The Povsrty Scandal

A Government report, issued this week, has. completely demolished the myth of the affluent society. It reveals that nearly half-a-mrillion families comprising up to one~and-a-quarter millicn children = have incomes below assistance level. Anyone who is familiar with the miserly national assistance "benefits" will realise that this means living in dire poverty. Living at this low level of income not only leads to a low standard of living, with the accompanying low nutritional standards, etc., it is extremely demoralising and tends to take away the dignity of the families affected. The role of the Labour Government has been to make this situation worse, as was recognised by The Economist last week when it described the incomes policy as being horribly unfair to the lower paid. The latest issue of the Journal of the Child Poverty Action Group underlines this situation with two blistering attacks on Government policy from Frank Cousins and Brian Jackson, director of A.C.E. (the Advisory Centre for Education). Frank Cousins links the struggle of the T.G.W.U. for the £15 a week minimum wage with the struggle against poverty. He accuses the Government of not understanding the need for an incomes policy which would equalise incomes upwards, ‘ The fight against poverty is one which mst be taken up seriously by all those on the left who want to break the present impasse in British politics. Who can deny that a campaign against poverty is an urgent social necessity? Yet on the other hand, such a campaign is impossible unless it is linked to bringing about a basic change in Government policy. British capitalism cannot afford to both bolster up the pound and fight against poverty. If British capitalism cannot bolster up the poun’ it will probably collapse. The Labour Government has tried to justify its incomes policy in terms of socialism by saying that it is designed to protect the lower paid against the selfishness of the highly-paid, highly organised unionists. Therefore, at one blow we campaign for an aim which seems reasonable to the ve#t majority of the people, which seems:to-be the logical conclusion of the Government's declared aims, and yet which cannot be achieved without a fundamental, anticapitalist policy being adopted. The scandal of poverty both confirms and re-vitalises our basic socialist commitment, it gives us a ready-made argument to make the ideas of socialism relevant to wide layers of the population. We should not miss this opportunity.