![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbInevitably, my conservative friends - and many conservatives who are not my friends and luckily will never be - have jumped on the welfare state with both feet as the cause of the riots. The link between "welfare dependency" and looting is held to be too obvious to be argued; and everyone speaks as though Britain had been ruined by the decision to use the power of the state to stop British citizens starving to death.
Were things any different before the Welfare State? I call as my first witness Mr. Charles John Huffam Dickens, journalist and novelist:
"Now, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, "put this case. Put the case that a woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her child concealed, and was obliged to communicate the fact to her legal adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with an eye to the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about that child. Put the case that, at the same time he held a trust to find a child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up."
"I follow you, sir."
"Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,—to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow."
"I follow you, sir."
"Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the heap who could be saved; whom the father believed dead, and dared make no stir about; as to whom, over the mother, the legal adviser had this power: "I know what you did, and how you did it. You came so and so, you did such and such things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it should be necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best to bring you off. If you are saved, your child is saved too; if you are lost, your child is still saved." Put the case that this was done, and that the woman was cleared." ("Great Expectations"; spoken by a criminal lawyer)
So, according to Mr.Dickens, there were "great numbers", whole strata of population, in the eighteen-fifties, whose children - and, by extension, youths and adults - were "being generated in great numbers for certain destruction... often... solemnly tried at a criminal bar... imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged.... so much spawn... to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow." And yet the social layer so eloquently described by Mr.Dickens had not been perverted by "welfare dependency". Britain still lived in the manly discipline of Darwinian competition, even though Darwin had not just yet spoken.
My second witness is Mr. Matthew Arnold, school inspector, critic and poet. Mr. Arnold was unimpressed by certain displays of violence in his time:
More and more, because of this our blind faith in machinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to the end for which machinery is valuable, this and that man, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are beginning to assert and put in practice an Englishman's right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy; and though a number of excellent people, and particularly my friends of the liberal or progressive party, as they [59] call themselves, are kind enough to reassure us by saying that these are trifles, that a few transient outbreaks of rowdyism signify nothing, that our system of liberty is one which itself cures all the evils which it works, that the educated and intelligent classes stand in overwhelming strength and majestic repose, ready, like our military force in riots, to act at a moment's notice,—yet one finds that one's liberal friends generally say this because they have such faith in themselves and their nostrums, when they shall return, as the public welfare requires, to place and power. But this faith of theirs one cannot exactly share, when one has so long had them and their nostrums at work, and sees that they have not prevented our coming to our present embarrassed condition; and one finds, also, that the outbreaks of rowdyism tend to become less and less of trifles, to become more frequent rather than less frequent; and that meanwhile our educated and intelligent classes remain in their majestic repose, and somehow or other, whatever happens, their overwhelming strength, like our military force in riots, never does act.
Find a difference between the rioters Mr.Arnold describes and the youths who have just now "put in practice an Englishman's right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes". And how very different are today's ruling classes from those Victorian ones, whose "faith in themselves and their nostrums" led them to inaction in the face of "rowdyism". And yet these rowdies had not yet been corrupted by the terrible evil of "welfare dependency".
I have more witnesses. But the point ought to be clear. The horrors of disenfranchised and violent underclasses have resided in England since long, long before the welfare state. The welfare state has been a partially successful attempt to prevent citizens of the United Kingdom from starving to death in the middle of public and private prosperity. In this it has succeeded - nobody goes hungry in Britain today, except perhaps for a few atrociously exploited illegal immigrants. It has not altogether succceeded in removing other bad features of English and British life, which pre-existed it and have gone back to form in spite and not because of its existence.
Were things any different before the Welfare State? I call as my first witness Mr. Charles John Huffam Dickens, journalist and novelist:
"Now, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, "put this case. Put the case that a woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her child concealed, and was obliged to communicate the fact to her legal adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with an eye to the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about that child. Put the case that, at the same time he held a trust to find a child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up."
"I follow you, sir."
"Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,—to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow."
"I follow you, sir."
"Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the heap who could be saved; whom the father believed dead, and dared make no stir about; as to whom, over the mother, the legal adviser had this power: "I know what you did, and how you did it. You came so and so, you did such and such things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it should be necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best to bring you off. If you are saved, your child is saved too; if you are lost, your child is still saved." Put the case that this was done, and that the woman was cleared." ("Great Expectations"; spoken by a criminal lawyer)
So, according to Mr.Dickens, there were "great numbers", whole strata of population, in the eighteen-fifties, whose children - and, by extension, youths and adults - were "being generated in great numbers for certain destruction... often... solemnly tried at a criminal bar... imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged.... so much spawn... to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow." And yet the social layer so eloquently described by Mr.Dickens had not been perverted by "welfare dependency". Britain still lived in the manly discipline of Darwinian competition, even though Darwin had not just yet spoken.
My second witness is Mr. Matthew Arnold, school inspector, critic and poet. Mr. Arnold was unimpressed by certain displays of violence in his time:
More and more, because of this our blind faith in machinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to the end for which machinery is valuable, this and that man, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are beginning to assert and put in practice an Englishman's right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy; and though a number of excellent people, and particularly my friends of the liberal or progressive party, as they [59] call themselves, are kind enough to reassure us by saying that these are trifles, that a few transient outbreaks of rowdyism signify nothing, that our system of liberty is one which itself cures all the evils which it works, that the educated and intelligent classes stand in overwhelming strength and majestic repose, ready, like our military force in riots, to act at a moment's notice,—yet one finds that one's liberal friends generally say this because they have such faith in themselves and their nostrums, when they shall return, as the public welfare requires, to place and power. But this faith of theirs one cannot exactly share, when one has so long had them and their nostrums at work, and sees that they have not prevented our coming to our present embarrassed condition; and one finds, also, that the outbreaks of rowdyism tend to become less and less of trifles, to become more frequent rather than less frequent; and that meanwhile our educated and intelligent classes remain in their majestic repose, and somehow or other, whatever happens, their overwhelming strength, like our military force in riots, never does act.
Find a difference between the rioters Mr.Arnold describes and the youths who have just now "put in practice an Englishman's right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes". And how very different are today's ruling classes from those Victorian ones, whose "faith in themselves and their nostrums" led them to inaction in the face of "rowdyism". And yet these rowdies had not yet been corrupted by the terrible evil of "welfare dependency".
I have more witnesses. But the point ought to be clear. The horrors of disenfranchised and violent underclasses have resided in England since long, long before the welfare state. The welfare state has been a partially successful attempt to prevent citizens of the United Kingdom from starving to death in the middle of public and private prosperity. In this it has succeeded - nobody goes hungry in Britain today, except perhaps for a few atrociously exploited illegal immigrants. It has not altogether succceeded in removing other bad features of English and British life, which pre-existed it and have gone back to form in spite and not because of its existence.
