Russell Haggar

Site Owner

Does the UK have an Underclass?

These teaching notes are divided into the following Sections

The Concept of the Underclass: Historical Continuities

Charles Murray and The Underclass

Structural Versions of Underclass Theory

Youth, The “Underclass and Social Exclusion [Robert MacDonald ed 1997]

The New Right and the Underclass

New Labour, Social Exclusion and the Underclass

The Conservatives and the Underclass 2007- 2015

Further Sociological Analysis

Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class [Own Jones]

Revolting Subjects

Social Class in the 21^st Century

The Precariat

Conclusion: The Underclass Today: Some Tentative Ideas.

The Concept of the Underclass: Historical Continuities

 

The theory of the underclass came to especial prominence in the 1980's and 1990's as a result of the publication of Charles Murray’s cultural version of the theory in which he argued that excessively liberal welfare expenditures had led to the development of an unemployed, welfare dependent, drug dependent, criminal underclass which could explicitly not be explained by the increases in economic inequality generated by the policies of the Reagan and Thatcher governments in the USA and the UK respectively.

However, it has been pointed out in great detail by analysts such as Kirk Mann, Lydia Morris and John Welshman that the basic ideas underlying cultural versions of the underclass theory have  a very long history. Thus it has  long been argued that  there could be a fundamental division between the deserving and the undeserving poor; that the underserving poor owe their situation  to their own biological and/or cultural  deficiencies; that it was likely that these deficiencies would be transmitted from parents to children and top the rest of the population; and that high levels of welfare spending  would  result in the expansion of the undeserving poor  at the expense of the rest of the population.

Such ideas can be found in the work of Malthus and Mayhew and can be seen to have influenced the development of early Poor Law policies. Furthermore Karl Marx, although he recognised that under capitalism the proletariat would inevitably be unjustifiably exploited, was just as critical of what he called the Lumpenproletariat as were Malthus and Mayhew of the underserving poor.

Eminent social workers of the early 20^th Century also espoused these views while Eugenicists argued against “over- generous” welfare benefits on the grounds that this would promote the growth of the deficient population and undermine national economic efficiency. Gradually more sympathetic attitudes to the poor did develop especially after the 2^nd World War and the expansion of the Welfare State did alleviate the problems of poverty to some extent. However negative attitudes toward the poor remained as evidenced for example in interpretations of Oscar Lewis’ work on the culture of poverty and in Sir Keith Joseph’s views on “the cycle of deprivation” and, if anything, these negative views intensified following the publication of Murray’s theories and their widespread dissemination in certain sections of the mass media.

Professor Ruth Lister has quoted Kirk Mann to the effect that the underclass “ may simply be a new term for an old intellectual activity … there has always been something unsavoury  about the underclass whether it has been called the residuum, the dangerous class, the relatively stagnant population , the Lumpenproletariat or whatever happens to be the fashion of the day, Seen in this light  the idea of an underclass is simply the most recent label for a class of failures.”  However, it may well be that this comment applies much more to cultural variants than to structural variants of the underclass theory of the does not apply to more structural versions of underclass theory.

 

Thus, theories which are related in some respects to the concept of the underclass have been subject to competing sociological analyses. In Youth, the “Underclass and Social Exclusion [1997] Robert MacDonald refers to a 1992 lecture by Professor John Westergaard in which he refers to four broad perspectives on the Underclass.

A “moral turpitude” thesis which accepts that’s that an underclass exists and that its members are characterised by “antisocial actions, welfare dependency, moral irresponsibility and deviant culture”.

An acceptance that an underclass exists but that its existence is explained mainly by social structural factors rather than the cultural deficiencies of underclass members. Insofar as underclass members do exhibit a deviant culture, this is primarily seen as a response to the social and economic deprivation, and it is this social and economic deprivation rather than the cultural characteristics of underclass members   which is the major reason for the development of the underclass.

A recognition that there is a possibility that an underclass exists but that there is a need for further research to determine whether an underclass does exist.

A belief that cultural versions of the underclass theory [ in which it is claimed that the social and economic deprivation of underclass members is caused, not by social structural factors but by the pathological cultures of underclass members themselves] are factually inaccurate  and designed to distract attention from the social structural causes of poverty and to legitimise reductions in social security  spending which will serve only to further increase economic inequality and poverty. Supporters of this view may well reject the use of the term “underclass” even in structural theories for fear that usage of the term in any form will promote the continued demonisation of the poor. {It is for this reason that William Julius Wilson came to reject the term “Underclass” in favour of “The Ghetto Poor” and that Michael Savage and his associates explicitly adopt the term “Precariat” rather than “Underclass “in their study Social Class in the 21^st Century [2015]

Students wishing to investigate in detail the history of underclass discourses may consult the work of Ruth Lister, Kirk Mann, Lydia Morris and John Welshman

In his study Underclass: A History of the Excluded Since 1880 , the historian  John Welshman documents the development of underclass related theories from the  late C19th to the early C21^st and you may Click here for  John Welshman’s excellent summary presentation of parts of his work.

Click here for Click here for Sociological Perspectives on Poverty by Tracy Shildrick and Jessica Rucell [2016] in which the authors refer to the work of John Welshman.

 

From The Culture of Poverty to Recent Theories of the Underclass

In the 1960's and 1970's debates on poverty revolved around Oscar Lewis’ concept of the culture of Poverty, Keith Joseph’s use of the concept of the cycle of the cycle of deprivation, Brian Abel Smith and Peter Townsend’s rediscovery of poverty in The Poor and The Poorest  and Peter Townsend’s magisterial Study Poverty in the UK. Also significant were the use of the underclass concept by Anthony Giddens and by John Rex and Sheila Tomlinson.

Oscar Lewis argued on the basis of his studies of poverty in Mexico and Puerto Rico  that some but not all of the poor in these countries exhibited a culture of poverty which was likely to result in the intergenerational transmission of poverty  although he did also argue that , at least to some extent , this culture of poverty  could actually be seen as  a response to the structural inequalities experienced by the poor. It is important to note also that Oscar Lewis was a supporter of the compensatory policies deployed by the Kennedy and Johnson administration’s War on Poverty programmes. Therefore, critics from the Left argued that Lewis’ ideas contributed to USA government policies which neglected the role of structural inequalities as a cause of poverty. Meanwhile, however, his ideas were interpreted by American conservatives to support arguments for the reduction in welfare benefits on the grounds that they would serve only to increase the welfare dependency of the allegedly culturally pathological poor.

Then in the 1970's similar arguments were raised in the UK by Keith Joseph who argued that high levels of welfare spending helped to reinforce a cycle of deprivation which lead to the intergenerational transmission of poverty  although  social scientists critical  of this concept argued that many children born into poverty would escape from it and that where an intergenerational transmission of disadvantage did occur this was due to  the  long term continuation of structural inequalities rather than to the personal characteristics of the poor.  Consequently, these social scientists preferred the term Cycle of Disadvantage to Cycle of Deprivation.

Brian Abel= Smith and Peter Townsend had argued in the Poor and the Poorest [1965] that relative poverty had actually increased and in Poverty in the UK [1979] Peter Townsend developed a more structural analysis of the cause of poverty while also criticising the theories of Oscar Lewis and Keith Joseph.  Click here for further information on the Culture of Poverty and the Cycle of Deprivation.

You may click here and then use the further links provided to access the entire text of Poverty in the UK [1216 pages]. Although published 45 years ago this book still provides excellent information on the definition, measurement and causes of poverty.

Charles Murray’s theory of the underclass should be seen as a contribution to the growing influence of New Right thinking from the 1970's onwards. Murray in effect agreed with much of Oscar Lewis’ description of the culture of poverty but he rejected the possibility that the culture of poverty  could be an adaptive response to the structural inequalities experienced by the poor and he rejected also the notion that the poor might be helped via increased welfare spending on compensatory programmes  and claimed instead that overgenerous welfare payments were a major cause of welfare dependency leading to the growth of the underclass. Needless to say, he also rejected radical structural analyses [ such as those of Peter Townsend] of the causes of poverty.

Even among sociologists who are prepared to use the term, there are disputes as to the precise characteristics of the underclass, the causes of its existence and as to the appropriate policy responses by government. Other social scientists reject the concept of the underclass for a variety of reasons.

Charles Murray and the Theory of the Underclass

As shown above, several theories containing elements of recent theories of the Underclass have been propounded in the last  few hundred years . More recently the term "underclass" was used in the 1970's by Anthony Giddens who claimed that a mainly Black and Hispanic underclass existed in the U.S.A. and by John Rex and Sally Tomlinson who suggested that a mainly Asian and West Indian underclass existed in parts of Birmingham and, by implication, in other parts of the U.K .However, these writers did not explain the existence of the underclass in terms of the cultural characteristics of the poor, but in terms of wider social structures and processes which resulted in racial discrimination and the existence of dual labour markets in which ethnic minority members were unable to compete effectively for well-paid, secure jobs.

Many sociologists have some sympathy with such ideas but it is important to note that the concept of the dual labour market has attracted some criticism because many jobs contain a mixture of the elements of the primary and the secondary labour markets.

By contrast, Charles Murray’s version of the Underclass theory can be seen as one importance element in the New Right which became increasingly influential in the USA, the Uk and other advanced capitalist societies from the 1970's onwards. New Right theorists believe that increasing economic inequality is a pre-requisite for increased economic prosperity but deny that this increased economic inequality is an indication of increased social-class inequality. This is because (similarly to functionalist sociologists) New Right theorists perceive capitalist societies not in terms of inevitable conflicting social classes but in terms of an unequal but nevertheless harmonious social order in which all citizens (rich or poor) should be seen not as members of social classes but as individuals who can contribute to the stability of society as a whole and attain gradually improving living standards.

Furthermore, although New Right theorists defended increases in economic inequality as necessary to promote economic growth, they also claimed to be supporters of equality of opportunity on the grounds that meritocracy also was a prerequisite for economic efficiency. Where social conflicts (such as urban riots or major strikes) do arise, they must be contained via tougher approaches to law and order and more restrictive industrial relations legislation, but they are not evidence of a fundamental class conflict as suggested especially in Marxist analysis.

Despite the New Right general denial of the usefulness of class analysis, they nevertheless did emphasise that social harmony could well be threatened by the existence of a work-shy, welfare-dependent and often criminal underclass as outlined by New Right theorists such as Charles Murray, who argued also that reductions in welfare benefits were necessary to curb the growth of this dangerous class.

Charles Murray argued in Losing Out [1984] that a mainly Black and Hispanic Underclass  of perhaps 5% of the population had developed in the USA  and then went on to claim in The Emerging British Underclass [1990], in Underclass: The Crisis Deepens [1994] and in The British Underclass 10 years later [2001]  that similar developments were occurring in the UK although the UK underclass was mainly white. . Not all members of the poor are members of the underclass for some poor people are well organised and positive. It is the lazy, disorganised, fatalistic, work shy, criminal poor who constitute the underclass, and we can see a connection here to the well- known historical distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor outlined at the beginning of this essay.

Single parents include those who have never married, those who are separated or divorced and those who are widowed. Also, most single parents are women. Charles Murray concentrates his attention on young, never married mothers

According to Murray, development of an underclass could be seen in interconnected rising rates of illegitimacy and single motherhood, increased unemployment and increased rates of property crime and violent crime. Murray claimed that generous but misguided social welfare policies were encouraging young mainly working-class unmarried women to bear children secure in the belief that, in the absence of financial support from fathers, they would instead be able to access support in the form of affordable housing and state financial benefits. Furthermore, the availability of state financial support would encourage mainly working class males to engage in extra-marital sexual relationships while feeling less responsibility to provide financial support for any resultant children which might well mean that sons would be socialised without the support of securely employed male role models which would increase the likelihood that they would underachieve at school and drift toward unemployment, welfare dependency and criminality.

Meanwhile as rates of single parenthood increased the stigma against it would decline and daughters of unmarried mothers might be less likely to recognise the positive benefits of marriage and more likely to opt for single parenthood themselves especially because an increasing proportion of working-class men would be unqualified, shiftless, unemployed, welfare dependent and prone to criminality and therefore unlikely to qualify as potential marriage partners.

Thus, in Murray’s schema, generous welfare benefits would lead to the growth of single parenthood which would result in the inadequate socialisation of sons and daughters. This would result in increased male unemployment and welfare dependency which would help to increase the rate of single parenthood which would fuel the intergenerational transmission and growth of the underclass. Very importantly according to Murray, members of the underclass are socialised into a culture of dependency which makes escape from the underclass difficult once one has been born into it.

Even more controversially, in The Bell Curve, Charles Murray combined with Richard Herrnstein to claim that the existence of a mainly Black underclass in the USA could be explained to a considerable extent in terms of racial differences in inherited IQ. This was a view which, unsurprisingly attracted considerable criticism Click  here and then scroll down to Part Two for criticism of IQ theories as explanations of ethnic differences in educational achievement.

For statements by Charles Murray and further discussion of his theory

Click here Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate [1996]

Click here for Underclass+10 [1990]

Click here for The British Underclass !0 years later [2001]

Click here for discussion on The Underclass

Click here for short interview with Charles Murray

Criticism of Charles Murray’s Version of Underclass Theory.

Murray claims that the availability of increasingly generous welfare benefits have encouraged mainly young working-class women to opt for single parenthood and encouraged mainly working-class young men to father children outside of marriage secure in the knowledge that they can be absolved from the responsibility of financial support for their children because single mothers will secure adequate financial support from the welfare state.

However, in relation to this point it is notable that only just over half of lone mothers are single mothers; that relatively few single mothers are teenagers and that most single mothers will enter into long term partnerships within a few years of becoming mothers. Also, although single mothers may receive some preferential treatment in relation to council house allocation, council house availability is limited, and welfare benefits are far from generous.

It is also true that although some single fathers may take their financial responsibilities seriously and take a positive interest  in their children’s development even if they are not living with mother and child , the setting up of the child support agency indicated that many fathers were not providing financial support and the inefficiency of the Child Support Agency[ set up in 1993 and recently rebranded as the Child Maintenance Service ] has resulted insignificant financial hardships for lone mothers.

Click here for a recent [2022] Guardian article on the Child Maintenance Service by Polly Toynbee

Also, lone parents [both men and women] are less likely than coupled parents to be in employment and insofar as single mothers may, on average, be relatively unqualified., they are less to be in well paid employment. Also, their employment prospects may be limited by the difficulties involved in organising affordable childcare especially for pre-school children. In summary, welfare benefits for lone and single parents [mainly women are low; maintenance payments from absent fathers may be unreliable; employment opportunities and wage levels for lone parents are worse than for couple parents and it should therefore come as no surprise that lone parents and their children are more likely to experience poverty than are couple parents and their children.

Click here for An Article from the IFS indicating that rates of  both Absolute and Relative Child poverty are about twice as high in Lone Parent Families as in Two Parent Families. Click here for A Guardian Summary of this article

It is abundantly clear, therefore, that, if anything young single women are likely to be dissuaded from single motherhood if they are aware of the likely future difficulties which they may face as single mothers. However young people do seek companionship and love and it may be that some young women, especially those facing the likelihood of insecure, poorly paid, unfulfilling employment, may feel that motherhood may give their lives greater meaning but  this does not mean that they are aiming for a life on welfare benefits.

Murray ‘s analysis of the socialisation process as it operates in single parent families seems to be limited in several respects. He claims that in the absence of a resident securely employed father figure male children will be socialised to believe that a life dependent upon welfare benefits is a viable alternative to gainful employment while female children will be socialised to believe that single motherhood is a viable alternative to marriage. However, there are also alternative possibilities. Many non-resident single fathers take a very positive interest in their children’s development; positive male role models are available outside of the family; most single parents either marry or form cohabiting relationships a few years after becoming single parents; daughters of single mothers may admire their mothers’ independence and resilience in the face of adversity and also be dissuaded from single parenthood due to their own experiences of the financial hardships that it is likely to involve; as a result of their own hardships sons may be more likely to recognise their own future responsibilities as parents due to the difficulties which they have faced as children.

The children of single parents are more likely than the children of couples to underachieve in school. This can be explained to a considerable extent by the fact that single parents and the children are more likely to experience poverty, but it is also the case that the children of poor single parents are more likely to underachieve than the children of poor couples. However, this may occur primarily as a result of specific additional problems which poor single parents face rather than as a result of the specific deficiencies of single parents. Critics of Murray’s theory deny that the children of single parents are disadvantaged at school because of the specific cultural pathologies of single parents.

For Further Information on Single Parenthood

Click here for Peter Lilley [Conservative Minister 1992]

Click here for Conversation article [2015]

Click here for Conversation article [2019]

Click here for Guardian article [2022]

Click here for articles from The Conversation on Single Parents

Murray believes that members of the underclass are especially likely to opt for welfare dependency rather than to seek secure employment and that anti-work attitudes are often transmitted from generation to generation within the same families. However, there is good evidence that there are few differences in attitudes as between the long term unemployed, the short term unemployed and the regularly employed and that the vast majority of people in each category are likely to prefer steady employment to welfare dependency especially because welfare benefits for the unemployed are far from generous.

For example, Murray’s conclusions were called in to question by Duncan Gallie in his study based upon findings from the ESRC Social Change and Economic Life Initiative of 1994 based upon interviews in 1986 Using data from 6 areas (Swindon, Aberdeen, Northampton, Coventry, Rochdale, Kirkaldy), Gallie finds no evidence to support Murray’s view of different attitudes to work as between the employed and the unemployed... He also finds Thus each category had had an average of 6 jobs during their working career. The average length of job had been 76 months for the employed, 74 months for the unemployed and 71 months for the long term unemployed thus suggesting that the long term unemployed certainly were not unemployable. There was also no evidence that the long term unemployed had become apathetic and resigned to being without work. They felt economically deprived and hoped to find work to rectify this situation.

You may click here to download  an article written by Duncan Gallie in 1994 entitled “Are the Unemployed an Underclass?” Some Evidence from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative”. However, it has been argued, for example by Professor Ken Roberts [see below for further information] that for a variety of reasons social survey research cannot be used to determine the existence or otherwise of an underclass because many unemployed people are not on the electoral register and are also particularly unlikely to respond to social survey questionnaires.

Also the transmission of poverty from generation to generation is far from inevitable and although Ian Duncan Smith and others would claim in the early 21^st Century that international transmission of unemployment was common in some families, research quoted below by has shown that this is in fact very rare and also that the long term unemployed are mostly very keen to find jobs, if they are available.

Click here for summary and here for full report: Are cultures of worklessness passed down the generations by Tracy Shildrick, Robert McDonald and Andy Furlong with Johann Roden and Robert Crow [2012]

Click here for Disconnected Youth by R MacDonald 2007 in which the author provides a critical assessment of the application of the underclass concept to the young unemployed and intermittently employed

Finally and very importantly It has been suggested that  the underclass concept was essentially used to demonise the poor in an attempt distract attention from the structural inequalities which are inevitable under capitalism and  to justify the reductions in the social security benefits which Conservative Governments wished to introduce but which themselves had the effects of increasing the very poverty which Conservative Governments claimed that they wished to reduce. However, Professor Roberts has argued that just because a theory is being used for ideological purposes this does not preclude the possibility that the theory has some validity.

Structural Theories of Poverty and The Underclass

We turn finally to what may be described as more structural theories of poverty. The immediate causes of poverty have already been listed as low wages, unemployment, ill health, old age, living in a single parent family and living in a large family. In structural theories of poverty:

1. Low wages are seen as very likely under capitalism because they are necessary in some industries to maintain profits.
2. Periodic unemployment is likely under capitalism. For example, in the case of the UK., unemployment was very high in the 1920's and 1930's and, again in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. Very little unemployment arises because people are unwilling to work. It is rather because of the way in which capitalist economies operate, sufficient jobs are, quite simply, not available.
3. All of the groups subject to poverty are dependent upon Welfare State benefits of one kind or another but although the Welfare State certainly does help people n need, its resources are inadequate, and its organisation is poor. Consequently, millions of people are living in relative poverty despite the existence of the Welfare State.
4. We may also, very importantly, distinguish between different variants of structural theories of poverty and, in doing so. link the analysis of poverty with the discussion of class, gender, “race”, age and power inequalities in UK. society. Thus, in social democratic theories of poverty, it is implied that very significant elements of democratic pluralism exist in the UK. political system such that it should be possible to reduce poverty by reducing unemployment, introducing a more progressive system of taxation, a more generous system of Welfare benefits and a minimum wage. The equalisation of educational opportunity, also, can make a significant contribution to the reduction of poverty. However, in Marxist theories of poverty, poverty is inevitable under capitalism and mild social democratic reforms will be insufficient to remove poverty. What is necessary is the abolition of the capitalist system as a whole, no less. Finally, Feminist theories emphasise the extent to which it is women rather than men who are affected by poverty and point to the need for the ending of women’s exploitation, while in other theories, ethnic disadvantage is seen as a key factor in poverty, leading to proposals for greater ethnic equality.
5. Finally, whereas Charles Murray and other New Right theorists have argued that excessive welfare spending has contributed to the development of an underclass, social democratic theorists have argued that the expansion of the Welfare State has been essential to reduce poverty and social disadvantage. Although in the era of New Labour and subsequently they have argued for what they consider to be more active welfare policies designed to give “a hand up rather than a handout”. However, Marxists have argued that poverty is inevitable under capitalism and that social democratic welfare policies contribute to the reproduction and legitimation of capitalism rather than to the ending of social inequalities.

Click here for tutor2U topic videos on Work, Poverty and Welfare for information on competing explanations of poverty. {Functionalism, Feminism, Marxism, New Right and Social Democratic perspectives on Poverty.}

Click here for a useful item on Theories of Poverty from Blacks Academy

As examples of more structural approaches to the Theory of the Underclass we may consider the work of Ralf Dahrendorf and Frank Field although it has been suggested that both authors combine structural and cultural factors in their explanations for the existence of the underclass.

Ralf Dahrendorf, originally in an article published in 1987 has also pointed to the existence of an underclass in the USA. comprising perhaps 5% of the population and predicts similar trends in the UK although he does state that "one may wonder whether the word "class" is as yet appropriate in the UK" with implication that this group may lack the stability of a class.  Also on his later work he says, "It is precisely not a class...it is simply a group of people who are not needed by society and who represent a challenge to its dominant values."

In Dahrendorf’s view, the so-called underclass contains several different, distinct groups such as the young unemployed, the old and many immigrants which have in common their lack of citizenship rights: i.e. rights to employment, education, health care and housing. Thus, Dahrendorf claims that what the members of the underclass have in common is that they do not have full citizenship rights and that as a result they may reject the norms of a society which certainly seems to have rejected them.

His description of the personal characteristics of the underclass is similar to Murray`s . Thus, according to Dahrendorf, the underclass does tend to have its own culture in that there is "a syndrome of deprivation which often leads to a ghetto existence" and "once people have got into it they find it difficult to break out" and "before members of the underclass will participate fully in education and training courses, it will be necessary to break through a barrier of indolence"

Yet the underclass has also been created by national and international factors causing mass unemployment and reduced wages for unskilled workers According to Dahrendorf, this unemployment has been caused by technological developments reducing the demand for workers in manufacturing industry and the failure of service industries to create sufficient extra jobs to replace those lost in manufacturing. He argues also that organisations such as schools, welfare agencies employers and trades unions have failed to address the needs of the underclass, and that significant institutional change will be necessary if the growth of the underclass is to be impeded.

In his analysis of the causes of the rise of the underclass, Dahrendorf has emphasised the importance of social structural factors yet some of his language draws him rather closer to the views of Charles Murray. For example….” we are beginning to see a kind of underclass culture. It includes a lifestyle of laid-back sloppiness, association in changing groups of gangs, congregation around discos and the like, hostility to middle class society, peculiar habits of dress, of hairstyle, often drugs or at least alcohol- a style in other words which has little in common with the values of the work society around. “

Students might like to describe Dahrendorf’s perspective on youth culture with their teachers, but it appears to me, at least, that few of the above characteristics necessarily suggest membership of an underclass. Apart from gang membership and drugs, these characteristics describe my youth pretty well.!

Anyway, more importantly, in  his study Underclass: a history of the excluded since 1880      [2013] John Welshman has described Dahrendorf’s approach as “ a curious mixture of conservatism and liberalism”  while Robert Mac Donald [Youth, the Underclass and Social Exclusion  1997] states that for Dahrendorf, “His position seems to be that in the first instance, structural, economic factors are the cause, but subsequently there have developed styles of cultural behaviour which  serve to sustain its existence “. Also, “Although Dahrendorf commences with a structural underclass theory, this soon slips into a cultural account not wholly different from that of Murray.”

 

Frank Field and The Underclass.

In his book “Losing Out”[: The Emergence of Britain’s Underclass] referred to T.H. Marshall’s analysis of citizenship as  consisting in political, economic and social citizenship  and argued that the combination f high levels of unemployment, widening class differentials  and the fact that the poor were unable to share in rising affluence were all contributing to the development of an underclass separated off from the lower sections of the working class.

This underclass consisted in the long-term unemployed, single parent families and elderly pensioners which has been created as a result of mass unemployment, increased economic inequality and the failure of welfare benefits to keep pace with the wage increases received by those in steady, secure jobs. Field states that attitudes to the poor have hardened such that it has become increasingly unlikely that the rich and comfortably off would be prepared to pay higher taxes in order to alleviate the problems of the poor.

In this view, the existence of the underclass is explained largely by structural factors which is a far cry from Murray`s version of the underclass theory.  However, Field claimed also that members of the underclass might sometimes exhibit negative characteristics similar to those emphasised by Murray but Field saw these characteristics as primarily responses to the structural disadvantages which members of the underclass faced. Thus, he aimed to combine structural and cultural factors as causes of the formation of the underclass.

In Politics, Poverty and Belief: A Political Memoir [2023] Frank Field again emphasises that poverty arises as a result of structurally caused long term unemployment and low wages but also that some young women may sometimes opt for single motherhood in order to secure access to council housing and that long term unemployed people may sometimes need to be persuaded to take up training scheme places. Thus, once again, poverty derives from a combination of structural and cultural factors.

Frank Field has been described as a political maverick. He spent his entire adult life involved in the development of social security policies and students might usefully read his political memoir.

Click here Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate [1996] See Pages 58- 60 for Frank Field’s contribution

 

Interim Summary

In summary we may distinguish between cultural  and structural variants of underclass theory and note that critics of cultural variants of underclass theory have argued that it is structural inequalities which are the are the prime cause of the development of an underclass and that there are few differences in cultural attitudes to work, unemployment and social security benefits as between alleged underclass members and other members of society. Also, if some individuals are more prone to work shyness, welfare dependency and criminality, these attitudes should be seen primarily as an unfortunate but understandable response to the facts of their structural social disadvantage rather than as the prime reason for their underclass membership. However, such cultural attitudes may reduce the likelihood of an escape from poverty.

 

Does An Underclass Exist?

There are several versions of the underclass theory and, in general, sociologists might have more sympathy with structural than with cultural versions of the theory. However, many sociologists would deny that an underclass exists in either the USA or the UK for the  following reasons..

It is difficult to define the scope of the underclass. It has variously been suggested that the long-term unemployed, the unemployed, the low waged, single parent families, poor families, old age pensioners, the criminal unemployed, might all be included in the underclass..  It is claimed also that all these social groups are at risk of poverty their actual specific circumstances differ very significantly and that their inclusion in one overarching underclass distracts attention from the specific problems which they may face. which means that it is inappropriate to consider them as part of one underclass.

It is argued that there is no significant discontinuity or break between the assumed underclass and the rest of the working class. There are no significant differences in attitudes and values and unemployed people may be lucky enough to find work and employed people may be made redundant such that there is continuous movement in the lower sections of the class structure.

Rightly or wrongly, some sociologists reject the usage of the term out of a concern that if they do use it, it will increase the credibility of cultural versions of the underclass theory [such as those of t Charles Murray] with which they profoundly disagree. However it could also be argued that if sociologists refuse to refer critically to the underclass theory , this will serve only to strengthen its acceptability to the general public and that what is really necessary is an analysis of the underclass theory which assesses  whether an underclass can truly be said to exist and the relative importance of structural  and cultural causes of poverty and social exclusion in general whether or not these lead to the formation of an actual underclass. This might lead to a conclusion that poverty and social exclusion certainly exist, that their causes are primarily but not entirely structural rather than cultural but that the disparate individuals experiencing poverty and social exclusion do not cohere into a separate underclass below and distinct from the working class.,

Youth, the “Underclass” and Social Exclusion [Robert MacDonald Ed. 1997]

Youth, the “Underclass” and Social Exclusion [Robert MacDonald Ed. 1997] is a collection of articles in which various authors investigate whether some unemployed young people are part of an underclass. In broad summary, the authors reject almost entirely Charles Murray’s cultural version of the underclass theory and although they do tend to accept structural explanations for the social exclusion which young unemployed people may well face, they also reject the notion that these young people form part of an underclass which is distinct from the more disadvantaged section of the working class. Thus, for example N. Buck sees the long term unemployed as “not so much stable members of the underclass as unstable members of the working class.”

However, two authors diverge from this general conclusion to some extent. Professor Ken Roberts disputes the conclusions of researchers such as Duncan Gallie that the long term unemployed exhibit the same positive attitudes to employment as the regularly employed because he believes that they survey data used to generate these conclusions do not take account of  the fact that long term unemployed people are less likely to be on electoral registers from which the survey samples are drawn and also less likely to respond to survey questionnaires.

 

According to Roberts, although the underclass includes a wide variety of groups with different lifestyles it may still be a useful concept. Such groups do have characteristics in common: their members are more deprived than the working class; their deprivation persists over long periods; their lifestyles and social networks are distinct from those in employment. Roberts is not sure whether an underclass exists at present, but it may be being formed and it will become well established in the future, he claims

 Steve Crain argues that some unemployed young people are forced to move between ineffective youth training schemes, temporary insecure poorly paid employment and unemployment with low unemployment benefits and that faced with this situation some youngsters do engage in benefit fraud, participate in the black economy and sometimes in criminal activity such as drug dealing. And that some young women may opt for single motherhood. Such activities could be seen as providing evidence supportive of Murray’s theory, but Steve Craine argues that such activities represent a response to the poor training facilities, lack of available job activities and inadequate benefits   which these youngsters face.

In the final chapter , Robert MacDonald reiterates the main  conclusions of the collection and presents some results from his own of detailed qualitative research of more than 300 adults and young people In Teesside  who had recent experience of long term unemployment and informal activity , MacDonald is therefore investigating individuals living in an economically disadvantaged area who according to Murray would be especially likely to adopt a culture of work shy welfare dependency.

However, MacDonald concludes that these people had become unemployed not voluntarily but because of the combination of economic recession and deindustrialisation which had affected areas like Teesside particularly adversely Also, the people had responded not with acquiescence in a culture of work shy welfare dependence but with  participation in ineffective training schemes, seeking temporary employment in low paid jobs, attempts at self-employment,  volunteering and migration both nationally and abroad in search of work. They had also sometimes done “fiddly work “[i.e. work in the black economy] but this was often seen as necessary to alleviate poverty given the low levels of social security benefits and to maintain self -respect and work disciplines. Some had also engaged in what MacDonald calls “quasi-criminal activity “such as drug dealing,

Macdonald concludes that these people “wanted work”. “They remained attached to remarkably durable mainstream attitudes that valued work as a key source of self-respect, as the principal definer of personal identity, as a social [and in many cases moral duty], as a foundation upon which to build sustainable family lives and respectable futures.”

This collection of articles illustrates the generally negative evaluation among sociologists of Charles Murray’s theory of the underclass as well as scepticism as to the actual existence of an underclass. However, as was indicated notions of the deserving and the undeserving poor have a very long history and despite the sociological critique, Charles Murray’s ideas would retain widespread support into the 21^st Century. .

Theories of the Underclass, Social Exclusion, Politics and Social Policy.

There have clearly been significant sociological criticisms of theories of the underclass, but these theories have nevertheless influenced the direction of social policies adopted by successive UK Governments

The Conservative Governments 1979- 1997

The Conservative Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major were influenced by New Right theorists who claim [similarly to Functionalist sociologists ] that economic inequality is inevitable because it derives from natural differences in talents and abilities and desirable because it increases incentives to study, work , save and invest and that this economic inequality will therefore promote economic growth and improving living standards for all, including the poorest members of societies. Furthermore, these income inequalities are seen as fair because New Right theorists believe that capitalists societies are relatively meritocratic which means that all citizens have a relatively equal chance to compete for highly paid occupations.

However, the New Right theorists also emphasised that social harmony could well be threatened by the existence of a work-shy, welfare-dependent and often criminal underclass as outlined by New Right theorists such as Charles Murray, who argued also that reductions in welfare benefits were necessary to curb the growth of this dangerous class.

Where social conflicts (such as urban riots or major strikes) do arise, they must be contained via tougher approaches to law and order and more restrictive industrial relations legislation, but they are not evidence of a fundamental class conflict as suggested especially in Marxist analysis.

The Labour Governments 1997-2010

 

The Labour Party has traditionally drawn its electoral support disproportionately from working class voters but even at the zenith of class voting in the early 1950's, approximately 30% of working-class voters voted Conservative and Labour leaders recognised even then that in order to win General Elections, they needed also to attract a significant percentage of middle-class voters.

Then as the size of the industrial working class declined and the correlation between social class and voting behaviour weakened further, it became increasingly likely that the Labour Party  would adopt an electoral strategy which deemphasised the explicit importance of social class issues ad in particular  the existence of social class conflict under capitalism in an attempt  to establish Labour  as a national party with cross-class appeal.

NB Some of this can also be added to Is the UK becoming a classless Society?t the link is to a doc in winter updates.

Although Tony Blair and his supporters would often claim that New Labour represented the interests of “the many not the few”, both he and subsequent labour leaders Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband would rarely mention the words "social class" or "working class". Since the same was even more likely to be true of Liberal Democrat and Conservative leaders, it could be argued that from the 1990's onwards, class politics had more or less been expunged from modern political discourse, except insofar as mainly Conservatives continued to analyse poverty in terms of the existence of what they considered to be a fatalistic, work-shy welfare-dependent underclass.

Meanwhile, New Labour certainly endorsed the concept of relative poverty and believed that it would be possible to reduce relative poverty without significantly undermining what they considered to be the incentive effects of significantly increased equality. Individuals and families are said to be living in conditions of relative poverty if they receive incomes less than 60% of the median income received for equivalent households.

When Labour politicians addressed questions of poverty, they did so primarily in terms of "Social Exclusion", which many regarded as an ambiguous term which in some respects amounted to a progressive distancing from more neoliberal variants of the underclass theory but in other respects harked back to them. It would nevertheless be fair to say that Labour politicians were less likely than Conservative politicians to refer to Murray-style variants of the underclass theory

The concept of Social Exclusion emphasises that the relative poverty defined solely in terms of lack of income may well be related to a range of other social disadvantages which result in lack of opportunity to participate fully and actively in social life.

Labour set up the Social Exclusion Unit in 1997 to investigate the causes of Social Exclusion. The SEU defined Social Exclusion as " a shorthand label for what can happen when individuals or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low income, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown." Subsequently from 1999 onwards the New Policy Institute began to publish an annual audit of the extent of Poverty and Social Exclusion entitled "Monitoring Poverty and Social Inclusion which actually combined about 50 possible indicators of Social Exclusion.

Meanwhile the SEU produced about 50 reports on various aspects of Social Exclusion including Truancy and School Exclusion, Rough Sleeping, Teenage Pregnancy 16-18 year-old NEETS, Young Runaways and Looked After Children. The principle organisational  purpose of the SEU was to provide for the development and implementation of "joined up" government policy responses  which were to be more effective because they integrated the activities of different government departments involved in the management of particular social policy issues but , unfortunately , it now seems to be generally agreed that expectations as to the effectiveness of the SEU were over-optimistic .It was renamed the  Social Exclusion Task Force when it was merged into the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit in 2006 and after  some further reorganisation under Labour , disbanded under the Coalition Government in 2010 . Click here and here or some additional information.

In any case the concept of Social Exclusion has attracted considerable criticisms especially from theorists who are in general critical of the overall New Labour project. Many regarded Social Exclusion”, as an ambiguous term which in some respects amounted to a progressive distancing from more neoliberal variants of the underclass theory but in other respects harked back to them. It would nevertheless be fair to say that Labour politicians were less likely than Conservative politicians to refer to Murray-style variants of the underclass theory.

However, It was suggested by Ruth Levitas that the Labour Governments approach to social exclusion reflects three possible discourses: a RED redistributive discourse, a MUD moral underclass discourse which focuses on the alleged cultural deficiencies of the poor and a SID social integration discourse which focuses on the importance of work out of poverty.

Critics of the policy argued that although Labour Governments did indeed reduce relative poverty the overall extent of income inequality actually increased under Labour Governments 1997-2010 although Labour spokespersons argued that this occurred mainly as a result of increased original income inequality  which Labour’s policies, although egalitarian , were insufficient to offset :i.e. that Labour’s taxation and benefits policies did redistribute incomes towards the poor but not by enough to offset the rise in original income inequality .

The critics noted also that increasingly Labour emphasised that there was a small percentage of people [perhaps  2.5% of the population] who were particularly socially and economically disadvantaged and whom Labour’s current economic and social policies were not reaching. These were “the excluded of the excluded: the deeply excluded” and Labour claimed that among these people, social and economic disadvantage might well be transmitted from generation to generation, a conclusion that was widely disputed. Labour argued that further specific policies were necessary to help these individuals and their families and therefore extended ASBOS to promote social order and introduced family intervention policies and family nursing projects to improve the efficiency of these “problem families”.

Labour claimed that these policies were often successful to some extent, but critics argued that they focused more on the alleged cultural and psychological defects of individuals and families than upon the social structural causes of the disadvantages which they faced. For critics from the Left, this suggested that under the umbrella of social exclusion the Labour Government were reverting to a Moral Underclass discourse and also that in their emphasis on employment as a way out of poverty, Labour were invoking the Social Integration discourse which downplayed the existence of substantial in- work poverty , the large inequalities of pay between different occupations and between rich property owners and the rest and the social value of unpaid domestic labour.

Essentially, the critics argued, the traditional Labour critique of social and economic inequality was replaced by a belief that existing patterns of inequality were acceptable so long as the allegedly culturally pathological minority could find some [almost certainly low paid] employment within an unequal, unjust society. In this view, therefore, there were similarities between some aspects of Labour’s policies on Social Exclusion and Charles Murray’s version of the Underclass theory despite the widespread criticisms of this

Nevertheless, one would have to study all elements of Labour’s social policies in great detail before forming an overall judgement and some short evaluations provided below suggest that even if their policies were less redistributive than some might have hoped they did at least have some merit.,

Click here for an IFS assessment of Labour’s Record on Poverty [2013]

Click here For an assessment of Labour’s record

Click here for Anthony Giddens on the rise and fall of New Labour

Click here for my teaching notes on Some Aspects of Social Policy Under New Labour   and click here from an overall assessment of Labour economic and social policies [2009]E

 

The Conservatives and the Underclass 2005-2015

Tony Blair’s “New Labour Party” won General Elections in 1997, 2001 and 2005 but in the 2010 General Election the Conservatives were returned to government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Despite David Cameron’s apparent commitment to a more moderate variant of Conservative ideology, the influence of Charles Murray’s ideas continued notably because of the appointment of Iain Duncan Smith as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government.

Iain Duncan Smith had previously been Chairman of the CSJ and the overall analysis in the CSJ reports did appear to reflect an essentially New Right approach to the causes of and remedies for poverty. Thus, CSJ Reports  reiterated theories that an Underclass was indeed developing in the UK and that this was related to problems of family breakdown, drug and alcohol abuse, the growth of debt, a failing education system, worklessness and dependency and that possible remedies included strengthening marriage, action to reduce drug and alcohol abuse, improvements to the education system , reform of the benefits system to make work pay and  increase the obligations on the unemployed to seek work and increased reliance upon the voluntary sector to improve community cohesion. Once again , as in the theories of Charles Murray, the economic and social difficulties faced by the poor  were explained in terms of the culturally pathological trait of the poor themselves rather than in terms of the structural disadvantages which they faced with no admission that any welfare dependency, drug dependency or criminality which they might exhibit was actually a response to the structural disadvantages which they faced.

[Click here and here for IDS at the BBC 2006 discussing Breakdown Britain. Notice also that Iain Duncan Smith again focussed on the development of  a UK  underclass in his responses to the UK urban riots of 2011.   Also click here for BBC coverage of Iain Duncan Smith’s views

[Ian Duncan Smith has also focused on the existence of a poverty trap whereby the existence of a variety of complex means tested benefits means that there may be little financial incentive to work because for every £ earned from employment perhaps 70 pence may be lost as a result of the withdrawal of means tested benefits. As Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith would aim to develop policies to alleviate the poverty trap and he would also seek to distance himself from George Osborne’s rhetoric of “Strivers and Skivers” Disputes with George Osborne and David Cameron over welfare benefits policy would eventually lead Iain Duncan Smith to resign from Cabinet in March 2016 although it has also been claimed that his resignation was linked also to his support for Brexit which Cameron and Osborne did not support.]

Conservative Macroeconomic Policies 2005- 2015

Also, Conservative macroeconomic policies wee to a considerable extent aligned with their welfare policies.

Although the Conservatives in 2007 had stated that they would support current Labour plans for government spending they changed their macroeconomic approach fundamentally in response to the credit crunch and subsequent economic recession. The Coalition government was certainly faced with a difficult economic legacy which both Coalition partners took every opportunity to blame upon the economic mismanagement of the previous Labour Government while critics of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats focussed upon the role of the international financial crisis rather than high Labour spending as the major cause of recession and subsequent increase in the budget deficit.

Whatever the causes of the deficit any government elected in 2010 would have aimed to reduce it and subsequent party-political disputes revolved around the speed at which the deficit should be reduced, the relative importance of government spending reductions and taxation increases in the deficit reduction process and the impact of the chosen debt reduction policies on trends in income inequality and poverty.

Conservative Chancellor George Osborne stated that the Coalition would reduce the budget deficit more quickly than would Labour and that they would do so primarily via government expenditure cuts rather than taxation increases. They stated also that Health, Education and Foreign Aid budget would be protected but that other departments should expect substantial expenditure cuts and that in particular there would eventually be significant reductions in the Social Security budget as real benefits were cut and more stringent conditions were attached to the receipt of benefits via schemes such as the Employment Support Allowance [ESA] eligibility for which would be determined by a Work Capability Assessment [WCA]. In the 2012 Budget George Osborne announced that the highest rate of income tax would be reduced from 50p to 45p which led to criticisms that the Conservatives were protecting the interests of the rich at the expense of the poor. However, George Osborne claimed that the actual loss of taxation revenue would be small, and that aspiration and incentives would be increased as a result of the lower tax rate.

Conservative rhetoric around the deficit reduction plans between 2010-2015 was in some respects ambivalent. On the one hand although George Osborne took every opportunity to claim in relation to the sharing of the burden of deficit reduction that "We are all in this together" he also emphasised alleged differences between "workers and shirkers" or "strivers and skivers" as he tried to build political support for significant reductions in the social security budget as indicated in the following link. Click here for Strivers versus shirkers : the language of the welfare debate and here and here for articles which are critical of the Osborne view.

Thus echoes of the Underclass Debate can be found in the Conservative approach to social policy and economic policy and in its response to the urban riots of 2010 while it has also be claimed that David Cameron’s Troubled Families Initiative which appeared to blame major social problems on the misbehaviour of a relatively small number of problem families had similar connections  in that the initiative could be seen as deflecting attention from the existence of deep- seated structural inequalities [which have been exacerbated by government policies onto the alleged culturally pathological behaviour of the poor. Critics of the Troubled Families initiative have also noted that the Coalition and Conservative Governments have claimed that these policies are working well, there is evidence that this is in fact not the case.,

 

Click here detailed data from the National Centre for Social Research on attitudes to Welfare. [Download the PDF and scroll down to Chapter Two]

David Cameron: Urban Riots and The Troubled Families Initiative

Click here and here  for David Cameron's response to the Urban riots of 2011

Click here and here  David Cameron Speech introducing the Troubled Families Initiative

Click here for Select Committee criticism of DCLG Report  on the Troubled Families  and here for criticism of the policy and the Government’s alleged exaggeration of the effectiveness of the policy

Click here   and here  and  here and here  and here  for further critical assessment of the of the Troubled Families Initiative. However, these critical assessments were written in 2016. Later Government analyses would suggest that the policy has had some successes as indicated in the Research Briefing cited below and subsequent Conservative Governments have continued with the policy. However perhaps further criticisms will appear in the future.

Click here  for a 2023 House of Commons Library Research Briefing on the Supporting Families Programme [previously Troubled Families]

Click here for sociological analysis of the Troubled Families Initiative

Click here and here for trend data on public attitudes to social security re spending which indicate that pro-social security attitudes declined from the late 1980's  to around 2010-11  but have increased thereafter .It would appear that the articulation of anti-social security spending sentiments by politicians and in the national media were especially effective between 2000- 2010-11 but that support for  social  security spending increased thereafter  although support for increased taxation to finance increased social security payments remains fairly limited..

 

The Theory of the Underclass: Further Sociological Analysis

Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class [Owen Jones [2010; 2016; 2020]

Chavs [In the second section of this Thinking Allowed programme for BBC Radio 4 Professor Laurie Taylor is in discussion with author Owen Jones.

Chavs Open Learn Review      Chavs podcast

In his Study Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class [2010, 2016, 2020] the radical journalist Owen Jones makes a critical assessment of the Conservative Party and of the Labour Party in the New Labour era. He sees the Conservative Party as fundamentally the defender of the capitalist class within the capitalist system and claims that even in the pre-Thatcherite era of One Nation Conservatism, the Conservatives made concessions to working class interests only when such concessions were seen as necessary to maintain the overall dominance of the capitalist class. Then the Thatcher administrations introduced a range of policies which increased social and economic deprivation for the working class: deindustrialisation resulted in the decline of secure, well paid employment in manufacturing industry and to its replacement by poorly paid , precarious employment in service in service industries and/or high rates of unemployment especially in traditional manufacturing areas; restrictive industrial relations laws reduced the powers of trade unions to defend workers’ living standards; taxation and welfare policies increased economic inequality and poverty; housing policies reduced the supply of good quality, affordable housing to buy or rent; and inadequate funding of state education reduced overall employment prospects for working class school leavers.

However, the Conservatives themselves claimed that in the past ineffective Labour Government policies and excessive trade union power had reduced overall economic efficiency whereas Conservative policies would have the reverse effects  so that workers would now be able to improve their living standards via their own individual efforts rather than via reliance upon class based and outdated policies of Labour Governments and their allies in the trade union movement. Thus according  to the Conservatives it would now be possible for aspirational members of the working class to achieve upward social mobility by their own  efforts  and , very importantly, the causes of poverty were to be found in the cultural deficiencies of the poor  rather than in the structural characteristics of capitalism as a system and in the particular characteristics of capitalism as a system and in the particular economic and social policies which Conservative Governments had themselves introduced.

In this context Owen Jones does refer briefly and critically to Charles Murray’s theory of the underclass to claim that it is factually inaccurate and that it has been used by Conservative Governments to deflect attention from the real causes of poverty and inequality and to promote disunity within the working class which will reduce the prospects  for the reinvigoration of radical left wing politics which Owen Jones believes to be necessary to challenge the continued dominance of neoliberal inequality.

Owen Jones argues that the key elements of Charles Murray’s version of the Underclass theory were endorsed and used to justify the public expenditure cuts to social security benefits which were introduced following the Great Financial Crash of 2008 and the formation of the Conservative Government in 2010.. Owen Jones argues further that by the early C21st, depictions of the poor in British popular culture  came to be encapsulated in the emergence of the so-called Chav. The word Chave was said to derive from the Romany word for gypsy but was also sometimes taken to be an abbreviation for “Council house adult vermin2 and /or “Council house and violent”.

This demonisation of the poor came to be accepted more widely because of the production of TV series such as Benefits Street, reality TV Shows such as Big Brother which mercilessly criticised working class participant Jade Goody, the Jeremy Kyle Show and “Comedy” show such as Little Britain. . So-called Chavs were variously depicted as dysfunctional, tasteless, welfare dependent individuals spending welfare benefits disproportionately on alcohol, cigarettes and illegal drugs  while one of the central figures in Little Britain [played by ex-public school boy Matt Lucas] was Vicky Pollard: a young, uneducated, barely literate, single mother with several children: a striking example of a “pram face” which was the term regularly applied to young single mothers.

These negative TV stereotypes were then widely applied in certain sections of the press to suggest that isolated examples of extreme family dysfunctionality and/or benefit fraud were examples of the much wider existence of culturally pathological tendencies among a Chav underclass which allegedly manifested itself even more clearly in the urban riots of 2010. Owen Jones and many others would suggest that these inaccurate stereotypes were not only deeply offensive to the poor but that they served also to animate academic presentations of cultural theories of the underclass and to bring them to a wider audience. Thus, it has been pointed out that far fewer people are familiar with Charles Murray’s theory of the underclass than are those aware of the character of Vicky Pollard who is seen by many as an accurate representative of the poor rather than as a negative stereotype.

As described above, there were significant party-political disputes as to the causes of the Great Financial Crash of 2008 and as to the appropriate means of dealing with it but the Conservatives responded with a significant programme of public expenditure reductions which especially involved reductions in social security benefits.

“Conservative rhetoric around the deficit reduction plans between 2010-2015 was in some respects ambivalent. On the one hand although George Osborne took every opportunity to claim in relation to the sharing of the burden of deficit reduction that "We are all in this together" he also emphasised alleged differences between "workers and shirkers" or "strivers and skivers" as he tried to build political support for significant reductions in the social security budget as indicated in the following link. Click here for Strivers versus shirkers : the language of the welfare debate and here and here for similar articles.  It has been argued  that the widespread dissemination of the Chav  stereotype helped to increase hostility  among the general population to what have been presented as excessive welfare benefits  and to strengthen support for more restrictive social security regimes which had been introduced initially by Labour but then intensified by the Coalition and subsequent Conservative Governments.

Click here for Benefits Street 10 years on  and here   and here   and here   and here  and here    for further examples of the demonisation of welfare claimants

However, In the preface to the 2020 edition of his book , Owen Jones that following on from the years of austerity,  public support for increased government spending on social security began to increase to some  extent as is indicated in the following sources.

Click here and here for trend data on public attitudes to social security re spending which indicate that pro-social security attitudes declined from the late 1980's  to around 2010-11  but have increased thereafter. It would appear that the articulation of anti-social security spending sentiments by politicians and in the national media were especially effective between 2000- 2010-11 but that support for  social  security spending increased thereafter  although support for increased taxation to finance increased social security payments remains fairly limited.

 

Thus echoes of the Underclass Debate can be found in the Conservative approach to social policy and economic policy and in its response to the urban riots of 2010 while it has also be claimed that David Cameron’s Troubled Families Initiative which appeared to blame major social problems on the misbehaviour of a relatively small number of problem families had similar connections

In her study Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neo-Liberal Britain, Dr Imogen Tyler emphasises that recent manifestations of the Underclass Theory should be seen as central to the general political project of neo-liberalism in the UK. I am totally unable to do justice to Dr Tyler’s detailed informative study but in summary terms the main points of her argument include the following.

• Whereas supporters of neoliberal policies argue that they generate the greater economic incentives necessary to promote faster economic growth, the benefits of which trickle down to the poor, Dr Tyler, long with many other critics of neoliberalism, argues that neoliberalism is designed to restabilise the capitalist economy and to re-establish the dominance of the capitalist class; that it significantly increases economici inequality and poverty and in so doing undermines the very prospects for equality of opportunity that it claims to support.
• In Dr Tyler’s view , increased economic equality is highly desirable and can be achieved only through radical left-wing policies supported by a united working class and hopefully be proposed by the  Labour Party, the trade unions and other left-wing groups.
• Dr Tyler believes that in reality in UK society there are major social class inequalities in power, wealth, income and opportunity which put the working class as a whole at a significant social and economic disadvantage but that  prominence given to the theory of the Underclass results in a focus on the characteristics of an allegedly work- shy, welfare dependent, criminal underclass and thereby distracts attention from wider structures of economic inequality which exist between upper, middle and working class people in general.
• The causes and effects of structural inequalities are thereby ignored, and attention focuses instead on the problems of a much smaller underclass which are considered to be primarily caused by the cultural pathologies of its own members.
• Consequently, welfare and social policies should aim to bear down on the alleged cultural pathologies of the underclass for example by reducing benefit levels and tightening their eligibility criteria and using ASBOs designed to decrease the raucous behaviour of some working-class youths.
• Dr Tyler notes also that although only a minority of people may be familiar with Charles Murray’s theory of the underclass , many more are familiar with related negative cultural stereotypes of the working class which have been deployed through the mass media in recent years and she believes that the prevalence of these negative stereotypes will have had much more effect on people’s political attitudes than any academic theories of the underclass.

Click here    for The Riots of the Underclass? Stigmatisation, Mediation and the Government of Poverty and Disadvantage in Neoliberal Britain [Dr. Imogen Tyler:]

Click here  for The Kids are revolting but why? [Dr Imogen Tyler].

 

 

The Great British Class Survey and the Precariat

In this Great British Class Survey Professor Mike Savage and his colleagues develop a 7 class model of UK society in which the 7^th class is the Precariat which is estimated to account for 15% of the British population which is a considerably larger percentage than that usually associated with the size of the underclass. In this schema social class membership is measured by the possession of economic, cultural and social capital and the precariat possess very limited amounts of these forms of capital.

 

Professor Savage and his colleagues state that they have chosen to use the term "Precariat" rather than "Underclass" because they see the latter term as particularly associated with versions of underclass theory which seek to associate the poor with cultural deprivation and welfare dependency, whereas Professor Savage and colleagues associate the Precariat with the structural inequalities endemic in capitalist society.

 

Professor Guy Standing and The Precariat

Guy Standing argues that "... leaving aside agrarian societies the globalisation era has resulted in a fragmentation of national class structures" and that "broadly speaking while the old classes resist i n part of the world, we can identify 7 groups", although he elsewhere includes as an 8th group, "The Plutocracy", who are a very small, extremely wealthy and politically powerful group at the top of the Elite. Among these groups, Professor Standing focuses almost entirely on the analysis of the Precariat which, he claims, accounts for approximately 25% of the overall class structure of many societies. The following distinct groups are considered by Standing, although it is highly doubtful whether he wishes to suggest that each of these groups are actually social classes, and he sees the Precariat as "a class in the making" rather than a class in itself in the Marxist sense.

1. The Plutocracy
2. The Elite
3. The Salariat: well-paid managerial and profession workers
4. The Proficiens: professional technicians who may by choice sometimes prefer employment on well-paid but short-term contracts
5. The Proletariat: individuals who continue to be employed in steady working-class jobs
6. The Precariat
7. The Unemployed
8. The Lumpenprecariat: "a detached group of socially ill misfits living off the dregs of society".

Professor Standing’s definition of the Precariat is rather different from the definition of the Precariat used in the Great British Class Survey but once again it would not be appropriate to equate Professor Standing’s Precariat with concepts of the Underclass.  For further information on Professor Standing’s study click here.

Conclusion: The Underclass and Social Exclusion Today: Some Very Tentative Ideas

It has been argued that at least to some extent Labour Governments 1997-2010 and the Coalition Government of 2010- 15 both reflected   underclass themes in their economic and social policies. However, more recently there has been a greater focus on the extent to which many working class people have been “left behind” because of globalisation processes resulting in deindustrialisation while  pro Brexit politicians have argued that membership of the EU undermined UK sovereignty in general and UK Government control of European immigration in particular and that the “white working class “have been disadvantaged because of high levels of immigration.. The UK economy and society suffered terribly because of the Covid crisis and also as a result of the war in Ukraine which led to substantial increases in the prices of energy and grain, but Conservative Governments have claimed that leaving the EU would improve the UK’s economic prospects eventually; that immigration levels would be reduced and that a levelling up strategy” would improve workers’ prospects in those regions which have been damaged especially by deindustrialisation.

Recent years have seen the development of so-called Blue-Collar Conservatism and in the 2019 General Election, many working class voters switched from Labour  to the Conservative Party which was very keen to maintain this working-class support by focussing on the alleged advantages of Brexit , the alleged negative effects of immigration and  the alleged social conservatism of much of the working class,  which meant they would oppose the alleged excessive focus of the Left on so- called woke issues such multiculturalism, white privilege, transsexual rights and environmental concerns coupled with the alleged failure of the Left to address the concerns of the left behind white working class. However, as is indicated in this article, the social conservatism of the working class should not be overstated.

Nevertheless since the Conservative Party now wishes to appeal primarily to the assumed social conservatism of the working class and to argue that they, the Conservatives, can best be relied upon to defend the economic interests of the left behind working class, it is not surprising that  far less has been heard recently of the underclass rhetoric associated with the theories of Charles Murray although a recent issue of Channel 4 Dispatches did attract some criticism. Click here and here for Dispatches 2024 and here for a  Guardian item on the Benefits System.

 

Of course, many argue that the UK exit from the EU has been a disastrous error and that immigration is in many ways beneficial and indeed necessary given the ageing population of the UK. Meanwhile, the UK rate of economic growth has been slow for at least the last 10 years, and levels of poverty, inequality and social exclusion have remained high which points to the ineffectiveness of Conservative social policies and their  levelling up strategy and helps to explain their General Election defeat in 2024. One can but wonder how the Conservatives would have responded to the current economic situation if they had been re-elected, but the Labour Party was returned to government with a massive House of Commons majority, which , however,  achieved with only 34% support of the electorate and its opinion poll ratings have subsequently fallen sharply. It is to be hoped that Labour will effectively address the issue of social exclusion although this will not be easy.

Labour are currently focusing on the need to reduce the current rate of inactivity in the UK and whereas Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is emphasising the beneficial effects of employment as against inactivity, some are fearful that undue pressure may be placed on those who inactive with good reason to seek employment. The following links provide additional information.

Latest Issue Labour and Activity Rates

Click here for How big is the problem of people not working? {BBC}

Click here Youth and “guaranteed” training [BBC]

Click here  for Ministers should enable work, not force it. {guardian] Ena

Click here    Participation in education, training and employment 2023 [DfE]