Underclass: A History of the Excluded Since 1880

313 Pages·2013·1.497 MB·English

by  John Welshman

Underclass:
A History of the
Excluded Since 1880
ii
Underclass:
A History of the
Excluded Since 1880
Second Edition
John Welshman
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2006
© John Welshman, 2013
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to be identified as Author of this work.
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-7809-3588-1
PB: 978-1-7809-3570-6
ePDF: 978-1-4725-0498-2
ePub: 978-1-4725-1371-7
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ContEntS
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 Regulating the residuum 15
2 A Trojan Horse: The concept of the unemployable 35
3 In search of the social problem group 57
4 The invention of the problem family 79
5 Chasing the culture of poverty 99
6 Sir Keith Joseph and the cycle of deprivation 119
7 Uncovering the underclass – America 139
8 Uncovering the underclass – Britain 163
9 Social exclusion and the Labour Governments 185
10 Troubled families and the Coalition Government 209
Conclusion 229
Notes 235
Select Bibliography 279
Index 287
ACknowlEdgEmEntS
In the first edition of this book I said that the help of many people, over
a long period of time, had made the writing of the book possible. Perhaps
foremost among them was John Macnicol, whose work I first came across as
a postgraduate student. His article ‘In Pursuit of the Underclass’, published
as long ago as 1987 in the Journal of Social Policy, was in many ways the
starting point for this volume, and my debt to his ideas and arguments will
be obvious. I would also like to thank a number of researchers, archivists,
and postgraduate students and others who have suggested references and
helped in many different ways: they include Chris Bowlby, Ben Gordon,
Denise Partington, Adrian Sinfield, Tom Slater, Pat Starkey, John Stewart,
Mathew Thomson, and Charles Webster. Alan Deacon, in particular, was
a source of encouragement at an important stage. The staff at Lancaster
University, particularly those involved with Interlending and Document
Supply, have responded to many requests for interlibrary loans.
The Economic and Social Research Council and the Wellcome Trust both
financed periods of study which made some of the research possible, and
in 2002 Lancaster University, the University of Leeds, and the Social Policy
Association funded a workshop held to mark the 30th anniversary of the
‘cycle of deprivation’ speech. Articles exploring aspects of this story have
been published in Benefits, the British Journal of Social Work, Children
& Society, Contemporary British History, Economic History Review, the
Historical Journal, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the
Journal of Social Policy, the Political Quarterly, Social History of Medicine,
and Twentieth Century British History. Several pieces by me on ‘troubled
families’ were published by History & Policy, where Adrian C. Bingham and
Mel Porter were helpful, and on the Poverty and Social Exclusion website,
where Stewart Lansley gave me much guidance.1 I have also presented many
papers at universities and conferences. Papers presented at the Department
for Education, in November 2011, and at the Department for Communities
and Local Government, in October 2012, were particularly interesting for
me. I am grateful for the suggestions and comments that those attending
have made.
Since the first edition of this book, I have moved within Lancaster
University, from the then Institute for Health Research to the History
Department. I have learnt much from my undergraduate and postgraduate
students in the History Department, particularly those who have taken
ACknowlEdgEmEntS vii
my courses Hist 276 ‘In Search of the Underclass: Politics and Poverty in
Britain, 1880–1970’ and Hist 277 ‘In Search of the Underclass: Politics and
Poverty in Britain Since 1970’. I would also like to thank my editors at
Bloomsbury, Frances Arnold, Emily Drewe, and Rhodri Mogford who were
always enthusiastic about, and supportive of, the idea of a second edition
of the book, and the anonymous readers who kindly read and commented
upon the manuscript. But most of all, I would again like to thank my wife
and children, Rose, Thomas, and Juliet, who have lived with the underclass
for many years.
John Welshman, Lancaster
July 2013
viii
introduction
On 15 December 2011, at the Sandwell Christian Centre, in Oldbury, in the
West Midlands, Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech in which he
wanted to talk about ‘troubled families’. Whether they were called ‘families
with multiple disadvantages’ or ‘neighbours from hell’, he said, ‘we’ve
known for years that a relatively small number of families are the source
of a large proportion of the problems in society’.1 It was estimated that
the state had spent £9 billion on just 120,000 families the previous year,
or £75,000 per family. The Prime Minister had appointed Louise Casey as
Head of a Troubled Families Unit in the Department for Communities and
Local Government (DCLG). She was to lead the nationwide task of ‘getting
to grips’ with the number of troubled families, and working out where they
were. There were estimated, for instance, to be 4,500 of these families in
Birmingham, 2,500 in Manchester, and 1,115 in Sandwell. By February
2012, local authorities were to have identified who the troubled families
were, where they lived, and what services they used. The Government was
committing £448m to turn around the lives of these families by the end of
the Parliament, funding 40 per cent of the total cost. Thus Cameron ended
by proclaiming that ‘we must get out there, help them turn their lives around
and heal the scars of the broken society’.2
Immediate press reaction to the speech focused on the perceived inadequacy
of the offered funding. What is perhaps more striking, if unsurprising, is that
writers and commentators seemed unaware of the historical resonance of
the phrase ‘troubled family’. The example of troubled families indicates that
what is missing from this debate is a sense of its historical dimension. Very
little is known about the extent to which the agenda on troubled families
marks a radical departure from previous efforts by Government in this field,
or whether it is simply the latest in a series of similar labels. This book is
concerned with the history of the concept of the ‘underclass’, and aims to
fill that gap. It is arguable, of course, that the idea of the deserving and
undeserving poor is much older, and it can certainly be identified in the
early modern era. However, while we briefly review the earlier history of
these ideas in the next chapter, this book really covers the period from the
1880s to the present day. Its main focus is Britain, though two chapters,
on the culture of poverty and the underclass, also look in detail at the
experience of the United States (US). What is perhaps most important to get
across is that the book is not a history of poverty per se, but of a particular