can be regarded addicts or wasters in sinkhole estates. It’s acknowledged that “good people” can fall on hard times – e.g. the genteel poor or those with disabilities, but mostly it’s a fault of the person and not society. Thus society does not need to change and radical politics is seen as being soft on welfare (sic). This leads onto another cognitive bias
The deserving and undeserving poor.
AKA Daily Mail land - “I don’t mind my taxes paying for the truly disabled but most are faking it. And as for the unemployed, pay them nothing. Work or starve”
They acknowledge that there are SOME deserving poor but posit that most are faking ill health/disability or if healthy too lazy to work. It ignores the fact that while many with long term conditions could work, few want to employ them in a world where there are too many unemployed to choose from and not enough jobs for all.
Whilst there are always those who are “difficult to reach” or as Marx called them the “lumpenproletariat “, these are a small minority. Society has a duty to determine how to best to “cope” with this minority without punishing the majority who have fallen on hard times. At best, the aim would be to educate and help equip them to achieve their potential, at worst to give them just enough to survive on and not turn to crime or riot.
Stereotyping
Most people are aware of what stereotyping is. They may not realise that stereotyping leads to “divide and conquer” since one of its main consequences is “othering” whereby those who are different or even slightly outside the mainstream can be denigrated. If you voted Yes don’t probably need any further explanations! Seeing someone as “different” can lead to a lack of empathy towards them and their situation. This can be used, especially if the “strivers” don’t have any personal contact with people in the situation, to mould public opinion against them. Thus we have a situation whereby seemingly decent people are not up in arms about the treatment of disabled people or the use of workfare during a time of labour surplus.
So effing Tories (of all colours) - selfish gits or people that have been manipulated by spin doctors with more than a passing knowledge of social psychology? IMHO, the latter is why seemingly decent people can have very harsh views on the have-nots. What to do about it is a whole other article!
Panda Paws you have hit this square on the nail. I think there are a whole lot of selfish tories out there and they are not all wearing blue rosettes. I cam across one woman on one of the comments sections when the SNP had proposed free school meals for all kids up to a certain age, sorry no kids not idea how old. Well her kids had to avail themselves of this when her relationship had broken up but she was damned if she was going to watch people that she deemed were wealthy enough to afford it. She did not care if her kids were stigmatised. I some times despair of the human race. Seems that there are always those who prefer to have someone to look down on.
ReplyDeleteWas the woman in the comments section Johann Lamont? She seems a fan of means-testing and to hell with universality :-)
DeleteThis has been on my mind for some time.
ReplyDeleteThe way that thinks look to be going in the UK in 2014 makes me believe that attitudes will result in a return to the bad old days of our predecessors.
With attitudes of "work or die" we will see a return of the work house and the resurgence of paupers that were abundant in the 1830's.
With the privatisation of the NHS, calls to stop or limit payments to the disabled and the increase of a non-caring population I can see that in two or three generations we will return to Victorian values. I believe that these changes are already underway.
The current generation of Scots just starting out in careers or work can't afford to buy a home or even rent decent accommodation. They are lucky to have full time employment at the minimum wage. A great many of them, graduates included, have 0 hour contracts. They can't think or having a family, settling down or planning for a future.
When you consider how much has been achieved to look after everyone why do we, the current custodians of this country, want to throw this away?
Is this all about money and power?
I'd recommend reading Naomi Klein's the Shock Doctrine. Austerity is a mask for tranferring funds from the plebs to the super rich. Then if we are fighting each other, we don't challenge the 1%
Deletepanda paws
DeleteThanks, I've jut checked it out on Amazon and I'll look out for it in a charity shop, where I do most of my shopping nowadays.
I'm one of the disabled that the country so hates. But I no longer admit it.
With that label attached to me no-one sees me, my education or the really worthwhile jobs I have had in the past. Sometimes I don't see me either, except through the eyes of others who see me as being lazy and inadequate.
I believe that it is only when we face our own frailties that we can understand those of others.
You might want to see if your library has it. If not they might be able to get it through inter library loans for little or no cost. I'm a disabled person too, though not as severely as some. NEVER let anyone make you feel lazy, inadequate or lacking in worth. They couldn't cope with what you do.
DeleteThe divide and conquer, scenario does spring to mind, it reminds me of something I read awhile back,which goes something like this, an unemployed man, a working man (low to average wage) and big business/government man, are all sitting at a table. On the table is a plate with ten pound coins, big business/government man reaches over and takes nine one pound coins, and puts them in his/their pocket.
ReplyDeleteBig business/government man then leans over to working man (low to average pay) and whispers in his ear, unemployed man, is about to take your one pound coin.
Yip it's one of those jokes with a sting in the tale/tail! And so true. If we keep oour eyes on each other, the powerful get away with murder
DeleteYou have, intentionally or not, written a potted history of the "Scottish" labour party. The masters of divide and rule, of othering and basically lying to get what they want; not what the people need.
ReplyDeleteForgotten to add, I watched "The Mill". It was brilliant, though while watching it; I thought, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
DeleteI remember the bit where the union rep talked about Westminster thinking the way to increase productivity was to reduce wages and thought they still do mate they still do!
DeleteYes they bloody well do. I work in the building trade: as a brickie. Unless you live in the "Sauwf eest", you get paid low wages. All the big building firms are English owned, the wages they pay aren't " British " wages. They are the lowest they can get away with. I know London a London born and bred bricklayer, in good times and bad; he has earned 3 times the amount I have.
DeleteThat's right, we're all in it together.......My Erse fae ma Alba.
It's part of Scottish folklore that there are few Tories in Scotland.
ReplyDeleteWrong. When the Blue Tories died, Scottish Tories simply moved their vote to Labour, and the SNP took Labours place.
In England, leftish folk vote Labour, and wankers vote Tory. In Scotland, leftish folk vote SNP, and wankers vote Labour.
My worry is wankers starting to vote UKIP!
DeleteSad to say, I agree.....The wanks are still with us.....(I don't feel clean now.....aaaaargh)
DeleteMeant to say earlier that my Husband says that they will be using Downton Abbey as a training video shortly.
ReplyDeleteMy Gran way back around the time of WW1 started out as a maid of work for one of the then Middle Classes, funnily enough her Granddaughter did her domestic School work in a similar house. Well there is something about the women in my family she told them to stuff it.
The guy that "writes" Downton used to write speeches for David Cameron and was ennobled by him. Baron Julian Fellows if you please.
DeleteI thought "down town" was a NewYork Dolls song. BBC? What's that?
DeleteHmmm... It's a Parisian doll's song! madame Claude Wolff (or Pétula Clark as she is known to us).
DeleteThis all reminds of this song...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5brQCPxxlSM
Thank you! I feel the "just world belief" stuff, and how it can be played upon, was central to the outcome of the referendum. i think the independence movement needs to be talking more about all this
ReplyDeleteWe need to challenge these views but when the media is owned by right wingers, we are at a disadvantage. I've seen comments btl in the Guardian stating that Yes vote were unemployed scroungers and workers voted No. Trolling obviously but then the seed is planted.
DeleteYes, that's the problem. All these attitudes that people buy into can be traced back to the press. I have a neighbor who, when anything bad happens in the area immediately blames the Poles. It never is, of course, and time after time it is proved to be the local jakeys (drug addicts for foreigners).. There were some empty beer cans lying in the street one day ...continental ones, and he immediately blames them on the Poles, like no one else ever drinks continental lager... (I pointed out to him a few days later that I'd seen a bottle of wine and it was Chilean, so to look out for Hispanic looking folk having moved in).
DeleteThere's the hatred of immigrants because they cost the country a fortune... when in fact they are far less likely to cost anything than natives adn government statistics prove that they are economically good for the country.
There's the fact that we cannot afford all these people on the dole who are scrounging and cheating, when in fact the truth is that the amount any of this costs is infinitesimal compared to the amount that big business salts away.
The ECHR overturns British law (although there is no suck thing) when in fact it almost never does.
The EU makes 80% of our laws... when 8% is probably nearer the truth...
The Mail, Sun, Telegraph, Express, Star ... feed us this nonsense as fact. It is not fact.
So true PP my younger sister, unfortunately is one of those 'I'm alright ' bunch of no voters. Even tho my niece lived on benefit for many years, being a young single mother, she conveniently forgets this now. Grrrr
ReplyDeleteAYE
Britain really has become nothing more than an undemocratic state of dictatorship bordering on totalitarianism when all 3 main parties in Westminster are signed up to this.
ReplyDeleteThe Tarpaulin Revolution
As I understadn it (because I don;t watch tv or listen to radio any more) there has been no coverage of this at all.
DeleteGlancing through the papers, even the more reasonable ones, there seems to be no mention of it there either.
When the government doesn't want publicity, it seems it doesn't get it.
An interesting article, but I've a question for Panda Paws on the bit about 'deserving and undeserving poor'.
ReplyDeleteIs that really only a 'Tory' or 'right-wing' idea?
It can best be traced back to the early Liberal Party in the 19th Century under Gladstone. Now he may have been a believer in the small state, but this in of itself cannot allow anyone to mischaracterise the Grand Old Man as a 'right-winger'.
It seems to me that that specific element of his analysis breaks down. The concept of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' is as left-wing in its roots as it is right-wing.#
Even many early British socialists discussed the concept, among them George Bernard Shaw in 'Major Barbara'...where the idea of the deserving poor and undeserving poor was examined through the concept of 'Give a man a job, and he'll forge his own dreams' (or not, as the case me be - but the implication was 'on his head be it').
So while I see what Panda Paws was going for, I cannot agree with the contention that the 'deserving vs undeserving poor' argument is notionally a child of the 'right-wing'. It is as left-wing in its origins as right-wing surely?
Hi Dean
DeleteTBH I was looking at it from a psychological perspective rather than a historico-political one. I know a bit about the history of the working class but rather less about the history of socialism. But what must be remembered is that when the working class movement started it was operating in a climate that had been dominated by an elite that was right wing and had thus dictated social attitudes. But yes some left wingers can be just as judgemental and end up being useful idiots. What's the name of those two in the Ragged Trousered Phil. again? That's where divide and conquer comes in, have the working classes fighting against each other and you lessen their ability to act collectively. Indeed, even Marx acknowledged that there's some you just can't help.
The orgins may be shared but I'd like to think that the left can move away from such unhelpful dicotomies whereas the right don't want to. And I include Rachael Reeves as the right.