I beg your indulgence, a few paragraphs following are history, but persevere and you’ll see the relevance soon.
The world changed in the eighties. Until then, the world was a better, more compassionate place. People were happy to do their job for satisfaction’s sake, and a living wage. Greed was for criminals back then, a negative quality rather than a virtue. The changes were brought about by Thatcher and Reagan beginning an age from which more and more have felt entitled. Job satisfaction is now called money and compassion the realm of eccentrics.
Back in Dickensian times, progress of welfare was due to those few wealthy persons who had compassion for those worse off. Diseases were rife, and the streets full of the poverty-stricken. They wanted a fairer society and were prepared to campaign for it, putting their money where their heart was. By the time of Willaim Beveridge, the acknowledged need created the reality. The NHS was to bring people out of poverty, the welfare state a safety net created by the compassionate for those dispossessed and without a public voice. Things improved throughout the Twentieth Century – right up until Thatcher and Reagan made a haven for sociopath’s without compassion.
You’ll notice that the people who created the welfare state were rarely the working class themselves. In those days many who were well off felt either guilty, or obliged to spread enough wealth to help others. Of course, this was not how everyone felt. Many of the menial jobs available to the poor in the early 20th Century were toxic, and led to early deaths and horrific illnesses, but for centuries, the serf, the poor etc were hardly seen as people in their own right at all. But we owe a lot to the first half of the 20th Century, the welfare state, the vote and the NHS being prevalent amongst them.
That was then, but Thatcher and Reagan helped to create the now. Before them, the sociopath was usually found amongst the criminal community, now they are the hoarders of wealth and power. Sociopath’s have no compassion, can you imagine what happens if sociopath’s make their way of thinking prevalent?
Unfortunately, your imagination is not required, it is all around you. What is more, that way of thinking has been breeding. The media are happy to promote Government messages that denigrate those who cannot help themselves. For me, gone are the days of my youth, when I happily worked in the book trade. Gone are my later years when I had a practice as a psychotherapist. Four major lung problems, an inability to walk, diabetes and Kidney failure make me dependent on the state, and in these recent years I have seen public opinion turn on people just like me.
Those on welfare, the sick, the disabled, the unemployed and the elderly are labelled as scroungers. Not individually, oh dear no, but collectively. I often hear that too many people are scrounging and it needs to stop – not you of course, I know you, you are deserving, but those others….. It is the nameless and faceless that compassion is in short supply for, and I despair of the unfair and unkind generalisation.
I am not the only deserving case, I know this. Where I dialyse at the Churchill Hospital three days a week, the ward has 24 beds. They are usually full of people having their blood washed. There are three shifts each day, six days each week, and it is one of two wards here doing so. In addition there is a renal ward where some overspill patients go, so in all as many as 300 people in my area are suffering kidney failure and needing regular dialysis. I still hear nurses complaining about scroungers, not we 300, the others out there taking advantage. Okay, they are being seen as nameless and faceless by someone who works in a poorly paid job because they have compassion, so what is going wrong?
It takes little to remind people, that aside from those with kidney failure, there is heart failure out there. Amputations etc are also deserving. Then you remind them that not all disabilities are visible, mental illness, fibromyalgia and others may not be apparent, but can still render a person unable to do a job. If we then expose the point that there are fewer available jobs than there are unemployed, and a great deal of employed can only find part-time work, the deserving can be a greater number in their mind, but then the argument breaks down.
It breaks down because we cannot visualise huge numbers in practical terms. Tell me, can a million pounds fit into a suitcase? I have a hard time visualising this, because I don’t need a million pounds and never have had so much. Likewise, people cannot visualise mass need. This is the clever thing the uncompassionate Tories do, they alienate and demonise collectively, not individually, so that those whose vested interest in hoarding wealth can see a mass of people, as a pestilence draining their resources. This is so that people with jobs, and reasonably well off, even if they know or are related to a disabled person can still see the nameless faceless mass on welfare to be a pestilence draining their resources. They have taken the bait, hook, line and stinker, and feel they would be better off if the lazy scroungers were stopped.
The Government is very aware that the poor and dispossessed are much less likely to vote.
What we have is a crisis of marketing. Any voice heard above the crowd that says the system is unfair, and explains their circumstances, is seen as apart from the masses draining the system, and are absolved of the demonisation. Those of us hit by ATOS, workfare etc, are not people in the mind of the masses until we draw attention to our plight, and it is nothing for an MP to say “It should not have happened in this case”, still condemning the masses.
We need two things to change this. We need to be prepared to vote, if only to keep the Tories out of power, and we need good PR. We need to be seen not as numbers, but individuals listed by names. circumstances and need. In cases of hostage taking, or kidnapping, appeals use names and details to humanise the hostage to their kidnappers. We need the same. We need to be not the one exception, but the 99.5% exception to a damningly unfair rule. We need to say: God forbid it should happen to you, but if you lost your job, were crippled, got sick or elderly, you’ll probably want a welfare state in place to help you. Chances are, you’ll only be seen as a deserving case by your family, and friends, and a nameless, faceless scrounger by everyone else.
Gina Ravens
