[Kizzy]

Have attitudes to people in poverty changed over a lifetime? Bob Holman put this to Guardian readers a year ago. He referred to a report on urban poverty written in 1943 by eight members of the hygiene committee of the Women’s Group on Public Welfare. Our Towns: A Close-Up was commissioned to investigate complaints from people in rural England about families evacuated from inner cities. Children were reported as dirty, inadequately clothed and badly behaved, and their parents were blamed as lazy and incompetent. Politicians and media reports supported this analysis.

The authors visited poor neighbourhoods and put a spotlight on the conditions that made life tough for the people who lived there. Instead of fuelling the growing hostility, they challenged public attitudes. They showed how resilient and resourceful families had to be to survive circumstances that most people would find overwhelming. The report was debated in parliament and influenced the Beveridge reforms that shaped the postwar welfare state.


Today the infrastructure of welfare support is under attack. Social security is deemed too costly; the principles of mutual support and solidarity are being replaced by selfish individualism. People in poverty are labelled shirkers and feel ashamed to claim the welfare support they need. Negative attitudes are reinforced by sensationalist media and opportunistic politicians, and the nasty and divisive public rhetoric that has emerged demonises those living in poverty in ways that are reminiscent of the early 1940s. It was this comparison that led Holman to call for a modern-day Our Towns.


Is this true? Have we lost empathy for individualism, has the media and 'poverty porn' skewed the view of the poor?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...y-uk-bad-1940s

Here is a recent document 'Our Lives: Challenging attitudes to poverty in 2015.' It gives a really enlightening overview of how poverty and reforms are are affecting lives in the UK.

http://www.ryantunnardbrown.com/wp-c...-20-march1.pdf